Friday 11 October 2024 – Pre-Mantis Experiential Workshop
Breathe Yourself into Embodied Consciousness:
A Conscious Connected Breath Workshop to Cultivate Presence and Somatic Awareness
In-person Attendance Only
Space Limited to 12 people
Abstract
“In Breathwork the “Spirit” that initiates, teaches, and purifies the personality is the breath.”
(Manne, J., 2004, Conscious Breathing)
Marion Woodman focused on the integration and conscious union of body and psyche, an inner marriage leading to a unified emergent organisation. She advocated for an ‘embodied consciousness’ as a practical and dynamic way of using the body to integrate unconscious contents into consciousness.
It is in the somatic (or body) unconscious, with its muscular tensions and breathing patterns, where the flow of our life force energy is blocked and interrupted, where our complexes reside.
Muscular constrictions are borne from a “lifetime of holding oneself up, holding oneself together.” Through movement and breath, we can release the unconscious blocks in the body, deconstructing or dissolving old interfering habit-patterns.
Once the body is relaxed from the hold of complexes, creative spirit can flow between head and body. We can become more receptive to our body sensations and allow intuition to flow through our body, thus freeing our imagination. Rigidity becomes fluid movement and authentic self-expression. Breath can revitalise the frozen aspects of our psyche with the vibration of the genuine feeling, allowing that emotion which is always connected to the breath to express itself.
Marion Woodman states: “For me, body work is soul work, and the imagination is the key to connecting both. Most of us keep our breath as shallow as possible because the eruption of feeling is too intense if we inhale deeply. Breathing is very important because it is a matter of receiving, and that is the feminine principle incarnate.” (Woodman, Conscious Femininity, 16-17.)
About the Presenter
Denise Grobbelaar is a Clinical Psychologist and Jungian Analyst in private practice in Cape Town. Denise is passionate about nature, embodied consciousness, working with images (dream work, active imagination and visionary experiences), mythology, and the enneagram. She has tracked her own dreams for 30 years and has participated in numerous ‘Dream Appreciation’ groups and ‘Waking Dream’ retreats since 2013. Her paper “The White Lion as Symbol of the Archetype of the Self and the Cannibalization of the Self in Canned Hunting” was published in the 2020 Spring Issue of the Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche. In January 2023 Denise trained as a breathwork teacher during a 3-week intensive and deeply transformational process in the Cederberg.