Take a deep dive and attend one of our transformative pre-conference workshops! You do not need to be registered for the main conference in order to attend a pre-conference workshops.
IONS 18th International Conference
Pre-Conference Workshops
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Ways to Go Beyond, and Why they Work
with Rupert Sheldrake
9:00 a.m.– 4:00 p.m.
People with regular spiritual practices tend to live healthier and longer lives. Science sheds a new light on many spiritual practices, including pilgrimages, meditation, chanting, prayer and rites of passage. We will reflect on our connections with our ancestors and with collective memories on which we all draw, and Rupert Sheldrake will show how his hypothesis of morphic resonance enables us to understand rituals and mantras in a new way, and provides a new interpretation of memory and the survival of bodily death. Our minds are much more extensive than our brains, and can stretch out to affect people on the other side of the world, and even reach the stars.
Fee: $150
Healing Family & Ancestors – Ceremonial Family Constellations
with Jill Purce
9:00 a.m.– 4:00 p.m.
Heal family trauma, release unhelpful patterns, and dissolve trans-generational tendencies in this powerful family constellation workshop. Family or ancestral traumas like accidents, suicides, wars, addictions, mental illness, emigrations, incarcerations, or adoptions can cause painful patterns of exclusion trapped in the unconscious field of the family, acting as magnets for later generations to unconsciously repeat. These inherited patterns can create powerful unconscious compulsions, resulting in finding ourselves doing things that don’t make sense in the context of our current lives. By honoring and restoring what has been excluded, we re-establish the integrity of the field, dissolving trans-generational tendencies and liberating the living. This work can be intense, oracular and profoundly healing. Purce’s unique method combines chant, ceremony and family constellations to heal the resonant fields of family and ancestors, unlocking persistent patterns so that order and joy are restored.
Fee: $150
“I Don’t End Here” – Biofield Science and Healing
with Consciousness and Healing Initiative
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
What happens if we realize that we exist beyond our physical bodies, and that our consciousness and energy fields can connect to foster healing? What are the implications for our concepts of consciousness and mind, self and ‘other’, health and healing when the conventional view of life as chemistry expands to life as biofields? Do information-carrying biofields, generated by all living things, extend beyond our bodies to suggest “I don’t end here”, providing evidence for the connections between and potential for healing of all life forms? Join the Consciousness and Healing Initiative (CHI) for an all-day experience of learning, inspiration and practice as we interact with luminaries in biofield science and healing at this pre-conference workshop with our partner the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Explore and expand your healing knowledge and capacities, and help co-create the healing revolution.
Fee: $150
The Shamanic Journey: Pathway to Another Reality
with Susan Mokelke, Foundation for Shamanic Studies
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
The shamanic journey is one of the most remarkable visionary methods used by humankind to explore the hidden universe otherwise known mainly through myth and dream. Facilitated by Susan Mokelke, participants will be initiated into shamanic journeying using drumming to alter consciousness and awaken one’s soul and dormant spiritual power. Enter into another reality and make contact with compassionate helping spirits, such as power animals, to gain knowledge and help for your life. This training is based in core shamanism—the universal, near universal, and common features of shamanism worldwide—originated, researched, and developed by Michael Harner (1929-2018), author of the groundbreaking classic The Way of the Shaman.
Fee: $150
Holotropic Breathwork
with Leo Raderman
9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Holotropic Breathwork™ is a powerful approach to self-exploration and healing that integrates insights from modern consciousness research, anthropology, various depth psychologies, transpersonal psychology, Eastern spiritual practices, and mystical traditions of the world. The name Holotropic means literally “moving toward wholeness” (from the Greek “holos”=whole and “trepein”=moving in the direction of something).
The process itself uses very simple means: it combines accelerated breathing with evocative music in a special set and setting. With the eyes closed and lying on a mat, each person uses their own breath and the music in the room to enter a non-ordinary state of consciousness. This state activates the natural inner healing process of the individual’s psyche, bringing him or her a particular set of internal experiences. With the inner healing intelligence guiding the process, the quality and content brought forth is unique to each person and for that particular time and place. While recurring themes are common, no two sessions are ever alike.
Fee: $150
Spirituality, Astrophysics, and Space Exploration
7:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
As IONS founder Edgar Mitchell said, “We are stardust.” As we learn more about outer space, tremendous discoveries are being made each day about the origins of our existence, the building blocks of reality as we know it, and the potential for life on other planets. How does this comport with religious and spiritual wisdom throughout the ages about the nature of reality, divinity and order in the universe, and the role of human consciousness in the cosmos? Both inspire awe, and both point to our essential Interconnectedness, and the need for both technology and human ethics to guide us toward sustainability. This enlivening evening dialogue builds bridges between these two arenas of exploration, and how they are not mutually exclusive but can be complementary to and inform one another.
