Gaia, Eros, and the Sacred ~ series of three workshops

A weekend of growth, connectedness, love, and abundance with the author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet.� Experience Gaia as a practice of love and life, and as a cosmic health theory, with Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD, teacher of the arts of loving, keynote speaker and workshop leader.

Experience the world and life differently: turn competition into symbiosis, jealousy into compersion, scarcity into abundance.� Learn how this can happen to you and your amorous communities.

Co-produced by the Foundaiton for Sex Positive Culture and The Sharma Center

The Sharma Center is located in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood, just off Denny. The address will be provided when you RSVP for an event at RSVP@sharmacenter.org. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or please call (206) 898-5876 to RSVP.

There is a limit of 30 people per workshop, so RSVP soon!

When?
Saturday, November 21
1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
4:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, November 22
2:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Discounts
Purchase the full series and receive the book at no extra charge.�
Attend one class and purchase the book for an additional $5.

Topics

# 1: The scientific and spiritual principles of Gaia theory (Saturday 1-3:30)

# 2: Sacred erotic energy and its circulation in amorous communities (Saturday 4-6:30)

# 3: Sharing amorous resources and creating global health and abundance (Sunday 2-4)

Detailed Descriptions

# 1 - Gaia Theory: The Scientific and Spiritual Principles

How does it work?� What does it mean?� What difference does it make to us? How can we contribute to Gaia's joy, health, and well being?

Gaia is the scientific and spiritual principle based on which the Earth, and its biota in particular, is a living being, a web of interconnected ecosystems whose health is proportional to the health of each cell in them.� All of us human and non-human animals, plants, microbes, and minerals, are little specks of life in this all-encompassing being.� As humans, we are more complex than other Earthlings, and there fore more vulnerable.� In this symbiotic system, the health of Gaia is proportional to the health of each live element in it.� An active knowledge of Gaia theory empowers today's humans to resolve the ecological crisis we're in, just like an active knowledge of Heliocentrism empowered Renaissance people to resolve theirs.

Exercises for this class include meditations that connect us to our inner symbiotic ecosystems, to other Earthlings, and to our first ancestors, bacteria.

# 2 - Sacred Erotic Energy and its Circulation in Amorous Communities

What is it? How can we perceive it, absorb it, channel it? What makes us part of an amorous community?� How can we contribute to its joy, health, and well being, and why is this good for us?

Eros was the god of love in ancient Greece and is often perceived as a spiritual force that pervades the material, that blows health and vitality in it, similarly to the prana, ki, and universal energy of Eastern traditions.� Erotic energy is sacred because it is part of a sacred tradition and because it denotes life, which is sacred in most belief systems.� Eros is a vital force that manifests in infinite ways and takes the form of the energy field where its presence is felt.� The ability to register this presence, to absorb and channel its energy that each of us has corresponds to the wealth we bring to our amorous and erotic communities.� Eros is what keeps Gaia alive.� The more we contribute, the more we receive.

Exercises for this class include safely giving and receiving sacred erotic energy in small groups and sharing about the experience and one's interpretations of it.

# 3 - Sharing Amorous Resources and Creating Global Health and Abundance

How can we safely share amorous resources?� Why is the practice of safer sex important to an erotic community?� What is fluid-bonding and why is it important to the health of an erotic community?

Safe sharing of amorous resources involves practices of love that empower all participants in an amorous community.� It is based on the Gaian principle that sharing resources creates abundance.� Gaia is 'gay' in the sense that, as a live being it is by nature happy and cheerful, and in the sense that it is capable of as many forms of love as there are Earthlings to experience them.� Gaia is alive because its vital principle Eros is in her.� Therefore, it is in everyone's best interest to radiate as much health, love, vitality, and well being as possible.� The more a participant contributes to his/her amorous and erotic communities in the ways of health, love, and vitality, the more each community will radiate these forces back, and so protect and enhance its participants' vitality and health.

Exercises for this class include conversations about emotional and erotic safety, practising healing and sensual touch, cuddling, spooning, as well as other forms of consensual amorous bonding, including three-way kissing.

�

Notes About the Series

• Each class is a body/mind educational experience

• The three topics are interconnected and each class can be taught alone or as part of a series

• Each class includes:

• a SEMINAR to delineate its major ideas (with open Q & A period) - 60 to 90 minutes

• a WORKSHOP to practice and experience them - additional 30-60 minutes

�

About the Educator: Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio gave the keynote address at the 2007 Loving More and World Polyamory Association conferences.

