Workshops


Silhouette of woman watching sunset on the beach

Jan works with your organizations and groups to custom design a retreat / workshop that meets your unique needs. Contact her for more information.

In my workshops, we connect the holy trinity of body, mind and soul. Our work is sacred, personal and universal. We move through the dualities until we emerge into the clear space of oneness, understanding how the pieces of our lives are all critical to the whole we are creating.

“Our stories contain the answers to each others’ questions. What I cannot find in searching through the riches and rubble of my own life may become apparent to me in the witnessing of yours. It’s through our stories that we begin to name ourselves, to say who we are under all the social trappings, and to emerge from those trappings like a butterfly from a chrysalis. We are midwives, in a way, to each other’s rebirth.”

— Jan Phillips, from A Waist is a Terrible Thing to Mind


Workshops – Click on any title for more information

Our stories define us. They affect our well-being, our relationships, our present and our future. They are vehicles of energy, vessels of possibility. They contain infinite potential and we can harness light and great power from the experiences of our lives.

Our bodies are waiting to be tapped for their wisdom, gained from every ordeal we have suffered or encountered. Every catastrophe has stripped us of something and given us something. The nakedness, we know. The gifts are yet to be unearthed.In this circle, we will revisit our threshold experiences, our decisive moments and pivotal events and re-view them through a lens of emotional clarity and compassion. We will experience the deep listening of others as we share our stories, hear the narrative arc, define the crisis and revisit the resolution. We will see our role in co-creating the event and the narrative, and we will reconsider the telling from a place of power.

Using music, video, poetry and writing, we will evolve ourselves beyond dualistic thinking and enter into a mindset of oneness and gratitude. We will work deeply with our own bodies and their intimacy with the natural world, tapping into the reservoirs of wisdom that are available to us. We will experience the energetic changes that accompany a change of story, and discover the healing capacity embedded in every story.

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Healing the world begins with healing ourselves. As Ramana Maharshi reminds us: “The greatest service we can render the world is our own self-realization.” This means that we become the greatest light in the world when we master our own ordeals and connect our creative potential with our spiritual power.

Becoming a prophetic person starts with a spiritual practice. It moves from silence to thought to word and action. When our words and actions are rooted in our spiritual commitments, we become a light in the world and a force for good.This workshop is an entry point into our own deep wisdom.Using the tools of music, poetry, storytelling and imagery, we explore the landscape of our own experience, mining it for insight and ideas about the work ahead.

  • tap into the wisdom you carry in your body as a result of your life events
  • understand the mystical connection between personal tragedy and creative transformation
  • experience the freedom and joy of finding your voice and sharing your gifts
  • become and agent of change as you re-shape your stories and share your light

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This is a course about transforming our lives, our communities, and our world one thought, one action, one day at a time. It is based on the premise that we are authors of our own experience and co-creators of the world we live in. As we inquire into the source of our beliefs, we begin the shift from illusion to illumination, from cultural conditioning to spiritual freedom. As we access and express the truth of our experience, we enter into a new milieu of awareness—of our power, our oneness with others, and our own sacred dimensions. Fortified by the magnitude of our own souls and the support of a loving community, we open up to the possibility of authentic self-awareness and prophetic revelation.

This workshop incorporates the arts (music, poetry, photographs, video, movement) to ensure that the work is fully embodied and beyond the cerebral. The instructional approach incorporates lecture, prayer/meditation, group exercises, and multimedia presentations.Participants in this program will become skilled in observing how they think as well as what they think. They will learn to imagine beyond dualities and to unite opposites into a higher synthesis of thinking. This course is a multi-sensory, multi-media experience that will:

  • dissolve obstacles to creative expression
  • connect the dots between spirituality, creativity and inspired activism
  • provide tools for re-pairing the opposites, transcending duality, and achieving unity consciousness

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This workshop addresses creativity as a sacred gesture—one that involves collaboration with the Divine as a primary element of self-expression. Imagine that Spirit is seeking to create through us, to regenerate Divine Being into this culture, Spirit/Word waiting to be made flesh through our creative expressions. Imagine yourself the vessel of transmission, one chosen to birth the sacred in word, song, clay, image.

In this workshop, we will connect with our inner spirit and experience the sacredness of our own creativity.

