Our student body draws from local, national and international participants who represent diverse backgrounds and interests including art and performance, education, health, somatics, psychology, environmental and community work. Graduates of our trainings live and practice in countries all over the world: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Scotland, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, United Kingdom, as well as from across the United States.
Graduates of our teacher trainings practice as dancers/artists, educators, therapists and consultants in a variety of settings: hospitals, clinics, schools, organizations, in private practice, designing performance works and "participatory rituals" for communities.
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Alice Rutkowski, Ph.D.
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In the course of the last three decades Alice has utilized the Halprin Life/Art Process as a teacher, therapist, artist, consultant, educator, conference presenter, coach and writer. She has been employed to synthesize and develop the Life/Art Process for undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate programs, throughout the United States, in Dance, Phys. Ed, Elementary Education, Psychology, Communication, Theatre, Humanities and Allied Health. She operates a movement studio where she conducts movement therapy/arts for individuals, groups and communities as well as apprenticeships in her own outgrowth of Life/Art called Motional Processing. These apprenticeships are designed for people from all professions to learn how to synthesize Life/Art awareness and tools into their unique area (hair stylists, factory workers, therapists, office personnel, story tellers, animal rights advocates).
Alice has served widely as a consultant utilizing the Life/Art Process in conflict resolution between teachers and administrators, team building for corporate businesses, communication and presentation skills for Fortune 500 executives, community building and parent liaison work with learning-disabled high school students, and customer service skills for Yoga teachers and massage practitioners. She has also partnered with other consultants and approaches such as ropes, yoga, music and occupational therapists, medical doctors, chiropractors, drumming, Guardian Angels, voice specialists, movement trainers, spiritual leaders and artists. Alice is often asked to lead conference plenaries, moving up to 1000 people at one time, and has led the Earth Run and Circle the Earth extensively.
While maintaining a private therapy/coaching practice, Alice continues to be actively engaged in most of the above areas and, recently, has developed "Anatomy of Success" a communication and presentation workshop for body-based practitioners. She has been invited to develop Life/Art segments for a foremost therapist training program in the Atlanta area and is currently adjunct professor in Lesley University's Creative Arts in Learning graduate program. Dr. Rutkowski proudly serves as adjunct instructor and board member for Tamalpa Institute and offers live, phone and internet coaching to many new graduates starting their own movement-based businesses throughout the world.
She says of Tamalpa, "The many things I learned at Tamalpa are foundational for everything professional and personal that has gone since. Two cornerstones, which I experienced profoundly on a bodily level, were possibility and adaptability. These have helped me get in and through the door over and over again with the Life/Art Process. Pivotal and comprehensive, these learnings allowed me to open my sights. They developed in me the willingness to expand/adapt/shapeshift the process and its form, all the while maintaining its integrity. If you see all the places I've brought the work, you will see that the Halprin Life/Art Process is poised to do just that!
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Amanda Levey
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When I came to Tamalpa at age 25 I already had a degree in psychology but was completely unsatisfied with the education I had received. I left my home country of Australia in search of something more meaningful and practical, and found it at Tamalpa Institute. Not only was the training immeasurably valuable personally on every level (physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually), I have been able to apply it in countless ways professionally. One of the most valuable teachings for me was to develop my intuition and my creativity, which has enabled me to develop my own creative and professional expressions of this work. I have worked with clients in many settings, including psychiatric outpatients, rehabilitation, community mental health, women's prison, HIV/AIDS. I have also had a private practice as a registered psychologist and movement-based expressive arts therapist for many years. I have facilitated workshops and classes in movement-based expressive therapy in many settings. I am a guest teacher at college level, in both a Dance program and an expressive therapies diploma, and privately supervise other psychologists and therapists.
This year has been one of very exciting developments. I was invited to fast track a Master's in Arts Therapy at an Art and Design College in my own work, so that I could teach in their Master's program. I am currently writing my dissertation on a single case study in which I have facilitated the production of a video self-portrait. It has been tremendously exciting for me to find out how someone else has experienced this process that I developed from the Tamalpa work. Also, a fellow student at my college shared my interest in establishing a multi-modal arts therapy center. We looked at buildings for lease and eventually found an ex-clothing factory called MARCO House. We realized this was an excellent acronym for Movement Art & Rhythm Creative Opportunities, so the charitable Trust called MARCO Trust was born, and we opened in June. I run one class a week. The therapy rooms offer my private practice, an art therapist, a voice and sound therapist, and shiatsu treatment and training courses. Every month, more artists, practitioners and facilitators approach us. MARCO also runs children and adults' art classes, and rents the studio out for yoga, pilates, salsa, five rhythms, performances and so on.
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Anne Alper
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My training at Tamalpa has been a very strong influential framework for my university education and preparation for the creative work that I am currently engaged in as a drama teacher, community consultant and expressive arts therapist at The Cedars of Marin Victory Center in Ross, CA. We are a communication and expressive arts day program for developmentally disabled adults. Tamalpa's reputation is highly regarded here and I have been given an open canvas to create my work with the clients. Under my direction, a small group of clients has named itself the Surprise Theater Company. We work as an ensemble, relying upon each other for reaching a deeper understanding of who we are as humans through dialogue, drawing and dance. All theater work begins with a body check in and then a verbal check in. I weave what each person brings to the "stage" into a theme for the day. We create ensemble drawings or murals that serve as the sets for our improvisations. The colors, strokes, shapes and figures all communicate a story for solo and group interaction. We identify the theme, dramatically encounter one another on stage and reach for growth. Praise is essential, everyone is a someone to be respected and loved. A round of applause closes the day.
I am also responsible for workshopping with the staff. Finding new pathways through the expressive arts to create leadership, I have introduced The Cafe Society for the Victory Center community, which meets once a month. The score is simple: find a way to collaborate with staff and clients -- come share and showcase the process of expressive arts at work.
My way of honoring the Halprin Life-Art Bridge is in bridging practical life skills with the arts created at the center. There is a divided sense of where these disabled people fit in the world: should they be mainstreamed into society working pedestrian jobs, or "employed" at the day program where they are engaged in the process of creating art? My theory is to drop the either or and create respectful titles that capture both for these artists in residence, now referred to as employed artists. A few of my clients have become entrepreneurs, naming their business, "Pam's Scarves and Shawls" and "Mama Bear's Art Studio", creating a business card, and developing inventory -- making more meaning out of their daily experience. I have another client who dreams of producing musical theater.
Working with expressive arts therapy and the Tamalpa approach, I am continually inspired by the unusual energy here among the disabled with whom I am able to go beyond my own limitations and know such real ways of being.
