Two workshops – Love in a Time of Broken Heart: Healing From Within, with Benig Mauger

Friday Introductory Seminar: Love in a Time of Broken Heart: Combining Psychology and Spirituality to Heal the Soul

“An understanding of the transcendent and mystical that is deeply grounded in the psychological is necessary if we are not to get bogged down in the narcissism of ‘woundology,’ or swept away by an ungrounded mysticism that promises healing without struggle.”*

Despite being told that wholeness and love lie within us, in our “quick fix” society, we often look for answers outside of ourselves and remain trapped in our wounds thus hampering our spiritual growth. Using a unique blend of psychology and spirituality, Jungian psychotherapist and author Benig Mauger, drawing from her latest book, explains how true healing comes from within and how to travel into this profound terrain of the heart.

*From Love in a Time of Broken Heart: Healing From Within, by Benig Mauger

Saturday Workshop: Healing From Within™: Initiating an Inner Path to Love and Your Soul

In an increasingly fragmented world, we seek inner wholeness, spiritual purpose-and love. While wanting to progress on our spiritual path, however, we are often held back by our sense of wounding. To be truly capable of giving and receiving love, we have to embrace our essential natures and heal our emotional wounds while practicing acceptance and forgiveness. With its unique blend of psychology and spirituality, this experiential workshop is designed to guide you on your inner journey to healing.

Using meditation, art, myth, poetry, movement and dream work, it will help us to examine how soul patterns transmitted to us in early life influence how we behave in our current relationships. We’ll explore how to balance our inner masculine and feminine aspects, as well as consider how heartbreak can be an initiation that leads to love and compassion.

Come discover what your own path to inner healing, wellness, and
spiritual purpose can awaken in you.

A book signing will follow.

Cost: $25 – Friday Evening Introductory Lecture
$99 – Saturday Workshop

Register Online

Note: The evening workshop on Friday, June 4, Love in a Time of Broken Heart, is a prerequisite for the full-day workshop.

At Transformations Holistic Learning Center
2301 Evesham Road, Suite 109
Voorhees, NJ 08043

Benig Mauger is an Ireland-based Jungian psychotherapist, writer, poet and public speaker. A pioneer in pre- and peri-natal psychology and founder of the Holistic Birth Center in London, she is the author of Songs from the Womb: Healing the Wounded Mother, Reclaiming Father: The Search for Wholeness in Men, Women and Children and, most recently, Love in a Time of Broken Heart: Healing From Within. Benig travels internationally to teach, lecture and run workshops. www.soul-connections.com

Now Who’s Crazy Now? with Elly Litvak

What is mental illness? Is it a health condition characterized by dramatic alterations in mood, thinking and behavior? Is it a chemical imbalance? Or is it the common euphemisms we hear tossed about daily like “out of your mind” or “nutty as a fruit cake”? What is recovery and how do we achieve this elusive goal?
In the fast-paced, one-woman show Now Who’s Crazy Now?, Elly Litvak brings her personal experience of living with and recovering from a serious mental illness to the stage. Now Who’s Crazy Now? is a candid, humorous, entertaining and highly educational piece, with a message of hope for recovery for everyone.
Elly’s story resonates with everyone. People living with a mental illness relate strongly to aspects of her experience while witnessing how her life transformed into one of health and balance.

Monday, June 14, 2010, 6:30 pm
St. Malachy’s Church, The Actor’s Chapel
239 West 49th Street
(between 7th and 8th Avenues)
Tickets: $35/$15 unemployed/students
The performance will be followed by a
Q&A and reception.
For more information or to buy tickets
call Melissa Meyer: 212-941-8906, ext 304
To order online: http://bit.ly/aqlgqs

Elly Litvak is a wellness and recovery specialist with extensive experience facilitating programs and workshops that benefit businesses, non-profit organizations and individuals. An ardent believer in healing through the arts and performance, Ms. Litvak is the founder of two theatre companies for people living with mental illness, Puzzle Factory and The Looney Awards. More recently, she has developed Now Who’s Talking — Telling Our Recovery Stories, a program that helps people living with mental health challenges tell stories that focus on the process of recovery. Ms. Litvak lives in Toronto.

Presented by:

The East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy – a New York City-based international education, training and research center for social therapeutics and other innovative approaches to human development, learning and community building.

Fountain House – founded in 1948 by former psychiatric patients of Rockland State Hospital. It is the world’s leading provider of recovery services for men, women and young adults living with major mental illness.

EVENT: Summer, Sex, and Spirits

SAVE THE DATE

Summer, Sex and Spirits

A benefit for Planned Parenthood of NYC

Thursday, July 8th 2010

at the newly renovated Museum of Sex

after hours admission to NYC’s most provocative museum

open bar all night

and

chances to win fabulous silent auction items

For information on sponsorship opportunities, contact melissa.lee@ppnyc.org.

Price Check: How We Became A Culture of Consumption, by Poetic People Power

On Wednesday, May 19th, Poetic People Power will hold its 8th annual
event. This year’s show is titled Price Check: How We Became A Culture
of Consumption. Poets will premiere new poems about the economics,
psychology and costs of our consumerism culture. Poets include Tara
Bracco, Erica R. DeLaRosa, Andy Emeritz, Nate Gunsch, Angela Kariotis,
Frantz Jerome, Shetal Shah, and Justin Woo.

