There Is a Crack in Everything...
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Our 2022 Presenters
Alan Rafael "Rafa" Seid & Tess Burke ♥ Supporting Conflict in New Culture, Parts 1 and 2 Monday and Thursday afternoons
Supporting Conflict in New Culture
When you’re living and loving outside the societal norm, there can be a lot to navigate!
Many of us are understandably averse to conflict. And yet, when unspoken "stuff" is left unattended, it usually percolates and gets worse.
From a New Culture perspective, we don’t want to avoid or eliminate conflict — we want to support it. Why is that, you may wonder? Because conflict is a natural part of existence, so we actually want to get good at handling it well!
This workshop intends to move you from feeling inept at handling conflict to being confident with that challenge--and if you're already confident, even better. Learn skills to help you engage conflict with more clarity and confidence, and to make it more likely to come out on the other side with a sense of connection and mutual respect.
You will receive some tools and a basic framework, and most importantly, the opportunity to practice, ask questions, and improve.
Part 1: Intro
We'll introduce some basic concepts, tools, and frameworks — with plenty of practice right from the start. We'll then will debrief and do some Q&A, time permitting.
Part 2: Follow-Up
After you've had a bit of time to put your new skills into practice during Camp, come on back with your questions, celebrations, frustrations and confusions. We’ll clarify confusing concepts and give you expert tips and pointers. We may also demo or role-play, do a live mediation, or practice in small groups, depending on time remaining and group excitement.
Alan Rafael “Rafa” Seid has been researching and teaching high-level modalities for living in harmony within ourselves, with each other, and with the planet for nearly 30 years. He is the founder of Kalapa, a CNVC Certified Trainer, and holds acertificate in Permaculture Design. He and Tess live on the land, in community, in the foothills of the North Cascades outside of Bellingham, Washington. Rafa’s primary clients are leaders and visionaries who struggle with turning their vision into reality. Are you interested in doing great things together? You can set up a call with him here: https://calendly.com/rafa-kalapa/15
Tess Burke works with leaders who recognize that their communication skills are limiting them, and teaches them how to consistently access collaboration and facilitate mutually beneficial outcomes with others.
Tess teaches and consults through Enjoy Life Consulting, LLC. She is a partner in Kalapa and a Certified Trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication. She holds a Certificate in Permaculture Design and lives in intentional community in Washington State. Connect with her at enjoy-life-consulting.com
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Deconstructing Sex and Gender ♥ Touch Pu'uhona Monday evening
Deconstructing Sex and Gender
In playful exercises and provocative discussions, we'll explore and demolish binary and “sliding scale” constructions of sex and gender, especially pertaining to ourselves.
In the first half of the workshop, we'll work in dyads and groups to identify sex and gender characteristics and determine how well we fit each trait. Be ready for surprises...you may discover massive contradictions!
In the second half, we'll then start to explore our own sex and gender signatures. In this phase, playful exercises will reveal how sex and gender relate us to each other rather than separate us. For some if not many of us, the end result will be that confusion and worry are replaced with clarity and freedom!
Touch Pu'uhona's Bio: My dominant passions are curiosity, creativity, and love. I'm continually challenged by the infinite games of listening and learning. I have the privilege of volunteering for events and organizations that help me to constantly learn more about the human experience: I'm a HAI Intern, Black Rock Ranger at Burning Man (where I also invented and run the Human Carcass Wash) and I'm also a coach in Landmark's Self-Expression and Leadership Program. Despite such excellent and ongoing training, I'm constantly in my own way and struggling to avoid staying completely in my head! I'm seriously interested in diverse intellectual areas, including science, philosophy and rationality. Professionally I'm a computer scientist working on software which makes us smarter, both individually and collectively. I'm interested in "having it all" and playing the best win-win game possible: Assisting you in daring to dream big and having your dreams come true!
Restorative Singing Circle ♥ Aaron & Melanie Tuesday evening
Trauma Tracking
What tools do we use to notice our own defense systems and to start tracking others as well? The goal for this workshop is to learn about chronically under-touched trauma stories, especially those of young Black men, and to get ahead of all our trauma stories as a core tool for interrupting oppression and facilitating collaboration.
