Transforming our Grief; A Practice for Renewal
with Karen Bellone & Elizabeth Castagna
Tuesday, 8/6 I 6-8 pm I $50
Registration deadline: 8/3
This 2-hour workshop focuses on engaging with the body’s wisdom as a vessel of transformation for re-patterning our grief narratives. By embracing, embodying and manifesting our experiences of grief and loss through ritual, and within the body, we can renew and revise our stories, re-integrating our relationship with grief and loss. By bearing witness to ourselves and to others through this encounter, we support and strengthen our inner resources, as well as build connective tissue in our humanity and our community.
This workshop will hold space for all experiences with grief, not just the loss of a person, but for all the myriad ways we feel loss.
Karen Bellone, MFA, is a Certified End-of-Life Doula and Death Educator. She is the founder of The Seventh Sense in NY’s Hudson Valley, where she is an integral part of a worldwide community that is reigniting the wisdom of death within our modern lives. She is also founder of Exit Strategy for Dying, a monthly Death, Arts and Culture Readers supporting a resource hub to educate and refocus the narrative around death and grief through the lens of arts, culture, storytelling and innovation. Prior to embracing her passion for end-of-life work, Karen has had a long career as an award-
winning filmmaker and internationally collected photographer. She received a BFA in Film Production from New York University, and did graduate work with the world-renowned Actors Studio, through their inaugural program at the New School for Social Research. After training and becoming certified with INELDA (International End of Life Doula Association), Karen worked with an innovative hospice in Los Angeles where her skills as a death doula were developed and broadened. In addition to working with patients in various stages of their life journeys, she was responsible for training the volunteer staff, nurses and other hospice and medical professionals to bring more understanding, humanity and compassion into their work with the dying. She spoke regularly about the role of the doula at end-of-life, and the space that can be held to bring about ‘a good death’. She believes strongly in the ability to demystify and assuage the fear that surrounds
death in our culture and to foster safe passage for the dying, as well as to aid the families and loved ones through grief and bereavement.
As a visual artist and storyteller, Karen acquired a multitude of skills throughout her career that unlocked a deep passion for the healing power
of visual and auditory perception on human consciousness. She integrated these strengths and resources into tools to bring aid and comfort for those imminently facing their mortality. Working with somatic and sensory awareness, Karen utilizes visual, sound and meditation therapy, personalized guided imagery, and commemoration of the sacred in the form of ritual, legacy and memory work, in order to bring comfort - physically, emotionally, spiritually to celebrate and commemorate the
life of the individual. In addition to her ongoing private practice, Karen is currently directing a feature film about living American artist Michelle Stuart, whose work also engages with the elemental and ineffable nature of existence.
www.theseventhsense.org
Elizabeth Castagna is certified to teach The Alexander Technique by Alexander Technique International. and received her training with master teacher Chloe Wing in New York City. She became Chloe’s Teacher Training Assistant from 2006-2013. In 2019 Elizabeth was certified by The Developing Self UK for teaching the Alexander Technique to children, teens and young adults. In 2023 she she completed her HUMANUAL training”
Elizabeth dedicates her teaching to seeing and hearing her students clearly, supporting the unfolding of change in their body while respecting the natural pace of this movement which is unique to each individual. With an understanding that how we learn is essential to what we learn, Elizabeth integrates a variety of teaching tools into her sessions. Among them are Body Mapping, movement experiments, energy awareness and free drawing. In her visual art and teaching, she embraces the not knowing — exploring the possibilities we have to sense and connect to ourselves, each other, and our environment.
Elizabeth provides a safe, creative space for her students where they are invited to be themselves, cultivate self-awareness and embody their thoughts, gestures and sense of wonder.
Elizabeth is also a Craniosacral Balancing practitioner. She works with Somatic Experiencing and Body Mind Centering as methods to restore ease and integration for her students body, mind, spirit.