JANURAY - MARCH 2025
online OFFERINGs
SPECIAL EVENTS
MONTHLY
WOMEN’S GROUP: DEEP FEMININE CIRCLES
JANUARY 2025
FEBRUARY-MARCH 2024
EATING THE POMEGRANATE SEEDS. Reimagining Demeter, Persphone & Hekate.
SEPTEMBER – OCTOBER 2025
REIMAGINING INANNA’S DESCENT: Trust Your Intuition, Reclaim Your Truth, and Release Perfectionism.
DECEMBER 20TH
Winter Solstice 2024: Somatic and Creative Contemplation.
Mythic Life’s Annual Complimentary Online Event and Gathering.
IN 2025!
JUNE 20-22, 2025 – Meet us at Endicott College, Beverly, MA
Mythic Life Presenting at the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association’s 16th International Conference.
Mythic Life’s Annual Complimentary Online Event & Gathering
Winter Solstice 2024:
Somatic and Creative Contemplation
In gratitude and appreciation for your participation and interest in Mythic Life’s classes, workshop series, lectures, and events in 2024 I am inviting YOU to our Annual Winter Solstice Somatic and Creative Contemplation online session.
Our theme is :
Honoring the LIGHT in our BEING through somatic meditation and expressive arts
In this event we will embody the nascent light of the solstice. I will facilitate somatic movement practice to tune into the world of sensation and contemplate the inner landscape of your living body. We will enter into the creative and expressive arts exploration that will allow us to move, dance, create images, & poetic responses that we can then share with each other.
This event will be online on Friday December 20th
1pm – 2:30pm PT | 2pm – 3:30pm MT | 4pm – 5:30pm ET
Find your local time here: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
Please register here to obtain the Zoom link. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the event.
online woskhop series
Embodying Your Heart’s Wisdom in Art and Life
Through Somatic Movement, Expressive Arts and Archetypes
From a physiological perspective the human heart is an organ central to the circulatory system. From an archetypal perspective the human heart is an organ central to our imagination, intellect, and aesthetic sensitivity.
The intention for this 4-week series is to explore, express, embody, and bridge into your life, the wisdom of your own heart. Participants will enter the somatic, imaginal, and relational realms of their heart and will learn that there is a connective tissue, a fluid rich membrane, between those realms. At the end of the series participants will gain embodied and creative resources to cultivate a practice of connecting with the heart, speaking from the heart, listening to the heart and, most importantly, trusting the heart’s wisdom in their day-to-day lives and relationships.
Embodying your heart’s wisdom will support you in:
- Finding clarity in your decision-making.
- Being present, centered, and grounded when challenges arise (self-regulation).
- Harnessing the courage to create and give shape to your truth.
- Orienting your efforts toward your goals and dreams.
- Living in integrity and through your ethic of love.
No previous art experience is necessary.
What prior participants have said:
Marialuisa’s work has provided rich nourishment for my mind, body and soul in it’s unique blend of theory, practice and spiritual depth. She offered scientific knowledge as a scaffold through which to enter somatic experience, which in turn acted as a gateway into a deeper connection with myself and the mysteries beyond. Her gentle focused presence, attentive listening and heartfelt aesthetic responses created a safe and trusting space despite the limitations of an online connection. Katy Menell
DATES:
4 Thursdays | January 9, 16, 23, 30
Time*:
10am – 12pm PT
11am – 1pm MT
1pm – 3pm EDT
*Please check your local time here: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
Registration: $160 USD value.
EATING THE POMEGRANATE SEEDS
Reimagining Demeter, Persephone, & Hekate
Through Somatic Movement, Expressive Arts and Archetypes
Dates:
Seven Thursdays
February 13, 20, 27
March 6, 13**, 20**, 27**
Time:
10am – 12pm PT
11am – 1pm MT
12pm – 2pm CT
1pm – 3pm ET
**In the continental USA, please note that Daylight Saving Time is on March 9, affecting the last three sessions for some participants. Please check your local time here: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
Registration:
$295 (payment plans available)
Early bird: $225 if registered by January 12th
*Space limited to 12 participants for a more individual attention*
Registration can be done:
Venmo: @Maria-DiazdeLeon-2
PayPal: mythiclifecenter@gmail.com – Please add a 3% fee for Paypal payments.
Check: Please contact me for details.
Payment Plans Available upon request.
Refund Policy:
- 90% refund up to 21 days to the start of the series (no full refund).
- No refund after the series begins, credit can be transferred for a different workshop offered through Mythic Life within a year.
Can’t make it but want to contribute to sponsor a participant? Contact me.
Myths are timeless and so is our soul.
This seven-week journey will provide an opportunity to explore, express and reflect on life cycles and transitions of the sacred feminine by re-imagining the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. As the season changes from winter into spring in the Northern Hemisphere, this ancient story mirrors and helps us reconnect with the cycles in a woman’s life: menarche, fertile years, perimenopause, menopause, and post menopause with a greater awareness.
