The Body of Stars
A Multi-Day Retreat Exploring Embodiment, Earth and Purpose through Astrology
Dates: October 24-27, 2024
Location: Ecodharma Retreat Center in Colorado, USA
Hosted by: Ramon Gabrieloff-Parish,
Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish and Renee Sills
Cost: $650 | $750 | $850 (sliding scale)
About this retreat
Astrology is a symbolic language that helps us attune with our intuition, open the gates of our imagination and live with a sense of inspiration, presence and purpose. As a model for complex systems thinking and mind-body coherence and integration that predates and underlies many forms of science and psychology, astrology goes far beyond the simplicity of “sun signs.”
In this retreat, participants will explore astrology as a spiritual and contemplative method. We’ll engage with charts, signs and symbolism, to develop greater self and relational awareness; connect with our physical environments and psychic processes as a seamless cosmos; and cultivate perspectives on how our individual karmic inheritances and dharmic potentials can help us meet this historical moment as change agents, healers and visionaries.
We will engage embodied astrology approaches that utilize somatic awareness, mindfulness, emergent ritual and ceremony, and other interactive experiential, creative and artistic processes. Participants will be invited to explore and express through solo practice, group process, community building, and inspired transmission.
Overview & schedule
Day One: Orientation to Community, Land and the Symbolic Language of the Stars.
Where are we? On this first day, participants will ground in their bodies and at the Ecodharma Retreat Center. We will connect with one another and practice the fundamentals of cyclic thinking –exploring the cardinal directions as symbols of life stages and temperaments, and the circle of the year as a basis for contemplative narrative.
Day Two: The Living Zodiac, Planetary Energies and Earthly Elements
Through movement, gesture, creative imagery and the powers of poetry, we will delve into the twelve signs of the Tropical Zodiac; the planetary forces; and the four phenomenal elements of nature, contemplating their capacities through the mirror of our birth charts. This day will include sensing practices with the land surrounding the retreat center.
Day Three: Aspects, Houses and Transits- Conflicts and Opportunities
We will use the more technical elements of astrological practice to explore habitual patterns, triggers, resources and timing. Through mapping our constellations, we’ll discover new awareness and skillful means in navigating our relationships, professional lives, spirit/soul callings and inner experiences. This day will include solo time, journaling and group constellations.
Day Four: The Endless Cycle - Cosmic Views and Personal Dharma
On the final day of the workshop, we will begin integrating our work and time together. We’ll reflect on how we might return to our lives with more acceptance of our strengths and vulnerabilities, and wider, more timeless views of The Big Picture, and our place within it. Participants will leave with astral support practices, clarified personal intentions and, hopefully, renewed zest the journey of their lives and destinies.
About the facilitators
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Ramon Gabrieloff-Parish is a lifelong star gazer, Afrofuturist philosopher, practicing astrologer, social artist and creative ceremonialist. His current project is to utilize the many outer planetary alignments of the 2020's as catalysts for imaginal, collaborative and institutional transformation.
In his day job as a chair of Naropa University’s Interdisciplinary Studies department he focuses on the intersections of equity and sustainability through courses on food and environmental justice. He also teaches foundations in contemplative learning and theory, embodiment, social identity, and conflict transformation.
Ramon is committed to community, cultural and cosmic regeneration, through his consulting work with Once and Future Green and with organizations like Golden Bridge, Youth Passageways and recently as board chair of Frontline Farming.
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Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish is an ethnofuturist mama, “cultural therapist” and ecotopian dreamer preoccupied with ancestors, art, Environmental Justice and Earth (re)becoming a paradise. She brings over 27 years of experience uniting sustainability, justice, and art.
Michelle is the founder of FLOWS environmental justice program, serves on the Colorado Water Equity Partnership, the advisory board for Frontline Farming, and the State of Colorado Biochar for Oil and Gas Plugging Working Group.
As founder of the consulting group “Once and Future Green” Michelle facilitates and trains communities to reclaim diverse ecological wisdom and cultural traditions with anti-oppression and ecological design tools.
Leaning on the teachings of permaculture and deep ecology, Michelle facilitates practices to blur time, connect with ancestry, Earth, and our grief, fear, rage, magic, and joy to support us to be more effective advocates. She is a cultural therapist and poet, currently featured at Meow Wolf Denver.
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Renee Sills is a second generation astrologer, intuitive, somatic educator and practitioner, and the founder of Embodied Astrology – a community-based, hybrid platform exploring intersectional astrology and the synthesis and application of astrology with other forms of knowledge, healing and creating. The through-lines of their work involve ongoing investigations of inter-relatedness, spirituality, mindfulness, creative agency, and the adaptive processes and queering of human bodies and consciousness in times of apocalypse.
Renee’s work weaves together and between the realms of astrology, mysticism, bodywork, healing ritual and participatory art. She seeks to proliferate (through all means possible) accessible, adaptable, embodied practices that reawaken enchantment, empathy and environmental inter-relatedness.
Questions?
If you have any questions or concerns about this offering, or need any additional support to register, please email us at office+2024programming@embodiedastrology.com.