Registration begins for the FALL !
Sublime the In-Class Workshop Series Fall session begins October 2011
Join us on a creative journey, using art, guided discussion, and a dash of inspiration. No experience required!
Learn how to live more fully! This workshop series is designed to teach you about a part of your self that, when integrated, will make you feel complete. Through art exercises and guided discussion we will explore the things that affected and influenced your pre-adolescent self. Discovering and understanding this part of yourself not only benefits you but has a ripple effect: it can benefit the family and community who depend on you to guide them.
OUR GOAL
What we are going to do in these workshops is learn how to move toward becoming complete and whole. We will work toward integrating, through understanding, a part of ourselves that is often misunderstood and detached.We will use art exercises and guided discussion to explore the things that affected and influenced her. You will leave these workshops with a deeper sense of yourself and the tools to continue to grow. As well as, the artwork and the experience of sharing with a community of women on a similar journey.
QUESTIONS
Q: Who should take these workshops?
A: Any woman who wants to learn more about herself.
Q: Should you still take them if you didn't like this stage of your life or if you have had trauma during your adolescents?
A: Yes. I believe that by exploring this stage of your development you will be able to review any of the events that affected you negatively and reassess your original take on them. For example, perhaps what you once defined as weakness was actually bravery. I also think that in doing this course you can heal from earlier difficulties.
Q: What if I am not very artisit?
A: You don't need to be an artist to take these workshops. We will use simple art techniques to help us express ourselves
INTRODUCTION
POTENCY
I believe that the inner adoescent girl is a potent part of every woman. Sadly, as we age we learn to silence her. Western culture allows girls freedom up to a point and then we are taught to conform. We are sucked into a vortex and spit out in an ill fitting barbie suit. We look around and see that everyone is doing as she is told. She is either being a "good" girl or rebelling and being a "bad" girl. One way of another we are in reaction to the annihilation of a very potent self, the early adolescent girl.
She is the part of us that knows how to have fun. She knows how to be free. She knows how to fight back. She knows how to sing, laugh and dance with abandon. She holds our potential, our hopes and dreams. She doesn't care what you think. She is brimming with her own ideas. She speaks in code to her friends who all understand her even if the rest of us don't. Her energy and vitality unnerve those who do not live as she does. She lives in us all and we need to reclaim and integrate her in order to feel complete and whole. We need to allow her to take her rightful place in our lives. We can call her forth and she will come. We have to drop our agenda and listen to her talk, listen to her energy, vitality and beauty. We must trust her. I believe that she knows what we need even when we don't.
VORTEX
It seems to me that prior to a girl hitting puberty she is the most free. I read once that a pre-adolescence girl could walk down the street behind her mother doing the King Tut and no-one would pay much attention to her. However, once she hits puberty everything changes. I think of this transition in a girl's life as a vortex. It is a swirling, whirling, force like a whirlpool that she gets pulled into where she is expected to look, sound and behave according to a cultural script.
Lots of girls are unhappy about their body changing. Lots of girls fight this transition. On some level they know they are losing something important and are being pulled into something bigger and more powerful then themselves. Once they are pulled into the vortex they change, they lose their freedom to be fully themselves.
BARBIE SUIT
On the other side of the vortex I think of the girl as being spit out in a barbie suit. What I mean is that she is forced to see how she measures up to a suit that none of us fit into. In other words, is she thin enough, tall enough, blonde enough, pretty enough, pleasing enough...? The barbie suit is a measure of the outside of a girl. It isn't about her inner beauty, strength and character. It is about how she fits into the cultural expectations, i.e., is she sexual enough but not too sexual? Is she the bride or the perpetual bride's maid? Remember that prior to puberty she could walk down the street being goofy and no-one much cared, least of all her. And that is the point, she didn't have to care much about who was watching or judging. She was free to be whatever she felt like being.
I think that when an adolescent girl first comes out on the other side of the vortex she still has part of herself. She has not been transformed completely by the barbie suit because she still remembers her former freedom. She still knows what she thinks and is ready to share that with everyone. However, people judge her now. They express impatience and irritability when she describes what she sees because a girl with a well-fitted barbie suit would never do that. It is my sense the the thing that upsets us the most about adolescents is that they have not learned to edit themselves. They are notoriously honest when it comes to their opinions of the people around them. And they especially like to point out when those people are being hypocrites.
This is what I call the pissy part of the adolescent girl. I think that this pissy part is an important part of her. I think that this is her way of expressing a loss that she intuitively feels. This loss is felt like a death. However, it is a death without a body. So there is no way to openly mourn. No-one understands what she is crying about. They just chalk it up to hormones. She doesn't know why she is crying either and hasn't got the ability to articulate what she is experiencing. This is the case because what she is experiencing has no name. It isn't called a right of passage. It isn't celebrated as a girls entrance into womanhood. It isn't recognized as a loss. It goes unmarked. When we do not name things we have no power to understand them, never mind change them.
This passage into and out the other side of the vortex is about a girl leaving herself behind. She is expected to put away her own ideas. She must stop laughing and singing loudly, and stop dancing with abandon. Now everyone is watching and judging her. She is expected to edit herself at every level in order to please those around her. No longer is she permitted to walk down the street, doing the King Tut, without a care in the world.
This workshop series is designed to address and name this lose with the intent to reclaim what was left behind: the vitality and beauty of the pre-adolescent girl. Through understanding and integrating this part of ourselves we can feel complete and whole.
KINGSTON SCHEDULE
Sublime #1:Here and Now
Saturday October 15/11
10:00-4:00
Sublime #2: Outside Influences
Saturday November 12/11
10:00-4:00
Sublime #3: Integrating Your Inner Girl
Saturday December 3/11
10:00-4:00
COST: $110.00 per workshop (may be covered through some Extended Health Plans)
(Sublime #1 is a prerequisite for Sublime #2 and #2 is a prerequisite for Sublime #3)
