Next week!
Last chance to sign up for this 2020 year-long course
Initiations in the Art of Ensoulment
with the Self-Care Playbook for Sensitive Leaders and Mystics.

Dedicate the year to body, soul, and wisdom needed to thrive and lead in these days.
Choose one of two online monthly workshop options:
     Second Mondays starting Jan 13, 2:30-4:30 pm pst,
     or Second Thursdays starting Jan 16, 3-5 pm pst.

Next week Wed. January 15!
EnneaMotion and the Enneagram
3-4:30 Pacific / 4-5:30 Mountain / 5-6:30 Central / 6-7:30 Eastern

Meet Andrea Isaacs, Enneagram master teacher, creator of EnneaMotion and the EQ quiz. (Take the quiz if you haven’t.)  The intro describes the Isaacs Enneamotion approach and training. Get the recording if you can’t make the time. Email me if you want to join.

To join use this link to join us (zoom video): https://zoom.us/j/821297708
Not at your computer? call: 669-900-6833. Meeting ID: 821 297 708
Click here for other time zones

Reserve Your Spot!
Pecos Monastery Santa Fe, New Mexico Retreat.
April 20-23, (3 pm check-in, 5:30 dinner–Thurs, noon departure).
Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey, 25 miles east of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Send your deposit: $100 with Venmo, Paypal, or check to Cynthia Winton-Henry, 2273 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA 94612.

Total Cost: $495-$640
Room and Board $295.00 15 singles, 5 doubles, register early for singles.
Honoraria $200-345 sliding scale. 

Find respite, among sensitive, creative souls. Listen, rest, sing, move, exhale with InterPlay practices to honor land and our enduring source of resilience and health, body and soul. We’ll research Greening the Soul: Creative Practices for Ensoulment., take personal time, make art, dance on behalf of each other and our world, create ritual and tune-in to stories, nudges, weirdness, laughter, and arising wisdom.  Link for more info…

Note: Retreat precedes the 30th annual Santa Fe Spiritual Director’s International Conference, where Cynthia and Soyinka will present.

Our ancestors were not naive. They were incredibly attuned to the cosmos, radically dependant on nature, and wildly perceptive. They relied on the gestalt of the collective’s cumulative senses to discern patterns and discover Earth’s wisdom for them over time. Their masterful spiritual intelligence was practical and mystical leading them to honor their ground of being as holy and wise beyond measure. To disregard such body wisdom was a form of insanity. As we can see, today, their wisdom is still authoritative.

Do you know things, see things, and feel things in ways that make you appear more intense or reserved than others?  Do you have visionary bursts or feel shut down? Do you struggle with shame about “who you are?” We need your wisdom. We need you to feel whole and worthy!

People who are gifted and sensitive have a different center of gravity. When our culture disregards our center of gravity we experience overwhelm, disease, and chronic ailments.

One in five humans is designed to sense more. We are not broken. We are gifted. We require an Earthwise balancing point. Like a treasured plant in the rainforest with great medicine, an orchid’s prophetic beauty, an elephant’s ability to walk miles to honor the anniversary of the deceased, a sensitive body may grow ill, turn against self and others when families, religious communities, work, and schools miss this fact.

Those who don’t fit into standard models need unique forms of training and encouragement. In fact, all people benefit from understanding and practicing the body wisdom needed by sensitives. After all, that is what sensitives are for, to help communities strengthen spiritual intelligence, creative imagination, wisdom, earth care, and health.

All of my adult life I’ve been guided to learn and practice the wisdom of sensitivity. Even in seminary, I had to demythologize and decode sacred texts. I had to get as close as I could to direct forms of knowledge to find support. I had to travel to Africa, India, and to Pueblos in order to find my center. I was given incredible mentors who supported me as an artist, thinker, writer, and dancer. Because of dance, I inadvertently trained to be a body intellectual. Thanks to my work with Phil Porter and creating InterPlay, I stumbled onto a gold mine of human health-making processes, the heart of which is located in the birthright practices of dance, story, voice, and stillness.  These wisdom practices are embedded in ancestral village morays.

One day I told my spiritual director that I hoped to write a book about initiations for mystics. She laughed.  I didn’t realize it’s crazy and presumptuous. Nonetheless, I’ve seen a huge gap in training for people like me. I want to assist others who are entering or trying to navigate the ancient mystic stream in a way that can shift us from affliction to recognizing and credentialing ourselves as gifted.  When we do we see that all growth is rooted in Earth and her initiations. As initiates, we develop clarity of vision, efficiency of energy, and courage to love.  

