Esalen Institute - Big Sur, CA
Sunday to Friday, June 20 - 25, 2010

THE BODY SHOP

Explorations in Intimacy for Couples

Presenters: Stella Resnick & Alan Kishbaugh

While sensitive discussion can bring closeness, words are not the core of intimacy. As modern neuroscience has shown—and body-based psychotherapists have known for decades—the core of the intimate self is the body.

Sometimes the words we say to ourselves or to our partner confuse rather than illuminate an issue because they come from habitual ways of thinking and expressing ourselves. Love in all its incarnations—as attachment, romance, friendship, eroticism, sexual union, and spiritual attunement—are all body-based experiences. Being a part of a loving couple is the ultimate evolutionary opportunity to heal old body-mind wounds and to share nurturing pleasures.

We'll begin with a brief look at what modern neuroscience tells us about how our pre-verbal past is programmed into our brain and nervous system. We'll see how the past is present in how we form emotional attachments, handle stress, convey love, and relate to sexual pleasure. Most importantly, we’ll practice how to use conscious breathing and felt-sense explorations to break from the past and to enrich our emotional and sexual lives. Each couple or individual who wishes to do so will have an opportunity to do Gestalt work to look deeper into areas of concern.

Utilizing partnered and solo exercises, imagery, empathic touch, music, movement, and Gestalt processing we’ll explore:

• Empathy and mutual attunement
• Balancing intimacy and privacy
• Attachment styles and differences in emotional needs
• Differences in sexual desire
• Emotional and sexual fulfillment

Stella Resnick, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist in Beverly Hills specializing in relationship and sexual enhancement. She is the author of The Pleasure Zone, past-president of the Western Region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Clinical Supervisor.

Alan Kishbaugh is a writer with many years of experience in book publishing and in urban planning, parkland, and open space preservation. He and Stella have been married for twenty-four years and have led couple’s seminars together for even longer.

For more info or to register by phone, call: (831) 667-3005
Visit: www.esalen.org