2007 Program

Fred Burks, in collaboration with a team of others, is excited to welcome us into this year's camp.  Fred and friends will be inviting us all to join in deep community and sacred space together during our welcoming circle.  In the course of the first two days, they will lead us into rich, meaningful explorations focused on building community and transformation of our lives and world.  We will delve into what it means to be intimate with our selves, with our community, and with the world around us.  Through a series of deepening, revelatory and fun activities, campers will be given opportunities to explore why we come to camp and what we want to do -- both individually and collectively -- to make this the best possible camp experience for us all and to support building our network for a new culture on this beautiful planet.

Fred Burks has spent much of his life traveling and exploring both the inner and the outer worlds.  He has lived and taught overseas for several years, and co-facilitated a variety of heart-opening workshops around the country.  Fred is a founder and active member of the Sacred Connections community in the SF Bay Area.  His deep commitment to what's best for all and to personal and global transformation through love and empowerment has brought countless miracles into his life.  He manages several popular websites which are all about personal and global transformation, including www.WantToKnow.info and www.weboflove.org.  Fred is excited to co-create a deep, rich community experience with all of you at NFNC this summer.

Fred will also be offering "Planetary Transformation Team" in the second week.

This workshop provides practical communication tools that enrich connection, cooperation, and intimacy. The emphasis will be to enrich and vitalize communication between lovers and community by providing practical communication tools that enrich connection, cooperation, and intimacy.

NVC is a language which Deepak Chopra says "...connects us soul to soul, creating a lot of healing. It is the missing element in what we do."

The two practice sessions will be for learning and practicing Compassionate Communication for a more satisfying relationship, a deeper connection with others and yourself.

Kelly Bryson
description to come...

Permaculture principles were created about twenty-five years ago by Bill Mollision and David Holmgren to guide us in designing homesteads that can provide us with what we need for healthier and more self-reliant lives, taking pressure off surrounding lands such as farms, wilderness and foreign countries to supply our needs.  Many of these principles are common sense yet powerfully helpful sayings our grandmothers might have shared with us, for example "The Problem is the Solution."  They are broad enough in scope to apply not only to how we go about providing ourselves with food, shelter and energy, but also how we can have more vital relationships with ourselves, each other and with spirit.  Just as humans are called to live more in harmony with the natural world in the way we grow food and build buildings, the health and vitality of our planet unfolds from how we relate to our selves and each other psychologically, culturally, and spiritually.  Our inner and outer worlds co-evolve with one another, such that truly transformative healing of the Earth must ultimately address both of these dimensions.  This workshops draws on permaculture principles created by the founders of permaculture and those who came after them, including the creators of this workshop; participants will be invited to add to this body of evolving wisdom.

Session One: Observation, Noticing Patterns and Working Where it Counts
Observation is the first permaculture design principle we will explore in both the outer and inner worlds.  We will begin by learning methods of walking outdoors with awareness developed by Native Americans and by permaculturists, and by distinguishing between observations and interpretations.  We will then practice these skills on our own minds, using insights of Byron Katie and others.  Next we will focus on noticing patterns in our behavior, and finally look for ways to shift patterns we'd like to change with ease rather than by pressuring ourselves to transform.

Session Two: Natural Succession, Invisible Structures, Self-Reliance and Interdependent Guilds.
After looking at how the concept of natural succession can be applied to creating a diverse and useful community of plants, we will turn to Ken Wilber's concepts of spiral dynamics to explore how we can embrace every person in our human family, valuing and including everyone's insights, while still moving us to evolve in ways that are critical to the health of ourselves and our planet.  We will explore how our culture functions in ways that are not immediately apparent, how we can stop supporting invisible structures that are harmful, and how we can create better ways of living through cultivating self-reliance and healthy community interdependence.

Session Three: Exploring Edges, Shadows, and Diversity
Traditional Permaculture encourages humans to use edges and value the marginal and to use and value diversity, in order to harmonize with complex ecosystems.  Similarly, to live our full consciousness and vitality, and to harmonize with others and with the planet, we need to explore our personal and socio-cultural edges, shining the light of consciousness into the shadows of who we think we are.  Through activities designed to help us listen to voices that we often repress or ignore, we will learn to expand and more fully integrate our sense of self.  In so doing, we are able to live more flexibly and fearlessly, transforming opposition into an opportunity for growth.

Session Four - Living From Body-Heart-Mind-Spirit
In Permaculture, we integrate rather than segregate and use and value renewable resources.  So, when it comes to our own bodies, hearts, minds, and spirits, we can also look for ways to have all dimensions of ourselves aligned and playing together in synergistic concert.  Drawing on the natural, and renewable, source of life energy that flows with such alignment, we can live more in harmony with, and in service to, the well-being of the planet as a whole.  In this session, we will explore dynamic exercises designed to identify, align, and follow the natural energy flows of our body-heart-mind-spirit.

Melanie Rios is a certified permaculture designer who has lived in intentional community for over thirty years, first in Arlington, Virginia, and for the past five years at Maitreya EcoVillage in Eugene.  She presents workshops on permaculture for the inner landscape, "green economics", and non-violent communication as part of her job as "Well-being Facilitator" at the two-month Permaculture and Eco-village Design Program offered at the Lost Valley Education and Research Center each summer.  She is an urban farmer, growing much of the food her family eats; and a musician, making the bulk of her economic living playing gigs and teaching violin and folk fiddle.  Her life mission is to demonstrate and inspire folks to see that living more lightly on the earth can be a lot of fun.  Her workshops are highly interactive, using expressive arts such as music and theater to illustrate ideas and to engage participants in learning.  She will be the primary facilitator for sessions one and two, assisted by Rob Tobias and Robert Bolman, and for the workshop portion of the pre-camp week, assisted by Robert Silber.