It is humbling to say that each year, people have been gathering with me in retreat and online spiritual courses. The course is the Art of Ensoulment: 12 Initiations in the Playbook for Senstives, Mystics, and Artists. I’ve asked some women to share their experience of the course.

Licensed acupuncturist Jiling Lin, L.Ac. “Ensoulment helped me transition through graduation, board exams, and starting a medical practice. During sessions, I feel met and heard and am able to access and express usually inaccessible states. This helps me be more creative, motivated, and ultimately live a more joyous life, to show up fully for myself, and my patients and students. Snippets of ensoulment tools arise when needed in life and clinical practice, particularly in times of challenge, as gems of beauty that help anchor me into my greatest self, and the Great Mystery of the Universe. Deep gratitude!”

MaryEllen May, filmmaker, guide of Mythos Journeys. “Life often feels like too much for my sensitive body, but this year was exceptionally challenging.  I’ve often felt trampled, fragmented and compromised just by being in the world.  The effects of this in my energetic field and in my physical body left me depleted.  I’m incredibly grateful to have connected with Cynthia and the journey of ensoulment last January.  It gently carried me through the trials I faced.  Each month gifted me with a deeper way of dancing with life’s initiations.  It gave me ways to experience these life shifts as gateways.  I moved through each gateway with profound appreciation and awe, transformed by the experience rather than trampled by it.  Cynthia’s guidance about how to navigate life in a sensitive body and to playfully release and dance has been life-saving.  This is a course one can encounter, again and again, going deeper each time.  The richness of this course can’t be overstated, I feel very fortunate to have had the chance to take the journey of ensoulment. 

I am offering the introduction to the course in an hour and a half online live training called Gifted and Sensitive Bodies: Intro Workshop for Leaders, Mystics, and Artist. The session is easy going, instructional, and gives you some practice in the basic tools of grounding, clearing, and restoring yourself. Link here for cost and times.

If you are interested in stepping into the year-long course I welcome your inquiry.  It’s a commitment so I am happy to talk to you in person to see if this is the right fit. Link here for more information.

Thank you for reading. If you know someone who might be interested, please forward this message.  It can take years for someone to finally orient to their giftedness!

In the coming days, how will you, as a mystic and sensitive leader, dance in body, mind, heart and soul? How will you stay true to the ethic of love, play, and your sacred relationship with life without succumbing to fear, despair, or rage?

I invite you to spend the coming year, starting in January, on your Glorious Life. Learn the things that mystics and sensitives need now more than ever. 

I’ve spent the last decade designing these 12 Online Workshops to help you track and lead the way to ensoulment. Workshops always include time for movement, voice, storytelling, and stillness.

In addition to a monthly two-hour workshop. you’ll receive chapters from The New Self-Care Playbook for Mystics and Sensitives, occasional Videos, and a Forum for Online Community Support. You can consider adding monthly coaching to address your unique experience. If you have been working with me, I am going to give you a big discount to continue to study and practice.

You’ll meet leaders who know the challenge of mysticism and leadership to share with us as we go along!

Purpose of the Course

To be ensouled is to dance the wise beauty of the cosmos. This is not an individual task. All of Life initiates and teaches us our place in the dance. To be centered in your Soul is to know your challenges as initiations.

To find the blessings of the dance depends on how you meet your initiations. You do not have to be perfect. You only have to dance.

The dance of ensoulment is a journey of fully opening to the joy and suffering of your human body. As you do you attune to the physicality of your Soul. It’s here that you gain strength to endure, rejoice, and know peace. A big secret is that Nature, Dance, Song, and Sacred SIlence are the fastest ways to sense soul or what some call fundamental consciousness.

The ancient initiations into embodied wisdom can be tricky to find. That is why I created the Hidden Monastery, to make it a teeny bit easier to practice the artful dance of body AND soul.

This course attunes you to

• your primal desires of body and soul: to create, play and rest
• your readiness to heed the Three Directives: efficiency of energy, clarity of vision, and courage to love.
• 12 arts in the dance of ensoulment and how to practice them.
• your spontaneity as the signature of your free will, and how to return synergy and synchronicity to center stage.

To enroll for this year-long course send your deposit of $80.00 to
Cynthia Winton-Henry at  2273 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA 94612
or through PayPal . I also accept Venmo payments.

You’ll receive monthly module documents, videos, and coaching support starting in January.  Time TBA. I’ll arrange your monthly coaching appts with you when you enroll.

