OŚRODEK TU I TERAZ / WARSZTATY / June 2018 / 12.06.18 - 17.06.18

Why join the Life Change Program?

There are too many reasons to list! But it is the reason that YOU discover that is going to be the most important. This retreat is a deep dive into yourself; perhaps acknowledging aspects of your life that you haven’t quite been able to before.

The Life Change Program is not a pampering spa retreat. There will be times of intense emotional and physical experience, some of which may feel challenging at the time. Such is the nature of transformation. Being with and part of a group will give you a sense of support and solidarity. You are creating real change, love and intimacy in your life!

Other than the time schedule, we will not be giving you detailed information; this encourages you to be in the present moment and to say ‘yes’ to every activity. The busyness of your mind will begin to quieten as the retreat unfolds and you drop into the deep spaciousness of yourself.

During this program I draw from a wide range of modalities including:

• Transpersonal Somatic approach
• Gestalt
• Energy Psychology
• Body and Energy Psychotherapy
• Somatic experiencing
• Trauma release and trauma therapy
• Awareness, meditation, mindfulness
• Guided visualization
• Insight therapy
• Bioenergetics
• Psychodrama
• Breathwork
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
• Family Systems Theory
• Transpersonal and psychodynamic psychotherapy
• Totality Therapy (from Dr Shakti Malan)
• Process-work psychology.

In order for you to get the most from investing in you, we ask that you either leave at home or hand in phones, mobile devices and reading materials. However, it’s always possible for you to be contacted in an emergency. We do encourage writing in a journal.

We will be exploring deeply the big themes of life: trauma, abuse, pleasure, depression, joy, survival, fear, anxiety, anger, intimacy, death and loss.

• Purpose
• Who am I?
• Healthy habits
• Expressing and feeling greater freedom with our emotions
• Trauma resolution – each culture has its own history of trauma. Acknowledging where trauma has impacted us is a vital part of this program
• Returning to a sense of peace, calm and relaxation
• Boundaries – Saying Yes and No
• A Spiritual life
• Discover an intimacy with yourself, and take away powerful, simple tools and practices to ignite/blossom this intimacy in your life, relationships, work

Are you ready for change?

The Life Change Program is time away from your normal schedule, time invested in YOU. Designed to give valuable insights around the big themes in life, you will be lovingly challenged to dive deeply beneath the surface of yourself, to what has brought you to this very moment, and provided with a safe space for deep, inner life changing discoveries, exploration, acceptance and transformation.

Opening to Life

In our day to day living, we can all too easily become set in our ways, comfortable and before we know it, we become closed. As this retreat unfolds, you may remember ‘the fragrance of life’, or perhaps discover it for the very first time. I use the word ‘fragrance’ because in more than just a metaphorical sense, we are similar to flowers. One cannot force a flower to open, but we can provide the right environment where flowering simply happens.

What’s the Benefit?

• Live the big life that you know is possible
• Uncover a deep intimacy with your inner passions
• Awaken the Eros that flows naturally through all of life
• Feel deeply relaxed, safe and at home in your body
• Come into a full embrace of your sensitivity in all areas of your life
• Cultivate an embodied spiritual knowing
• Discover an openness that permeates through your body, mind, attitude and spirit

What is a body approach to personal development?

I noticed with more traditional forms of therapy that something always remained unanswered, returning to a familiar ground that never seemed to change. Our culture places much emphasis and value on cognition from the mind. We’ve grown up in a disembodied world – sitting at desks for far too many hours, looking at our laptops and hand held devices.

Our body is a bridge to our inner life and to all that’s ever happened to us. Learning to make deeper contact with the internal space of our body, somatic sensations and nervous system, invites a gradual shift from mental perception, to an embodied experience of ourselves as unlimited potential.

The exercises and structures you will take part in on the program are all body-based;
a combination of experiential and structured, sometimes with movement, where your energy is encouraged to flow, breaking through old, restrictive patterns and ways of holding ourselves that keep us small. The breath is a key element to facilitate this approach, and much time will be given to bringing awareness to this gateway into spaciousness.

