Maureen Chase leads SpiritSong, which is a powerful tool for freeing your voice, for accessing the authentic sound that is you, and for entering into Spirit.   SpiritSong  is based on the premise that song has two primary purposes: first, to release any “dis-ease we are carrying, and second, to connect us with the creative source.  When SpiritSinging, toning has divine intelligence and that’s why we call it SpiritSong.  It frees the creative source because is it an emanation of the essential life or spiritual force.

Abigail Bottome leads this workshop.   Through reflection and meditation, we can use the power of memory to return us to natural places that have provided solace for our grief, inspiration for artistic work, diversion from a care or worry -- personal or global. We can reaffirm kinship with the natural world through identification with these personal remembered places. Over time our connection to these places becomes more than a memory as we establish a sense of kinship to them and nurture our desire to preserve and protect these places and places like them. Through guided meditation, short writing exercises, conversation, and laughter we will reacquaint ourselves with those remembered landscapes. Come with a special place you want to ponder and write about or come with a blank stare and create a new encounter with a remembered past.

Paula Estey leads this workshop.  RECLAMATION begins with a guided meditation about spirit, body and creativity. We then trace each other’s outlines onto paper, in whatever pose or position the participant is drawn to do. Painting in the portrait is the bulk of the Workshop experience. At the end, we witness each other’s work and hear each participant’s journey through claiming our physical beauty and presence. It is a powerful workshop experience. You must sign up for both Part I and Part II to participate in this workshop.

Sarah Pirtle leads this workshop. where we nurture our souls by allowing ourselves to be as big as we are. In this workshop we will find personal touchstones for support after WISE to help live out the ways in which we feel called. Inside our hearts, the earth reorients and informs us, harmonizes and transforms us. Inside our hearts, a call pulls us toward our next steps. The WISE conference creates a community where we affirm and draw each other out. This workshop will provide an opportunity to hear ourselves and what is moving in us. WE will create a sacred space where--with focusing questions, music, circle dance, simple ceremony, and humor--we can ground in our own truth of who we are, how we are called, and how much we are wanted on this earth. A portion of the workshop will be outside.

Lesley Smith leads this workshop.  This workshop is rooted in soft Shintaido and will lead participants through gentle regenerative activities that ignite joyful connection with the earth, your body and with one another. You will find a place to return to, far from the daily work-a-day world, the center of which is joy, love and celebration. Dress in layers of comfortable clothing you can move in and feel comfortable moving on the earth in.  This workshop is appropriate for any age and any level of fitness. Bring a thick towel or yoga mat.

 Joanne Rowley leads this workshop.  This creative, experiential workshop will invite an embodied  contemplative approach to elemental wisdom. We will draw upon the teachings of Buddhism, Yoga, Experiential Anatomy and Body-Mind Centering coupled with the poets’ lens to cultivate a re-membered  experience of earth, air, fire  and water within the body-mind-psyche . Meditation and yoga practices, sounding, creative movement and self reflection will be the primary vehicles to invite a more wholesome self-understanding, an internal balance and healing and a greater capacity for relatedness to all sentient beings. Participants should bring a blanket and a yoga mat or pad and journal

Roberta Horseman teaches Wheat Weaving, an ancient art form created to celebrate the harvest, and the many gifts of mother earth. Weavings were hung on the hearth as a reminder in the dark of winter that new light and new life would return in the spring.

Wisdom Keepers are spirit dolls woven from wheat and sweet grass. Wheat represents the life force, and sweet grass represents spirit. Using your imagination, intuition, and childlike spirit, you will create a being that represents your unique gifts – a reminder of your value and creativity

Goals of the Workshop: To re-discover an ancient tradition that honored the earth and the divine feminine. To create a sacred weaving to keep as a reminder of your own divinity and connection with the earth.

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 Materials/Cost: $10

See Linda's bio for her background...

Linda Weltner will share her thoughts about women's journeys to develop their passion, find their voice, and to work for change in a way that recognizes the interconnectedness of all things on earth.

Susan Porter leads this hands-on workshop that will get journal writers out of a rut and gain a new way of seeing words by changing their color, size, and background.  For anyone who has not tried a daily journal, this workshop will inspire them to begin the process, opening up the many possibilities of working in a book with more than just words. Participants will discover the fun and mystery of putting feelings, thoughts, memories, ideas, and daily musings down on paper that has been altered with paint, collage, printing, pop-ups and other exciting techniques.  Each participant will be able to start a journal of her own to take home and continue using the processes learned for months to come. 

Annegret Baier is a knowledgeable teacher not only of percussion but also of the role of drumming to the African music culture. In a typical class.  Annegret demonstrates a rhythm then teachers the various parts to each student or groups of students on a drum or percussion instrument. Participants learn their parts and have a chance to perfect them through repetition, body percussion, movement and drumming. Everyone enjoys the experience of creating music and playing it with others. In this way they quickly learn the value and reward of listening and working together.

Using storytelling, drumming, poetry and song, Jane Gossard shares the process of finding her spiritual voice.  She tells three inspirational stories:  “University Sing,” a story of leadership, challenge and faith (when she was 19); “Drumcalling,” a story of love and self-discovery (when she was 48); and “Into the Wilderness,” a story of courage and vision – Jane’s encounter with a black bear on a six day sacred solo in the Sangre de Christo Mountains of southern Colorado (when she was 53).

After hearing Jane’s stories, the participants divide into small groups and share their stories and reflections on finding and using their own voices.

      Lori Grace leads this workshop , in which she proposes to provide participants with an experience of the senses that helps unclog whatever gets in the way of more inspired creative writing. We will work with the visual, kinesthetic, olfactory,  auditory and, perchance, gustatory senses to provide an actual experience of how we can improve creative work.  Because our souls are a component of what we are attempting to access through our work, let’s experience and sharewriting that sings and connects us to what makes us feel alive.

This workshop is led by Mia Corinha & Barbara Ducharme .  They  will use the labyrinth to mine the subconscious’s access to archetypal energies through the four elements to develop a symbolic hologram that informs and represents our relationship to our own and the planetary Soul.