What to Expect:
Learning to deeply hold Black stories of pain and resilience;
Deep connection and relating to people across identities about oppression and liberation;
Self-inquiry and witnessing others in deep inquiry;
Collaborative, innovative, and participatory group work and conversation;
Intimate, deep, and thoughtful work in pairs/dyads;
Being physical & in close proximity with others (consent-based; no intensive exercise, at max some light yoga stretches that will be made accessible for everyone in the room);
Expanding your ability to sit with discomfort; and
Using your voice in various ways to express and discharge emotions.
So many of us have been hurt around our voices and are seeking healing. Song circles create a space where we can receive emotional nourishment by disrupting the notion that we cannot sing together.
We are firm believers that music, tears, and laughter are not separate. We treat them all as a critical part of the human voice. Singing together, creating sound together, and practicing listening together are a few of the ways in which we reach for each other. Folx who have been told they cannot sing are especially encouraged to attend.
White supremacy is really invested in us believing that we cannot sing, especially when in community. Disrupt the racist messaging in your mind and lift your voices in song with us.
We are not interested in being good...we are interested in being close.
Aaron Johnson (he/him) is an earth builder, teacher of closeness, and activist. He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 2007 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. He has made a lifelong commitment to use the skills he possesses to end racism. In addition to using intimacy and closeness to Blackness as a primary means to that end, the tools he frequently uses are speaking, teaching, singing, photography, filmmaking, and minimalism. Aaron leads a mentoring program called Turn It Up Now that focuses on elevating the power, talent, love, and work ethic of youth. He believes that deep connection is one of the most powerful tools one can use in dismantling racism.
He is a co-founder of Holistic Resistance https://www.holisticresistance.com/about and founder of the Chronically Undertouched Project. The Chronically Undertouched Project is a tool that is used to interrupt the trauma story of white hands on Black bodies in America, and also to track the trauma of young people who are under-touched by design of oppression, historically and presently. Holistic Resistance is a Black-led organization and movement that believes ending oppression and healing from the trauma of oppression is a holistic practice. They are invested in resisting at every level from one-on-one connections to collective transformation. Common tools they use in resisting holistically include deep questions, music, minimalism, heart-centered listening, grief in community, and earth connection. They reach for your heart and invite you to never stop resisting. "Together we can stay creative while taking on the impossible."
Melanie Rios (she/her) lived in intentional communities from 1975 until a few years ago. She is founder of Collaborate Northwest, a consulting business which coaches community groups, non-profits, public benefit companies and activist groups on effective decision-making, organizational culture and conflict transformation.(www.collaboratenorthwest.net .) She also provides support to frontline activists, serving as a bridge for them across differing identities to further their life-saving work.
Melanie first attended NFNC Summer Camp West in 1999 at Mountain Grove, and has presented workshops at three other New Culture Summer Camp locations since then. She and her wife live in Portland, Oregon, where their children, grandkids and her sister's multi-generational family all live nearby, forming a mostly sweet and sometimes challenging sense of community. Melanie enjoys a newish love affair with a cello that supplanted a violin she broke up with because it had been aggravating her neck.
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Oil Experience ♥ Shoshannah Crow
& Ray Cohen Wednesday morning/afternoon
Oil Experience
Leave your clothes at the door...and bring a towel!
What is it?
It's almost impossible to describe...kind of like a cross between dolphins swimming and a giant slippery ameoba created by many...of us!
The Oil Experience is an opportunity to gather together and...with the help of oil, skin, our senses, and surrender, experience amazing community connection and deep self-discovery at the very same time.
Let's dive in together!
Shoshannah Crow has been coming to NFNC Summer Camp West since 2007, and has been a Summer Camp organinzer since 2009. She is a Forum facilitator and trainer.
A few years back, Shoshannan went to Liebeskunst (the German event that inspired Summer Camp West) and experienced what was called an "Oil Action". It was so moving that she knew she had to bring it to camp. This year, we're calling it “The Oil Experience”. This will be the second time Shoshannah will be facilitating this community art event, and she is very excited to do so!
Ray Cohen has been a co-organizer of the Oregon and Cascadia Tantra Festivals, a professional counselor helping people recover from substance abuse as well as working with issues of intimacy, polyamory, open relationships, and sexual healing. He is also a personal fitness coach and a professional musician. Ray has been helping to organize events and teaching workshops on the West Coast for Network for New Culture and Sex Positive Portland, as well as co-leading Sacred Pelvic Healing message with Amara Karuna since arriving in Oregon after completing Peace Corps service in 2016.
