Taught via Zoom by Morbid Anatomy founder and Creative Director Joanna Ebenstein

Eight Tuesdays January 3 - February 28
7-9 pm ET (NYC TIME) (* Last class will run 7-10 pm to accommodate final projects)
Admission: $175 (Patreon Members) / $195 General Admission

PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time

Paul McCartney heard the melody for Yesterday in a dream. Hilma af Klint painted visionary works dictated by spirit guides. Thomas Edison and Salvador Dali woke themselves from hypnagogic states to secure their ideas, and filmmaker David Lynch uses meditation to move beyond the rational, everyday mind and discover unexpected ideas and images.

This January, join Morbid Anatomy founder and Creative Director Joanna Ebenstein as we explore—in concept and practice—ego-free co-creation in collaboration with that elusive “beyond self” all creatives seek.

Over the course of eight weeks, we will meet guest speakers and practitioners from a variety of traditions—including Jungian active imagination, spiritualist mediumship, dream work, shamanism, past life regression, yoga, meditation, and prayer. Each will speak about—and lead us through—their own techniques for making contact.

Students are invited to bring an idea or image they wish to work with to class, or be open to one that emerges over the course of our exploration. In the final session, students will have an opportunity to share a creative work they produced utilizing some or all of these systems and speak about their experience.

In doing this work, we will take inspiration from our ancestors, who viewed creativity not a willful act of ego, but as a mysterious phenomenon with links to the divine. They sought the support of The Muses when embarking on a new project, and the in-spiration they longed for meant “influence of a god.”

Although many of us no longer believe in outer divinities, creators often report that their most vital, innovative and true work feels not like a product of their own individual consciousness, but rather like a collaboration with something outside of themselves, something other. This mysterious other has been called, at various times and by various cultures, daimons, the souls of the dead, the gods, the unconscious, the holy spirit, “flow state,” and alien intelligence.

For centuries, relationships with them were cultivated via practices such as ritual, sacrifice, chanting, dreamwork, prayer, bodywork, meditation, hallucinogenic plants, and other altered states of consciousness. Psychologically, this approach allowed for a distancing of ego from creative product, decreasing the likelihood of personal inflation, and engendering a sense of humility, gratitude and appreciation of the mystery.

SCHEDULE

Week One (January 3) Creativity as Channeling and Prayer
Introduction by Joanna Ebenstein, followed by Diana Walsh Pasulka, professor of Religious Studies and author of American Cosmic, who will speak on creativity understood as channeling in a variety of traditions. She will discuss the idea of prayer as one of these traditions, and lead us in one.

Week Two: (January 10) Dreams and Dream Work
Dream worker and interfaith minister Tristy Taylor will speak on dreams as a way of communication with the deepest, unknown parts of the psyche, and teach us immediately accessible techniques for working with them.

Week Three (January 17) Carl Jung and Active Imagination
Jungian Analyst Patricia Llosa will speak on Jung and creativity, will introduce us to the concept of Jung’s active imagination—a practice used to bridge the gap between the conscious and unconscious mind. She will also lead us in an active imagination of our own.

Week Four (January 24) Spiritualist Mediumship and Creativity YES
Medium Tiffany J. Hopkins will speak on spiritualist mediumship, a technique traditionally focused on receiving messages from the dead, and how it might be used to tap into a source of inspiration beyond our own minds, whether you choose to call that the dead, our unconscious or higher selves, or any other form which cannot be known through our physical senses. She will also lead us in a mediumistic meditation.

Week Five (January 31) Yoga and Meditation
Yoga instructor Stefanie Mihoulides will speak on yoga as a way to open up to that which is beyond ego, and it original intent as a means of bringing together mind-body and spirit. She will also guide us in a yoga session followed by a creativity-focused meditation.

Week Six (February 7) Shamanic Journeying and “Non-Ordinary Reality"
Christina Pratt—Shaman, shamanic teacher, and author of the Encyclopedia of Shamanism—will introduce us to the concept of the shamanic journey, an ancient technique of entering into an altered state of reality, called “non-ordinary reality.” She will also lead us in a shamanic journey.

SKIP FEB 14

Week Seven (February 21) Past Life Regression
Hypnotist and Regression Therapist Daniel Ryan will introduce us to the concepts of past life regression and hypnosis, and lead us in a practice of regression in class.

Week Eight (February 28) Final Presentations (Note: Class will run one hour longer to accommodate all students)
Each student will have an opportunity to share a response—artistic or otherwise—to the material.