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Bernhard Frey
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I am a Physiotherapist and Expressive Arts Therapist with strong Body, Movement and Dance- Therapy Background . I have worked for more than ten years in clinical settings: Neuro-Rehabilitiation, Mental Health, Psychiatry. For the past years I have worked in the Department of Physio-, Dance, -Movement Therapy at the University Clinic of Psychiatry in Zürich, Switzerland, of which I am the leader. In the therapeutic work I am leading dance and movement therapy groups and one-on-one sessions with clients with all different kind of psychiatric diagnoses. I use elements of the Tamalpa training, especially Somatics, Relaxation, Movement Ritual, and Dance Explorations in my work. I try to integrate more and more expressive arts therapy in my work, shifting from movement to drawing to writing...
I have studied at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and finished the Master program in Expressive Arts Therapy. My master thesis is about “Rituals in Arts and Therapy- the Power of Ritual Performance. It’s in German and but you can read the abstract in English at the database of www.eguniversity.ch.
Reading my personal papers and documents from the training at Tamalpa in 1997/1998, I notice that I learned a lot. It was a big gift to be a part of the training at Tamalpa. It gave me a broad basis for my work as a dance and movement therapist. I still feel the power of the work!
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Brigitte Schanz
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Brigitte Schanz completed her Halprin Practitioner certification after full time training at Tamalpa Institute from 1996-1998. She is an early childhood educator with many years of work experience in different settings such as teaching in a cooperative kindergarten, in day care centers, and working in a home for children age 2 months to 7 years, who have single parents with drug issues or psychological illnesses.
The Halprin Life/Art Process has shaped Brigitte's life profoundly, professionally as well as personally. Young children's experiences are based on patterns of sensory, kinetics and emotions. Working with small children made Brigitte aware that movement is a great approach to strengthen children's perception about themselves, others and their environment. Returning to Switzerland after training, she offered Creative Movement classes for small children in a dance studio. She worked at the studio for several years, teaching 3 classes a week, age 3-4, 4-5, and 6-7 years. She used check-in, movement exploration, space, dancing with music and scarves, story telling and moving the stories (using group themes, seasonal themes and rituals), drawing and sharing, and performances, including solo performances. Professionally, Brigitte realized that her understanding of the somatic and movement work was not profound enough to be a full time movement teacher. She decided to pursue a BA Degree in Arts to advance her teaching career.
Personally, the Tamalpa Training enhanced Brigitte's artistic expressions. For many years she was looking for the right "form" of personal artistic expression and finally found it in the Clown work some years ago. Therefore, after six years of integrating the Tamalpa Training on a personal and professional level, she decided to pursue a BA Degree in Arts and return to San Francisco. She now combines her professional interest in movement and theatre with her passion for Clowning.
Currently, Brigitte is studying at New College of California and taking independent studies at the Clown Conservatory. Her interests are the Clown as a Healer. She is exploring the field of Hospital Clowning with a community Project of the Clown Conservatory at San Francisco General Hospital. Along with a group of her second year Clown students, she did a presentation for cancer patients at the hospital, about healing and laughter.
Her goal is to support creating a Clinic Clown Program at San Francisco General Hospital, perform as a Clown in the hospital, schools and other venues, teach Creative Movement, teach early childhood educators and kindergarten teachers about the importance of movement and creativity with a very practical approach.
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Daphne Georghiou, MFT Intern, MA, RSMT
Los Angeles, California, USA
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Tel: 415.652.6670
I began my career with a background in dance, creative writing, yoga and the dramatic/performing arts. I have been a graduate of Tamalpa Institute and a Halprin Practitioner since 2000, and since then, the Life-Art Process has been a strong foundation for my continued personal healing/transformation, as well as for my professional expertise. It has been my great honor to teach this work both internationally—Cypurs—the island I am from, and also nationally—in New York, Texas, California. Currently, I serve as an Associate Tamalpa teacher in the Los Angeles area.
As a psychotherapist, and a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist, my sessions with clients come alive and are enriched by calling upon image, dialogue, poetic writing, dance/movement and dramatic expression—all in the spirit of the creative potency that the Tamalpa work inspires. I have utilized the Halprin method both in groups and in one-on-one work, in private practice, and in various healing and well-established trauma and rehabilitation centers. My clients have ranged from individuals suffering with severe mental disorders, alcohol and drug addiction, depression, grief, and various other traumas and transitions. I have found the dynamic nature of the Life-Art process easily adaptable in most healing, therapeutic environments and for all ages. I have found that it creates a wonderful parallel with the Jungian and Depth Psychology work I am trained in, as well as Continuum Movement—a style of somatic healing/regenerative work I am additionally becoming a teacher of. I believe that the soul speaks to us through the arts and creativity, through story and metaphor, through rich and often ancient symbols, and through expressing somatically. The Life-Art process offers us a universal template for understanding the creative language of the soul beautifully--the language of symbolic imagery and metaphoric movement in art, drama, dance and performance.
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Dietmar Brinkmann, MA, RSMT
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Website: www.marinacounseling.com
Since I graduated from the program at Tamalpa Institute in 1999, its fusion of Somatics (body-based approaches to human development) and Expressive Arts has informed my work in a myriad of ways. It also helped me by building foundational skills such as self-awareness, openness, compassion and understanding of the creative process.
My experience facilitating groups includes: Expressive Arts groups for men, movement therapy for recovering alcoholics, stress reduction groups with inmates in San Quentin prison, support groups for HIV positive men at UCSF AIDS Health Project, and a group of seniors ages 70-102 years old as part of Anna Halprin’s performance project “Seniors Rocking”.
For years I taught movement theater improvisation workshops in the USA and in Europe and co-designed arts-based inquiry projects for organizations including International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), Organization Development Network (ODN) and Craigslist Foundation.
Since 2005, the main focus of my work has been in three areas: facilitating groups for interpersonal skills development, couples counseling and psychotherapy for individuals. As psychotherapist (MFT intern) I work at the Marina Counseling Center in San Francisco. As group facilitator, I work at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. In the groups I facilitate, students learn to understand interpersonal dynamics and leadership styles to create better working relationships.
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Elisabeth Guentert Bay, MA, BCATR
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When I started my training at Tamalpa Institute in 1988, I didn't know that the Halprin Life/Art Process would become the core essence for my later work "Healing Arts Therapy". After the first year of training I felt strongly the need of deepening the work. I became one of the two students who attended for the first time a second year. Writing my Master's Thesis "The healing power of the I-Thou relationship" helped me to define my personal work. It contains like a Mandela the four life sections; the individual and the collective experience in the light (consciousness) and the dark (unconsciousness).
With my former training in Medicine and Psychology I implemented the Halprin Life/Art Process in my personal work "Healing Arts Therapy". I had for 10 years a private practice in Switzerland, where I treated clients with incest, depression, cancer, suicide, alcohol-drug abuse, anorexia and more. I also have been giving and still give following workshops:
"Listening to the Child within you", "Myth and Ritual in Nature", "Movement Ritual", and "Journey through your body".
During 7 years I was organizing and leading the Eastern Earth Run in Switzerland. In 1995 I was co-facilitating and co-organizing the "Circle the Earth" event in Switzerland. Since my first self-portrait at Tamalpa, I have painted two more. When I became 40 years old I held a public performance and danced all three of the self-portraits. It felt like an initiation to step into a new part of life.
