Creativity & Culture

Website program category as of 2022

COME TOGETHER! A Festival of IntraConnectivity and Spirit | Day Pass

With Daniel Siegel, Elissa Epel, Little Bear Tom Nason, Rhonda V. Magee and Douglas Drummond

Package Dates

We live in times of high existential stress with both ever-increasing personal, societal, and global pressures and the constant pain of witnessing ecological crises and widespread social injustices. These challenges also create opportunities to reconsider our relationships to self, one another, and the planet — and to choose a life of peak purpose and interconnectedness. […]

COME TOGETHER! A Festival of IntraConnectivity and Spirit | ETMC Day Pass

With Daniel Siegel, Elissa Epel, Little Bear Tom Nason, Rhonda V. Magee and Douglas Drummond

Package Dates

We live in times of high existential stress with both ever-increasing personal, societal, and global pressures and the constant pain of witnessing ecological crises and widespread social injustices. These challenges also create opportunities to reconsider our relationships to self, one another, and the planet — and to choose a life of peak purpose and interconnectedness. […]

Gratitude for Our Ancestors: Healing Our Lineage & Ourselves

With Erika Gagnon

November 29 - December 2, 2024

Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey as we gather to look at our ancestral lineage and how our ancestors continue to influence and affect our lives today.  Gratitude for our ancestors! We are the reality of their dreaming. We are the tip of the arrow of our entire ancestral […]

In Our Hands: Reclaiming the Lost Self from Technology, a Digital Liberation Workshop

With Shannon Algeo

December 2 - 6, 2024

This workshop is your opportunity to reckon with the digitization of our times, reclaim the lost self from technology, and rewire your relationship to creativity. “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver asked in her beloved poem The Summer Day. The average person now spends 61 to 80 days […]

Imagination: Exploring Your Inner World for an Extraordinary Life

With Cassandra Vieten

December 6 - 8, 2024

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them to the impossible. — Arthur C. Clarke Imagination is the foundational ingredient in problem solving – the ones in your own life as well as problems in society. Yet how many courses in imagination did you take during your K to12 education? Were you […]

Go Within Week of December 16–20, 2024

With Teachers in Residence

December 16 - 20, 2024

Use for 4-Night weekday workshops, 6-Night Mon - Sun workshops, or 7-night Fri - Fri workshops--RG will autocalculate the correct pricing.   Venue Color Codes: Hux - #7996e5 RT - #eab885 BY - #b1f8f9 MH - #ea9fea LP - #c6c5e5 PY - #3aad9a AB - #f7f494 PH - #9dcc82

Planets and Poetry: Embodying Astrology Through the Expressive Arts

With Heidi Rose Robbins

January 13 - 17, 2025

Join Heidi Rose Robbins for an enlivening exploration of your astrological chart. Through group study, movement, writing, and poetry, we’ll bring our astrological map to life — and in so doing, we will practice loving, act courageously, and fully embrace our next life steps.  In this workshop, we will come together in the beauty of […]

Somacultural Liberation: Freeing the Body Through Cultural Awareness

With Roger Kuhn

January 24 - 26, 2025

What role does dominant culture play in how we experience the sensations, thoughts, feelings, and deeper existential mysteries of our bodies?  Roger Kuhn, a Poarch Creek Two-Spirit Indigequeer activist, artist, sex therapist, and somacultural theorist, believes that viewing our bodies through a somacultural lens can help us better understand how dominant culture informs and, all […]

Go Within Week of January 27–31, 2025

With Teachers in Residence

January 27 - 31, 2025

Joyful Metamorphosis: Embrace Uncertainty Through Play

With Stacie Blanke and Anthony Veneziale

January 31 - February 2, 2025

This interactive workshop is designed to ignite your creativity and foster connections through the transformative power of improvisation, play, and imagination. Embark on a captivating journey in which science and spontaneity collide, delve into the world of improvisation, and discover its transformative impacts on the brain.  Find out how engaging in playful activities can stimulate […]

Cultivating Creative Resilience

With Darnell Lamont Walker and Cara Chandler

February 3 - 7, 2025

Build inner strength and resilience through a blend of gentle and restorative yoga, stress-relief meditation, Yoga Nidra, and focused writing exercises. Participants will embark on a journey to identify and overcome personal and creative challenges.  This workshop begins with restorative yoga sessions to release physical tension and prepare the body for creative work, followed by […]

