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2012 WORKSHOP SEASON


March 24, 25 2012
Reclaiming the Human Capacity for Ecstasy
Location: Spring Hollow Lodge, Sharon Woods Park, Columbus, Ohio
(please ask for information about nearby hotels)
Instructors: Belinda Gore

The human need for is ecstasy is an imperative as the need for food.

The Cuyamungue Method teaches us how to adjust our bodies to access our natural ability to expand awareness and experience ecstasy.

Anthropologist Felicitas Goodman’s research revived a tradition – at least 36,000 years old – that uses the capacity of the human nervous system to alter its functioning in order to enter expanded or non-ordinary states of consciousness. Using this simple, safe, and teachable method, you will learn to use ecstatic postures to facilitate healing, divination, shape-shifting and spirit journeying.

The body postures seen in ancient art from Mayan, Egyptian, African, Native American, and other traditions are a doorway into experiencing this kind of ecstatic trance.

Cost: $135; early registration before February 1, $110. Click here to register.


May 31- June 3, 2012

The Hero Journey – Embracing Your Own Story

Location: The Cuyamungue Institute
Instructors: Paul Robear, Laura Lee

The Hero Journey is not only the universal story arc at the heart of mythologies the world over (and of many Hollywood movies, made accessible and popularized by Joseph Campbell) — it is the story of our lives. The challenges facing the mythic hero are our challenges. Each of us is the hero of our own life’s story. This introductory course is perfect for those new to the posture work.

We’ll use various postures to inform us on each step of our own
journey:

  • Answering the Call to Adventure.
  • Meeting our Mentors, and Threshold Guardians.
  • Facing our deepest fears.
  • Grabbing hold of a long-buried gift
  • finding our way back home, wiser, stronger, transformed.

Join us to learn how to use the Cuymungue Method to dive deeper into your own story and emerge with fresh insight, and release the “Spiritual Warrior” within.
Cost: $395 INCLUDES MEALS AND LODGING. Click here to register.


June 13-17, 2012

Masked Trance Dance
Location: The Cuyamungue Institute
Instructors: Rae LeCompte, Jackie Haworth, Stephanie Stephens

The Masked Trance Dance is a five-day workshop that is a centerpiece of our work at the Cuyamungue Institute. The workshop includes using The Cuyamungue Method to journey to the home of the animal spirits, then making masks and costumes in preparation for a ritual dance that the group creates based on guidance offered during the Tennessee Diviner ritual. The ritual dance that emerges from integrating the group’s collective trance experiences tells a mythic story and culminates in a metamorphosis dance. Cost: $525 INCLUDES MEALS AND LODGING. Click here to register.


July 24-29, 2012
Using The Cuyamungue Method for Healing, Growth and Going Beyond to Access the Universal Mind
Location: The Cuyamungue Institute
Instructor: Nick Brink

For thousands of years people have gone to their shaman for healing and answering questions. The purpose of this workshop is to better understand and learn of the intuitive power of the shaman and the use of the ecstatic postures for healing, growth and going beyond to access the universal mind. As a psychologist I have used hypnosis and dreamwork for 30 years for these same purposes, but the ecstatic postures can lead a person quite directly and simply to the same or even deeper experiences. Three basic postures will be the core of the workshop: 1. a divination posture to identify the problem/goal; 2. an underworld posture to find what is needed to resolve the problem or attain the goal; 3. an initiation or metamorphosis posture to incorporate what is learned from the underworld experience. A fourth posture of journeying into the earthly realm can show us how these experiences affect our life and/or a journey into the upper world can take us to a new level of experience. This series will begin with the Tlazolteotl posture for cleansing.

Experiencing this process of healing, growth and going beyond requires more time than just 5 days. I would hope the workshop would continue over the Internet, returning to these experiences from six months to a year later when the participant is ready to look back to recognize and understand the transformation that occurred.