Since 2005 I'm living in Vancouver BC, Canada. I'm in the process of building up a new private practice and offering workshops. My vision is, to create a place in nature for Healing the 3 Aspects of Being: 1. the relation to self - 2. the relation to other people - 3. the relation to nature and its soul aspect (the elemental beings). With my husband, a geomancer, we are starting to offer workshops in the wilderness of British Colombia led by our intention to reconnect with the inner Self as well as with the soul aspect of nature. The Halprin Life/Art Process, our extensive training in perception and our deep respect and love to nature will guide us into this new adventure.
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Frank Hediger
Basel, Switzerland
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Currently, I am working as a physical therapist at the Mental University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland, as part of the Physical Therapy team. The team is comprised of three physical therapists, a sports trainer, a massage therapist and three movement therapists. I work with individuals as well as groups in different units of the Hospital. My clients have a mental as well as a physical diagnosis. The diagnoses range from depression with manifestations of back pain to schizophrenia with broken wrists.
I utilize the three level of awareness (a basic model of Tamalpa work) every day at the clinic. The physical level is to make use of Movement Ritual in various ways. I bring it often into the therapy with people who have back pain, need new ways to relax their bodies or I use it as a medium to get more conscious of one's own body. Occasionally, I lead the clients in dance; beginning with a walking score, guiding them to dance freely in the room. This is normally in a group setting with depressive people. On rare occasions, I get an uncommon patient, with whom I am able to work with imagery and poetry as part of the healing process.
The emotional level. This level becomes present as soon as I meet a new client/patient/group. I have become very adept in reading the Body Language signs that clients send out as well as the group energy that I encounter. This intuitive understanding of the present energy is a great help; it gives me the possibility to act spontaneously without fear. I believe strongly that being able to tune into the moment on all three levels, allows me to treat a person/group with more dignity and respect. Everyone has his/her own subjective story that I should respect, though at times it is very hard to not categorize a person immediately after reading the doctor's diagnosis.
As a practical example, in the illegal drug unit, I never know what energies I will encounter. As soon as I enter the room my emotional radar is fully alert. Sometimes people are very friendly and easygoing, and at other times, one or two of the group members can be extremely agitated, aggressive and nervous. In a split second, I must decide what I will do with the group. This can range from exercises in sitting, to working with a Sculpturing Score on how the individual feels in that moment, to regular stretching or to relaxation techniques.
The mental level is represented in the way I communicate with people. I utilize the "I" messages when I work with people. I have found with this technique that the person is more responsive to my suggestions after the treatment and more willing to take responsibility for their own healing. Ever since my Tamalpa training, my communication has become clearer, more efficient and yet still, more playful. I realized as a therapist/facilitator it is important to speak out what I sense inside, this allows the clients to communicate honestly. As an example, sometimes clients come to me with a lot of "hidden aggressions or expectations" in the moment, when I tell them that I sense they are aggressive, the clients change their attitude immediately and become more honest with me. In that moment true therapy happens, in the spontaneous communication from heart to heart when the person feels safe and understood.
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Georgina Jahner, Ph.D., R.E.A.T
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Georgina is a Halprin practitioner, dance artist, educator, and facilitator of movement-based expressive arts therapies. Formerly a professional modern dancer, dance teacher, and deep tissue bodyworker, Geordie currently leads seminars and workshops teaching the Halprin Life/Art Process and the 5Rhythms work of Gabrielle Roth in Hawaii and New Zealand. She is a Teaching Associate of both Tamalpa Institute CA, and The Moving Center NYC. She is currently founder and director of The Studio Maui, a movement and healing arts center located on the island of Maui, Hawaii. The Studio Maui is dedicated to innovative research, education and training in conscious movement as medicine, as an art form, and as spiritual practice. The Studio represents a pulling together of the many strands that comprise Geordie's professional and educational experience.
Geordie first came to the Tamalpa work in the mid-1970's when she completed the Level I training in the context of her Masters Degree in Psychology through Lone Mountain College (now part of San Francisco State University). She returned to study at Tamalpa in 1996 in the context of her doctoral program, and included the Tamalpa Institute Level II Leadership Training as part of her doctoral course work. In 2001, Geordie completed her Ph.D. in Expressive Arts Therapy through an innovative independent study program at Union Institute and University, based in Cincinnati Ohio. Her interdisciplinary studies focused on an inquiry into three different movement-based expressive arts therapy modalities with emphasis in Women's Psychology and Women's Health. Her doctoral thesis, The Transformative Power of Expressive Arts: Women's Self Portrait Rituals and the Halprin Life/Art Process was based on an in-depth study of the Self-Portrait Rituals. She produced a wonderful video titled Women's Rites which chronicles five women's experiences of creating and performing their self-portrait rituals in the context of their Level 1 training.
Post-graduate work includes facilitation of a 3-month course based on the Body Mythology work in Auckland, New Zealand which Geordie hopes to present again on Maui next year. She has also taught Halprin Life/Art Process courses in several New Zealand Universities to Expressive Arts Therapy students in Psychology departments, and Performing Arts School students - including screenwriters, directors, actors and dancers.
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Ilse Jordan Kunzel
Bogotá, Colombia
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I am a graduate psychologist in Colombia and also a Musical Theater Artist. I found Tamalpa Institute as the perfect match to join these two passions together, and what better than a movement-based, Expressive Arts Therapy Institute! I graduated from Tamalpa Institute in 2003.
The following are projects in Columbia where I brought the Tamalpa work:
1. My first challenge to bringing Tamalpa's work to Columbia was at CIREC (Integral Centre of Rehabilitation of Colombia). They have patients for rehabilitation after accidents with landmines or other sad realities in my country. Working with clients through the methods of the Tamalpa work, my intention was to give back to them a sense of their body as it is, even with their lost parts, and to be able to use art as a creative way to explore their feelings, body image, memories and images.
2. I helped design and execute a project for eradicating and preventing child labour in Colombian Handcraft Minery with the International Labour Organisation. Through Tamalpa's methodology, I gave the participants tools (through movement, drawings, poetic dialogues and writing) to explore why school is important and how childhood is important to be lived though with play and education.
3. I worked with The Colombian Flower Export Association and designed a project called "Cultivating Peace in our Family". The main objective was to give to all the workers in the business who come from towns all over the sabana of Bogotá, tools in communication and Non-Violence with their families so that there can be a support to help our country be in peace. My job was to give workshops to the facilitators who were going to work with this population.
4. A company of 2,200 employees in Colombia that administrates social benefits, health, housing, and recreation to workers of many affiliated companies contracted me to create self-development workshops for their employees. We conducted several day-long workshops over 3 months, facilitating 13 groups of participants pooled from the different affiliate companies and all levels of employment. The intention of the project was to have everyone in the company relate as human beings rather than divided by their roles in the company.