Freedom from the past

You may be in a life crisis, feel stuck, in transition or you may just have a week free and want to dedicate the time to knowing yourself deeper. When the longing to be free is bigger than the fear of being exposed, we open ourselves to experiences that re-program our deepest beliefs about ourselves and liberate the flow of energy held in psychological behaviour patterns.

In an atmosphere of empathy, non-judgment and acceptance, the group process facilitates a discovery and potential resolution of repressed energy from the past, and a return to our original essence. One of my objectives is to support you in bringing more awareness to your behaviour and how your unconscious patterns can undermine your relationships and creativity.

THE FIELD

This is one of the main benefits of group work. Another way of describing the Field is resonance. We are each a unique bundle of energy, a symphony, if you like. Imagine a room full of violins. If someone were to enter this room and play one of them, you would notice that others would ‘play’ an empathic tune. This phenomenon accelerates one’s awakening. In an example from my own life, I was co-facilitating a 7 day group process and the first day coincided with the anniversary of my mother’s death. During an opening dance with the whole group, my colleague happened to play a song that was very significant to me in relation to my mother and this touched me deeply and I started to openly weep. Soon, several of the group members, who’d been captivated by what I was experiencing were able to feel their own grief around mothering and the group process had begun.

Why did I design this program?

I am passionate about human potential! And in creating dedicated, clear spaces for discovery. Different aspects of ourselves are revealed in different scenarios. Whether we are aware of it or not, the biggest place of hiding is from ourselves, so if we are really interested in awakening, the more different scenarios we can put ourselves in, the more we can discover the places that we hide.

My own self-enquiry began 20 years ago, at the age of 32, when I entered psychodynamic psychotherapy (which lasted on and off for 12 years). During this time my life changed in ways that I never thought possible, including embarking on a 5 year Transpersonal Psychotherapy training. After a while in therapy, my therapist gave me a flyer for a 3 day workshop, Psychology of Vision; the experience was profound to say the least; the biggest breakthrough for me at that time was to allow myself to cry in front of other people, and also to receive accurate feedback from others for the first time in my life. In our day to day life, we cannot rely on those around us to give us accurate feedback, the kind that leads to discovery of our authentic self. At some point in our lives we must take full responsibility for where we are at and stop blaming the outside. This takes time and commitment. The aim of this program is to give space for this and to point you to what is real about you, and what is an adaptation. An intense, bespoke experiential program can be a great catalyst to one’s ongoing self-discovery!

What did I discover in a nutshell?

Our own unique experience of early life set’s up in us, to a greater or lesser degree, a false self (the stronger the challenges, the more of a false self we create). As we are forming, the adults around us tell us who we are, from beliefs handed down from their parents, and we form unconscious beliefs around these to survive. At the root of these (false) beliefs is an idea that we’re unloved and unlovable. It’s this false self that creates the dramas and general mayhem in our lives; the, shall we say, distortions in our behaviour and the ‘energetic straightjackets’ that we seem to wear and not be able to take off.

What, eventually, emerges from all the soul searching is we discover we might be alive for reasons other than productivity or consumption - as the Authentic Wealth of our Real Selves is slowly revealed. We are not problems to be fixed, but jewels to be discovered, with life as the oyster!

My commitment to you

There are no quick fixes in this life, no matter what the marketing may tell you! It can be a wonderful gift to give yourself and your potential a 5 day program, but you also need to have other support in place (unless you are many years down the line and know the kind of fractures in yourself that come up for integration). There is integration time built into the program.

And it may be important that you have additional therapeutic containers in place before and after the week. It is your responsibility to put this in place, and to have the resources to do so. The language of alchemy beautifully maps the transformation of the soul, and the dissolution of the false self. Allowing space in your life for this dissolution, is how change happens, and we come through a little bit more real than we were before. Illusions that were being held in relationships often break away after participating in an intensive.