Date: May 19, 2010
Time: 7 PM
Location: Grand Theater at The Producers’ Club, 358 West 44th Street, NYC
Admission: $15

Seating is limited so please RSVP by emailing p3rsvp@gmail.com.


What Makes a Feminist Artist?

By Allyn Gaestel

Last month Paradigm Shift organized a Feminist Artist Showcase at China 1 in Alphabet City. Facing a packed house, musicians performed a diverse array of musical sets, from spoken word to folk to reggae.

The range of performances underlined the diversity of the feminist movement, and the space for self-definition and expression within the movement. I was curious to discover what brought all these people together under the umbrella of “feminist art”.

Performers appreciated the audience’s warm reception and the opportunity to perform in a feminist space. Ricky, from Twilight of the Idle said, “It is important to have a specific place for feminist artists to perform. Women and queer and trans people, which many feminists are, have to work harder to find an audience. We get taken less seriously than straight cisgendered male artists and musicians. We get heckled by audience members, and in some cases believe it or not, by the very person who booked us in the first place.”

Jennifer Ortiz, a spoken word performer and doctoral student at CUNY Graduate Center explained that it is important to support feminist artists in safe spaces, but they also need to expand their audience to spread their message. “I feel it is important for feminists to have their own performance space, however, I am afraid that if feminist works are only displayed at such events, it may in essence be ‘preaching to the choir’. Feminist works need to be showcased at other venues in order to ensure that the message reaches those individuals, particularly young woman, who are unsure or confused as to what feminism truly is.”

The question of reaching out to broader audiences and spreading the feminist message through art was a central theme repeated by many artists. Chantilly said that much of her art doesn’t take an overtly feminist tone, because that isn’t what “hits home” for her listeners. “In a way, I feel like it’s not very productive to write exclusively on feminist topics (music-wise). You can only reach a certain niche of people that way, and at that point you’re just preaching to the choir. To me, the best way to reach people is to write whatever’s in your heart, then embody your ideals in the way you live and set an example.”

Numerous artists emphasized actively living feminism through performance and beyond. Katina Douveas said, “being a feminist for me is being extremely sensitive and vigilant to all forms of oppression, and then doing something about it.”

Jennifer Ortiz explained her own self-assertion as a feminist: “I believe that being a feminist is to take pride in being a woman and about fighting against the grain of societal expectations. In society, women are too often pressured to follow societal rules which tend to be biased in favor of men; being a feminist requires living by your own set of rules that emphasizes being a woman.”

While many artists feel somewhat outside the mainstream music world with their loaded messages, Julie from Twilight of the Idle is optimistic about the feminist art movement: “it’s only a matter of time before a feminist movement becomes concurrent culture.”

And Katina Douveas emphasized the breadth of the feminist movement. “I really believe we all have a feminist inside of us, somewhere, and that deep down, we all know that honoring “differences” and speaking up for those silenced, and for our own silenced voices is really in all of our best interest.”

Feminist artists are working throughout their lives to spread their own definition of feminism. Supportive spaces play an important role for nourishing these activists as they continue to assert themselves in less receptive venues.

Twilight of the Idle is hosting a CD release party Saturday, May 15 at 8pm at Collect Pond 338 Berry St. in Williamsburg.

Contacts for the performers are listed below:

Hosted by Laura Joy, Acoustic Folk Pop & Membership Coordinator, Paradigm Shift
http://www.myspace.com/laurajoymusic

BASTET – “Belly Dance For Change”, Experimental belly dance troupe
http://www.bastetbellydance.com

BARNACLE BILL, Folk / Soul / Reggae
http://www.myspace.com/barnaclebillmusic

CHANTILLY, Singer-Songwriter
Picture Feist and Joni Mitchell jamming in a Brooklyn warehouse
http://www.myspace.com/chantillysongs

JENNIFER ORTIZ, Spoken Word Poet
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=54705567&ref=profile

JULIA WELDON, Folk Indie Rock
http://www.myspace.com/juliaweldon

KATINA DOUVEAS, Spoken Word Poet
http://blogs.myspace.com/katinakatina

MS. INDIA.M, R&B/ Soul / Jazz / Alternative
http://www.reverbnation.com/msindiam

TWILIGHT OF THE IDLE, Queer Cabaret Wordrock
http://www.myspace.com/twilightoftheidle

View event photos on facebook!