5. I designed and led a project for a company where a terrible event occurred. One of the managers was kidnapped and, sadly, killed few days after. My intention was to provide the company with a structured experience and safe environment to express together through the arts all their emotions, memories, and pain related to the event. The workshop was dedicated not only to this person, but to all the people in similar situations all over the world.
6. I am teaching Movement Ritual at the Colombian Association of Transpersonal Psychology. In class I use drawing and poetic dialogue to ground the bodily experience.
I take any project that needs my support in personal growth and use Tamalpa's methods and techniques in all of them, adjusting as necessary to the person, the group, the company, or the circumstance. |
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Jaime Nisenbaum, REAT, Ph.D. (candidate),
Tamalpa adjuct faculty member
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I am originally from Brazil and my first degree was in Electronic Engineering. I came to the US in 1990, was introduced to the Tamalpa work in 1992, and received my certification as a Halprin Practitioner in 1995. Coming from a background where the arts was both despised and distorted by commercialism, I cherished the opportunity to tap into my own creativity and to explore my art at Tamalpa, not only for the sheer pleasure of it but also as a gateway to self-discovery and personal growth. After Tamalpa, I continued to pursue a career in expressive arts therapy and psychology and went on to get a Master's in Psychology and more recently a doctorate in Clinical Psychology.
The focus of my work has been providing psychotherapy for adults, children, and couples, and teaching courses in psychology and expressive arts to the general public and at the master's level in the San Francisco Bay Area. My training at Tamalpa provided me with the principles and a solid methodology for working with clients and for teaching an expressive arts therapy approach. In addition, a noteworthy aspect of the Halprin Method for my work and for my own philosophy of healing is that it is based on holistic principles aimed at the integration of mind, body and spirit. In my private work with clients I have combined the Tamalpa work with my interest in depth psychology and have used the tools of the work to help my clients enter and explore the deep landscape of the psyche in ways that are safe, creative, and transformative.
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Jamie McHugh
Tamalpa adjunct faculty member
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I have been using the Tamalpa approach since 1986 to inform both my creative process and professional work. Two of the virtues of this approach that have stuck with me over time are:
- The power of self-permission: giving space and time for the Self to reveal itself in unexpected ways.
- The power of self-activation: fearlessly following what arises as a way to become our own authorities and our own healers.
These two virtues reflect my values of trusting nature and the emergent unknown, trusting the tenacious creative impulse that is part of the evolutionary design within us. These values are supported by a methodology that allows participation at whatever level people wish to be involved in their own liberation. The abbreviated steps in this process for me are the following:
- Accessing the inner landscape with the specific objective tools of breath, sound, touch, movement and stillness/inner sight (having a pathway);
- Exploring the tools with subjective responses (alternating between following the path and leaving it);
- Connecting with personal material through the channels of sensing, feeling, thinking and perceiving;
- Expressing what has heart and personal meaning through various mediums (i.e., speaking, writing, dancing, etc.) while being witnessed; and
- Reflecting and integrating what arises with the group and/or guide.
The combination of concrete tools (form) with exploratory time (formlessness), and the inevitable beauty and unique artistry that emerge, makes this approach applicable in so many diverse ways. It satisfies the universal human yearning to have an intimate encounter with ourselves and one another.
These are some of the different contexts I work in:
- John F Kennedy University (practicums for graduate students in Holistic Health and Somatic Psychology to experience their own body wisdom)
- Swiss AIDS Federation ("Movement as Medicine" workshops for HIV+ people to improve health and well-being)
- "Coming Into our Bodies and Out of our Past" workshops in San Francisco and NYC (for gay men to heal old wounds and create community)
- "Movement and Expressive Arts in Nature" workshop, Part 3 of Tamalpa's Summer Series (for people to restore connection with the elements and their primal selves)
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Julie Ann Numrich
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I came to Tamalpa Institute after a long illness that led me to discover a new country, language and a new sense of being. I had previously been studying to be a doctor when I became chronically ill and could no longer work or go to school. It was a violent break with my everyday life and long-term life goals. I left behind all that I had ever known in search of my true self and to find the strength I would need to pull through. Doctors had told me that I would be sick and dependant for the most of the rest of my life but I didn't want to accept their diagnosis. I felt that I had larger goals to accomplish. I had to learn everything anew as if learning to walk for the first time. Nothing seemed natural or easy yet I seemed to be returning to something I had known long ago and forgotten. My true self. Along this path of discovery I came across the books of Anna Halprin and her amazing story of illness and recovery. Something resonated so deeply in reading her life's testimony and from my own experience of participating in one of Tamalpa's summer workshops that I moved back from Europe to do the Tamalpa training. This was a big step towards facing my past as well as coming to terms with my identity as an American before I got sick. The two parts of my life seemed to have been separated by the distance.
During the Tamalpa training I discovered the root cause for my illness and how my own personal mythology was keeping it alive. I learned experientially how my illness or fear to live fully had been a long time in the making due to past childhood trauma. This discovery was made through a long process of exploration using Tamalpa tools and body part imagery that culminated in a life-size self-portrait performance. Through the creation of my own self-portrait performance I was able to design my very own healing ritual which culminated in a complete Gestalt experience. Immediately upon enactment, as if a spell had been broken, I was able to let go of my old patterns of living in the shadows, thus inviting illness, and begin to let fresh air and sunlight enter my world. Not only did I continue to heal physically from that day forward, but my soul began to heal from wounds I had been carrying throughout most of my life. I went forward from my self-portrait performance and my Level Two Tamalpa training holding the keys, not only for the continuation of my own healing, but also to facitlitate the healing process of others. I have carried those keys with me back across the ocean to continue to work as a bridge between my home country and the continent where I had first found refuge and a new beginning.
I am currently based out of Belgium and have been a RSMT and RSME through ISMETA since Sept. 2009. My desire is to bring the work as authentically as possible to meet the growing interest and desire I have found here in Europe, primarly among the French speaking communities of Belgium, France and Switzerland.
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JungMyung Lee
Seoul, South Korea
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I began work as a professional broadcast announcer in 1986. A woman announcer in Korea was regarded as a "flower" and there was great pressure to live up to this image. Then I started producing. First, musical programs and eventually I became a full-fledged producer of documentaries on victims of Korean politics.
The documentaries were about, "The psychological contemplation of people facing death," "The massacre of Vietnamese residents by the Korean army during the Vietnam War," "Long-term prisoners of conscience refusing to convert to the political system of South Korea." I received a number of prizes for my work, including the Korean Broadcasting Producer Association Award in 1999, and the Korean Broadcasting Award in 2001.
In 2001, I began to study Psychotherapy and Art Therapy. I left my broadcasting job to find a new life. During this time, I experienced several different therapy programs and I entered two graduate schools: Seoul Graduate School of Buddhism where I studied transpersonal psychology and where I became the leader of a study group for feminist psychotherapy, and The Graduate School of Youngnam University where I studied Art Therapy. I left this second art therapy program in disappointment (it was too limited and analytic) and began to search for a more general art therapy methodology.