Embodying Joy: Black Wisdom Traditions of Liberation and Healing

With Kamilah Majied

February 3 - 7, 2025

From the poetry of artists such as Maya Angelou and Amanda Gorman to the rhythms of musical geniuses such as Alice Coltrane and Stevie Wonder, Black creative, cultural, and spiritual wisdom guides us toward justice, freedom, and joy. This workshop, designed for participants from all backgrounds, offers practices from African American wisdom traditions that support […]

Reawaken The Creative Process

With The Brothers Koren

February 7 - 9, 2025

Explore your unique creative process and express your human potential in a weekend deep dive with The Brothers Koren. Discover your distinct creative personality and how to find harmony and coherence in your own creative process. The brothers specialize in facilitating a safe space for you to move beyond the inhibitions and align to your […]

Creative Catalyst: The Transformative Power of Making Art

With Dana Albany and Michael "Flash" Hopkins

February 10 - 14, 2025

The Artist lives within everyone! Art can be made out of just about anything! It’s a time to leave the critic behind and allow oneself to play, nourish, and replenish the creative spirit. It’s also a time to enjoy the company and camaraderie of like-minded peers. Now is your time to discover the joys of […]

A Black History Month Celebration: Exploring and Restoring Our Path to Healing through Empathy and Music

With LaVerne McLeod and Melanie DeMore

February 21 - 23, 2025

Join LaVerne McLeod and Melanie DeMore for a weekend of exploration and celebration of Black History Month as we express ourselves, connect, play, and honor humanity. Together, we will explore what it is like to walk in another person’s shoes to understand and empathize with viewpoints that might differ from our own. We will build […]

Marking Change: Using Nature, Creativity, and Ritual to Navigate Life's Transitions

With Day Schildkret

February 21 - 23, 2025

As life changes, we also must change — yet this isn’t guaranteed. Too many of us get stuck at our thresholds. Nature, creativity, and ritual can help us cross them gracefully, helping us ground, listen, and orient to what is changing.  Join us for a transformative workshop designed to provide the skills and understanding needed […]

Designing the Life We Want: Self Renewal in the Winter

With Mark Nicolson

February 24 - 28, 2025

Have you created the impact you want? Are you showing up the way you’d like? Are you going in the right direction? You have never before been where you are right now. You have never been the age you are today, never had the experiences you now possess. This is your time to pause and […]

Find Your Voice and Reconnect with the Storyteller Within

With Firoozeh Dumas

February 28 - March 2, 2025

We are all born as natural storytellers. Our need to tell stories is primal for it connects us with our deeper selves and with one another. Most of us lose this inherent ability as we grow up, and our stories often become subjected to grades and criticism, which can make our voices shrivel, even disappear. […]

Art as Medicine

With Daria Halprin

March 3 - 7, 2025

“If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?”  –Alice Walker How can  art contribute to healing while staying centered in the creative process? What kind of art-making responds to the therapeutic experience? What does it mean to live an aesthetic life? And what is possible when we do? In the […]

Secret to Belonging: How to Create Authentic Connections that Transform Communities

With Lee Mun Wah and Yi-Li Godfrey

March 3 - 7, 2025

Belonging is an essential part of the human experience. Throughout human history, we have encountered intense polarization and separation due to religious, ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation differences. This unique workshop, led by renowned documentary filmmaker and community therapist Lee Mun Wah and diversity educator and body-based psychotherapy practitioner Yi-Li Godfrey, explores how to foster […]

Healing Wisdom for Modern Times: You Are Your Greatest Healer

With Erika Gagnon

March 7 - 10, 2025

Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey, as we gather together and explore the healing wisdom of the “Americas.” We will learn about the importance of ancestral lineage, ceremonies and rituals, sacred altars, medicinal plants, and the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual bodies. You are your […]

Seeding Self Renewal

With Didier Sylvain

March 10 - 14, 2025

The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars." — Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower All beginnings have seeds — the starting point for new growth and new branches of our lives, the sources for new chapters. This is what annual cycles and seasons promise: As our intentions and ambitions sharpen, […]

Awakening Spring Within: Somatic Herbalism, Plant Spirit Meditation, and Nature Connection

With Marysia Miernowska

March 14 - 17, 2025

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. – Thich Nhat Hanh Join herbalist, medicine woman, and plant spirit teacher Marysia Miernowska […]