Brittany – a poem by Cristina Dominguez

Writing and I’m freed
freed and I’m writing
writing
the need that I keep fighting

Turn the page,
ignore the cage
the cell that I’ve sealed myself in
the sin that it is to keep within
these thoughts and feelings that should be told

the toll
what I’ve done to my soul
out of
yet in control
taking hold
heart beating bold

pain and breath behind sealed lips
Death of my reality
my spirituality
imprisoning what I’m envisioning
not me in my totality

Completely confined
confiding my truth
my root
in the ground
deep down
I hide
I’m blind
I’m dry
without tears
I lie
you died

and now I’ve left behind
the part of me that’s free
am I fighting losing you by losing me?
I can’t let go of the you in me
I hope these words raise you up
how they’ve weighed me down
maybe my liberty
is your eternity

Oh Brittany
Can you forgive that I live on
and you’re gone
Is it really living?
I’m holding on

Let these words touch your face
in a place that you deserve
Can these words serve
to find me
I’m hiding
with these words

PARADIGM SHIFT, FEMINISTING, and SOAPBOX INC. Proudly Present A LOWER EAST SIDE FEMINIST TAKEOVER

PARADIGM SHIFT, FEMINISTING, and SOAPBOX INC.
Proudly Present

A LOWER EAST SIDE FEMINIST TAKEOVER
Celebrate as the Lower East Side officially becomes The Feminist District!

Happy Hour $5 Wells/Drafts
Win an exclusive Paradigm Shift “Use the F Word” engraved iPod Nano with a video camera!!
Win $100 discount to a Woodhull Institute Ethical Leadership Retreat!

June 9th, Wednesday 6:00-9:00 PM

Gallery Bar 120 Orchard Street, btwn Delancey St. & Rivington St.
Subway: Delancey-Essex Sts (F, J, M, Z), Grand St (B, D), 2nd Ave-Houston St (F, V)

Photography by Amy Mitten
Supported by
Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership

Feministing
Feministing.com reaches more people online than any other feminist blog.  We draw attention to issues that are under-covered in mainstream media, analyze pop culture, media, and advertising through a feminist lens, push elected officials and media gatekeepers to be more accountable, highlight and amplify social justice activism, and disprove the stereotype of “humorless feminists” on a daily basis.

Soapbox Inc.
Soapbox Inc. is the premiere feminist speakers’ bureau, representing experts with a progressive take on everything from politics to porn to parenting.

FACEBOOK INVITE

Last day to buy tickets for the Gala Benefit Dinner: Honoring 21 Leaders for the 21st Century 2010

> Make a reservation <

Cocktail Reception 6:00 p.m.
Dinner 7:00 p.m.
Jumeirah Essex House
160 Central Park South
New York City

See the website for details: http://www.womensenews.org/21Leaders

Brokeback Marriages: bisexual activity in traditional marriages

In the rainbow of the bisexual community, one more complicated stripe is the practicing bisexual in a traditional marriage. Based on the situation presented in the award winning motion picture, Brokeback Mountain, we call these “Brokeback Marriages”

In the worst case, the extramarital sexual activity is done under cover of dark, or behind closet doors. This is when same sex affairs happen without the consent or knowledge of the opposite sex betrothed. In the best case, the practicing bisexual has come to full awareness and has negotiated the terms of the play beyond the traditional monogamous paradigm.

In either case, that path from closet to open self acceptance can be as uniquely harrowing as any coming out story. Have you been in such a situation or would you like to work through the “What if it were me?” scenarios? Does every playful partner have to come out as bisexual or is the negotiation with the marriage partner the real hurdle? How does the bisexual activity make this different from any other extramarital affair? And in the larger context, when if ever will our society be ready to accept such an arrangement? Or must couples who work it out just be moving to their own kind of closet.. from their families, from their neighbors, from their friends?

Gather with bi and bi-friendly folk to explore the landscape of the Brokeback. Share your own experiences or wonder outloud how you would deal with a wandering partner, or your own lustful temptations. Or just hang out and listen to what others have to say in BiRequest’s fabulously safe, non-judgmental environment.

And if you can’t make it to the meeting, feel free to join us
afterward “eight-fifteenish” for dinner at:

Good Stuff Diner
109 West 14th Street
(north side of 14th St, just west of 6th Ave)

You are invited to join NARAL Pro-Choice New York’s Activist Leadership Circle!

The Activist Leadership Circle is a group for all people interested in getting more involved in NARAL Pro-Choice New York’s efforts.

Members of the Activist Leadership Circle meet once a month to discuss current reproductive health issues, learn about opportunities to participate and lead upcoming advocacy efforts, and develop new advocacy initiatives and campaigns.

The Circle has three Action Groups for members to join including the Outreach Action Group, Political and Legislative Action Group, and the Reproductive Health Education Group.

To join, you must participate in our 4-part series of new member trainings and events. Our next new member series kicks-off on Wednesday, May 12th.

Below is the complete new member training and event schedule:

Wednesday, 5/12/10, 6:00-8:00 pm: “Welcome & NARAL Pro-Choice New York 101”
Wednesday, 5/19/10, 6:00-8:00 pm: “How to Talk about the Issues and Take Action”
Thursday, 5/27/10, 6:30-8:30 pm: “Pro-Choice Action – Phone Bank”
Wednesday, 6/2/10, 6:00-8:00 pm: “Graduation and Welcome party”

Training takes place at NARAL Pro-Choice New York offices, which are located at 470 Park Avenue South, 7th Floor New York, NY 10016

For more information and to RSVP, please contact our Community Organizer anytime at lhoward@prochoiceny.org or 646-520-3506.

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