Join us for a FREE Nelson International Mural Festival workshop!
An hour of sensory, celebratory & sacred expression(s). Come reconnect with your MUSE or meet them for the 1st time. The workshop will help you tap into IN-spiration through playful embodied invitations. For the seasoned or novice writer see how sensory & embodied practices can create a space for resonate attuned creative expression. Creative expression is in all of us. Discover what wants to flow out! Invite your muse to speak through the language(s) of your body. Mercedes will infuse the workshop with creative somatic practices to encourage, inspire & invigorate your creative spark(s). You will be invited to engage with breath awareness, mindfulness, visualization, memory, dreams, sound, drawing, gentle movement all to foster a deeper attunement to the flow of images and ideas that are already within you and waiting for you to express!
Please bring notebook & pen!
DATE: Saturday, August 9th
TIME: 10:30am-11:30am
LOCATION: Kootenay Art Therapy Institute
ASL interpretation will be available
About the presenter: Mercedes Baines (MA, RCC, CCC, CAC) (she/her) is writer, performer & somatic psychotherapist, facilitator, instructor and consultant in private practice – Mind In Body. She identifies as a multi-racial, fat-bodied, queer-adjacent, cis-gendered woman who is a trauma survivor and lives with chronic illnesses. She has written and co written numerous plays and performance pieces during her two-decade tenure as a theatre artist before she trained & became a somatic psychotherapist. She performed many years as a spoken word artist, wrote, produced and performed two critically acclaimed solo shows (Love Bites & IErotique) & her poetry is published in several anthologies including Miscegenation Blues. Her writing & performance style interweaves the written word with music, sound, magical realism, rhythm & movement inspired by writers such as Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker & Isabel Allende.
Her work in the performing arts (SFU School for Contemporary Arts), her training in somatic trauma healing (Somatic Experiencing) and Adlerian Therapy (Adler University), influences her approach to psychotherapy & her understanding of the healing and the creative processes. She is passionate about exploring ways to inhabit both the healing & creative processes in ways that are collaborative, embodied & integrated.
Her themes of creative practice include: intersection of race & sexuality; identity & race politics; eroticism & sensuality; body image; fantasy; gender identity; intimate relationships & trauma. Her areas of psychotherapy practice include: body image; trauma; living with a life-altering (chronic)/life-threatening illness; disordered eating; depression; anxiety; grief and loss; identity; sexuality and issues related to race and culture.
*Limited availability. Please contact info@ndac.ca if you have a free ticket and are unable to make it, as we would love to give your space to someone on the waitlist!