Accessing the universal mind is an extraordinary experience that takes us beyond the world of our ordinary senses. The afternoons will be used to demonstrate the extrasensory and psychokinetic power of these postures by using some of the experiments examined by Dean Radin in his book Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. Performing these experiments in ecstatic trance can show that these altered states are more powerful in accessing the Universal Mind than the ordinary state of consciousness.

Cost: $495 INCLUDES MEALS AND LODGING. Click here to register.

Nicholas Brink is a licensed clinical psychologist. Nick has maintained a private practice in psychology for the last 35 years. and presented 50 workshops on hypnosis, guided imagery, dream-work and shamanic journeying. …… for a complete resume http://imaginalmind.net/resume.html


July 30-August 4, 2012
Discovering the Power of Animal Spirit Guides
Location: The Cuyamungue Institute
Instructor: Nick Brink

Animal spirit guides are powerful guides in healing and personal growth. An animal spirit guide will be sought and identified using a divination posture. Then the spirit guide will be more personally experienced using a metamorphosis/shape-shifting posture. Learning what this spirit guide has to offer the participant will be examined using an underworld or spirit world posture and what is learned will be incorporated within the individual using an initiation/death-rebirth posture. The power of the spirit animal will be explored by considering its position on the medicine wheel, whether the Lakota, Navaho or Zuni medicine wheels, recognizing that the medicine wheel is a mirror of the self and in itself a powerful healing story as per Mehl-Madrona’s Narrative Medicine.

In the Lakota tradition, the first name given a child is found in the parent’s vision quest, a name from one of the four directions. Then a person is expected to spend one’s life searching the four directions to find his or her four names. The names from the East are of birds, the South of the small animals, of the West the carnivorous animals, and of the North the antlered animals. Another activity would be to find a medicine bundle object, fetish, etc, to carry as a continued reminder of the animal spirit. This might include a trip into town or a meditative trip into the nearby desert to find a special power spot and there to identify a special power object for the medicine bundle. This would be the beginning for the participant in searching the four directions to eventually find his or her four personal animal spirit names.

These ecstatic experiences are extraordinary and take us beyond the world of our ordinary senses. The afternoon or evening will be used to demonstrate the extrasensory and psychokenetic power of these postures by using some of the experiments examined by Dean Radin in his book Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. Performing these experiments in ecstatic trance can show that these altered states are more powerful in accessing the Universal Mind than the ordinary state of consciousness.

Cost: $495 INCLUDES MEALS AND LODGING. Click here to register.


August 29 – September 2, 2012
Teacher Training: Becoming a Certified Instructor
Location: The Cuyamungue Institute
Instructor: Belinda Gore
Co-facilitator: Jackie Haworth

In the Instructor Training, you will learn:

How to teach the safe and simple six-step process, known as the Cuyamungue Method, using a simply ritual, rhythmic sound, and body position.
What postures to use for specific purposes, including:

  • HEALING: the meaning of healing, making whole and holy, for self and others;
  • DIVINATION: how to consult the larger Reality for answers to personal and global questions
  • SPIRIT JOURNEYS: traveling along the World Tree to the Sky World, the Middle World, and the Lower World
  • METAMORPHOSIS: shape-shifting in non-ordinary reality
  • INITIATION: accessing the mysteries of death and rebirth.Practice techniques for rattling and drumming to guide trance sessions.
You will also learn:
  • How to facilitate group dynamics in workshop settings and support participants in finding meaning in their trance posture experiences.
  • History of Felicitas Goodman’s research.
  • Overview of body-based spiritual practice, including neuro-psychology and physiological changes that occur during the trance state.
  • How to organize workshops and individual consultations.

Cost: $595 – INCLUDES MEALS AND LODGING, as well as workbook and training materials. (To confirm that you meet criteria for attendance please read or email belindagore@hotmail.com) Click here to register.


September 18 -23, 2012
Experience the Dendara Zodiac through Posture
Location: The Cuyamungue Institute
Instructors: Jill Schumacher & Meredith McCord

The fee for this workshop is $525 by July 1st, after July 1st the fee will be $575.00. We will start at 5 pm on Tuesday and end at approximately 2 pm on Sunday. Click here to register.