Experience community vision sharing and explore the potential of ritual and ceremony in two workshops at the 21st Biennial Conference of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research at The Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights, June 4-6, 2015, Suffolk University, Boston
Bodystorm: A Menstrual Rights Embodied Visioning Council, June 5th
Roxanne Partridge, MA, Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, PhD candidate-Pacifica Graduate Institute, @embodyperiod
Bodystorm is a guided brainstorming session with intuitive, interactive, and embodied exploration, provided in a space of expression, deep listening, collective visioning, and movement. Inspired by the community gathering that is the SMCR conference, this workshop welcomes members to come together in a practice of embodied imagination. Rooted in both liberation and depth psychologies, I weave Jack Zimmerman’s Way of Council and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed into an embodied visioning council. In this collaborative space we shall tend the problem of embodied representation of menstrual health and reproductive justice.
Council enacts the sacred practice of a community talking-circle. A vulva puppet talking-stick will be passed around the circle and each council member may respond to opening rounds of questions to heighten connection and intention. Then, the vulva-stick will be placed in the center to be picked up and responded with in a more irregular fashion. Heart-centered expression and listening, spontaneity, and movement welcome collaborative re-visioning, witnessing, and generative interruptions of our habitual positions.
Informed by Boal’s image theatre technique, council members will be asked to sculpt their bodies into images that respond to prompts such as: what menstrual health is like, a menstrual dream image they’ve had, an experience of reproductive justice, relevant questions in the moment, or to mirror an image put forth by another participant. These wordless expressions privilege the images and voices of the body, widen the traditional verbal nature of council, and give flesh and blood to our ideas.
As council leader, I will facilitate the council structure, questions, responses to bodystorm group process, and closing ritual.
Participants will gain an experiential introduction to a practice of community vision sharing and an opportunity to enrich the dream of menstrual health and reproductive justice as a human right, through collaborative embodied imagination.
Rights of Passage: Reclaiming Women’s Rites, June 6th
Giuliana Serena, Ceremonialist, Menstrual Cycle Educator, Moontime Rising
Weaving A Red Web by Giuliana Serena
This workshop will explore examples of modern pan-cultural rites-of-passage for women’s blood mysteries. Participants will be invited to look at their experience of womanhood, identify key rites-of-passage that may or may not have been acknowledged in their own lives—and those of their loved-ones—and gain a new perspective on the potential for ritual and ceremony to increase the awareness of the value of menstrual health and wellness for those worldwide. This session is designed to be relevant and welcoming to those of all faiths, persuasions, and backgrounds.
Rites of Passage, the ceremonial acknowledgement of the crucial transitions in the lives of individuals, families, and communities, have been practiced since the beginning of civilization, and the blood rites, those relating to fertility, menarche, menstruation, pregnancy, birth, miscarriage, and menopause, are among the most ancient. In the modern day, these rites have been largely forgotten, with the exception of some traditional cultures. However, we are now experiencing a surge of interest and enthusiasm for the reclamation and re-imagination of these rites, as is evidenced by the growing menstrual empowerment movement in the west.
Rites of Passage used to be considered “rights” of the people. In keeping with the theme of the conference, Menstrual Health and Reproductive Justice: Human Rights Across the Lifespan, Giuliana suggests that these rites of passage do, in fact, offer a powerful way to support menstrual health and reproductive justice, by providing spiritual and practical preparation, support, and celebration of life transitions.
Media Release and Registration for the SMCR Boston Conference.
