Poetic Medicine Journal

Special West Coast Edition, May 2015
HWP John Photo

May, 2015

 

Dear Friend of Poetic Medicine,

 

Greetings. I wanted to let you know about a superb event happening early this summer. Over the past few years there haven't been many Poetic Medicine programs in the Bay Area; if you can make the time for yourself, please take advantage of this opportunity.   

 

Poetic Medicine and Personhood:

A Way to Explore the Sacred

 

Monday, June 29 in Menlo Park, CA

 

What is most personal is most universal.

~ Carl Rogers

from On Becoming a Person

 

This day-long retreat is being led by the very seasoned 1st cohort students in the Poetic Medicine training program. They are in their third and last phase of their training. This summer day of immersion in poetry-as-healer will give you a chance to experience this blossoming field directly. 

 

These marvelous advanced students bring a range of skills and gifts with them, garnered from their lives, from their deep professional experience and from this two-and-a-half year training they have come through. I'll give a keynote talk that will address:

  • Applications of poetry and poem-making as healing modality;
  • Finding what you didn't lose: expressing your truth and creativity through poem-making;
  • Poetry as a way to explore personhood and the sacred.

If you are a helping professional, you will gain insight and gather tools for your help, for being more present. Whether you are a professional helper or family care-giver, this retreat will prove a source of renewal to self-care.

 

Anyone who recognizes and loves the way poetry reveals the essential and necessary in life--you will be at home participating. If you feel even a hint of this, a sense that something in you is in bud, you come too!

 

Vallombrosa Retreat Center offers beautiful grounds as a sacred space for us.  Wonderful food, hospitality and community await you. Consider making this a time of personal spiritual retreat, staying overnight so that you can prepare for the day, absorb what Monday brings. Please read the enclosed brochure to learn more. 

 

So much is unfolding that must

complete its gesture,

 

so much is in bud.

 

Denise Levertov

from Beginners

 

Sincerely Yours,

 

John Fox, CPT
A    D A Y - L O N G  R E T R E A T
Vallombrosa Center 
Menlo Park, CA 
~  
Poetic Medicine and Personhood 

Monday, June 29, 2015

~ 
A Way to Explore the Sacred Experience, Conversation and Poetry Reading Offered by The Institute for Poetic Medicine In Collaboration with Vallombrosa Retreat Center, Menlo Park, CA 

   

The day is designed to offer people ways of using the practice of poem-making and the inclusion of poetry in their lives to make more vivid the experience of being and becoming a whole person. We believe that within each person there is a capacity for creative expression. When nurtured within a safe and supportive environment, this expression sparks deeper spiritual awareness and acts as a catalyst to body and mind, heart and soul. 

 

This retreat will give people in helping professions an opportunity to learn how to use poem-making as a healing modality-and also as a self-care practice. We encourage you to consider making this a special day for spiritual retreat and you can enhance that by coming a day before or staying the day following. 

  

For more information please contact Cyra Dumitru at: cyradumitru@earthlink.net or call her at (210) 396-6796. 

 

You can also call Vallombrosa at (650) 325-5614 to register.

  

Vallombrosa Center

Consider enhancing this special day for spiritual retreat by coming the day before or staying the day following at Vallombrosa.
 
Dimensions of the Conference:

An Overview of Poetic Medicine: A Keynote by John Fox

Five Workshops (sign up for two)

Poetry Reading and Response by Participants

Poetic Medicine as Practice: Conversation Circles


Workshop Themes:

Poetic Medicine: A Way to Enhance and Deepen Helping Work 
Finding Your Voice
To Learn By Heart
Undressing to Find Your Truest Self
Movement and Poetry
Befriending the Body 


 
Retreat fee (includes lunch): $70
 
No writing experience necessary.
 
Visa and MasterCard accepted.
 
 
Click here to register in the Calendar of Events section.
 
Click here to view full flyer with details.

The Only Gift to Bring

A Poetry Reading

 

with Lynn Pollock, John Fox, Jim Moreno, Joseph Rubano, and Open Mic

 

~ Open to Public ~

 

Thursday, May 28, 7-9 pm

Encinitas Community Center

1140 Oakcrest Park Drive,

Encinitas, CA

 

If You Praise a Word, It Turns into a Poem.

Caitlan Weber, at nine years old

 

Join us for a celebration of reading of poems that evoke the mysterious healing power of natural and spiritual realms, the intimate and fierce call of the personal and political, the place where loss & tenderness, grief & insight, live.  

 

"I think there's a kind of desperate hope built
into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves
while there's still time."

 

W.S. Merwin (former U.S. poet laureate) 

 

Click here to view full flyer.