THE FIVE ELEMENTS (Thursday January 2nd)
with Abbie Galvin

The five elements; wood, fire, earth, metal and water; can be understood as five phases of energy with corresponding seasons, organs, colors, tastes, sounds, etc; each giving rise to the next as a never ending cycle of life. In this session we will present an overview of five element theory, its origins as a medical model and its place in our western cannon of holistic healing.

FIVE ELEMENT CHARACTERISTICS (Thursday January 9th)
with Abbie Galvin

Each of the five phases or elements holds within it unique characteristics which describe time, personality traits, patterns of behavior, and how each element relates to one another as expressions of nature, both personal and universal. In this session we review in detail each phase of the five element cycle and all its corresponding attributes.

FIVE ELEMENT QIGONG (Thursday January 16th)
with Chris Chen

Qigong is the cultivation of life force energy. In this session we review a classic five element Qigong standing meditation sequence along with an opening and closing series. The focus of the sequence is not mastery of each movement, but rather a discovery of the somatic relevance of Qigong postures in the experience we have of ourselves as embodied spirits in the living world.

THE FACIAL BLUEPRINT (Thursday January 23rd)
with Ty Watson

The face is a blueprint of our personal territory and how we live determines the way that territory develops and changes over time. In this session we explore the landscape of a face as a fundamental code of features, enabling us to better understand our ancestry, the essence of our nature, our propensities and our opportunities, so that we may become cartographers of our personal potential.

THE FACIAL MAPS (Thursday January 30th)
with Abbie Galvin

The face is a fractal of our body, which gives us a window into our personal narrative. In this session we explore polarity… the left and right sides of the face, our internal nature vs our external nature; and trinity… the three zones of the face which indicates how we make personal decisions; as well as how we can read the movement of time on the face through the decades of our lives.

FIVE ELEMENT PRACTICE (Thursday February 6th)
with Alex Sharry

The seasons are a universal dialogue that point us to where we are on the map of time. Spring is a bursting bud, a chirping bird… whereas Winter is an invitation inward. In this session we move through a seasonal practice using the five elements of great nature as our personal GPS system for orientation, organization and optimization.

THE EMOTIONAL MAP (Thursday February 13th)
with Abbie Galvin

The emotional map of the face plots the wrinkles of our visage that inevitably show up as lines and crevices, deep and shallow. In this session we explore the many wrinkles that form over time due to the frequency with which we express specific emotions and how stuck emotions can contribute to "trapped fire" which in modern medical terms can be understood as inflammation.

THE FACE IN TIME (Thursday February 20th)
with Ty Watson

The lines, wrinkles, moles and marking of the face are all facial imprints with specific meanings and associations. By understanding what information is implied, we can start to notice facets of our own character that we favor and which pieces of ourselves might be neglected and in need of more investigation or expression.

FIVE ELEMENT BREATHWORK (Thursday February 27th)
with Chelsea Delle Palme

The five element theory offers us a framework for the currency of our practice to move through and our breath is the perfect driving force to make that frame come alive. In this session we play with the charge and flow of the elements both experientially and metaphorically, utilizing breathwork and meditation to have an embodied experience of the theory. 

THE FACIAL FEATURES (Thursday March 6th)
with Abbie Galvin

While each of our faces can be seen as a mosaic of all of our features, each of our features expresses aspects of our character. The whole is always more than the sum of its parts, but the exploration of each part is a portal into more information about our personal behavior patterns and how we meet the world. Each tell us something unique about ourselves. 

THE INTERACTION OF ELEMENTS (Thursday March 13th)
with Aylin Karadayi

Each element influences our actions and interactions, illuminating our strengths, weaknesses and interpersonal dynamics. In this session we explore strategies for responding to our own and others' dispositions through the lens of the five elements, so that we may be empowered to enhance our character and cultivate more meaningful interactions.

THE FIVE SPIRITS (Thursday March 20th)
with Ty Watson

Shen is the implicit nature of our spirit, our connection to the cosmos and the reflected information of the face. In this session we explore how Shen shines through the face, its interaction with each facial feature and its residence in each major elemental system: the wood of the liver, the fire of the heart, the earth of the stomach, the metal of the lungs and the water of the kidneys.

FACE READING PRACTICAL (Thursday March 27th)
with Abbie Galvin

It’s time to put all the information we’ve gathered to practical use and read the face as an integrated whole. In our final session we synthesize the insights from the previous sessions in order to use the interplay of elements, time, topography, features and markings to understand how they all come together to elicit a unique and distinguished narrative.