If you cannot attend the Live Presentations via Zoom, the recordings will be available for you to watch at your convenience for up to 2 months.

Full Presentation Descriptions

Introduction to Focusing and Dreams: Finding, Embodying and Anchoring ‘the Help’
Dr. Leslie Ellis

Focusing is a deeply respectful and profound avenue for the exploration of our dreaming lives. Its gentle form of inquiry opens a doorway into the mystery of dreaming that does not yield to logic or force, but rather, unfolds as we bring curious, open-ended attention to our spontaneous images. A key aspect of Focusing-oriented dreamwork is Eugene Gendlin’s notion that we can ‘find help’ in every dream.

In this Introduction to Focusing and Dreams, we will create/enter a dream or daydream, find and embody help, give it expression and share/discuss what arises for us. We will also learn the basic steps of embodied experiential dreamwork, with examples of how these steps unfold in session. Dr. Ellis will also describe the clinical uses and benefits of exploring dreams, and explain why finding help is such a good place to start when exploring dreams (and especially nightmares). There will be time for brief experiential practices, debriefing/discussion and your questions.

The Creative Wisdom Approach: Embodying a 5-step Intermodal Expressive Arts Process
Kathleen Horne, MA, LMHC, REACE, REAT and Tamara Knapp, MA, NCC, LMHC, REACE

Join the co-founders of Expressive Arts Florida Institute for an introduction to their Creative Wisdom Approach—a five-step process that draws on the natural world and the deep inner wisdom accessed through the arts. The presentation includes an overview of its theoretical foundations in nature-informed, intermodal expressive arts practice, as well as an experiential component. Through an intermodal sequence of checking in, nature witnessing, guided meditation, art-making, movement, sound, witnessing and sharing, your current inner landscape will be illuminated and expanded. Alongside this experiential process, you will learn the five steps of the Creative Wisdom Approach, as well as to how it can be implemented with clients, students, mentees, or workshop participants.

The Creative Wisdom Approach has evolved organically through Expressive Arts Florida Institute’s more than 15 years of training expressive arts therapists and facilitators, and leading workshops, trainings, and presentations.  This presentation will include applications of the Creative Wisdom Approach within professional roles, including implementation across contexts such as therapy, facilitation, education, consulting, and coaching, as well as for personal practice.