Friday, September 12, 2014

Sweet Review Of Our Tarot Workshop By Elinor Greenburg


FromFrom: Elinor Greenberg <elinorg@me.com>
Date: September 11, 2014 at 5:33:48 PM EDT
To: NYIGT Google Group Group <nyigt@googlegroups.com>
Subject: AAGT Conference
Hi All,

I find that my mind keeps going back to Asilomar and the AAGT Conference, so I thought that I would share a few more thoughts.

I think whoever was on the committee choosing presenters did a fabulous job. There were so many good presentations!

One presentation that was a great and very pleasant surprise to me was by Christine Stevens the editor of the British Gestalt Journal. It is hard to describe, but I will try to give you a sense of its originality and effect on me.

Christine combined a poignant film of the now abandoned Spode ceramic factory, her "rescuing" some unfinished lamp bases, working with them in various ways, a very sensual film of her shaping clay accompanied by the amped up sound that her hands made sliding over and shaping the clay (sounded like soft "New Age" music) and a pair exercise in which one of the pair shaped a hunk of this clay by "feel,"while the other person stayed silently in contact with the shaper. I paired off with the wonderful Stella Resnick who I hadn't seen for more than 35 yrs.  All of the above created a deeply moving experience for me!

Another: Kooch and Victor Daniels' presentation on Tarot and GT, taught me the concept of "an emotional stack": how very often underlying the first emotion a person expresses is another emotion and under that another, and so on. They had the client choose pictures from various tarot decks to illustrate each emotion; however, I used this concept in my group therapy group last night without tarot cards.

On a lighter note, Kooch and Victor Daniels also did a great job of organizing a wonderful night of entertainment for us around a fire pit outside. It began with a Mexican Shaman blessing individuals (anyone who chose to participate) with smudging by fire, then leading us in a ritual where we formed a circle around the central fire, lit our candles by sharing our light with the person next to us, and connected our small light (in our imagination) to the larger central fire. There was additional paid entertainment, but what stands out for me is how many of us, when invited by the MC, stepped up to the microphone and told jokes, sang songs, and recited poems. Humans entertaining humans.

Warmest Wishes,
Elinor

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