• $80/month includes a monthly online workshop
• $120/month include one-to-one monthly coaching

To repeat this program I’ll discount the course. And, I suggest one to one coaching as most of us need ongoing support with these 12 initiations.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

12 arts in the dance of ensoulment and how to practice them.

Your Core Lifeiations

Initiation One: If You Don’t Pray It Can Kill You: Invoke Your Soul Team. Community, Teachers, Ancestors, both seen and unseen. Honor them, and you will be on your way to supportive, divine initiations.

Initiation Two: Don’t Count on Your iPhone for Wisdom: Activate Your Real Flow-Power– the power to move, tell, voice, and just be. Upload the unique hidden and visible gifts that generate the flow that allows you to listen in and learn from mystery.

Initiation Three You Really Here Are Here On Purpose–You just need to differentiate your gifts, calls, and your needs to divine your purpose. Put on your seatbelt as you activate the poetry of the purpose shining through your soul credentials.

Initiation Four: Don’t Get Over Yourself, Be Human: Bow to Your Human Limits– Everything from this point forward embraces death and appetite as part of body wisdom. All you have to do is practice the art of bowing.

Initiate Your Super Powers

Initiation Five: Denounce Forced Integration and the Socialization of Bigger and Higher is Better–Learn to InterPlay Between Your Big and Little Bodyspirit, Honor Ordinary Life and Find Serenity.

Initiation Six: Break Out of Old Narrow Ways of Seeing that Inhibit Soul to Claim Your Soul Sight– Your brain sees in all directions. Practice seeing from both your higher and your ordinary self using your mystic gyroscope.

Initiation Seven: Recover from Being Overly Responsible for Things You Cannot Change: Know Your Body And Release Things Inside You That Are Not Yours– Honor mirror neurons. Practice shaking and dancing to neutralize, cleanse connections.

Initiation Eight: Refuse Getting Boxed In: Enjoy and Balance Your Power Centers and Enneagram Points– Check in with your Kundalini Driver, Belly Collaborator, Heart Organizer, and Crownstar Visionary. Use the EQ quiz to foster a more beautiful dance across all nine points of the Enneagram.

Initiation Nine: Liberate yourself from the Western Clock, Take Your Time & Take Your Space–Slow down and speed up time. Learn how to expand and contract physical space and enjoy life.

Your Sacred Interactivity

Initiation Ten: No Trespassing, even those who love me, Tend Your Sacred Cords and Body Agreements. Are you troubled by your relationships? We’re connected kinesthetically, in an energetic field alive with cords. Rules of engagement across systems, seen and unseen, are needed to respect your body wisdom.

Initiation Eleven: Navigate Worst Nightmares of Shunning, Rage, and Despair. Build Your Courage to Love. Attach to Guidance that loves your highest good. Learn What it is to Trust Your Power. Dance 5 Dynamics of Change: Instead of trying to let go, invite bodies to play with change.

Initiation 12 Play as if Life depended on it: Dance with Your Magical Spontaneous Hook-Up. Play the Field– Use your Heart Mic. Practice the art of ecstatic following Connect and drop connections. Stream the Field. Direct your kinesthetic imagination to track soul.

With you in the mystic and everyday dance both hidden and revealed,

Link here to enroll.

I am pleased to announce that Soyinka Rahim and I will offer a workshop at the 30th-anniversary conference of Spiritual Directors International next April 21-24 in Santa Fe,  with the additional possibility of a quiet Hidden Monastery Retreat beforehand.

The Spiritual Directors International Conference days are full of offerings from Sr. Joan Chittister, Dr. Barbara Holmes, Roshi Joan Halifax, Fr. Richard Rohr, Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe), Mirabai Starr, Lucy Abbott Tucker, Adam Bucko and workshops by people like Bayo Akomolafe and other diverse, embodied, contemporary wisdom teachers. Several of us are InterPlayers including Chris Copeland and Jane Vennard. Click here to see the workshop teachers. 

As you know a conference is not a retreat. That is why I want to offer additional, affordable, quiet days beforehand  (89 for room and board per night) at Pecos Benedictine Monastery’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey located in the Pecos River Canyon 25 miles east of Santa Fe. To hold the space I’d like to know if you would enjoy time with our Hidden Monastery of body-wise mystics, artists, and contemplative activists. There will be earth time, solo time and group space for artful reflection. (You may choose to attend this retreat and not the Spiritual Directors Conference.)  Please respond if you would choose to come Monday, April 20 or Tuesday, April 21 through Thursday, April 22, the first day of the SDI conference. Would you email me your thoughts?