Workshops
Outrageous Love Workshops
The Outrageous Love Festival gives you an unprecedented opportunity to embody Outrageous Love through a unique series of top-notch workshops. This page contains descriptions of the workshops and sessions offered last year, as an example of what you can expect. The program for 2021 will be announced in details in June. As always, we are committed to bringing you only the best of embodiment and practice sessions, facilitated by our team of senior practitioners .
Keynote Teachings
Marc Gafni
Dr Marc Gafni teaches on the cutting edge of philosophy in the West. He is deeply committed to evolving a new dharma; a meta theory of integral meaning that will re- shape key and pivoting points in consciousness and culture.
Marc’s brilliant integration of mind and heart allows for a transmission that is direct and touches people in various and unique ways. For some, it is experienced as an epiphany of the mind. Others might experience a great opening of the heart or feel touched intimately in ways that they might not be able to really grasp or describe. Again others will experience energetic awakenings. And for some, the transmission might be very quiet and take months to land into their consciousness.
Marc’s greatest gift of all is that he loves each person that he meets on his path outrageously and he has a unique capacity to make everyone feel included and addressed. You’ll understand why people call him a spiritual artist.
Early Morning Practice
Claire Molinard, James Bampfield, Simona Muratori, Govind Vloemans
Waking up your body, mind and soul is part of our daily routine. Through various forms of meditation, yoga and Moga Dao Qi Gong you will achieve just that. A wonderful preparation for the rest of your day!
Pleasure in Food
Monday, 10:45 – 11:30 AM
Erik Plas and Micky Masset
During the workshop, we will focus on the pleasure from conscious and healthy food. Where do you find the pleasure of tasting dishes? What exactly can we discover around the pleasure in the ingredients we use almost daily? What do we mean by conscious food?
If you want to re-discover the pleasure in daily ingredients, please have the following ready when we start the workshop.
- 5 bowls with the following (in that order):
1. Raspberries
2. Pieces of pure chocolate
3. Tomato wedges
4. Pecan nuts
5. Half cucumber slices - A blindfold for everybody joining the workshop.
- Possible questions about vegetarian cooking or the menu of the week.
Larger groups might be pointing somebody that feeds the others, but if you remember the order of the bowls, it is also fine to help yourself.
Eros and Art
Monday, 7:45 PM
Wednesday, 10:45 – 11:30 AM
Kohlene Hendrickson
On Monday evening, join our special guest Kohelene Hendricks who is inviting us on a virtual tour of the foundation Romainmotier, in Switzerland, where she is currently exhibiting her “Eros” paintings series. This series was directly inspired from Dr Marc Gafni and Dr Kristina Kincaid book “A return to Eros”.
Art Gallery website: www.kohlene.com
On Wednesday, Kohlene will take us through each painting, one by one, taking us deeper inside, by sharing her “making of” the Eros paintings.
About Kohlene Hendrickson
Kohlene Hendrickson is a native Californian, but moved to Switzerland in 2000 where she has found “home” in the enchanted village of Romainmôtier. She studied Fine Arts at the Otis Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles. She worked for 12 years as an illustrator and art director, then returned to fine arts by studying fresco with Frederico Vigil and continued her study of fresco in Italy. Kohlene has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in the USA and in Europe ( France, Italy, Switzerland and Austria). Her artworks have been on the highly successful TV series Will & Grace where her male nude drawings were featured.
CONFESSION OF PLEASURE
Tuesday, 2:15 – 3:45 PM
Philippe Joannis
Pleasure is the source of ethics and the highest pleasure is the pleasure we experience in moments of greatness and transformation. These are moments when we are attuned to reality, and when we put our own transformation in service to the healing and the transformation of the whole.
You will be invited to confess a personal story of a moment of pleasure / greatness. Through being fully received and seen, you’ll be able to integrate that moment into your whole being, and to activate your capacity to embody pleasure more fully. … Receiving and being received, acknowledged by others, being seen and seeing others through the eyes of outrageous love, is a holy practice which we’ll engage fully during this sacred space held by Philippe Joannis, who is a senior Unique Self Emergence facilitator and coach.
About Philippe Joannis
With a Scientific (computer science and mathematics) and philosophy training, Philippe has done most of his professional life within the Apple universe while following a steady developmental and spiritual path. He has been very influenced by Henri Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin mysticism and dove in a trans-lineage spiritual path when he met Marc Gafni 8 years ago which how he studied and got initiated to the Kabballah mysticism. He also used to be a street magician and pretends that Magicians are liars that point to deep truth about transformation, surprise, and the pleasure of ceaseless emergence that is the essence of life.
Multidimensional Multilevel Pleasure: Where Are We Now?
Tuesday, 2:15 – 3:45 PM
Thomas Goddard
The capacity to embrace pleasure — at all levels — is not so much an accident of being a human as it is a sacred gift that is woven into the Fabric of Being from top to bottom, at every level of consciousness. Pleasure is one of Reality’s/the Divine’s essential ways of calling each of us into our true nature, into alignment into our True Identity, and into the fullest expression of our Unique Selves.
