Breathing Fire: A Wild Power Workshop for Women
February 3-5, 2023
Facilitated by Leigh Melander, Ph.D., Spillian Co-Founder
Are you burning to change your life and the world?
Join us for a weekend celebrating the fire we hold in us, the dragon fire of the Catskills mountains, and the embers of fire festivals traditionally celebrated in winter and early spring to imagine the power and life of the coming year.
In most cultures, women have been traditionally defined by three roles: maiden, mother, and crone. Each is a powerful metaphor, each has value, but they all live within society’s expectations. They are often as much about how the world sees women as they are how we see ourselves.
There is another metaphor, one that acknowledges women’s power, our wildness, and how we often stand outside the constructs of society.
And that is dragon. Filled with fire, with possibility, with fortune, and with danger, dragons refuse to be bound by rules.
How do we see and embrace this power in ourselves, even when we aren’t sure we can? How can we learn to ride this fire enough so it doesn’t burn ourselves or the people around us? And at the same time, how can we understand that its very nature resists being tamed? How can we navigate the risks of unleashing this fire in a world that is often terrified by it?
Explore your own fair fierceness through story, movement, and imagination.
Mythic Catskills Adventures
Spillian’s Mythic Catskills Adventures are an intersection with the essence of the Catskills: the forests, the mountains, the people, the deep stories that make this place so compelling.
Each gathering celebrates a facet of this gem-like place: its food, its fish and streams, its ringing summer, its snow-spangled winters, its flowing creative life force.
Come for a weekend of grand adventure. Feast. Explore. Hear the great stories and share your own. Revel in the mythic possibility of the Catskills and find where it sings in your life – and then bring that song back home with you.
About Leigh Melander, Ph.D.
Leigh has an eclectic background in the arts as well as consulting in strategic planning, outreach and marketing, and event planning for over 20 years. She has performed, and taught and facilitated explorations of imagination and creativity internationally, working with individuals and groups to help them find their way to bringing their wild ideas to life. Her first book in the Frivolous Revolution series, Psyche’s Choice, has been released as on Amazon, with additional books coming in 2023.
Her undergraduate degree is in performance, literature, and history from Penn State, and she studied writing by invitation with Nobel Poet Laureate Derek Walcott at Boston University. She has a doctorate in cultural mythology and psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and wrote her dissertation on frivolity as an entry into imagination. She has has appeared at various conferences and on media outlets, including the History Channel, as a mythology expert, and has published articles in Spring Journal, The Routledge International Handbook of Jungian Film Studies, The Mythology CD-ROM. She hosted Myth America®, a weekly radio show about how myth shapes our sense of identity on an NPR affiliate for three years and is transitioning to a podcast, and served as the Vice President of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the editor of their MythBlast series for four years.
Pricing
Workshop Registration Fee: $295 until January 25, 2023. $395 after that date.
• Includes all chef-made meals, sessions, and materials. Cash bar, tax, and gratuities not included.
• Attendees are welcome to arrive any time Friday afternoon after 3 PM.
• Please bring comfortable clothes that you can move and make stuff in.
• Commuters welcome for the workshop registration fee.
Spillian Lodging
Spillian offers eight delightful rooms. You can learn more about them here and make your choice on the registration page. All rooms are available on a first-come, first-served basis. The Jules Verne Room has two double sized beds, and is appropriate for sharing with a room mate. If you are coming with a friend and would like to share that room, one guest should reserve the room. Fees for all of the rooms are the same for single or double occupancy and are in addition to the workshop fee.
