WiseWomen's Forum: CENTERING: Returning to Our Calm Core, Annilee Oppenheimer

Saturday, April 15th

Centering: Returning to our Calm Core

Led by Annilee Oppenheimer

This afternoon's presentation is on returning to our Calm Core. In the fairy tale The Three Ravens, the only thing the young heroine brings with her on her long and arduous journey in search of her older brothers is a "little chair as a provision against weariness." A chair is a place of repose that is close to the ground. The "little chair" in this fairy tale is evocative of our Calm Core - that place in the psyche where we are grounded, centered, collected, and relaxed. It is the place where we can, in T.S. Eliot's words, "be still and still moving" in a positive direction.

This program will focus on practices we can do to return to our Calm Core as we face the inevitable personal and collective challenges of our outer lives. We will use our time together to experiment with various centering practices to help us experience a felt sense of our Calm Core and to learn how to return to it when the tumults of life move us away from our center.

Participants will be invited to share their favorite centering practice with the group. We hope to build a toolbox of ways to return to our Calm Core so that we have access to this place of renewal whenever we feel fragmented and overwhelmed on our own life journey.

A retired lawyer, Annilee Oppenheimer is a Haden Institute certified dream group leader. She has participated in programs at the Jung Society since 1999, and she has found it to be a true community where, as Henri Nouwen said, "solitude greets solitude" and "our various solitudes are like strong pillars that hold up our communal house."

The Wisewoman group meets at 2:00 - 4:00 P.M. in the Jung Society of Washington library at the Palisades Community Church, 5200 Cathedral Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20016. Please arrive early so the session can begin promptly at 2:00. The doors open at 1:30 so participants can have an opportunity to meet & greet before the session. Please use the Hawthorne Place entrance. The Jung Society has moved an on-line registration and to Paypal, so please register and pay on line. If there are problems with registering on line, please bring $5.00 cash or check.