In May 2004, I participated in Natalie Rogers' workshop in Hawaii and spent several days being absorbed in the curative power that dance had. This led me to the training programs at Tamalpa Institute.
In 2004, I began Tamalpa's Immersion Training program. I've come to realize that my body is a barometer of my mind. I neglected this before and was always anxious about my weak constitution. At Tamalpa, I was faced with my body, my mind in the body, and the spirituality inside the mind. While studying at Tamalpa, I felt all my therapy (healing) experiences were integrated and they reconditioned and deconditioned every experience from my dreams to waking life.
Based on my training at Tamalpa Institute, in 2005 I began my Master's thesis on psychology and will also begin the Ph.D. program in Expressive Art Therapy at European Graduate School, Switzerland. The title of my Master's thesis is "Study on the therapeutic elements of physical movements."
Upon my graduation from Tamalpa this winter, I will register as an Expressive Art Therapist with IEATA. I will also automatically be registered as a psychotherapist in Korea. I have translated Daria Halprin's book (2003) in Korea. It will be published this winter 2006.
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Karina Bergen
Hong Kong
Email: Click Here ››
Karina is a Halprin Practitioner, facilitating movement-based expressive arts education workshops in Hong Kong and throughout Asia. Karina currently sits on the Board of Directors of Tamalpa as an International Representative.
She believes strongly in an intuitive, body-based healing practice, and guides experiential workshops for personal discovery, self-expression and empowerment and a deeper sense of self.
In a safe space for creative play, Karina guides movement-based workshops that incorporate the powerful Tamalpa framework she studied, including improvisational movement/dance, voice and dialogue, drawing, witnessing and performance. Karina believes strongly in the power of group process giving a great freedom and understanding - we are not alone in the struggle for self-acceptance.
Karina also guides workshops for students in International (English-speaking) schools, as well as for the Hong Kong Eating Disorders Association, the APA (Academy of Performing Arts), CCDC (Community Cultural Development Centre), the Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society and YWCA.
For more information on other workshops Karina offers see www.movingwheel.com
Karina has also led a series of teacher training workshops for the Youth Arts Foundation (YAF), and has facilitated individual client sessions.
Karina is a Consultant with KELY Support Group, an NGO youth outreach organisation. She runs an Eating Disorders program through KELY to adolescents in schools across Hong Kong. Karina also speaks publicly on eating disorders, addiction and healing.
She has presented workshops in creative arts therapy at international conferences in Beijing and Tokyo.
Previously an international award-winning documentary producer for Hong Kong television station TVB, Karina became interested in dance, movement and improv as healing arts during her own journey of radical transformation - which included healing her battle with bulimia, a disease spreading widely in Asia today.
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Lian V. Wilson
U.K.
Email: Click Here ››
My life's work is dedicated to the body and its amazing ability to heal & give expression to the soul. I am a dancer, performing artist and teacher. I graduated from the Tamalpa Level 2 training program in 2003 and the work has become my life's practice.
I came across the work of Tamalpa and the Halprin Life Art Process whilst researching the 'development between feeling intelligence and the onset of a fragment self' in particular looking at the benefits of the art of dance. Anna Halprin's life work was very pivotal in my research and led me to signing up for a Tamalpa Experience workshop. I wanted to see if the work warranted me uprooting from the UK, and I was curious to discover what made the HLAP stand out from other forms of movement, art & expressive art therapy. After a very insightful and creative weekend I departed with a very profound learning experience about my life, I knew instantly that I needed to learn more and enrolled myself for the full training program. There began my journey towards a more spiritual existence & awareness of myself as a human being in connection to others and the environment, firmly grounded in the rich work taught at Tamalpa Institute.
Level 1 was a gift to myself to move and check in with my body everyday. To take a concentrated time to focus on looking at where I was in my life. Level 2 gave me the opportunity to put into practice all that I had learned and gained in Level 1, to truly embody my learning on a personal and professional level.
Upon graduating I feel that I have stepped out with life-long tools. I have been teaching weekly movement ritual classes, HLAP workshops and a series of weekly HLAP classes to the public. I am an associate teacher of Tamalpa Institute and sit on the Board of Directors in both the Marketing and International committees. I have lectured as a guest teacher at San Francisco State Recreational Therapy department and continue to dance & perform regularly.
The training programs helped to develop my witnessing & listening skills, aiding me to be more present with both clients & students. I now have a greater confidence within my teaching. As a dancer, the HLAP has helped me to fine-tune my body as an instrument that can articulate & get to the essence of what is going on for me physically, emotionally, mentally.
In the Tamalpa community, I have gained an international community of like-minded colleagues and peers whom I share a common language with and a strong support network. I feel extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to learn & grow under the direction of Daria Halprin and the faculty at Tamalpa Institute. Thank you for teaching me how to communicate from my heart!
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Libby Worth
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I undertook two training programmes at Tamalpa Institute (1984 - 1985) with a sparkling range of students whose personalities and dances are still fresh in my mind. We worked intensively together in Anna Halprin's inspiring studio and outdoor dance deck at Kentfield. Even now, so many years later, I return to the huge logbook record of my time there, to seek reminders of the ways we worked with Anna, Daria, and Ken and with many visiting teachers besides.
On returning to London I built up a programme of teaching in local community centres for children, mothers with toddlers, teenage girls groups and young offenders, while simultaneously developing a public programme of evening classes and residential courses.
It has always felt important to sustain close links between my teaching and performance and further learning about dance and theatre. My main focus was on devising and performing in dance pieces made in response to particular places, such as the Dorset Coast, Hampstead Heath in London, a walled garden in Wales and most recently a stretch of canal in Hanwell. Although many other influences have filtered into my work through additional training and collaborations with other artists, Anna's work in the natural environment, the RSVP Cycles, Movement Ritual and the use of visualisation have remained crucial in the development of responsive physical work in a range of spaces.
After undertaking an MA in Dance Studies at the University of Surrey I became interested in various means of writing about dance, including ethnographic studies and combining practice and research. I am currently a full time Lecturer in Theatre Practice at Royal Holloway, University of London. I have recently co-written a book with Helen Poynor for the Routledge Performance Practitioner series entitled Anna Halprin (2004), an experience that enriched my understanding of the Halprin Life/Art Process and bought me back in touch with Anna and colleagues who continue to inspire. I am now writing up my Ph.D. dissertation, which in part explores how training methods in Feldenkrais and Halprin Life/Art processes supported students in their creation of two large scale innovative physical performances in response to contrasting play texts.
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Lisa Foisy
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My most current application of the work was at the University of Oregon. As the Director of the Women's Center I used the Tamalpa Institute Teacher Training Program in three areas: organizational management, counseling, and teaching.
