Sound Healing w/Eve Schatz
Jan 13, 2011
“Creating Harmony in Yourself and the World – Easy Sound Techniques
for Everyday”
Talented group leader and sound healer Eve Schatz guided participants to focus awareness on feeling the sound of their own voice resonating in their body, which feels like a massage from the inside out. The program included learning to find your own tone or the frequency at which you vibrate, and a ‘Song of the Soul’ group experience which is a comfortable, joyful improvisational lifting of our voices and spirits.
Eve Schatz earned her undergraduate degree in Psychology and was a graduate student in Expressive Therapies when she discovered the profound effects of Sound Healing as taught by pioneers Sarah Benson and Kay Gardner. She co-founded the first Sound Healing Association in the Boston area and taught sound healing in the West Palm Beach Public School system, massage and Soma schools, privately and in workshops. Her multicultural interest in music and culture brought her to join Agbekor, the Boston based 30 piece Ghanaian Ewe Drum and Dance Troupe, as a drummer, and she co-founded Cambridge Custom Percussion, a multicultural music school, performance and recording venue. She spent three months in Nigeria where she performed African and Western Music with indigenous musicians and where she met indigenous healers while participating in a medical program. Eve joined the women’s music ensemble Mother Mountain and recorded music in the pyramids and temples of Egypt.
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Connecting with the Physical World and the Divine
With Rev. AnnE O’Neil
February 8, 2011
This evening was all about building our sense of connection – our sense of connection with ourselves and the physical world, and our sense of connection with the Divine. Spiritual director and energy healer Rev. AnnE O’Neil led us in a 6-position grounding meditation and in chanting the names of various manifestations of the Divine- some of whom have incarnated on this planet, some of whom have not. This practice opens us to recognizing differences between spiritual guides and identifying the ones with whom we relate.
Rev. AnnE O’Neil is an energy healer and spiritual director with a practice in Great Barrington. Her primary focus is working with people in issues of grief, loss, and transition, although many clients are looking for a more general sense of healing and deepening of their spiritual life. She was ordained in 2003 by One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City and is currently enrolled in their postgraduate Interspiritual Counseling program. She is also a Certified One Light Healing Touch practitioner, as well as a life coach trained by Coach for Life. Her personal mission is to provide healing and inspiration to individuals so they may step more fully into lives of joy, consciousness, and purpose.
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Poetry as Soul Rescue
With Jan Hutchinson
March 17, 2011
I crack my mind
above the page,
and sunny side up
it lies there
looking for God.
As part of the Berkshire Festival of Women Artists, Women’s Interfaith Institute hosted a poetry reading interwoven with a presentation on how poetry (all art for that matter) can center us, save us, get us beyond ourselves. Jan Hutchinson’s poetry is direct, accessible, and quirky. It asks the big questions but dances laughingly away from all dogma and certainty.
Jan Hutchinson studied psychology as an undergraduate and literature and creative writing in graduate school. She has lived in the Berkshires for thirty-five years, working and raising a family. In the last decade, her study, inner life and creative work have coalesced into a focus on how the writing of poetry can be a lifeline, rescuing us, and a buoy helping us to float.
The net of laughter
waiting beneath
the nervous highwire
is Grace.
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From Constriction to Freedom – A Journey to Our Spiritual Home
With Rev. Cheryl Ann Luft
Apr 12, 2011
Join Rev. Cheryl Ann Luft, MSS and Movement Therapist and Educator for a universal Passover experience. Through words, imagery and music, participants were guided to move and experience the journey of Exodus which is told in the Passover story. Together, the group traveled this journey creating a deeper and more personal understanding of this timeless and relevant path. No previous movement experience was needed and all were welcome to participate.
Rev. Cheryl Ann Luft is Jewish and an ordained ecumenical, interfaith minister, specializing in practical spirituality and worship for special populations. When not donning her robe, she is a Movement Therapist and Educator working with dance in Jewish populations, movement classes for the general public and private work with individuals.
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An Embodied History of Women
with Sylvia Smetana
May 12, 2011
In this multimedia presentation, Sylvia Smetana of EnlightenNext presented the evolution of women’s consciousness to better understand where we are today. In the past fifty years, women’s range of life choices has changed dramatically. We are now free to create lives that our foremothers could barely have dreamed of. Yet as we try to realize our potential, too often we find ourselves living out of the motivations and patterns of the past. We don’t realize that the past–not just our personal history but all of the history of women–lives within us.
Sylvia Smetana was born in Austria and studied business administration in Vienna. She met spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen in 1994. Inspired by the integrity, humanity and purposefulness of his teachings, she moved to Germany in 1997 to join the movement. In 2001 she joined EnlightenNext’s world center in Lenox, MA as their Finance Director.
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The High Holy Days~Cleansing the Soul as a Path Toward Peace
With Kaya Stern-Kaufman
September 15, 2011
The Jewish calendar reflects not only the physical passage of the seasons but also the journey of the soul through each year. In this program we explored the Jewish practice of Cheshbon Hanefesh- to take an accounting of the soul.