Write Your Deepest Story: Memoir, Autobiography, and the Personal Essay

With Janis Cooke Newman

March 17 - 21, 2025

We all have a story to tell. But turning your life into an engaging and meaningful narrative requires both keen self-awareness and a working knowledge of basic storytelling. This experiential workshop invites writers at all levels, from personal journalers to published authors, to cultivate the skills needed to tell the most compelling — and truest […]

The Akashic Records: Diminishing Isolation, Loneliness, and Disconnection

With Roksana Badruddoja

March 24 - 28, 2025

How might you think about grief, and what are the lessons to be learned about restoring your life? This precise, honest, and heart-centered workshop, led by cultural sociologist and Gomti River ceremonialist Roksana Badruddoja, focuses on exploring grief in a life-affirming way through the sacred wisdom of the Akashic Records and the qualitative feminist writing […]

Healing Waters: Waves of Reconciliation and Resiliency, a 5Rhythms® Journey

With Douglas Drummond

March 28 - 30, 2025

Rhythm is our universal mother tongue. It’s the language of the soul. — Gabrielle Roth Enhance your life through movement and join an inspiring 5Rhythms® workshop led by international teacher Douglas Drummond with master djembe drummer Sanga of the Valley and the talented Nick Ayers, a dream team for live percussion and recorded sound. We’ll […]

Entering Your Creative Universe

With Paul Heussenstamm

March 31 - April 4, 2025

This workshop invites you to explore the creative spirit that resides within each of us. Whether you are an experienced artist or simply seeking to uncover your potential, this meditative experience promises to be enriching. We will begin with colored pencils to open our hearts and let creativity flow naturally. Then, with acrylic paints, participants […]

Meet Your Better Half: Unlock Your Right Brain

With William Donius

April 4 - 6, 2025

Learn to activate the right side of your brain to unlock the insights necessary to break through self-limiting patterns. Based on a Nobel Prize-winning discovery in neuroscience, this methodology helps you think outside the box and live a more creative, productive, happier life. William Donius, author of the New York Times bestseller Thought Revolution, spent […]

Elemental Ceramics

With "Kayenta" Kelly Magleby

April 7 - 11, 2025

Join us for this weeklong wild clay pottery intensive. As a group, we will go through the whole process of making pottery from the wild, including processing clay, mixing various wild clays, and finding and testing clay in the field. We’ll learn how to hand-build pots using various techniques, including pinch pots, slab work, coil […]

Bohemian Gravity: Transformation Through Movement and Meditation

With Yemi Akinyemi Dele

April 18 - 20, 2025

A weekend of transformative exploration to bridge physical movement with the subtle layers of internal flow, connecting body, energy, and perception. This retreat goes beyond traditional practices and invites participants to discover the intelligence and freedom inherent in all forms of movement — not only in the body’s gestures but also in its inner energy […]

Science and Spirituality: The Search for Meaning in a Secular Age

With Michael Shermer

April 18 - 20, 2025

The intellectual and spiritual quest to understand the universe and our place in it is at the core of science, religion, and spiritual traditions. We are pattern-seeking, storytelling animals trying to make sense of the world. For millennia, we have told stories in the form of myths and through religions that have offered countless explanations. […]

The Braided Way: Bringing Ancient Wisdom Into Our Contemporary Lives Through Trance Drumming, Ceremony, and Cross Cultural Wisdom

With Patricia James and Geramy Quarto

April 25 - 27, 2025

When the wisdom of the sky and the wisdom of the earth are braided through the human heart, then there will be a rainbow of people. This prophecy of the Indigenous peoples speaks to the practice of braiding together traditional (earth) and contemporary (sky) knowledge to create something new that embraces both rather than replacing […]

Embodied Writing and Spiritual Practice

With Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Erik Davis

April 28 - May 2, 2025

Part writing workshop and part tantric retreat, this unique practice week explores the relationship between personal writing and subtle body practices. Religious historian and Tantric practitioner Sravana Borkataky-Varma will lead experiential sessions largely stemming from Hindu Goddess Tantra practices. Award-winning author and scholar Erik Davis will then guide the group in reading and writing exercises, […]

Awaken The Artist Within: The Sketchbook Immersion

With Erin Gafill and Tom Birmingham

April 28 - May 2, 2025

Learn to tap the source and break through creative barriers during this hands-on workshop. Together, we’ll explore a variety of mediums and techniques to find entry into creative expression, including: Color blocking Watercolor sketching Observational image making Timed free writing Abstracting from nature The poet Rumi speaks of a river of joy that courses through […]