REVEALING THE JEWELS
with Adi Weinberg & Cat Gerrard
The Revealing the Jewels online courses are a series of guided explorations of our connection to our body: through movement, breath, voice, story and community. Each course works with a different story - a myth or fairy tale - as a guide. Through weekly sessions - of movement research, other practical invitations and discussion - we allow the story's themes to come into contact with the body. Guides on the course are storyteller/teacher Cat Gerrard and Gaga teacher/dancer/ choreographer Adi Weinberg. More about them here.
The courses take place fully online. They are for anyone who would like to take more time to move, breathe and deepen the connection to themselves and to story - whether you go to an occasional movement class (Gaga, Tai Chi, Yoga etc) or whether you work with the body (performers, musicians, healing artists etc) - or anyone anywhere in between! You’ll be encouraged to follow your very own journey, in your own space and at your own pace – but also to share your experiences and your process with your fellow participants through discussions. Please come ready to move and to dive in!
Each course has a cyclical format, with three distinct cycles per course:
Cycle 1 (four weeks long) consists of a weekly online practical session (usually 3 hours on a Saturday morning CET).
Cycles 2 and 3 (four or five weeks long per cycle) consist of online discussion sessions, allowing us to revisit the themes from Cycle 1 in deepening circles, having time to sit with them again individually, to delve further into them separately and, through discussion, in community.
You are very welcome to join a course just for the practical component of Cycle 1.
Each week there will be accompanying material for you to dive into in your own way and guide your journey - texts, images, playlists, tasks. This material will also evolve with each cycle, giving you new routes of enquiry, as well as allowing you to pursue previous paths.
More on the cycles here. | More on RTJ here.
There is no order to the courses: you can start with either Don't Go Back to Sleep: Trailing the story of Taliesin or Homecoming: Calling towards The Lindwurm
DON'T GO BACK TO SLEEP
Trailing the Story of Taliesin
Cycle 1: 5 weeks of 3 hours/week
Cycles 2 and 3: 4 weeks each of 1.5 hours/week
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
- Rumi
An invitation to wake up into the fullness of our senses. We will explore our connection to: our senses and sensuality; our wildness and ability to shape-shift into whatever shape we need; our ways to keep turning up for what we really want; and how we let all of these discoveries sink into the body and be available for us in our day-to-day lives.
All along we will be guided by the story of Taliesin, a myth which, amongst its many shapes, offers some ways we might explore staying awake to our fullness in the world, to our sensual, changeable human animal selves.
NEXT DATES
The next course will be in Spring 2022. Dates coming soon!
The Details: Don't Go Back to Sleep
Cycle 1 (5 weeks) will consist of online practical sessions of 3 hours per week on a Saturday.
Cycles 2 and 3 (4 weeks each) will consist of online discussion sessions of 1.5 hours per week, on a Saturday.
We will work with a maximum of 15 participants and a minimum of 8.
TECHNICAL THINGS
You should have a working internet connection, with a working camera and microphone, as well as a space to yourself that you can move in (minimum 2m2 – enough to swing your arms around).
COST
We offer you 3 different options, to cover both your financial possibility and our costs.
Cycle 1 only (15 hours online practical sessions)
For this pick Option 1, 2 or 3. Prices in Euro and Złoty.
Option 1 - 165€ / 750PLN - this works out at 11€/ 50PLN per hour
Option 2 - 150€ / 675PLN - this works out at 10€/ 45PLN per hour
Option 3 - 135€ / 600PLN - this works out at 9€ / 40PLN per hour
Cycles 1, 2 & 3 (15 hours online practical sessions, followed by 12 hours online discussion sessions)
For this pick your option from above (1, 2 or 3).
Then add another option from below (4, 5 or 6).
If you don’t know yet, you can decide near the end of Cycle 1 if you'd like to continue into Cycles 2 and 3.
