An Embodied Approach to Creative Expression

This two-day retreat invited participants to explore their bodies and voices as vehicles towards greater self-expression. Providing insight into creative blocks, participants discovered ways to overcome these blocks and move towards creative freedom through dream work and its potential for self-understanding.

Both days began with a voice and movement workshop. Participants were invited to be in their bodies consciously, to move, hum and sing, using their imagination and felt experience. Saturday afternoon featured a seminar on finding one’s Inner Voice, facing the Inner Critic/Judge, Performance Anxiety, and Perfectionism. We discussed fears around the expression of creativity, explored the symbols of those fears and what might help us outgrow them.

On Sunday afternoon, we presented a Dream seminar exploring Jungian psychology, the language of dreams and how these can give insight into self-expression. Some prominent themes in dreams were introduced, such as a dream of a car out of gas, a car where the dreamer is in the backseat, a dream of going in for performance or exam and being naked or not knowing the steps.

Stacey Jenkins, Registered Psychotherapist and certified Jungian Analyst

Stacey is a Toronto Jungian Analyst who assists clients in restoring life to dry places. This is done through work with their dreams, which arise from the living waters of the psyche.

Stacey’s areas of interest and experience include addiction, loss of meaning, depression, creativity, spiritual growth, questions of life path and self-exploration.

She is versed in the creative process and the realization of creative vision through two decades of professional experience in television and film production. Stacey incorporates experience with the Tarot, astrology, the I Ching and other divinatory tools in her practice, inviting synchronicity and the mysterious domain of intuition into the therapeutic process.

Elisabeth Pomès, Registered Psychotherapist and certified Jungian Analyst

Elisabeth first realized her love for psychology and psychotherapy when she started working with artists. Starting her career as a singer and later a voice teacher, she came in contact with artists who experienced debilitating stage fright and at times was blocked in their creativity. She started developing Performance Without Fear, a course in which she used her background in Yoga, Qigong, Meditation and Psychotherapy to help artists release tension both physically and psychologically.

At the same time, she discovered the works and psychology of Carl Jung and began her training in Analytical Psychology at the Ontario Association of Jungian Analysts. She became a certified Jungian Analyst in 2009. Elisabeth has a private practice in Toronto.

David Pressault, Registered Psychotherapist and certified Jungian Analyst

David is a Jungian analyst with a strong background in the Arts. He developed a relationship to the unconscious through the art form of contemporary dance. He was a professional dancer and choreographer for 20 years and he still creates dances when time permits. In 2005, he retired from the stage as a dancer and began a Masters in dance at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal). The following year, he began his training in Analytical Psychology at the Ontario Association of Jungian Analysts and graduated in February 2012. Since then he has worked in private practice and offered supervision.

Cover photo by Sally Mann