Why the Tu I Teraz Centre?

This program is held in the awesome embrace of the Tu i Teraz centre in Poland. For me, this program has been percolating through for the last 7 years and I am excited and delighted to be birthing the 5 day pilot at this centre, where I spent 10 days last year teaching at their 5^th Tantra Festival – V Festiwal Tantry. Nestled in a forest, away from everything, with beautiful group rooms and spaces. It is a perfect location for this intense program, with our basic needs wonderfully taken care of, we can relax and focus into self-discovery.

What do people say about working with Kimaya?

“So... I'm not sure how exactly to describe my experience on the day and since then, but I know that it has been quietly profound... although of course not so quiet on the actual day whilst I was crying my broken heart out. There has always been such grief and armouring around my heart area. I have felt like a prisoner to it because I can't remember it ever not being there. Felt like I was born to hold this nameless crippling grief. I could literally feel the blockage there, every time I moved towards intimacy, it felt like a heavy wall needed to be forced through for the energy to move and expand upwards.

On your retreat it felt like that desperately broken hearted feeling I've always known was fully released. Now there is space! To learn and to practice openness and receiving. And I guess truly living instead of surviving.

I felt that the release happened as a result of your skill as an embodiment and healing practitioner. As though you could sense the blockage in my being and you knew what needed to be done, and you facilitated that very powerfully, and also perfectly gently. So thank you for giving me freedom from a huge part of my generational baggage. I'm grateful, and I also know that I deserve this freedom, and so much more too!” ~ Surya from London

There is one word that individual clients, couples and workshop participants use to describe working with me – Deep. Being very honest with ourselves about how life has impacted us.

I look forward to working closely with you, in this transformative and deeply revealing 5 day journey! – Kimaya.

DAILY SCHEDULE EXAMPLE:

The timings and structures may differ!

• 7:15 - 8:00 - Yoga
• 8:00 - 8:30 - Bioenergetic Practice
• 8:30 - 9:00 - Freestyle Dance
• 9:00 - 10:00 - Breakfast
• 10:00 - 13:00 - Groupwork
• 13:00 - 14:00 - Lunch
• 14:00 - 15:00 - Integration, relaxation and massage
• 15:00 - 16:00 - moving meditation, social meditation or embodiment practice
• 16:00 - 17:00 - Conscious connection
• 17:00 - 18:00 - Dinner
• 18:00 - 22:00 - Hang out time

The Program is structured around the group – all the activities (apart from massage or when you are meeting with me individually) are in community with the participants and the program staff. Being in such close proximity with each other will bring up feelings and habitual behaviour patterns. It will not be so easy to use your familiar distraction habits to dissipate or avoid feelings.
A key aspect of the program is to understand and begin to see clearly what triggers you and where you go in an emotional reaction. In our everyday life we learn strategies to avoid confrontation with the parts of ourselves that we believe are unlovable. All feelings that come up are welcomed, acknowledged, embraced, even if the past habit was to hide or isolate.

Other experiential structures are designed to engage your energy in its totality; to keep it moving; to reveal behaviour in different scenarios and to encourage the loosening of your body’s holding patterns, either in the group as a whole, small groups, pairs or on your own. The 3 hour daily group work session is the main crucible of transformation in the program with the intention of making space for what is in the unconscious to be felt and resolved. You’ll be taught tools and techniques to support you for life.

The Life Change Foundation Exploration

After booking your place on the program we will ask you to write out your basic life story, including any traumatic events or anything else which might be psychologically relevant. This should be
a maximum 4 page Word or email document. On arrival you will have a brief interview with me to find out what you’d like to work on, or how you would like to develop.

Accommodation

We propose shared room accommodation. There is a tendency in us to isolate and go to our rooms. By sharing bedroom space (in single sex rooms), you can see what you discover about yourself!

Details of the workshop