First, I believe that having the title, Halprin Practitioner on my resume was crucial to being hired for the position. Even though the hiring committee didn't know exactly what a Halprin Practitioner was, it provided a space to highlight skills I had within the counseling field, which was a requirement for the job.
Organizational Management:
As Director, I had 16 employees in my office. I incorporated the Halprin Life/Art Process tools of drawing, and journal writing in our bi-annual weekend training retreats and weekly staff meetings. These tools helped define our vision, establish our goals and offered opportunities to develop community.
Counseling:
The Women's Center at the University of Oregon is an access point for students, staff and faculty in crisis situations (in addition to many other objectives). My job was to initially provide a "safe" place to go to, provide someone they could confide in, and then provide further resources as needed. I used the skills I learned as a Halprin Practitioner to be an advocate for these students, staff and faculty. Some I saw on a regular schedule over a long period of time, and others I offered counseling and advocacy just enough to get them to services more closely suited to their needs.
Teaching:
I taught one to two classes annually using the Halprin Life/Art Process. The class was part of the Relational Leadership Program, housed in the Educational Leadership Department. Participants used drawing, movement, and journal writing to explore their own concepts and experiences of leadership. The highlight of my time at the University of Oregon!
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Liz Dampsey
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My name is Liz Dampsey, and I'm a Tamalpa Graduate from 1997. Currently, I am working as a Grief and Spiritual Therapist at Sierra Tucson, a psychiatric hospital and dual diagnosis treatment center in Tucson, Arizona. I do both individual and group therapy, and have had the great opportunity of integrating the Halprin Life/Art Process into a few of the programs at Sierra Tucson.
A few years ago, I co-created an Integrative Movement group that incorporates several somatic and movement principles and practices. The main focus of the group includes any combination of the following movement forms: breathing and breath awareness, yoga and stretching, Qigong techniques, creative movement, walking meditation outside on the trail, Tai Chi walking, basic Aikido practices involving stance, balance, centering, grounding, and partner movements. The group begins and ends with a very brief (only 1-2 minutes in length) drawing or writing of how they're feeling on each of the 3 levels of awareness. This group meets two times per week in the morning for one hour.
I've also used the Halprin Life/Art Process while working with clients dealing with eating disorders. These are usually individual sessions that involve the client creating a body tracing, or life size self-portrait. I will often trace their body on top of the one they drew, which highlights any body dysmorphia they may have. In addition, they will identify different colors for different core feelings and draw them inside their body. This process provides the client with a great deal of insight and awareness about their perceptions of their body size, as well as unconscious feelings they may carry in their body.
I have also facilitated the expressive arts therapy group, which has given me great freedom to re-use old scores, as well as develop new ones. This group includes those clients in the Program for Sexual Trauma and Recovery, and some of the themes I use include boundaries, mask/unmask, and gathering resources for healing and recovery.
Most recently, I've used the Halprin/Life Art Process in developing the spirituality program at Sierra Tucson. Each Sunday, there is a spirituality group for the whole population. A co-worker and I developed a gratitude score using group movement phrases, drawing and writing on the theme of gratitude in one's life. I've also recently led the building of a labyrinth on campus, where using art and writing both before and after the walk has been very powerful for clients and staff.
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Margot Stueber, MA, MFT
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I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in Los Angeles/Pasadena. For 25 years I have been working with children, families and individuals in the United States and in Germany. My training includes Jungian psychotherapy and Gestalt Therapy and Dance. I've been a Tamalpa Practitioner since 1991; using the Tamalpa Work as part of individual and group therapy supporting creative expression of conflicting parts of psyche. In giving a voice to emotions and images in movement, drawing and poetry my clients work through their issues and feel the joy of being creative.
I have also developed several volumes of poetry and drawings inspired by the work I began at Tamalpa.
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Melinda Harrison
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As Artist: I have used Life/Art process as a way to move through transitions in my life: As a family - creating the space of self expression & creativity: My husband & I danced our wedding vows; The birthing of my children- dancing rituals with women (including performances when pregnant); a mother/baby dance for mother's day; creating a baseball dance for my 10 yr old son and his friends; Passion Indigena was a performance about my daughters dream of dancing with the devil at age 14. I had to "dance" it. And when my husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer... he used the RSVP Scoring to express e-motion and choose his treatment.
As Educator: I've taken my dance into the schools to teach children about environmental issues; Into the community with performances of Cry of the (Whooping) Crane, Catastrophie and Restoration for an Environmental Conference at Naropa, Ancient Forest Rite a participatory event with a canopy installation to dance on and The Rainforest Dance.
As Movement Facilitator and Health Coach: I work with people one-on-one and in groups to create scores for their communities, for themselves to step into a new way of being. And in Nature: I take people into the wilderness of Colorado to dance, to discover and enhance their personal myths by listening to the environment using the RSVP Scoring Method.
I founded Ritual Garden Collective a group of women who met on a regular basis for over 4 years, to move and score rituals with and for each other. I create community dance events yearly: Winter Solstice, Ground Hog Day, Yemanja's Day, etc.
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Michelle Vest
As a working artist, I use the Tamalpa work in my creative processes for both my painting and performance work. In the paint studio, I dialogue among movement, journaling and painting to help me "get out of my head", so to speak, and into my body, treating the painting process as an improvisation. Through the dialogue process, I become aware of themes or topics or feeling states that might influence my work in a restrictive manner, e.g. as with a preconceived idea. Journaling helps me explore these ideas in a literal way leaving the paint as the medium for more emotive, and abstract visual expression.
Likewise, with performance, I engage in this similar process, becoming familiar with and exploring material that will inform a piece and help me to refine aspects, if not the entire performance. Though most of my performance work is improvisation, I often will work on a theme that is of importance to me from my own personal history or from political history - one not necessarily excluding the other - allowing the artistic dialogue to provide content on all levels: physical, emotional and imaginative. In the end, I must say that having initially attended Tamalpa for personal growth, the training helped me make a very big, and much desired, change in my profession, and continues to be the source from which I draw the strength to live my life in a heartfelt, meaningful and creative way.
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Paula Jaya Pravaz
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I was born in Buenos Aires. My family left Argentina when I was 2 years old due to the violent military dictatorship that was taking place. I grew up in Brazil, surrounded by the power of the mountains, oceans and intense vegetation. Then when I was 11 years old my family and I returned to Buenos Aires. This contrast between the lush and free style of the Brazilian way of life and the self-conscious, constricted and mental style of Argentina caused me to restrict my own “life juices”. I was a teenager and I wanted to fit in!
My life's quest has been to free my body in the Brazilian style and to add to this joy and freedom the reflective and self-inquiring qualities that Argentina offered me. The Halprin Life-Art process was the very first space where I felt these two aspects meet. Where body and mind where no longer oppositions but part of the magical gift of being a full Human Being!!!
Butoh Dance has been another big part of my life for 14 years now. In Butoh the opposites are the very material of creation, as the world Bu means to grow roots into the ground and Toh is touching the sky with your hands. In Butoh we “dress the universe” and become a dancing part of the whole, embodying every element, rediscovering our oneness with the stars, pebbles, dragonflies, petrol leaks, everyone’s hurts… just oneness.
