LIBIDO: LOVE OF LIFE FILM PROJECT
Libido: Love of Life Film Project
by Andrea Juhan
Do you ever hide the truth about your sexuality?
Who you are attracted to?
What pleasures you feel?
What you long for?
Have you ever wished for a place to heal, grow, or challenge yourself?
Libido: Love of Life is a film collaboration with Libido creator Andrea Juhan and the talented filmmaker and Libido On-going participant, Will Harris, and a large group of amazing generous dancers and teachers, who have all dedicated themselves to sharing the richness they have found in this work. It is a beautiful look at this unique synthesis of dance and transformative movement practice.
What is Libido?
A few simple definitions:
Sexuality Life Force Vitality Creativity
Carl Jung says “Libido is appetite in its natural state”- It is an essential part of our body’s natural expression. Complicated one moment, ecstatic the next.
The Open Floor Libido programs are an exploration of embodied sexuality using the transformative power of conscious dance as a vehicle for awareness and change. If you have ever felt curious or confused about how to more fully enjoy the generative, instinctual, biological energies that move within every one of us, then this program is for you.
A Transformative Practice
“The point of Libido programs is not to necessarily create a sexual experience, but rather to create space and embodied awareness for whatever experience of sexuality you are having.”
We live in a time where sexuality is, on the one hand, pervasive and casually X-rated, and on the other, boxed in with stereotypes and unrealistic expectations. Along the way there is less and less capacity for real meaning and connection. In many ways, dance and sexuality have become almost synonymous in our culture.
To move is to feel, and to move freely and authentically makes us look and feel radiant. And yet, too often we hide and diminish this powerful part of ourselves in awkward social situations with drugs, alcohol or simply a thicket of limiting beliefs.
Many of us accept a life where our potency is un-tapped and our creative potential unfulfilled. Meanwhile our sexual expression can be more unconscious than conscious. We may find it drives and pulls us, diverting us away from the bigger picture of what we truly want and need.
Through Open Floor dance meditation, we turn this dynamic around. We create a mindful communal, sex positive, environment in which we explore how the embodied energy of libido moves within and between us. We look at the ways we hold ourselves back or get in our own way.
Libido Fundamentals are a place to practice full embodied engagement with Libido energy, the same energies that you may find in the bedroom (positive and challenging) are available and at play thru the dance – it’s not about acting out sexually, it is about opening and expanding the passion and power of Libido into all areas of your life.
The Libido Fundamentals workshops touch on the powerful universal elements involved in feeling, moving, and increasing the ability to fully embody this energy.
Many participants take these course many times! Libido courses support unapologetic pleasure, and the capacity to experience the transcendent possibilities that whole-hearted libido can offer us.
Libido On-going
The On-going Libido Program is a deeper longer unpacking of the Libido terrain…a commitment is made for over two years: same people, same staff, same venue – but that’s about all that stays the same. The length of the program gives us the possibility to explore the threads of our personal history with Libido; to develop emotional intelligence around our sexuality and the choices we make. Over time and deep honest interactions, our dances bring healing of the places that have been hurt, and offer us the resources to develop our relational, creative and spiritual expressions Libido.
The pleasure and beauty of this journey is well worth the challenges and risks.
These programs are OPEN TO ALL: couples or individuals, virgins and experienced lover’s heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, queer, and all combinations therein. In short anyone with a body!
Find a workshop! www.openfloor.org
Andrea Juhan: a therapist, a dancer, three decades a student/teacher of Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms, and Gestalt Awareness Practice, and Integrative Body Psychotherapy; she has created her own form of Movement Practice called Open Floor –together with other gifted teachers she cofounded Open Floor International. Her unique form of group process Open Floor Encounter and Libido programs are taught worldwide.