Rabbi Kaya Stern-Kaufman guided us through a meditation as a way of connecting to a deeper sense of self and beginning the process of inner cleansing. This practice serves as preparation for entering the High Holy Days- a period of inner cleansing and outer repairing of relationships. As we begin a new year, we may be renewed on our paths towards wholeness and peace.
Rabbi Kaya Stern-Kaufman, MSW is one of the founders and leaders of The Berkshire Minyan- a traditional/egalitarian prayer group that meets every Shabbat morning at Hevreh of S. Berkshire. She volunteers as Chaplain at Fairview Hospital and is an experienced Jewish Educator. She has taught a variety of classes in Judaic Studies and Hebrew at Sinai Academy of the Berkshires, Congregation K’nesset Israel Synagogue, Hevreh of S. Berkshire, Simon’s Rock College and Isabella Freedman Center. Formerly a social worker and Feng Shui consultant, Kaya is currently working on a book entitled, “Between Heaven and Earth- Re-envisioning Synagogue Space.”
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Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)
with Joni Carron
October 18, 2011
Rev. Joni Carron led us in the Mexican tradition of honoring our deceased ancestors. We discussed the different ingredients and beliefs that make up this colorful, flavorful and important day in Mexican culture. While experiencing Dia de los Muertos as a group, we were invited to explore our own beliefs about death and the ways in which we do or do not honor our ancestors.
Many brought a picture of a loved one who has passed over who they wanted to honor. All of the photos were placed on “la ofrenda,” or altar. In keeping with the custom of this ritual, we prepared the favorite foods of loved ones to be shared at our potluck dinner. It was a lovely evening of shared stories, anecdotes, songs, poem and prayers of loved ones.
BIO: Reverend Joni Carron is an Interfaith Minister, ordained in 2009 through One Spirit Interfaith Seminary.Her studies over the past ten years have focused on death/dying, end of life care, spiritual pain/ diagnosing spiritual pain, grief/bereavement, and the history and skills of an Anamcara (soul friend) caring for the dying. She is currently pursuing her life’s calling as a hospice chaplain. As a hospice volunteer Joni has assisted many of her friends and family through the transition of death. She has previously worked as a drug and alcohol counselor for nine years, and currently performs weddings, funerals and various spiritual ceremonies as part of her ministry.
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Harvest Gathering: The Blessings of Gratitude
Led by Satyena Ananada
November 17, 2011
A long-standing tradition of the Women’s Interfaith is to gather in the fall of the year to share the blessings of our harvest and to enrich our lives with the power of gratitude.
In this program we experienced an evening of:
Inspiration, Connection, Ceremony, Prayer, and Song.
This year we focused on our Spiritual Harvest: gratitude for what has been~what we have received~what we have learned~how we have grown~the gifts we have given~the joy we have known~the strength we have called upon~the challenges we have conquered~the love we are harvesting.
We are living in intense transformational times! This evening provided the opportunity to join our hearts and our forces to call down a Blessing on the Human Family, our Mother Earth and all life.
Participants were asked to bring:
~ Simple foods that nourish and delight the body
~ An object for the gratitude altar that represents the blessings of your harvest
~ A short written paragraph about what you are spiritually harvesting
Bio: Satyena Ananda is a holistic educator and spiritual counselor with thirty eight years background and training in designing and implementing programs and experiences for people of all ages. Her work focuses in the areas of healing, personal transformation, holistic living , ceremony and spiritual direction. She promotes spiritual connection, peace, self-acceptance, love and spirit-empowerment .
Satyena is co-founder and director of Starseed, an interfaith healing sanctuary and holistic retreat center in the northern Berkshires. Her current focus is on: conscious evolution, feminine spirituality and leadership, earth based healing, conscious co-creation, spiritual community and the creation and stewardship of sacred space.
Satyena is trained and experienced in many modalities. Using the powerful energy of sanctuary and connection with spirit she serves as a guide for people to reach deeper connection with self, source and life purpose through retreats, workshops and private sessions. Because Satyena has ancestry from the four root races, she is deeply connected with heaven and earth and feels called to assist humanity back into the unity of the One. She has been leading Universal services and ceremonies since 1978. Feeling the beauty and necessity of interfaith she served on the boards of Women’s Interfaith and Women’s House of Peace for 8 years. She is deeply grateful to join with you for this evening.
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December 13, 2011
Celebrating The Light Within
With JoAnne Spies & Susan Jameson
Dear Sisters in the Light
This month’s program was about YOU!
Your poems, short stories, songs, prayers, and meditations ~
the things you use to engage your inner light.
As daylight recedes
and the night embraces us
inviting us to go inside
come and create!
An ongoing tradition of Women’s Interfaith Institute is to celebrate the light in the darkest month of the year.
JoAnne Spies and Susan Jameson created a beautiful evening of honoring different traditions in which each person lit a candle and shared something inspiring ~ a poem, story, prayer, meditation or song. The light shone from and for everyone!
Women supporting women of diverse faiths in generating spiritual leadership, scholarship and service