The Summit 2017

As leaders, facilitators, ministers, caregivers, citizens – people – our lives are inundated by information, noise and heavy responsibility. Care practitioners are seeing an all‐time high in individuals desperately seeking support simply to maintain their daily lives. Traditional ways of worship, prayer, and community are often "not enough." Coping strategies often entail numbing out and holing up. As our brains work overtime to negotiate and critically attend to the barrage of multiple experiences, our bodies often suffer neglect. Trauma theorists have discovered that the body interprets experience differently than the mind, developing a code that is uniquely scripted and in desperate need of its own discharge. Theorists and practitioners have also long attested that restoring the body first often allows the mind and the soul to follow. In this workshop we will learn to slow down, to discover the language of the body. We will learn several body prayer techniques and somatic and neuro‐kinetic exercises that will allow us to connect to centering breath, to release the mind, and to balance the nervous system. By entering into sacred movement we will allow for our bodies to usher us into a deeper experience with God.