Karl Steyaert (MS, MA) is an educator and community builder who enjoys supporting people in conscious living and transformative learning.  Beyond his academic training in Anthropology and Environmental Policy, he has pursued extensive study of sustainable communities, Nonviolent Communication (an approach to peaceful social and personal transformation), aikido (a nonviolent Japanese martial art), yoga, and Buddhist meditation.  From 2002 to 2005, Karl lived and taught at the Findhorn Community - a holistic learning center and ecovillage in northeastern Scotland - where he led an ecovillage-based academic study program, as well as teaching Nonviolent Communication and yoga.  In September 2006, he co- founded Bodhi House, an intentional "living-learning" community dedicated to cultivating integral well-being, in Oakland, California.  Karl offers training, consultation, and coaching in Nonviolent Communication, sustainable community building, conflict resolution, and conscious living.  He can be reached at: ksteyeart@gmail.com.  Karl will primary facilitator for sessions three and four, assisted by Melanie Rios.

Rob Tobias will be lead facilitator for the Playback Workshop (see below), and will assist Melanie Rios with sessions one and two.

Rob Bolman is an environmentally innovative builder in Eugene, founding director of Maitreya EcoVillage, and former president of the Eugene Chapter of the Northwest Eco Building Guild.  He has offered humorous yet compelling presentations on green building throughout the west coast region, and he is currently preparing a presentation exploring economics, democracy and human consciousness and how they relate to our global crisis, parts of which will be incorporated into sessions one and two.

Robert Silber is originally from Washington DC.  He spent many years working for the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations.  He is a founding member of La'akea community in Hawaii with other summer campers.  He has a permaculture design business and does Lomi lomi massage.  Robert will assist with teaching the pre-camp workshops.

This session will include an introduction to Playback Theatre forms such as fluid sculptures, tableaux, pairs, 3 sentence stories, chorus, and full stories.  This is improvisational theatre based on stories from our lives.  We will use our stories and playback theatre as a jumping off point to enhance our listening skills and fully witnessing the telling of each others story.  We will also explore music and dance as dramatic elements in creating personal theatre.  Come ready to connect with others, share stories, listen, learn, sing, dance, play and have a good time.

Rob Tobias performed with Eugene Playback Theatre from 1998-2004 and continues to give playback workshops and participate in improvisational theatre projects.  His workshops are highly interactive and enjoyable with the goals of building community, sharing personal story, and encouraging playfulness using music and improvisation and the principals of playback theatre.  He is also a contemporary singer/songwriter and recording artist influenced by folk, blues, reggae, country, and Jewish roots music.  Rob sings, plays piano, guitar, and harmonica, and has his own stamp of originality that is both familiar and distinctive.  Rob has released 5 CDs with mostly original material.  His recent songwriting has led him to posting a topical 'Song of the Month' each month on his www.robtobias.com web site.  Rob Tobias will be lead facilitator for the Playback Workshop, assisted by Melanie Kundert, and will assist Melanie Rios with sessions one and two.

We start today with a puja--a ritual that activates all our chakras, our energy centers--security, sensuality, power, love, communication, insight and spirituality. We activate our own chakras with the Bija Mantra chant and inner holds (bandhas). Then we share a security-chakra experience, the rite of the Loving Parent and Open Child, with an initial partner. Then we rotate to 5 new partners for brief experiences with our sensual, assertive, romantic, verbal, knowing and spiritual chakras. We return to sit yab/yum with our initial partner, with whom we share lovebreathing, chant the mantra, and activate all-chakra energy. We end with community synergy all-chakra connect.

Prepare for Tonight's All-Chakra Tantric Date Monday, August 13th, 4pm-6pm
Janet and Sasha Lessin prepare us for a tantric date tonight. Givers tonight are invited to focus on a Receiver for an All-Chakra tantric date, maybe tonight. This afternoon's class sets the scene; you sample the imago process-- helping a person heal her or his emotional hang-ups. Janet and Sasha relate the technique of the tantric date. On the date, use the techniques and the healing skills you practiced in the imago process as you explore a woman's ejaculatory-orgasm capacity.

At a time when our nation is determined to keep us on the warpath, what better time to raise our voices against intolerance, hatred, and violence?  At a time when our government propels us into a new dark age of fascism, what better time to talk about radical love, or the right to love who we want, how we want, and as many as we want?  Loving openly and freely in these times, whether you are straight or queer, is a brave political act.  We have been conditioned by outdated social norms that limit our perceptions and shackle us to unhealthy cycles of dissatisfying relationships.  Yet we also live in a time when we can choose our gender and redefine our sexual identities.  Don't we then have the right to decide what kind of relationship best suits our lifestyle?  Declare yourself a revolutionary of the heart.  Find out how you can expand your potential to love, transform your lifestyle, and together we can threaten the social forces of patriarchy!

Wendy-O Matik is the author of "Redefining Our Relationships: Guidelines for Responsible Open Relationships."  As an educator and spokesperson for the polyamory community, Wendy has become a revolutionary activist of the heart.  Since the release of her book, she has taught over sixty Radical Love & Relationship Workshops globally, excavating important social trends and reshaping the future of alternative relationship models for the 21st century.  As an activist for social change, Wendy is pushing the boundaries on firmly rooted notions in mainstream society on relationships, love, gender, sexual equality, and sexual politics.  She is available for educational and motivational discussions on the topic of alternative relationship models and responsible non-monogamy.  Visit her website for more information.

For a detailed examination of the development and use of this process at ZEGG, see What is the ZEGG Forum? in our document library section.