INTENSIVE RETREAT: THE EQUUS EFFECT Meets Somatic Enneagram
NEW OFFERING! Save the Date!
Equine Experiencing with the Somatic Enneagram!
MAY 07–11 2026 | Sharon, CT USA
with Jane Strong of The Equus Effect and Marion Gilbert
TUITION: $2500.00
SEATS: ONLY 12 spaces available
REGISTER TODAY >>
THE EQUUS EFFECT and SOMATIC ENNEAGRAM invite you to a four-day retreat to explore the impact of working with horses and the Somatic Enneagram. This extraordinary offering is designed to reveal and resolve barriers to grounded presence and emotional regulation, and to expand the space between stimulus and response.
The dramatic polarization of perspectives here and in other parts of the world have overburdened many people’s nervous systems and left us with a sense that we have no choice but to react rather than respond to situations – many of which are way beyond our control.
The issues of agency, autonomy and about what we react to and what we don’t.
Sometimes the nervous system forgets what safety feels like.
We spend energy on stories and defense-based reactions to potential and symbolic threats. We project, regret, withdraw and second guess our choices because we find powerlessness intolerable.
We need to stay in the game as well as develop our ability to make the best use of the ‘time between points’. That’s the difference between the capacity to remain present in the face of the hard parts and the skills and practices we have in place that support our ability to bounce back.
Enter horses. They’re big. They’re honest. Their hearts are coherent. Horses require emotional honesty from us because they resonate, connect, and collaborate through trust.
They are always 100% present so they are great models of how we can be more so.
They also bring up exactly what we need to work on in a most engaging and insightful way.
The Somatic Enneagram uses type-based defense mechanisms as catalysts for building capacity to adapt and meet life’s challenges as a catalyst for change.
Join us to identify defenses and track as well as move through the barriers to our aliveness in real time—all with expert guidance and support from Marion Gilbert, Jane Strong, and Jane’s magnificent herd of ‘equine coaches’.
FOR QUESTIONS: EMAIL US
SOMATIC ENNEAGRAM™ Trainings with Marion Gilbert
Join Marion Gilbert Online via ZOOM for Modules 1, 2, and 3
Join Marion Gilbert In-person for Modules 4 and 5
Cost: $450.00 | Save $50 with Early-bird Registration
DOWNLOAD a BROCHURE
What is Our Capacity?
The “Capacity” for staying present to what is determines how integration can occur. Capacity is developed through witnessing the enactment of the third force of creation: The reconciling force.
The receptive force of creation (the first force), and reactive force of creation (the second force), are balanced and intrinsically connected by a third force of creation called the reconciling force.
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The Body is the Resource…
Everything created and manifested contains a blueprint of the primal source of all things. Deeply imbedded in all material substances is the origin and the energetic presence of the unmanifested, unconditioned reality.
How can it (the unconditioned reality) ever be separate and divided, when it is the very raw essence of all things?
Many spiritual disciplines have body-based practices to bring us back home from being attached to a conditioned reality of two opposites profoundly experienced as separate parts and opposing in nature to something much more subtle and profound, easily overlooked and that which takes us into our undivided nature. We say how can you be both? This makes logical sense to anyone who uses their ordinary mind, their mental processes. You are either good or bad, away or present, here or there, sick or healthy, old or young… From a space-time continuum, this is partially true, and beyond time and space reality this all collapses and becomes one into something different from the unifying as the two opposites. Our body has access to these direct experiences through our subtle centers, which are already fully coded with the experience of an unconditioned self. (more…)
RESILIENCE – Through Relaxing the Emotions in the Body
Listen to the LIVECAST WEBINAR RECORDING of Marion Gilbert and Transcend Egypt’s Islam Abokandil:
RECORDED ON SUNDAY, MAY 3, 2020
12:00 P.M. PDT
2 HOURS
Join Marion Gilbert for a Somatic Enneagram™ Approach teaching. In this webinar, Marion will share:
- What is resilience?
- What is the relationship between emotions and our bodies?
- Learn the Somatic Approach to relaxing the emotions in the body.
Marion has been practicing physical therapy since 1978 and is the owner of a well established physical therapy practice and movement studio in Grass Valley, CA. Marion certified with the Palmer-Daniels Narrative Enneagram Teacher Training in 2005, is a core faculty member with The Narrative Enneagram (TNE), and is a teacher and international presenter, focused on the Enneagram and Somatic Awareness.
Why Do We Resist the Hurt?
The obstacles to healing are the same as the obstacles to prayer or contemplation. The body gives us access to the truth of the present state of our physical reality. The body lets us know what is going on, and it does this through a process called, “awareness,” a process that connects us with the felt-sense in the body, which is like tuning in to a particular sensory language.
Often, this kind of awareness process is not congruent with what we tell ourselves and hide fro ourselves as our true state of well-being. Across our years growing up and over time, we learn how to adapt around ourselves and literally bypass all sorts of uncomfortable feelings that attempt to flow through the body, for the sake of survival and functioning. (more…)
When a Life Experience is Not Metabolized…
Any life experience too overwhelming for the capacity in our nervous system will be responded to by containing the charge and walling this charge off from affecting the nervous system as a whole, as a way of preventing it from short circuiting. This is a highly intelligent response, prioritizing survival needs in relationship to secondary needs. We need to survive first before we can reflect and inquire into our lives.
By the time we are adults, many undercover energy pockets have been created in our physical bodies. Even though these can go for a long time unnoticed. These will eventually come to the surface when the cost to maintain them becomes greater, as the pattern requires more and more energy to sustain themselves. Especially over time, when the pattern continues to get reinforced by subsequent experiences. An accumulative effect that adds to the contained charge resulting in each life experience being only partially processed. (more…)
Understanding the Connections
It is apparent to most of us, upon close observation, that everything is interconnected and dependent on one another. Recent neuroscience and epigenetics shows that there is a way that information is translated somehow when there is a need or attention is placed towards a desired function in the physical structure. We are calling this “gene expression.”
This is a secondary element, in addition to the genetic make-up, for a gene to come to full expression. The body is always looking for correcting and balancing, nurturing and eliminating, activating and passifying for an optimally functioning organism. These processes are subcortical in nature and are part of the brainstem, reptilian brain, and partly limbic organization in the hind and midbrain.The human being is born the most vulnerable and dependent of all creatures for the longest time and in need of proper care and nurturing by its primary caregiver, which is usually the mother. The initial connection between caregiver and child is called attachment bonding and is important for the experience of safety and well-being and brain development, all accomplished through what’s called “secure attachment.” (more…)