Jor-El.org with Ed "Jor-El" Elkin, Ph.D.

This workshop offers a spiritual version of traditional Gestalt based on the principle that "behind our differences we are the same". In other words, we will learn to experience the "oneness among us."

NAMASTE is the traditional Indian greeting which means:
"I honor the spirit within you which is the same as the spirit in me."

By blending the techniques and teachings of Ram Dass, Fritz Perls and Alan Watts, participants are guided to embody the meaning of Namaste through exercises designed to evoke our shared humanity and the "oneness among us."

The exercises include guided imagery, movement and dance, sitting and moving meditations, chanting, and both small and large group interactions.

Some in each audience are ready to be active rather than passive. Some in each audience are ready to blur the distinction between performer and audience, and take the "risk" of performing which happens best when participation is optional!

There are numerous forms of Interactive Theatre, ranging from members of an audience giving suggestions to an improv theatre troupe, to playing a role in an improv performance, to following a guided process from begining to end as a "performer". One form that the guided process has taken has been developed by Jor-El and is known as the Conscious Evolution Adventure.

In the Conscious Evolution Adventure, the audience is guided step by step to act out the entire sequence of evolution from single-celled organisms at the bottom of the sea through stages of fish, frog, dinosaur and mammals to human. At the human level, the audience-participants are guided to be infants, babies, toddlers, schoolkids, teenagers, young adults, young marrieds, middle-agers, old agers, etc and deal ultimately with the issue and experience of aging and dying! In the final stage, after death, the next stage of human evolution is acted out as each individual becomes a single cell in the body of humanity.

It must be remembered that at any stage in the process, participants may return to the audience-observer mode. In fact, they can do this as often as they like.
Some people are not ready to be dinosaurs, lizards, or frogs, or infants and only enter into the performer role when it is time to be a teenager or an adult; others jump in at the very begining and perform the entire sequence!

The experience is not only great fun and great training for actors and actresses. It also is designed to be a powerful personal growth experience fulfilling the goal of providing acting "stretch" while allowing the personality to integrate into itself parts that have been denied. In Gestalt Psychotherapy, the phenomenon is known as re-owning the disowned parts of self so that the person becomes whole, as when people who have disowned their power or denied their anger give themself permission to express the denied/repressed/ disowned emotion and thereby become more fully themselves.

In the Conscious Evolution Adventure, participants have the oportunity to integrate into themselves the sub-human (i.e. "animal") qualities along with the early childhood stages of life, both of which have usually been disowned.. This happens not only directly when the audience chooses to perform, but it also happens vicariously when the audience watches the performers.

The Conscious Evolution Adventure is designed as a theatrical experience which includes an "intermission" which comes at a point where the kids in school have recess maintaining the role of kids in school. The entire sequence is usually designed as a two hour process with 30 minutes allotted at the beginning for introduction and warm-up and 30 minutes (at least) at the end for de-briefing , comments and sharing

The process is suitable for all age groups and for mixed age groups as well.
Jor-El offers to conduct The Conscious Evolution Adventure: An Interactive Theatre Event either as a brief two-hour entertainment or as an intensive training that can take a half-day, one-day or two-days where each stage in the evolution sequence is explored in depth.

This workshop presents the philosophy and techniques of Expressive Arts which have in common the ability to use many forms of expression to bring about personal growth and healing.

These include: Art and music-making, poetry writing and reading, Dance and movement, Transformational theater, Journaling, Drumming and Singing.

By expressing that which is "inside us", we gain insight into the unconscious roots of many of our difficulties and a greater ability to resolve our problems and heal our lives.

This workshop provides participants with a significant connection with one or more past lives. Using powerful guided imagery processes, participants re-experience the past life and gain information relevant to current life-situations. The process is also highly effective on an individual basis.

In today's hectic achievement-oriented world, we seem to be running faster and faster to get nowhere ! In the process, we lose touch with who we really are! It's time to remember ourselves, by finding that we are Human Be-ings and not Human Do-ings! Through exercises, meditations, discussion and inquiry we use this time to literally slow down, do less, be more! Come BE with us.