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Saffire / DJ Sabou ♥ Dance Into Being: Embodying Freedom Through Rhythm and Authentic Expression Second Friday afternoon
Ecstatic Dance Party CANCELED... Saffire was unable to make it. (First Friday evening)
Dance Into Being
On this creative, percussive journey the entire being is explored and enriched physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually by traveling the path from movement through sound through rhythm and into Integrated expression. We discover a fuller emergence of the self and touch into the heartbeat of community. True community happens when everyone moves to the same pulse. Each of us may have a different relationship to that pulse, a different rhythm, but as long as we are in relationship to that pulse, we remain in relationship to each other.
Saffire/ DJ Sabou is an embodyologist. His greatest joy is helping to embody the world, one community at a time! He has been a professional DJ for ecstatic dances for over 25 years. A passionate international Nia instructor for 17 years, he is the first Black man to receive a first-degree black belt in Nia. Saffire has presented drumming and Dance Into Being workshops throughout the USA, Europe, Mexico, and Bali. He has been Co-Director of the Ecstatic Choir for 7 years, co-founded two experimental dance companies, and performed with Danielle Hellender Dance Company and Mergence Dance Theater. He is a professional performer and musician who has been featured on numerous CDs, and his bands have opened for several international acts, including Sheryl Crow, Crash Test Dummies, The Paul Winter Consort, and Barenaked Ladies. He is a musical accompanist for dance and movement classes at severaluniversities His wonderful children's Book, The Groove Goblin, can be purchased on Amazon and his latest HandPan CD, HandSight, can be purchased on iTunes and CDBaby or through Saffire directly at saffireb@me.com. His website is: https://www.saffirebouchelion.com
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Victor Warring ♥ Facilitated Erotic Ecstatic Dance Friday evening
Facilitated Erotic Ecstatic Dance
Clothing-optional ecstatic dance with a recorded/live DJ set including moving/dancing the erotic. Facilitated opening and closing circle.
Victor Warring is a somatic sexuality and relationship educator/coach, erotic activist and public speaker. His focus is on “rewilding” sexuality and relationship; supporting people in understanding their innate human-primate desire for connection and eros and integrating that with their domesticated, socialized values. Victor works with individuals, people in relationships of all types and communities navigate their way into erotic wholeness.
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Art Program
Art program? What's that?
One word--fun!
We'll sprinkle interactive art experiences throughout camp this year. There will be dedicated times for you to visit the art area and create a variety of art work, and to engage with ongoing projects. Drawing inspiration from the beautiful forest that surrounds us at camp, we'll create art projects by using found natural objects. We'll have the opportunity to connect through a creative process and form a sensory relationship between the materials and our surroundings. Come play, create and add beauty to camp!
OFFERINGS:
Wooden Rounds: natural wood slices, ready to decorate for name tags.
Ephemeral Art Garden: An area dedicated to creating a “garden” of natural found objects (pine cones, branches, stones, rocks, leaves etc.) arranged into patterns and sculptures. This is an ongoing project that we'll set up in a location that makes camper interaction easy as we walk through, or by adding and rearranging materials--an evolving piece of art that changes daily as we all contribute. After we complete the project, our garden will be exposed to the elements of weather and time, becoming an ephemeral piece of art.
Nature Jewelry: We'll use found natural objects and wire to create pieces of jewelry.
Lanterns: To bring light to the forest, we'll create tissue-paper lanterns with 3-dimensional shapes by using bendable branches, tape, glue, and battery-operated candles.
Body Canvas: Interactive body painting on a 3-dimensional living canvas. Everyone is encouraged to become and to create art!
Body Landscape Mural: We'll paint a series of outlines of our bodies to create a sensual, colorful "bodyscape".
Lynne Wilburn
Art is an integral part of my being, and includes both performing (dance) and visual arts. I have been blessed to be able to share this passion throughout my teaching career and at New Culture events. Although I'm new to NFNC Summer Camp West, I was involved with NCNW starting in 2014, where I created and presented art and dance workshops. Currently, I'm retired, and live in the Star Community, which is an intentional community in Seattle. I take great joy in offering art experiences for NFNC West Summer Camp this year!
