Monday, June 8, 2009

Classes for this Summer


Writing (and Living!) From Your Body 

~A seminar for writers, therapists, and entrepreneurs~

or anyone who wants to explore the value of mind/body connection in the work that they do


We don’t live in our bodies well.

Since at least the time of the Enlightenment, Western science and philosophy has privileged the “rational” mind over the feeling body. “I think therefore I am,” said Descartes, famously locating human existence—and the knowledge we gather of the world around us—solely in abstract mental processes. To Descartes and the ensuing rationalist legacy, trustworthy knowledge was not in a sensing, experiencing body, but rather in the “objective” mind somehow removed from the body.

And yet, in more and more postmodern disciplines (from psychotherapy to linguistics to feminist theory), we are seeing a resurrection of the “body as text”—the idea that the body actually houses a wellspring of knowledge about ourselves and our world. This class is space for you to consider the value of integrating “body knowledge” into traditional assumptions about how we come to know what we know. We will ask questions like:

 

·      In valuing the mind as apart from the body, and in defining reason as abstract and transcendent, how have we lost the concrete, incarnate nature of knowledge?

·      How has disconnection from our bodies affected our work? Our relationships? Our connection to our physical environment?

·      How could the practice of writing and journaling serve to reconnect us to “body knowledge?”

 

The class will both explore relevant theory from diverse discipline and offer practical techniques for living, writing, and creating a more embodied life.

 

Dates: Fridays, June 19 & 26, July 3, 10, & 17

Time: 9:30–11:00 a.m.

Location: 444 Ravenna Blvd., #309, Seattle, WA 98115

Instructor: Kimberly George

Cost: $125 for the 5-week course. $25 deposit will hold your registration. Class limited to the first 5 people who register. To register or receive more information, please email: writeexpressions@gmail.com