  • Discover your inner voice and what it has to say
  • Understand the importance of your creativity and its contribution to the world
  • Find new ways to honor your work and give it the time it deserves
  • Experience the joy of surrendering your fears and allowing Spirit to be released through you

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A chance to create and re-create ourselves using the beautiful landscape around us for our inspiration. Water, woods, mountains and rocks will guide us to the metaphors that give power to our poetry, our imagery, our stories and our souls. We will follow our heart’s creative desire, give voice to our intuitions, and pull up buckets from our wells of wisdom. We will explore every avenue for creative expression, seeing them as vehicles for our prophetic voices.

We will incorporate meditation, movement, and mindfulness to enter the depths of our mystic selves and tune into the messages waiting to be heard. This is an opportunity to unplug from stress, connect with Source, build community with your sisters, and surface the voice of your own soul.

Together we will experience and celebrate the diversity of our experience, the commonness of our convictions, the sacredness of our intentions, and the joy of our oneness. We will photograph, write, sing, share and be amazed together at the beauty of the Earth and the beauty of our selves.

How we feel about ourselves affects our emotional, spiritual, and physical health. If we dwell on what’s wrong instead of what’s right, we experience dis-ease. We set up conditions for a compromised immunity that can contribute to emotional and physical disease. This workshop explores our beliefs about the body—where they came from, how they affect us, and how we can free ourselves from their constraints.

Once we re-think our belief systems and understand how our attitudes have been shaped, we can let go of concepts that do not serve us and establish positive and supportive value systems. Being in dialogue with each other strengthens our ability to heal ourselves, understand our common experiences, and create a nurturing community. Through writing, video, storytelling, and interactive exercises, participants journey inward, discover their own wellspring of wisdom and power, and learn ways to live from this source.

  • Explore your belief systems about the body
  • Engage in story-telling and creative exercises that liberate your thinking and expand your consciousness
  • Reawaken your senses and open up to the power of creative alchemy
  • Experience your body as a medium through which the Divine expresses Itself
  • Choose and commit to beliefs that support your health and well-being

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This is an intensive hands-on weekend program where you will learn how to transform your knowledge and skills into a teachable format so that you can sustain yourself financially by sharing what you know.
  • intensive coaching in harvesting your experience and speaking your wisdom
  • training in efficiently articulating what you’re an expert in, what exactly you are offering, to whom you’re speaking and why it matters
  • a professional head shot photograph to use in your PR materials
  • info on print/web marketing and using free publicity tools to expand your platform
  • a clearer understanding of your audience and how to reach them
  • a free download of Circling, a facilitator’s manual for a 10 week creativity group
  • free copy of The Art of Original Thinking, winner of 3 national book awards
We are in the throes of an evolutionary advance. We are exposed to more information in a day than our ancestors were exposed to in a lifetime. Not only are we feeling the stresses and growing pains individually; in some way, we can sense the changes coursing through the global mind. Concerns about terrorism, health care, climate change are affecting everyone. Change is the only constant, and our job is to learn how to navigate the white waters.

In this program—through the use of music, video, poetry and story, we reconnect our brain and heart, our bodies and spirits, and get back to our center. From there, we tune into our authentic voice and begin to express our original wisdom. With the help of some fun, creative exercises, we will arrive at the place where “our deep joy meets the world’s deep hunger.”

  • expand the boundaries of your spiritual intelligence
  • experience the flow of your creative energy and the joy of its release
  • discover a new vitality that comes with reconnecting our fragmented parts

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Activating Your Enlightenment Codes with Jan Phillips

The mystic Meister Eckhart said, “The process of enlightenment is a process of subtraction, not addition.” We do not have to learn more to become enlightened. We have to let go of our ideas about enlightenment. We have to lose our illusions. We have to abandon our ideas that there is some place to get to, another state to arrive at, more information to acquire.

The only thing that keeps any of us from enlightenment is our own thoughts. Believing is seeing. In this workshop, we delve deeply into our own mental landscape and explore it like pioneers. We examine what we think, why we think it, and discern if we want to keep thinking it. We liberate ourselves from cultural and religious conditioning. We practice original thinking. We learn how to speak from our core.

In this work, we use poetry, video, music and story to keep our brains and hearts connected. We learn practices that keep us connected to the Infinite. We begin a journey to mastery that will change the course of our lives if we are true to our commitments.

  • discover the difference between original thinking and conditioned thinking
  • learn the skill of transcending duality
  • experience the power of being connected to your own wisdom

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