In this embodied, interactive workshop, we hope not only to expand our notions of what pleasure is, in all its dimensions, but also to dive into each of these dimensions to see where we are with respect to each dimension. It is our aspiration to emerge from this time together with a clearer view of our relationship with pleasure and to be seen and heard by our fellow explorers about our holy journey, so as to better discern within our own unique experience how to orient ourselves within that map and embrace the multiple ways we engage pleasure in our journey into the inner face of Reality/The Divine.
About Thomas Goddard, JD, PhD
Tom Ronen Goddard has studied with Dr. Marc Gafni since 2010 and has served on the Board of the Center for Integral Wisdom for nearly a decade. Tom also was a founding member of Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute and has served as Chairman of the Board for Shalom Mountain, a retreat center in New York where he continues to lead retreats.
Tom is the founder and CEO of Integral Healthcare Solutions, Inc., a global healthcare consulting firm that helps organizations meet internationally recognized quality standards.
Tom has a PhD in psychology from George Mason University and a law degree from the University of Arizona.
He lives in Tucson, Arizona, USA, where he communes with the desert and his guitars.
Evolutionary Satsang
Wednesday and Friday, 2:15 – 3:45 PM
Chahat Aden Corten
This Intimate gathering is embedded deeply within our community. It is an important tool to build our field of Outrageous Love. Come and sit with us and show yourself, where you are in the moment. Everything is welcome. Your story, your questions, your musings on life, something beautiful you want to show us, something difficult that you want to share or if you simply want to be held by the community. We are all on the same path, be it with different details. It doesn’t matter when or where your journey started. It doesn’t matter where you are on the path…. The only thing that matters is that you are willing to bring your offering in the Light of Outrageous Love. So that the Light of Consciousness will shine on all of us and our meeting will reveal its Gift to us as we sit together in Evolutionary Satsang.
About Chahat Corten
Chahat Corten (1955) was one of the founding members of an internationally acclaimed Dutch community and retreat centre dedicated to heart-based living, personal growth and spirituality. From its beginnings in 1988, she stood with her late life partner Ted Wilson in holding together and developing this dynamic, experimental, on-the-edge organization.
Thoroughly cooked in the complexities of intentional communal living, Chahat blends penetrating wisdom in the realms of relating, intimacy and sacred sexuality with gentle compassion, holy laughter and ecstatic creativity.
In her wondrous life journey, she has had the privilege to meet and study with numerous great spiritual teachers from all over the world. All these doorways into the miracle of our existence have shaped her unique realization of emptiness and fullness, wisdom and love, culminating in her deep, wide open heart.
Chahat supports individuals and couples who seek her out for her wise and deeply human perspective on all areas of life. One of Chahat’s greatest skills is supporting people to find ways to implement spiritual practice in their daily lives – the only place where our practice really gets challenged and can be seen for what it is!
“In meeting Marc Gafni in 2010, a total new layer of Love opened up within me. His transmission allowed me to access a realization of Truth that had been unfolding and deepening in me for years, in a new, most tender and intimate way. As one of Marc’s teachers would say: ‘Embodied in my toe nails.’ Working with Marc and our awesome team in the Festival of Love is my great joy and delight.”
Take A Risk: Pleasure!
Wednesday, 2:15 – 3:45 PM
Dr. Kristina Kincaid
Take A Risk: Pleasure is an experiential workshop where participants take a risk to share and explore a taboo aspect or a deeper longing to claim and live more fully in their Pleasure.
When we experience ourselves as pleasure beings, open to our full flow, pulsing with life energy through our body, we become more creative and feel more deeply connected to ourselves and to others. In this dynamic, interactive workshop we will combine individual work with group process. You will learn techniques to liberate this energy and access more pleasure in your life. These techniques will be demonstrated through individual body readings with select participants who choose to take the risk of revealing an issue around claiming their pleasure- and are willing to work through it in a supportive environment.
About Dr. Kristina Kincaid
Dr Kristina Kincaid is the Co-Director of The Institute of Integral Evolutionary Tantra in New York City and is the Co-Chairperson and a Co-Creator of the Outrageous Love Project. She holds an MA and Doctorate in Theology from Holos University. A graduate of the Institute of Core Energetics and the prestigious Barbara Brennan School of Healing, she also earned a BA in Anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin.
The Institute of Integral Evolutionary Tantra is an affiliate division of the Center for Integral Wisdom (CIW). CIW is a non-profit organization co-founded in 2010 by Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, Sally Kempton, Lori Galperin, Mariana Caplan, and a leadership team that has expanded to dozens of the most respected spiritual teacher, leaders, authors and activist in the world. CIW is a think tank, which is articulating and advancing a spiritual movement that is evolving the source code of human existence. Kristina is a CIW Scholar and a member of the Board of Directors.
Kristina is known for her transformative work in personal growth and intimate relationships through the body. She offers residential retreats, workshops and individual sessions for single men and women as well as couples. She lives in New York City.