She has been interviewed on Italian public TV about her books on practices of love that include bisexuality and polyamory.� She is a writer, educator, activist, a healer, scholar, and cultural theorist.� Her numerous books include Gaia (2009), Lambda finalist Eros (2007), Plural Loves (2005), Women and Bisexuality (2005), and a forthcoming collection on bisexuality and queer theory.� She leads classes, workshops, and lectures on Gaia Theory, Sacred Erotic Energy, Sharing Amorous Resources, and Narrative Healing.� She blogs at SexGenderBody.blog.� She has been published in and peer-reviews for several journals.� She is a University of California PhD and professor of humanities at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez.� She lives in Cabo Rojo, Western Puerto Rico.

She believes that "a world where it is safe to love is a world where it is safe to live."

�

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is an amorous community?�

It is a group of people who share ways of loving each other and agree to practice certain forms of love.� Participants in and amorous community are emotionally interconnected by these practices and by how these practices affect their emotions and health.� Amorous as well as erotic communities offer different levels of openness to participants.

2. How can an amorous community be healthy?�

The health of an amorous community is proportional to the health that each participant brings to the group.� Health is abundant in an amorous community if each participant takes good care of personal health and vitality.� This care and attention to one's well being is a gift to the community.

3. Why is the practice of safer sex important to amorous and erotic communities?�

The protection of each participant is proportional to the health of the community.� In practicing safer sex, a participant protects other participants from pathogens that might be inadvertently stored in this participant's body.� People's immune systems vary in strength, depending on a number of physical and emotional factors.� Therefore, what may at any given point be innocuous to one participant may be dangerous for another.� If everyone practices safer sex based on this principle, the practice of safer sex will optimize the health of the community.� Everyone will receive as much love and healing energies as he or she needs at that point, and everyone will give as much as he or she is capable of offering.

4. What is fluid-bonding and why is it important to the health of an erotic community?

Fluid-bonding is the practice of exchanging deep and not-so-deep body fluids with sexual and erotic partners, and the emotional bonding that this implies.� In a given erotic community, the practice of exchanging fluids is often restricted to members of an inner circle.� Fluid-bonding protects the health of an erotic community because it invites disclosure of who is part of these inner circles and how each circle defines its fluid-exchange rules.� This protection is both physical, as in limiting the potential exchange of pathogens, and emotional, as in optimizing the use of amorous resources within each circle and in the community as a whole.

5. What is Gaian about this way of organizing erotic communities?�

Gaia is the scientific and spiritual principle based on which the Earth, and its biota in particular, is a living being, a web of interconnected ecosystems whose health is proportional to the health of each cell in them.� All of us human and non-human animals, plants, microbes, and minerals, are little specks of life in this all-encompassing being.� In this system, the health of Gaia is proportional to the health of each live element in it.� Therefore, it is in everyone's best interest to radiate as much health, love, vitality, and well being as possible.� The more a participant contributes to his/her erotic communities in the ways of health, love, and vitality, the more each community will radiate these forces back, and so protect and enhance its participants' vitality and health.

About the Book

�Gaia and the New Politics of Love:� Notes for a Poly Planet

�by Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

�

Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2009 (on-sale date 09/08/09)

Gaia and the New Politics of Love explains how to practice the arts of loving as a form of the arts of healing, which includes creating and sustaining amorous communities through shared amorous resources.

The practices of love typical of polyamorous communities are very useful in this context as a model that can be expanded to a global scale.

For example, practicing the arts of loving activates the cycle of oxytocin in the human brain (the so-called "cuddling" hormone) that enables people to trust each other, display amorous behavior with one another, and cooperate in solving problems, thereby creating sustainability in their environments and communities.

Through the practice of these new politics of loving we can transform hatred into love, fear into hope, and scarcity into abundance.

The book outlines a global ecological theory that explains how by creating an abundance of loving resources we can heal the damage done to our planet's biota that threatens our survival as a species.

More Information

Become a Gaia-on-Facebook Fan: http://tiny.cc/GaiaOnWbsite79

Go to author's website, Gaia book page: http://tiny.cc/GaiaOnWbsite79

Contact the author at serena.anderlini@gmail.com

-��� ��� � Order Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves: http://tiny.cc/OrderEros

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Eros/Serena-Anderlini-DOnofrio/e/9781560235729/?itm=2

-��������� Go to SexGenderBody Blog page: http://tiny.cc/SerenaSGB

http://sexgenderbody.com/user/24/track

-��������� Go to Author's Website, Gaia book page: http://tiny.cc/GaiaOnWbsite79

http://www.serenagaia.com/books.php?sezione_id=1&bookID=28