Out of this oneness we can choose to work with those elements that bring us the most healing. Personal examples of this would be the bonding with nature and the work with animal allies that the Life-Art process offered me.
My work, inspired by the Life-Art process and the Butoh practice, has been about deepening the bonding with nature, where all the human qualities can be found in its full potential, where the sun and the moon are not opposites but are amazing parts of the integrity of life, where nothing is left apart and there is place for delightful unity in diversity!
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Pernille Overo
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How I use the Tamalpa work:
Since I graduated from Tamalpa 2 years ago, I have started my own business in Denmark where I work with dance as an artistic consultant in organisations and businesses.
In Worlddance, I develop and direct dances for people in organizations, businesses, at conferences and in network. I guide people in dance to experiences, skills, joy and change. I have danced with schoolteachers, accountants, leaders, librarians, engineers, and nurses. I have developed a simple score that I call Networkdance. I redesign it again and again for the special intention of each group.
Intention
For conference participants, the intention is to strengthen individuals' access to their own resources. The dance thus creates a network of people, who after the dance are more connected. It gives the network more connection and power.
Method
Dance, as a serious play -- participants get to experience themselves in a free space where it is impossible to make mistakes, only discoveries.
In the workshop, dance is used as a way to access the self and to acquire experiences about group/networks.
During the workshop, experiences from the dances are gathered and shared. Examples of results reached through using dance:
- A network of people, where relations are strengthened and the network generates more connection and power.
- Groups of employees, who break down customary conceptions about each other and discover new territory together.
- Leaders who practice skills in leadership through movement.
- Conference participants, who through dance get to know each other fast, so they have a chance to draw upon each others' resources during the conference.
References
"For our education it is important to signal that you cannot develop your
self or your leadership style only through the analytical. The dance
became a very good symbol for this."
- Hanne Harmsen, leader of the Master program for change management, Business School Århus Worlddance Change Through Movement.
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Petra Eischeid
Email: Click Here ››
www.LifeArt-Petra-Eischeid.de
Petra Eischeid is a Cologne artist. She is a theater director, actress and performer with over 20 years of theater experience. Petra is also a social worker and a therapist, who uses dance and theater as healing tools. In 1996 Petra co-founded "LifeArt", a collaboration of therapists and artists whose goal is to support personal growth by working with the arts. The most profound piece that came out of the Life/Art Process and her process by itself after having lost her own child was a "theatre-piece for dying children and their relatives". She produced it together with a German children hospital, supported by an association called "Förderkreis Kinder zwischen Leben und Tod e.V."
Since 1993 when she returned to Germany, her work has been highly influenced by the Halprin-Method®. She works internationally in Further Trainings and Universities. Her thinking and professional works are highly influenced by her long-standing studies, experiences and working on the theme "living and dying" as well as by her contacts with shamans of different cultures. On stage and in teaching, she brings together her theatre-work and stage-experiences with the Philippine art of "stick-fighting" and the Halprin-Method®. She lives a self-employed life as a "Life/Art-Artist". Currently she is living at the Bodensee in Germany. She is doctoral candidate in psychology.
Contact:
Tel: 0049(0)7534-998742
www.lifeart-petra-eischeid.de
She is a certified Halprin-Practitioner® and one of the co-founders of the German Tamalpa Association "Tamalpa Deutschland e.V."
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Rana Stewart
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Currently I am using the Halprin Life/Art Process in many different settings with adults and children, teaching dance and Tamalpa workshops in schools, growth centers and community programs throughout Northern California and New Mexico. I bring the Tamalpa work into the activities and presentations of several dance collectives that I belong to, and teach Movement Ritual to teenagers, who have found it to be a remarkable movement and body awareness experience.
Specific projects that I have created involving the Tamalpa work include, The Spirit of Fairfax Expressive Arts and Dance Festival, and Embodying Nature. The Festival was an expo of the somatic movement educators in the local Fairfax community, and was created with the intention to involve more of the community in expressive arts workshops. Embodying Nature is a workshop I developed as a result of being involved with Tamalpa's environmental work. I created a retreat in collaboration with an outdoor adventure company to bring the creative community out into the wild in a safe, guided experience of Embodying Nature.
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Saille Mawson
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I have a diverse professional background as a self-employed person for over 20 years. With my qualifications as a counselor, I contributed, among others things, to education and health as a communication skills trainer for mental health workers, an outreach worker for women in adult education, and in HIV/AIDS care.
I graduated from the Tamalpa Leadership Training in 2004 and completed Level 3 Supervision Training in 2005. I now live and work in Scotland near the intentional community of Findhorn, with which I am closely associated. I am 46, a community artist, massage therapist, voice teacher, and self-employed facilitator of the Halprin Life/Art Process for individuals and groups. A belief in the healing power of creative expression, a zest for life, and a wish for a more humane, compassionate and kinesthetically aware world are some of the guiding impulses behind in my work.
In addition to running Expressive Arts workshops for the general public, I adapt aspects of what is taught at Tamalpa to the needs of specific organisations and groups. I am doing consulting work with the New Findhorn Association's newly elected council members, supporting them in team building and visioning. I have introduced the interplay and dialogue between different creative modalities into other educational programmes offered by the Findhorn Foundation, namely the Living in Community Group, Spiritual practice, Learning English as a Foreign Language, and a 3-month creative arts programme called, Essence of the Arts in Community. The scoring process I learned at Tamalpa has helped me design and create workshops with the facilitators of these groups according to the themes or intentions that they are exploring.
I am also building a private practice as an Expressive Arts Counselor in my local area for individuals to explore their life themes through movement and drawing on a one-on-one basis. Tamalpa's facilitator training has added a whole new dimension to my approach as a counselor, giving me the confidence to work with clients through their creativity. It has helped me cultivate my role as a witness and guide .The power of drawing and moving is often visible in the immediate way these expressions can reveal to people new resources and new vistas in their lives.
The Tamalpa training has helped me develop a solid movement practice (Movement Ritual) that supports me in my daily life and gives me a solid somatic base from which to work with others in movement. Personally, I notice that having greater physical flexibility and new somatic awareness continues to improve my quality of life immeasurably. I am adapting Movement Ritual and using it as a basis for teaching a series of private classes called Looking After Your Back to people in my local area who want to increase their mobility and flexibility. I also use Movement Ritual as a basis for a more dance-based movement improvisation class for people who want to deepen their somatic awareness, have some fun and explore their creativity.
I am currently developing my own creativity as a playback theater performer, dancer, and songwriter.
