Praxis & Improvisation is the name I have given my workshop projects and tutoring services because I believe that this is where creativity originates, in playful doing. Praxis means "practice" and "process," and improvisation, of course, is the wonderful, playful response to just about anything, that is at once spontaneous, experimental, focused on release, and on receptivity. At the same time, creative work involves critical thinking, focus and following through.
Aristotle believed that free people engage in three kinds of basic activities: praxis, theoria, and poiesis. Each term refers to a type of knowledge: praxis is an approach to knowledge that has action as its goal; theoria is the kind of knowledge whose goal is truth; and poiesis is an activity that is rooted in production in the highest sense, and is deeply related to James Hillman’s notion of the “poetic basis of the mind,” the place where imagination dwells and from which it emerges. Creative practices help us connect this aspect of the mind as psyche with the body, which is also connected with the psyche as a whole. As the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyist C.G. Jung (1875-1961) discovered, the creative process itself provides a threshold experience within which each individual is invited to encounter unconscious psychic material calling for integration. While this process is individual, and he called this “the individuation process,” it is more-than-personal in nature.
My workshops support opportunities for active engagement with both writing and art-making processes, along with a sense of engagement that will encourage the unfolding of truthful productions. Truth in this sense is a relative thing, so perhaps what I’m getting at here is that my aim is to support you in producing work that honors your authentic self, which is a kind of playful alignment with the wonderful ritualistic power of the creative act. At various times I may provide Jungian depth psychological contexts within which participants might better explore and understand their work. The emphasis is always on the process, but it is my hope that participants find themselves creating works that are ready to go out into the world, to be shared and enjoyed. My aim is to continually explore and support this wonderful process, the creative process itself.
Private Tutoring & Workshops