(1) SoulWork Deepening 2023 & 2024

Join our community of SoulWork students and practitioners through our ongoing classes and retreats. Experience how to identify oneself as consciousness, connect to High Self/guides and befriend inner selves. The next series of classes will focus on Pleasure & Presence. The body is our doorway to witness and meet the amazement and delight of life. Encounter the rapture of sensation and energy while understanding the parts of us that block this elation. Embrace your aliveness! Two individual SoulWork sessions are included in each series. Weekly Monday Embodied SoulWork meditations can be attended to deepen into the practice. For those interested in becoming SoulWork practitioners this series of classes is the core training. For a list of those who have completed the Group SoulWork Training.

Your guides on this journey: Yahya Suzanna Nadler MEd, movement therapist, and Raphael Rod Birney MD, depth psychotherapist and meditation teacher.

Fridays via Zoom 9:15am-11am PST

Fall: Pleasure & Presence Sept 8 & 22, Oct 6, 20, and Nov 17th. Can’t be present for all of them, no worries; everything is recorded.

2024 Winter: Pleasure Continued (TBA)

Full immersion: 5- 1.75 hour group classes, 2 individual sessions per series. All classes are recorded for later listening. Fees – Checks (made out to Suzanna Nadler) & international price (can use Wise) is $350 per series. Otherwise, if you pay by credit card, Venmo, PayPal, or Retreat Guru the cost is $365. (Price includes Wheel of Awareness & Conscious Self $100 value Fridays 9:15 – 10:30 Sept 15 & 29 October 13 & 27.)

Another Option: All 5 classes alone: $200.

Individual SoulWork sessions can be added for $130. each.

To Register: If you are new to this group email us your intention, and any experience you have had with SoulWork. Payment is due on or before August 31st.

“For each individual to come towards correct relationship to the whole, there must be “good enough” inner witnesses. Thich Nhat Hanh says the next Buddha will be the sangha – the community of practitioners. We must become responsible for our own light, our own shadow, no longer project these out onto others. We don’t need more gods. We need elders, guides, teachers, therapists, witnesses, rabbis, and priests, to help us find the gods within ourselves as we journey towards conscious participation in the collective body.” Janet Adler

(2) Embody & Dream the Tarot

Explore the tarot through movement, breath/chant, guided meditation and parts work. The major arcana teach us about the archetypal aspects of ourselves and the minor arcana present everyday experiences as seen through the lens of the elements: earth (coins); water, (cups); fire, (staffs); air, (swords). We begin each class with a picture of the card we are exploring with background information to understand the symbols. Our SoulWork practice begins with a movement exploration to experience the symbolic energy of the card in our bodies, preparing us to go into a guided meditation integrating the parts/selves the card represents within our larger cosmic awareness. We end with time to share as a community. Offered by Yahya Suzanna Nadler & Raphael Rod Birney with occasional other guest teachers. On Zoom by donation: Mondays 9:00am PST. If you can’t come to a class, no worries; they are recorded and put up on Youtube: Body Poet Yahya.

Register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You only have to register once.

Donations are accepted and will go towards scholarship funds for the 2024 SoulWork Retreat, thru PayPal (suzyahya@selfsoul.org) or Venmo (Suzanna-Nadler-1)

(3) Illuminating All the Selves:

SoulWork Retreat May 19-24th All are welcome as we enter the intention to bring the light of the cosmos to all our inner selves, from the most refined to the most course, and then to the world. Join our SoulWork sangha for a time of guided SoulWork meditations, inquiry, Dances of Universal Peace, chanting, movement and sharing.

Alton L Collins retreat Center, Portland Oregon. May 19th to 24th 2024, Sunday 4pm through Friday 2pm.

Your guides: Murshid Mariam Baker SoulWork lineage holder. Yahya Nadler Counselor, movement therapist & SoulWork Pracitioner. Raphael Birney Psychotherapist & SoulWork Practioner.

Cost: Early bird discount Teaching fee minimum $250, after February 19th $325. Room & Board: Triple $595, Double $695, Single $895. For more information Flyer and to register contact Raphael Birney.