Body – Art – Expression
Thursday and Friday, 10:45 – 11:30 AM
Ulrike Katharina Blank
On Thursday, join us for an embodied session of accessing Pleasure through our unique artistic expression. We will move our bodies, breathe, dance, create art and poetry.
On Friday, another embodied session of accessing Pleasure through our unique artistic expression. A time for sharing our gifts and creations will be offered for those who wish.
About Ulrike Katharina Blank
Ulrike Katharina Blank, life artist, visual artist (painting, photography), art project manager.
I was born in Germany and I live now in Essen, a city in the Rhine – Ruhr Area. After I completed my grafik design Studies, I worked as an employ in several advertising agencies for ten years. Then I realized that the time had come to change my life completely. I choose to quit my job as an art director to focus my energy and time on living as an artist.
My other passion, teaching people how beautiful, inspiring and sometimes even life changing it is, to express ourselves through our unique art expression, started to become real. I am creating and leading art workshops for children, youngsters and adults in different contexts.
I was a member of two theater groups for fifteen years, improvisation theater and body theater. This satisfied my need for playing, body movement and dance, and also taught me a lot about embodiment through art expression. On my development path and emerging journey, I participate in bodywork in different forms and approaches.
For five years I have been creating and leading art workshops that weave all parts together: body awareness, body movement, and dancing, drawing, painting, and writing.
NATURE AS POETRY
Thursday, 2:15 – 3:45 PM
James Bampfield
The goddess wrote a poem called Nature.
For our Sustenance and Pleasure.
Come take a walk in the footsteps of St Francis,
in the footsteps of Basho and Wordsworth,
and lay your head in nature’s lap
as she holds space for you
and holy can become haiku.
In this workshop we will guide you on a trip into the non-human world – for the purpose of contemplation, of inspiration, of creativity.
About James Bampfield
James grew up in the UK and has Master’s degrees from Cambridge University and University of Surrey. He has travelled extensively and lived on 4 different continents. He attended his first ‘group’ when he was 17 years old and since then self-development and spirituality have been central to his path through life.
He is a co-founder of Quinx, an international facilitation and consultancy company and has worked extensively in both Europe and USA. He has also co-founded two very different projects called Organization of the Future and Silence for Peace.
Whether working in-company or in open workshops, transformational learning remains at the core: waking up and growing up. He is passionate and optimistic about the call for a cultural evolution that mirrors the intensive technological evolution of recent years.
In the last few years, he has also turned to writing and speaking, especially on the subject of pleasure and fulfillment. His book the Discipline of Pleasure has recently been published, both in English and Dutch.
Pleasure all the way up and all the way down!
Thursday, 2:15 – 3:45 PM
Claire Molinard
All we really want in life, is pleasure. Pleasure in the mind, manifests as peace and creativity. Pleasure in the heart, flows as joy, or love. Pleasure in the body is experienced as rapture, ecstasy, or vibrant health. In this workshop, we’ll bring the Pleasure dharma home into our own unique beings. Through various practices and explorations, we will land it into our very hearts, minds and bodies. Come dressed in comfortable clothes, as we’ll be moving our bodies and make sure you have a pen and paper handy. Dr. Marc always told me that “ To really know something, you’ve got to feel it all the way down into your left toe nail”. Let’s make this real!
100 Blessings – The Pleasure of giving your Unique Gifts.
Friday, 2:15 – 3:45 PM
Claire Molinard
In this workshop, we will practice giving our gifts, through giving each other blessings. Each person has a unique door into Reality, it’s their unique perspective and their unique intimacy with the world, that is theirs and theirs alone. This unique window into Reality is the unique gift they alone can give. It’s the original medicine that can heal a corner of the world only they can heal. Dr Marc teaches that, that to give a blessing, we first access the blessing of the moment. We feel into what is real for us here and now, and from there, we offer a blessing that arises from that moment of Unique Self revelation.
Let’s come together and give and receive a 100 blessings.
About Claire Molinard
Claire Molinard is an empowered lineage holder and teacher of both the theory, practice, and transmission of the Unique Self Dharma. Her first dive into evolutionary spirituality was in her early twenties when she started to study Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga. Since then, Claire has explored and practiced many paths.
In 2007, during a silent meditation retreat, her small-self dissolved into the Big Love that lives at the core of all things, and this peak experience changed her perception of reality forever.
In 2008, she discovered Ken Wilber’s Integral theory, which gave her seeking mind a deep and wide enough map in which to “put all the pieces together”.
But it’s only when she met Dr. Marc Gafni in 2013, she knew she found her teacher. Dr. Gafni’s meta-vision of an evolutionary Spirituality grounded in the depth of his spiritual lineage gives her a deep sense of coming home. Claire studies with Dr. Marc, along with collaborating with him on a number of outrageous projects, by holding the stewardship of all the books and projects related to Unique Self theory and by exploring how to best complete the missing pieces of this dharma, and how to deploy the dharma effectively in the evolution of culture and consciousness.
Together with Chahat Corten, Claire holds the extraordinary Mystery School and Outrageous Love Festival space in Europe.
Besides the above workshops, there will be surprise workshops and events throughout the week, enriching your experience even further.