PRESENTER BIOS (In alphabetical order)

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was co-founder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Her books include Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy, Death: A Graveside Companion and The Anatomical Venus. You can watch her Tedx talk—Death Like You've Never Seen It Before—here.

Tiffany J. Hopkins (she/her) began studying mediumship after moving into her great-great grandmother's cottage in Lily Dale, the world's largest community of Spiritualists. She combines a university-trained intellect with a universe-connected heart to bring flashes of understanding to the mostly incomprehensible world of mediumship. She is a practicing medium, educator, freelance futurist, and founder of Normalize Talking to the Dead.

Patricia Llosa, MFA, LP, is a Peruvian-American Jungian analyst in private practice in New York City. She earned her undergraduate degree in archaeology and art history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and did graduate work at The School of Visual Arts. For more than 20 years she worked as an administrator and educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A graduate of Marion Woodman’s BodySoul Rhythms® Leadership Training Program and has taught her workshops in Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Peru and Spain. A member of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis she serves on their Gradiva Awards Committee. She is also on the board of ARAS, the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism.

Stefanie Mihoulides has been practicing and studying yoga and meditation for over 25 years. She chose the name Casual Yogini to present her work in an accessible, easy to understand way, and strives to share what she knows and loves of the practice in a plain, simple straightforward way. She has studied anatomy through Threes Physiyoga with Diana Zotos Florio and Emily Tomlinson. Her guided meditation instruction was with Jonathan Foust at the Kripalu Center For Yoga & Health. She has since gone on to instruct other yoga teachers in how to lead a guided meditation. In addition to the love and practice of yoga and meditation, Stefanie is a visual artist and maker with a degree in Fine Art from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She teaches because she want to help anyone realize that they have to the power and ability to easily start to improve their own well being.

Diana Walsh Pasulka is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her research examines miraculous events within Catholic history to new religious movements. Recent books include American Cosmic: Religion, UFOs, and Technology (Oxford University Press 2019) and The Resurrected: Spiritual Initiations in the 21st Century (forthcoming). She is widely published, and is a featured speaker at conferences, on podcasts, radio, and television. She is lead investigator on an ongoing study of Catholic manuscripts about saints, levitation, and bilocation, in partnership with the Vatican Secret Archive and the Vatican Space Observatory. Her book American Cosmic has garnered critical acclaim with the field of religious studies.

Christina Pratt is a practicing shaman, who trained with Ecuadorian, Tibetan, Tamang, and African shamans. She is also the author of the two volume Encyclopedia of Shamanism; runs The Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing; and is host and producer of a free podcast called Why Shamanism Now.

Daniel Ryan CHt, CRt, has maintained full-time private practice in New York City offering Hypnosis and Regression Therapy to individuals, businesses, and groups since 2012. He is currently attending Columbia University studying Narrative Medicine and pursuing a Master of Science. He has received board certifications in Hypnotherapy, Regression Therapy, and Neuro Linguistic Psychology. He studied and trained in techniques of meditation at the School of Practical Philosophy in New York City from 2007 to 2014 while exploring Vedic philosophy, neuroscience, and east/west mysticism. He co-founded the Center for Integrative Healing in Chatham, NJ in 2012. From 2014 to 2020 he worked alongside Melissa Tiers as Director at The Center for Integrative Hypnosis in Manhattan. His father, Jeffrey Ryan (1940-2011) was a hypnotherapist specializing in past life regression and Daniel’s first teacher. With decades of experience using guided therapies, meditative practices, and narrative journeys in hypnosis - today Daniel champions education and ethical practice alongside thought leadership and exploration into new territory.

Tristy Taylor is a Portland, Oregon-based dream worker, teacher, ordained interfaith minister and animal communicator. Raised by world-renowned dream worker Jeremy Taylor--co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Dreams--and dream artist Kathryn Taylor, she has been working with her dreams from the very beginning. She has been leading dream groups since she was 15-years old, and over the last three decades, she has grown her own dream work offerings to include art making and ritual as guided by the dream world, as well as opening the rich secrets of nightmare imagery. She has a Masters of Art & Consciousness from John F. Kennedy University, and she is currently adjunct faculty at the Chaplaincy Institute for Interfaith Ministry, where she teaches Dreamwork, Ritual Crafting, and Being with Death and Dying.

Images:

1. Hilma af Klint, The Swan, No. 1, Group IX, 1915

2. Spiritualist artist Georgiana Houghton, Portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ, 1862

3. Transcendentalist painter Agnes Pelton, Light Center, Agnes Pelton, 1947–1948; Collection of Lynda and Stewart Resnick; photograph by Jairo Ramirez.