SW Overview by Raphael Rod Birney MD & Yahya Suzanna Nadler MEd, LPC

“SoulWork is a marriage of psychology and spirituality that opens pathways to the integration of being. It brings together the three primary levels of consciousness – divine, human , and instinctive — into a cooperative and mutually supportive process whereby our inner life may be realized, manifested and shared.” MJ

SoulWork has both ancient and modern roots and was brought into this current incarnation in the 1980s by Moineddin Jablonski, who was the spiritual leader of a Universalist Sufi lineage. As long as humanity has existed there have been various ways to work with the inner world to bring us into greater balance, open to supra conscious states, to bring more compassion to ourselves and the world. Imaginal practices have existed in almost all spiritual traditions. In modern times Carl Jung developed his entire psychology through his inner imaginative experiences that he documented in the Red book. He called this method of inner work active imagination while the ancient Sufis called this process creative imagination. The medieval mystics differentiated between the vera imaginalis or true imagination and the fanciful daydreams of the so-called monkey mind.

Intention. To prepare for the SoulWork session we focus on the intention, whether talking to a person before an individual session or tuning into the group field of what’s needed to support the unfoldment of all the members. Holding this intention is our activity before beginning a session.

Induction. The first part of a SoulWork session begins with an induction that creates a balanced state in the nervous system through awareness and breath. The inhalation process charges collapsed and frozen inner states and reinvigorates the body. Focusing on the exhalation allows a letting go process wherein hyper aroused states are calmed from their instinctual fight or flight patterns and the body relaxes. When the nervous system is in an energized, relaxed and open state we can engage in a creative relationship with our inner selves and this carries over into our relationships in our outer lives.

Alchemical Vessel. Next an inner gathering or meeting place is formed through focusing on the heart center. This alchemical vessel is an inner holding environment, a place where the various parts, complexes or selves, in the language of SoulWork, can meet. Other names for this gathering place are: the table of holy wisdom, the garden of the heart.

When we work with guided imagery practices it is important to realize that while some people “see” things internally others access through different senses. A self can be experienced through sensations in the body, emotions, reactions, heard as an inner voice, or just known. Eventually the crucial capacity to kinesthetically feel these parts/selves within the body is realized.

Befriending Your Inner Selves. In SoulWork there is a basic template of inner selves with infinite variations and possibilities. Moineddin’s initial template consisted of 1. high self, a supra conscious state, 2. conscious self, awareness, and 3. the basic selves – masculine, feminine and child. We experience different parts of ourselves every night in our dreams. Paul Federn, a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, said “I do group therapy with an individual”.

Conscious self is of the utmost importance and is strengthened by the induction’s balanced breath and the formation of the garden of the heart. In SoulWork we bring attention to the curious, compassionate, loving witness that is conscious self. From this place there is no fusion or identification with the child, parents, or ancestors. Conscious self is the conductor of the inner orchestra wherein each part when tuned and in relationship creates the beautiful symphony of an integrated human being.

High Self. After their intention, induction and creating the inner temple in the heart, there is a time of communion, guidance and dialogue with high self. Some people experience this universal energy as an angelic presence, a wise being, or as an animal ally. Conscious self in communion with high self creates an atmosphere wherein each part can be met with love and respect, one of the central principles in SoulWork. In modern psychotherapy research this quality of self acceptance or self compassion has been found to be crucial to the healing process. Overtime we differentiate, befriend and heal each self.

Various Selves. The soul child opens us to embodied innocence, wonder, creativity and joy. The wounded child and shadow parts hold the unwanted, repressed and dissociated feelings and memories. The protectors are adult children who push away the wounded and shadow selves to manage overwhelming feelings. A well known protector is the mental judge or super ego which becomes a place of wise discernment over time.

To move into the 21st-century and honor how each of us has an inner male and female aspect we refer to these as solar and lunar selves. The solar self represents left hemispheric processing, the qualities of doing and analysis. The lunar self holds the capacity for being and synthesis, representing more right hemispheric processing.

Bringing session to closure. At the close of a SoulWork session we bring all the selves that have been gathered into the breath of unity, acknowledging our relatedness and resting in the uniqueness of each. Perhaps bowing to our inner selves.

Integration – Self Reflection & Action. We honor our relationship to this SoulWork by bringing it into form, not letting the dream slip away. This can be done though moving, journaling, drawing, creating art, or silent self reflection. Then we see what actions we can take to bring what we have learned into the outer world of our every day lives.