Option 4 - 130€ / 595PLN - this works out at 11€/ 50PLN per hour
Option 5 - 120€ / 550PLN - this works out at 10€/ 45PLN per hour
Option 6 - 110€ / 505PLN - this works out at 9€ / 40PLN per hour
This fee covers our teaching fee, planning and admin time. We split our fee so, no matter that we're both present for the whole time, we just get paid for the teaching that we do. We hope this keeps it accessible for you.
You can pay in instalments, if that's easier for you. Just contact us at the email address below to organise a plan catgerrard@gmail.com
To Apply: Don't Go Back to Sleep
More application details when we release the dates. If you are interested in the course and would like to be contacted when the dates are released, please send us a message here or at the email address below.
For any questions or queries, please send an email to catgerrard@gmail.com
HOMECOMING
Calling towards The Lindwurm
Cycle 1: 4 weeks of 3 hours/week
Cycles 2 and 3: 5 weeks each of 1.5 hours/week
WHAT WAS EXILED
The moment before you were born, the stories say, your mother gave birth to another, to a small, black serpent, to your wild twin. But he or she was not considered appropriate and was not welcome so they were cast out into the forest, exiled from the life, light and shelter of your home.
But what is exiled doesn't stay benign or docile or small. Over time it grows bigger and fiercer and further from you. That small, black serpent became a dragon.
Image by Gao Xingjian
WHAT WAS CALLED HOME
We live in a time when so much - in society and inside ourselves - has been sent into exile, sent out into the forest and told never to return.
What if it's time to welcome the dragons back from the shadows?
What if it's time to make a space inside us, at the very centre of us, for what we cast away?
What if there's been an empty space there all this time?
The Lindwurm is a story vitally relevant for being (fully) human in this moment. With it, we might call ourselves home. Many different characters from the story are essential to this task of calling us home, so we will spend our time with five of them, with five archetypes. Some may be familiar to us and some may also need some welcoming. Each has something beautiful and vital to remind us of, to help us remember:
The Maiden
The Wise Woman of the Woods
The Sovereign / The Queen
The Dragon
The Storyteller
NEXT DATES
The next course starts on 13th November 2021. Application deadline Sunday 31st October 23:59
Cycle 1 (4 weeks)
10:00-13:00 CET | Saturday 13th, 20th, 27th November, 4th December 2021
Weekly online practical sessions, guided by Adi and Cat.
On Saturday 11th December 2021 there will be an additional 1.5 hour conversation 10:00-11:30 CET, closing Cycle 1. We will also speak more about what Cycles 2 and 3 will offer.
There will be a short break between Cycles 1 and 2. In this 11th December meeting, we will also offer some material for those continuing to work with over this break, before Cycle 2 begins in 2022.
Cycles 2 and 3 (5 weeks each)
Cycle 2 - 5 weeks - 10:00-11:30 CET | Saturday 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th January, 5th February 2022
Cycle 3 - 5 weeks - 10:00-11:30 CET | Saturday 12th, 19th, 26th February, 5th, 12th March 2022
Weekly online discussion sessions.
We will work with a maximum of 15 participants and a minimum of 8.
TECHNICAL THINGS
You should have a working internet connection, with a working camera and microphone, as well as a space to yourself that you can move in (minimum 2m2 – enough to swing your arms around).
COST
We offer you 3 different options, to cover both your financial possibility and our costs.
Cycle 1 only (12 hours online practical sessions)
For this pick Option 1, 2 or 3. Prices in Euro, Złoty and Pounds Sterling.
Option 1 - 130€ / 600PLN / £115 - this works out at ~ 11€/ 50PLN /£9.50 per hour
Option 2 - 120€ / 540PLN / £100 - this works out at ~ 10€/ 45PLN / £8.50 per hour
Option 3 - 105€ / 480PLN / £90 - this works out at ~ 9€ / 40PLN / £7.50 per hour
Cycles 1, 2 & 3 (12 hours online practical sessions, followed by 15 hours online discussion sessions)
For this pick your option from above (1, 2 or 3).
Then add another option from below (4, 5 or 6).