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Stephanie Haug
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I am a physiotherapist and Halprin Practitioner in Germany. I graduated from the Tamalpa Immersion Format Training in May 2003. The focal point of my professional work had developed strongly towards body awareness over time, and the need for integration of the emotional and mental levels in addition to the very physical entrance point of the body became evident to me. I also carried a strong interest in psychology, personal development and learning. With this, the Halprin Life/Art Process with its emphasis on the connection between the "3 levels of awareness" and on personal expression was a perfect supplement to both my professional and private journey.
Coming back home from this incredibly rich training experience I started very enthusiastically to investigate contexts and formats where I could offer the work. I had to learn that it is not easy to get it "out into the world", to get people interested and eventually motivated to participate in workshops or courses. So parallel to this project, I continued to work as a "regular" physiotherapist in a private practice, mainly with clients with orthopedic and neurological diseases, and there it was that I began to realize that I already do work with several tools of the Halprin Life/Art Process. Movement Ritual sequences, the communication techniques and the work with images and movement qualities found entrance in my physiotherapy work and clients and colleagues remarked to me how much they liked the quality of my "being there with others" in my way of working.
I offer Movement Ritual courses to the public related to our practice, and I enjoy teaching this approach to the body and the quality of listening to the body's wisdom very much! My long-term vision is to work in a psychosomatic clinic with body awareness and expressive arts. I think the reconnection to our bodies' wisdom is the very basis for the healing and personal development needed here and the Tamalpa Work offers great tools for this process. I also seek the opportunity to work together in a team with psychologists and other professionals in this setting in order to create a supportive and safe container for clients to take the steps they need to take in their own healing.
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Sue Martin
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I was 39 years old and on the road to burn out. I was a successful political activist advocating and implementing creative public policy initiatives to prevent and address domestic violence. During my six-month sabbatical in 1991, I decided to do something rejuvenating and creative: the Tamalpa Institute Fall Program. Well, suffice it to say, that my life has never been the same. What started as a 2.5-month adventure has turned into an exciting and vibrant career. Over the course of the next five years, I slowly decreased my public policy work and increased my time at Tamalpa.
Upon graduating from Tamalpa, I took the Halprin Life-Art Process to women survivors of childhood abuse. I led groups for HIV positive survivors, lesbian survivors, and former prostitute survivors. For almost 10 years the Halprin Life-Art Process inspired and nourished hundreds of survivors of abuse and torture. I also use the Halprin Life-Art Process in my trauma recovery training seminars for the staff of non-profit agencies. I have also used the Halprin Life-Art Process in organizational development programs for non-profit agencies.
I obtained my master's degree in Psychology in 2001. I self-published and currently distribute my master's thesis, Using the Body's Wisdom to Heal Trauma: A Somatic Expressive Arts Approach.
Today I combine the Halprin Life-Art Process with somatic-based trauma and attachment repair work in what I feel is a beautiful work of art. I work with individuals in my San Francisco and Berkeley offices, co-teach a graduate course on trauma for Art Therapy master students at the University of California at Sonoma, and lead a trauma-focused consultation group for expressive arts therapists. I present often at conferences and have just completed, "The Art and Science of Attachment Repair," for the upcoming book, Creative Arts Therapies for Sexual Abuse Survivors.
I am eternally grateful to the current and former faculty and staff members at the Tamalpa Institute for the amazingly creative and profound container you gave me during my years at the Institute. This creative container supported a level of integration in me that has served as a foundation for the evolution of a rich personal and professional life. Thank you!
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Thea Frey M.A. (Expressive Art Therapy), RYT, RMT
Author of Soul's Dance
Website: Click Here ››
When I began my studies at Tamalpa Institute in 1978, I embarked on a very exciting and adventurous path of creativity, learning, self-inquiry and self-actualization. My passion for dance and artistic expression deepened and evolved into my life's work.
My soul was truly born in nature at the wild North Pacifique coast, in the redwood forests, and inspired and supported by Anna and Daria, the dance community and the creative Life/Art process of the Tamalpa Institute. Filled with a thirst for the in-depth explorations of my body, mind and soul, I was continuously being reborn and affirming being alive!
My very intimate relationship to the work has not changed since, it only deepened and my first Self-portrait titled "I am the world" reflected that desire to be part of this world, as well as the need to deepen the "who I am " and to then bring the dance back out into the world.
I ran, danced, and assisted in eight Circle the Earth dances for peace performances with Anna Halprin, one of which was held in Essen, Germany and another in my hometown, Zürich, Switzerland. In 1995, Tamalpa Suisse sponsored Circle the Earth in Winterthur Switzerland with myself acting as the artistic director.
Throughout the next decade to follow, dance, teaching, healing, Life/Art and stage, has truly unfolded into my life's career. I completed my Expressive Arts Therapy training with a Masters Degree. I lead my own trainings in Life/Art dance workshops at various studios in Manhattan and work as therapist in private practice. I have had many solo-dance performances based upon my own self-portraits as backdrop for the stage. For the last ten summers, I offer the annual Nature dance workshop in the wild Swiss mountains. I published my first book, Soul's Dance, a work on dance as a healing force, and currently I am rewriting and producing an evening long play for the theater. My performance career has also taken off into creating a cabaret act in New York City with songs, piano and dance.
Whatever I do and whatever occurs in my life, the Life/Art process is my closest ally and guide -- it supports me and connects my work to my soul.
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YongJa Yim
Seoul, South Korea
Email: Click Here ››
I graduated from Tamalpa's Training program in 2003 and received my Halprin Practitioner certificate in 2005.
Before I went to learn the Halprin Life Art Process at Tamalpa, I taught psychology and education as lecturer in Korea and practiced counseling applied with Neuro-Linguistic Programming and arts mediums in my private practice office.
I was lucky to find out about Anna Halprin's book Dance as a Healing Art, that prompted me to attend Tamalpa.
After graduating, I returned to Korea. My teaching subjects changed and I began to teach Arts Psychotherapy, Integrative Arts Therapy, and Movement-expressive Psychotherapy, and Theory of Dance-Movement Therapy in two graduate schools.
Currently, I am a contracting lecturer at the Department of Arts Therapy, Graduate School of East-West Complementary Alternative & Medicine, Wonkwang University, Iksan, South Korea. I am also a Lecturer at Department of Psychotherapy, Graduate School of Information and Social Welfare, Kwangwoon University, Seoul, South Korea.
Subjects that I teach: Arts Psychotherapy, Integrative Arts Therapy Theory of Dance-Movement Therapy, Movement-Expressive Psychotherapy, Counseling Psychology, Developmental Psychology.
Certificates that that I hold: Halprin Practitioner, Doctoral Degree of Counseling and Education Counselor, Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Waldorf Teacher, and primary school teacher.
In the future, I wish to offer the Halrpin Life/Art Process for students to become Dance-Movement Therapists in Korea, at a department of dance-movement therapy in a university, when it becomes more popular in Korea.
I've practiced the Halprin Life/Art Process applied to many subjects, making use of Tamalpa techniques in my classes and have practiced the short version of Body Part Metaphors & Self-Portrait Ritual occasionally in workshops. I also run a private dance studio.
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