Upcoming Workshops
No workshops are currently scheduled!

For more information, e-mail kcg@drgajdos.com or programs@temenosretreat.org or call Dr. Gajdos at (610)388-2888 or Temenos at (610)696-8145.
 

A Selection of PAST WORKSHOPS PRESENTED

Finding Peace Through Creative Prayer
How do you find your inner peace in today’s chaos? Come discover inner peace (which we need to cope with the world as well as bring peace to it) through “creative prayer”. This day will be about re–creating your center in a quiet space, for finding your own unique prayer life—be it through collage, drawing, writing, movement, meditation, music, or nature. (Wear comfortable clothes and bring a bag lunch.)

Griefs of Birthing: A Healing Afternoon
Those who have suffered loss from miscarriages, abortions, stillbirths, SIDS, or infertility often find no consolation for their grief. This afternoon of healing will acknowledge such losses through sharing our stories, guided meditation, ritual, and creative expression. 

Ember Evening
As winter comes, we physically go inside for warmth and shelter. Where do we go spiritually? This can be a time to hunker down and take stock of the soulfire within, clean the ash and stoke the coals that hold the embers for new flame, and then add further fuel! An evening og guided meditation, discussion, and experiential exercises will help renew our passion to the Spirit and build upon that fire within.

Vicarious Traumatization
Those in helping professions are confronted time and again with traumatic experiences of the people they serve. Listening to, and helping people through such life stories can have a profound impact upon the helper; that is, the helper can experience “vicarious traumatization.” This workshop explores both the effects of traumatization and its antidotes for “healthy helping.”

Freeing the Self from Family Grief
Unresolved grief and trauma over the span of generations may have a profound effect on the present as well as the future. Ironically, our attempt to run away from generational griefs and trauma actually precipitates our being stuck and immobilized in old familial themes and patterns.
This workshop explored how grief and trauma can have a cascade effect down the generations, and suggested ways to differentiate oneself from the past. Using old photos and a working sense of family history—family genograms were constructed and experiential exercises performed.

Ember Day
As winter comes we physically go inside for warmth and shelter. Where do we go spiritually? This can be a time to hunker down and take stock of the soulfire within: clean the ash and stoke the coals that hold the embers for new flame—and then add further fuel! An afternoon of guided meditation, discussion, and experiential exercises to help renew our passion to the Spirit and build upon that fire within.

Narcissistic Culture and the Duplicitous Shadow
Dr. Gajdos presented a lecture at a monthly presentation of the Round Table Associates for the Study of Jungian Psychology.

Women and Body Image
We may not be constricted by Victorian corsets, but we are still constrained by contemporary culture that touts its own distorted view of "beauty."  When and how may we let ourselves love, honor, and cherish the bodies we have?  This workshop hopes to provide a gentle, non-judging atmosphere where we can question our mythologies of what we "should" look like and allow ourselves to find ways to affirm ourselves now.  Media culture beware! There will be discussion and experiential exercises including writing, collage, and movement.  Women of all ages are welcome, mothers and daughters.

Holidays or Holydays? 
An afternoon to prepare the soul for the onslaught of worldly noise and busy-ness. When the "holidays" arrive, must we become frenetic and harried? Must we "SHOULD" ourselves with grand expectations only to be disappointed? How is it that family dissonance and dysfunction seem even more intense? How is it that seemingly forgotten griefs and losses feel all the more remembered? Here is an opportunity to reflect on these questions, do some soul-soothing, and perhaps uncover the "holy" in the "holiday." This day will include discussion, meditation, and experiential exercises. 

A Ritual for Healing Griefs of Birthing
Those who have suffered loss from miscarriages, abortions, still births, and infertility often find no consolation for their grief, their loss. Grieving a chosen abortion may not seem rational; grieving a miscarriage may seem disproportionate to such an invisible loss. These losses constitute disenfranchised griefs, socially unacknowledged losses. 
Grief is socially unacceptable; we praise as strong those who hold their sorrows within themselves. Some losses are even unrecognized and our grief is diffused into our lives because there is no ritual to contain and transform it. Those who have suffered losses, especially of children, whether through early death, miscarriage, abortion, infertility, still birth, or SIDS, are invited. This Sunday afternoon of healing will acknowledge such losses through sharing our stories, guided meditation, ritual, and creative expression. 

Women Who Run With Wolves
How often have women said to themselves, "I wish I had trusted my intuition." In this techhnological age we have been conditioned to mistrust our inner awareness, our body wisdom. Here then, is a day to explore and honor what we perhaps have so long dismissed, our "wildish nature." The stories in Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book will be the springboard as we dive into our own creative excercises of movement, art, writing, and sound to bring us back to ourselves. Wear comfortable clothing for the swim! 

A Day of Re-Collection
Come to gather in the disparate parts of yourself for psycho-spiritual re-alignment. We are living in a world of busyness and fragmentation, and need, from time to time, to re-collect and re-member ourselves into wholeness. This day is designed to be restorative so bring all the pieces of self that have become unglued. The day will consist of discussion and creative imagery and exercises including sound and movement. 

Summer Mini-Camp for Women
Using stories from Women Who Run With the Wolves as well as other sources, we will come together to explore our own "wild woman" natures with discussion and, playfully, with a myriad of creative excercises. Re-ignite the passion; recreate the Self this summer with a weekly mini-vacation.

Family Secrets, Shame Re-Membered
An afternoon of healing through exploring, in a nurturing and nonjudgmental atmosphere, old places in new ways. We often have encoded within us past experiences in our families of origin that keep us shame-bound in our everyday lives. This afternoon intends to affirm our breaking out of these patterns of shame through discussion and creative exercises.

Grief As A Threshold to New Life
"When the heart grieves for what it has lost, the soul rejoices in what it has found" Change is loss. So what do we find when we open our hearts to our loss, our grief? When we open to the pain of separation so necessary to our individuation? When we delve down deep? This day will usher movement into the realness of new life that comes from grief and loss, via meditation, creative expression, writing, and discussion. 

Evening Seminar
C.G. Jung Center of Philadelphia Lecture Series
This evening seminar at the Jung Center of Phiadelphia will explore the above topic with a little lecture, more discussion, and a creative exerices/experience to help bring us to our own expression of self and movement to new life. Wherever you are on your journey, you are welcome.