19th Annual
Northcoast Men's Gathering

Proposed Workshops

T

All My Relations: Honoring the Life in and Around Me
 
Facilitated by Jay Powers
 
We’ll experience and explore aspects of our essential selves as a foundation to relating to others. The primary relationship we have in this world is with ourselves, so the clearer and cleaner we can be in that relationship, the better we can relate to others, to our ancestors and to the earth. The workshop will focus on five areas of our being: spirit, mind, heart, body and relationships.

---

Who Am I, How Did I Get Here, What's Next?

This workshop will unfold in two basic pieces of approximately one hour each.

The first will be a meditation/visualization starting in the 1st chakra (family and cultural roots,) and ascending through the 2nd (sex, money, power, career, status,) 3rd (the beginnings of personal integrity, and identity outside of family and social status,) 4th (relationships and compassion,) 5th (communication and surrender to higher being,) 6th (thought and wisdom,) 7th (connection with being beyond self,) and 8th (the dimension of archetypal energies.)  It will be focused on connecting directly with the feelings, images and memories evoked in each chakra, and inviting healing/cleansing energy into each without analyzing what has come up.

Depending on how many attend and how long the first piece takes, the second piece may involve breaking into small groups to share what did come up for each man, and to do some  work with the specific relationships and issues that arose.  The focus will be on healing our family relationships, our ancestors, and the long history of abuse, racism and genocide in our culture.  It will include a brief reading on these issues from Malidoma Some's book "Of Water And The Spirit", and opportunities for "truth-time dialog" (speaking and listening in sacred space) with people from our past, our present, or with different parts of our own self.

---

All The Parts of A Man

We are each a unique collection of many aspects—our male bodies, our thoughts and beliefs, emotions, skills, talents, as well as the influences of our mentors, teachers and loved ones. All of this is animated by the larger energies and forces of Spirit. 

You are invited to explore these aspects and facets of what it is to be a man through a playful and moving visual experience known as SoulCollage.

You'll be provided with a variety of images to choose from that excite or draw you in. These will be placed on 5x8 mat cards. After constructing one or more cards you'll explore the meaning of the images on your card/s in a process called “I AM THE ONE.”

The workshop provides a safe and respectful way to discover and explore all the amazing parts of ourselves, some obvious and some more hidden.

Randy Crutcher will be your guide and facilitator in this introduction to the SoulCollage process. There is a suggested donation of $5 for materials.

---

Music and Poetry for All my Relations

This will be opportunity for men to come together with instruments and voices and share songs and poems. Percussion instruments are also welcome. Men are encouraged to bring songs and poems that relate to the theme of "All my relations" and men's work. Seabury plans to share songs such as "My rainbow race" (Pete Seeger), "All my relations" (Peter Rowan), "Child of the wind" (Bruce Cockburn), "All is welcome here" (Arjuna Ardagh), "A better man" (Keb Mo), and "Medicine wheel" (Kate Wolf); and poetry by poets such as Rumi, Hafiz, Pablo Neruda and Robert Bly.