Personal Development Workshops

Fostering Your Creative Power

Finding and Following Your Inner Guidance

Cultivating Heart Wisdom and Healing through Mindfulness 

Sharing and Growing Our Spiritual Lives

Compassionate Communication  

Writing Your Spiritual Journey

Exploring Spiritual Experience through  Poetry and Story

Healing and Uplifting the Heart through Poetry 

Experiencing Kabbalah 

Your Ten Creative Powers: Cultivating Your Inner Tree of Life

Compassionate Communication

Note: You can find Dr. Burack's professional development workshops at www.charlesburack.com

We live in an immensely creative universe.  And we are all born with innumerable creative capacities.

So why aren't we as creative as we would like to be?  What holds us back?  Fears.  Insecurities.  Judgments. Perfectionism.  Harsh inner critic.  Lack of confidence. Socialization. And more.

In this workshop, you'll learn time-tested techniques for freeing up your innate creative powers.  You’ll also learn powerful insights and methods used by creative artists, scientists, mystics, sages, and entrepreneurs.

  Practices include: a 5-step method for inviting and elaborating your creative intuitions; techniques for overcoming your fears; meditations that clear and focus the mind; and approaches that activate the diverse creative energies inhering in your body, mind, and soul. 

 Creative thinking, writing and drawing will be explored.  Emphasis will be placed on enjoying your creative process and applying your creativity to all aspects of your life.   

When you follow your inner guidance, your life, work, and relationships are supported by inspiration and insight, purpose and passion, conviction and courage. You feel empowered to act with integrity and confidence.

The inner guide has been called intuition, presence, integrity, soul, spirit, higher self, still small voice, inner voice, inner light, inner teacher, the divine within. However you name or conceive it, it is the fountainhead of your personal wisdom, vision and values.

In this workshop, you will learn several practices for discovering, deepening, and sustaining your connection to your own guide.

These practices include cultivating positive psychological, ethical, and spiritual qualities; fostering optimal states of awareness and understanding; and minimizing or transforming negative qualities and states.

You’ll also learn methods for inviting, receiving, testing and actualizing authentic guidance. 

  We are inherently emotional beings with deep, essential, and powerful feelings. 

Our feelings are primal portals to our body, mind, soul, and the divine within. Feelings provide vital information about ourselves, others, the environment, and the spiritual realms. They also supply vital energy to act and interact.

When we tap the wisdom of our hearts, we are able to live more conscious, vibrant, fulfilling, and connected lives. We experience greater joy and well-being, have healthier, more caring relationships, and work more effectively with loss and suffering. We are more present to our lives and to the lives of others. We are more creative and productive and attain greater inner peace.

In this workshop, you learn ways to:

· optimize awareness, understanding, and regulation of your own emotions—using mindfulness and other powerful psychospiritual practices

· consciously and responsibly tap your heart wisdom and emotional power to enhance your personal, social, work, and communal life

· work effectively with painful emotions and interpersonal conflict

· empathize with, understand, and relate more effectively with others

· communicate and act with greater clarity, compassion, integrity, and power.

Kabbalists use the image of the Tree of Life to depict ten sacred-creative powers that originate in divinity and flow through the universe and the human body and soul. 

These sacred powers include: limitless spiritual potential, intuitive wisdom, discerning understanding, lovingkindness, strength, beauty, endurance, empathy, right relationship, and presence. 

When you tap these energies, you are able to create—in tune with the Creative Source—a joyful, loving life rooted in integrity, purpose, and meaning. You will not only be more empowered to realize your essential self but also be better equipped to serve the greater good.

In this workshop, you learn ways to:

· attune to the Source of your life

· locate, cultivate, and express your sacred powers

· work through obstacles that limit the expression of your innate powers

· balance and harmonize conflicting energies

· apply your sacred energies to personal health, development, relationships, work, community, and the wider world

Some of the transformative practices you learn include: contemplative reflection, mindful presence, meditation, visualization, chanting, prayer, sacred stories, soulful dialogue, and inspired study. No background in Judaism is needed.    

    Would you like to explore and deepen your spiritual life in a supportive, safe, confidential, and nurturing group of other seekers? 

Would you appreciate the presence and participation of others as you savor or struggle with important issues in your life?

 Do you enjoy offering and receiving empathic, heartful listening? Do you value others' perspectives on your journey?

In workshop, you have the opportunity to share the experiences, questions, and challenges that touch your heart and soul. You also have the opportunity to listen deeply and compassionately to others’ sharing their spiritual lives.  This mutual sharing creates connection, understanding, healing, and transformation.