If you don’t know yet, you can decide near the end of Cycle 1 if you'd like to continue into Cycles 2 and 3.
Option 4 - 165€ / 750PLN / £140 - this works out at ~ 11€/ 50PLN / £9.50 per hour
Option 5 - 150€ / 670PLN / £125 - this works out at ~ 10€/ 45PLN / £8.50 per hour
Option 6 - 130€ / 600PLN / £115 - this works out at ~ 9€ / 40PLN / £7.50 per hour
This fee covers our teaching fee, planning and admin time. We split our fee so, no matter that we're both present for the whole time, we just get paid for the teaching that we do. We hope this keeps it accessible for you.
You can pay in instalments, if that's easier for you. Just contact us at the email address to organise a plan catgerrard@gmail.com
The Details: Homecoming
To Apply: Homecoming
Please apply using the Google Form here or at the button below by SUNDAY 31st OCTOBER 2021, 23:59.
We'll confirm that the course will go ahead or not by Wednesday 3rd NOVEMBER 2021.
After application and confirmation, we will send details about payment methods. Payment is required to reserve your place. Payments must be made by Monday 8th November 2021 18:00.
In the case that you need to cancel your spot, please email us straight away. If you cancel before 8th November we can give you a 50% refund. After 8th November payments cannot be refunded.
For any questions or queries, please send an email to catgerrard@gmail.com
MORE ABOUT REVEALING THE JEWELS
The King and the Jewels
There was a king who sat, every day, in his throne-room and listened, more or less, to the pleas of those who lived in his kingdom. Every day the same beggar would turn up. He would wait in the long line until he stood in front of the king and then he would hand him a ripe, juicy piece of fruit before leaving without saying a word. Every day the king took the fruit, passed it to his attendant, who threw it, unceremoniously, out of the window. The fruit landed in an empty room behind the throne-room, day after day after day, year after year after year...
Ten years passed and one day, as the king was about to pass the daily fruit to his attendant, a monkey that lived with the women in another part of the palace ran into the throne-room. It saw the fruit, leapt straight onto the king’s lap, grabbed the fruit from the royal hand and started to eat it right there and then. As it did so, out from the fruit rolled a huge jewel, which landed at the king’s feet, gleaming. The king – with some urgency – turned to his attendant to ask where he’d put all the other fruit! The attendant dashed to the empty room, followed by the king, who saw not an empty room but a room full of furry, stinking, smashed fruit and, in amongst the fruit, thousands upon thousands of gleaming jewels.
The Fruit We Threw Away
The king accepting the fruit is fast asleep, dead to the world and to the task at hand: to pay attention to the person right in front of him. The health of the land and everyone in it is at risk if he stays asleep.
We are in a moment where there’s much that we’re sleeping through. What if we could wake up to what is really in front of us, at each moment? What if we could take our cue from the monkey and grab it with both hands? What if we could wake up into our full senses and sensations and come home to ourselves, to live fully, finally, in our bodies?
Cycles
I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Robert Bly
The world we live in unfolds in cycles: of day and night, the four seasons or the rainy and dry seasons, the menstrual cycle, the hydrological cycle. We think these cycles have much to tell us - about a way of life where we can be in tune with these seasonalities, these shifts both outside us and inside us. Where we do not have to get everything all at once, where we do not have to keep progressing, where we do not have to be consistently the same. Where we can realise that we do not have to.
RTJ courses are created in a cyclical way, we introduce themes to the body in Cycle 1, so you can meet the material as much as you like and then let it go, let it sink into the body and do its work in the dark, knowing that you will meet the same themes again in later Cycles 2 and 3 and, in such a way, meet them and yourself differently.
Each week of a course there is accompanying material for you to dive into in your own way and guide your journey - texts, images, playlists, tasks. The material will also evolve with each cycle, giving you new routes of enquiry, as well as allowing you to pursue previous paths. You can engage with these materials as much or as little as you like, according to your own needs, pace and desire.