 As a group participant, you may choose to receive questions, reflections, or suggestions from others, or you may simply want to share your experiences and be heard by a group of compassionate fellow travelers who care about your well-being and growth. 

My main role is to create a safe, welcoming container for genuine sharing as well as to facilitate the process of sharing and interacting. We usually begin a session with a brief meditation, inspirational reading, or other transformative practice. 

Writing is a powerful way to explore and express your spiritual journey. In this workshop, you reflect on and write about your journey.  You learn insight and practices for freeing your inner writer and expressing your inner life. No writing expertise is needed.

We begin each session by reading inspirational quotes, poems, or brief stories by Rumi, Rilke, Dickinson, Oliver, and others that illuminate the spiritual life.  Then, we use meditation to contemplate our own life experiences.  These may be peak experiences of love and insight, painful periods of despair and loneliness, or ordinary moments of kindness and humor.

After each meditation, you are invited to write about our experiences in any form you choose--story, poem, freewriting, prayer, essay.  Freewriting is spontaneous writing that emphasizes process over product, and authenticity over craft. In freewriting, you don’t have to worry about whether your writing meets any standards or expectations—the writing simply flows uncensored from your heart, mind, and soul. 

After each writing exercise, you have an opportunity to share your writings in a safe, support, confidential space.  All sharings are voluntary.  If you choose to share, you can decide whether or not you want to receive responses or questions from other workshop members.  A group covenant will ensure that all responses and interactions are made in a positive, caring, and sensitive manner. 

All of us have peak experiences in which we feel most alive, joyful, connected, or at peace. These sacred experiences give meaning, purpose, and vitality to our lives—and they help us grow and evolve as human beings. 

This workshop explores the varieties of spiritual experience through engaging deeply with inspirational poems and stories that depict these transcendent moments. You not only have the opportunity to savor these gems but also to use them as springboards for exploring and writing about your own spiritual life.

 We recite and reflect on poems by Maya Angelou, Wendell Berry, William Blake, Mahmoud Darwish, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Marcia Falk, Allen Ginsberg, Louise Gluck, Susan Griffin, Hafiz, Jane Hirshfield, June Jordan, D. H. Lawrence, Antonio Machado, Thomas Merton, Mirabai, Pablo Neruda, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Oliver, Marge Piercy, Adrienne Rich, Rainer Rilke, Jelaluddin Rumi, Shikibu, Rabindranath Tagore, Walt Whitman, and others. 

Meditations and writing exercises help you connect with and write about your own peak experiences.

In this workshop, you learn ways to:

· understand the diverse array of sacred experiences

· contemplate inspired poems written by mystic poets around the world

· clarify and express your own peak experiences

· express your experiences in evocative language and memorable stories

· invite and integrate transcendent moments into your life.

      We will immerse ourselves in classic spiritual poems that have the power to heal, uplift and transform our hearts.  We will explore the light they shed on our lives.  Poets include David, Rumi, Hafiz, Hildegaard of Bingen, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Kabir, Mirabai, Shikibu, and Yunus Emre.  Together these poets from around the world offer a wealth of wisdom and inspiration about how to connect with the depths of the soul, how to compassionately face suffering, how to balance solitude and society, how to find the courage to pursue our passions and missions, how to heal our emotional wounds, as well as how to live with joy, vitality, love and creativity.  Poems will be distributed in class.  Contemplative and writing exercises will help us to gain personal insights and healings.  

      Kabbalah is the heart of Jewish mysticism.  It offers profound teachings and practices that have influenced and been influenced by Christian and Islamic mystics.

In this workshop, we examine the Jewish mystical experience of an androgynous divinity and soul.  We explore our own ability to embody sacred creative powers (symbolized by the Tree of Life) in service of the Source and all beings.  We also explore how to discover light in darkness and to transform suffering into life-affirming.  We will experience some transformative prayers, blessings, chants, and meditations.  No background in Judaism is needed. 

We are innately social beings. We are born to relate and communicate. The quality of our relationships profoundly affects the quality of our lives. And the quality of our communications profoundly affects the quality of relationships. 

Compassionate communication is key to building relationships based on mutual understanding, respect, and care. And empathic presence is key to compassion.

In this workshop, you learn ways to: 

· listen with empathy, presence, understanding, and appreciation

· speak with authenticity, clarity, conviction, respect, and persuasive power

· mindfully attend to and honor your own perceptions, thoughts, feelings, needs, values, and aspirations

· express vital needs, communicate difficult feelings, and offer useful feedback with honesty and kindness

· make requests that address your needs and values

· calm the mental chatter that distracts you from listening and speaking well

· clear and focus your mind

This workshop integrates insights, principles, and practices from psychology, communication science, and ancient wisdom.