By re-imagining these ancient goddesses, we mobilize internal energies that have become stagnant, and allow them to inform ways in which we can restore, assert, and transform our life’s narrative: past, current, and future. As a result, we reclaim that which is precious and meaningful in us and embody the courage to offer it to others.
My main intention is to support you in embodying, exploring, expressing, and bridging into your life the archetypal resonances you experience from the mythic story of Demeter, Persephone & Hecate:
- Demeter will shed light into a deep lesson from grief: mothering that begins with oneself.
- Persephone will teach us how to be in the unknown, embrace our fears and anxiety, ingest the seeds of our inner knowledge and navigate through the cycles in our body and life.
- Hecate will guide us in the art of inquiry and the value of articulating questions that open us up to possibilities; especially when we feel stuck, uninspired or at a crossroads in life.
We will engage in creative inquiry, endocrine/imaginal contemplations, somatic movement, storytelling, embodied archetypes, guided imagery, and art-making utilizing the methodology of the Tamalpa Life/Art Process and The School of BodyMindMovement. The series will culminate in a circle of harvesting our collective wisdom and compassionate witnessing.
All levels of experience with the arts are welcome.
Facilitator:
Marialuisa Diaz de Leon, MA, REAT, MSME/T.
Therapist, movement specialist, mythologist, educator, researcher, and performer born in Guadalajara, Mexico. Marialuisa’s professional experience in somatic movement, dance, and psychology spans over twenty-five years and includes work in education, private practice, and community intervention. Marialuisa is the creator of Mythic Life: Embodying Wisdom, Beauty and Courage (mythiclife.net) where she brings her expertise on facilitating meaningful and transformational experiences to women from all over the globe. She has developed a mythosomatic theoretical framework; a forward thinking integration of myth, arts, somatic movement and archetypal psychology which informs her philosophy of practice.
Marialuisa is an adjunct faculty at Southwestern College and Associate Teacher at Tamalpa Institute. She served as Program Director and core faculty at Tamalpa Institute in California and continues to supervise advanced students’ fieldwork projects. Marialuisa is a registered Master Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator from ISMETA. She gained organizational embodied leadership experience while serving nine years on the ISMETA Board of Directors, the last three as Board President. She is also a registered Expressive Arts Therapist through the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA).
“Marialuisa holds you tenderly and empathically as you explore the physical, emotional and spiritual depths of your heart. She leaves you with a lasting legacy.” Kate Craik
“Her gentle focused presence, attentive listening and heartfelt aesthetic responses created a safe and trusting space despite the limitations of an online connection. I would highly recommend Marialuisa’s work for anyone looking to deepen and enliven their connection to themselves, their bodies and life itself.”
Katy Menell
ALTARES
A Ritual of Remembrance through Embodied Creativity
The Mexican tradition of creating altars for Dia de Muertos on November 1 and 2 is rooted in prehispanic indigenous traditions that survived the conquista. According to this ancient tradition, the veil that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead thins out at this time each year allowing the spirits to leave Mictlán (the otherworld) and join their living family and friends. The ofrendas placed in personalized altars such as the ‘day of the dead bread’ and the smell of the marigold flowers used to decorate them help orient spirits so they can find their families and loved ones who are waiting for them to celebrate and remember the loving memories that connect them.
Join in to honor, appreciate, and celebrate the life of a loved one who has passed: a person, a pet or even someone you never met but you want to show appreciation and gratitude. We will engage in creating Life/Art offerings for our loved ones through somatic movement, gesture and dance, drawings, and calaveritas (or short poems) inspired by the imprint they have left in us as well as by the qualities and traits for which we will always remember them.
Please note: In our time together, we hold a ritual of remembrance inspired by the imagery, symbolism and metaphor used in the Mexican altares. While this experience may creatively support the grieving process, the focus is not intended to be on the more painful aspects of the loss and grief experience itself. Rather, in the Mexican spirit, our collective focus will be on honoring, remembering, and celebrating the life of those we love who have crossed over to another dimension. If you have any questions about this, please contact Marialuisa at mythiclifecenter@gmail.com before signing up.
RESOURCING YOUR MYTHIC JOURNEY
Embodied explorations of your Hero/Heroine’s Journey through the Tamalpa Life/Art Process.
Your body carries the archetypal energy of the different mythical motifs and stages of your journey toward wholeness and meaning. In this workshop series you will identify and explore those archetypes that support and inform the mythic dimension of your current stage in life and:
Identify what is most alive in you.
Open up and align with the guidance, intuition, and wisdom of your body.
Harness the courage that empowers you to face and navigate life challenges.
Tend to your innermost brilliance.
In this 4-week journey participants will be guided to identify their own individual resonances with and connections to the Joseph Cambpell’s Hero’s Journey and Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey utilizing the methodology of the Tamalpa Life/Art Process: somatic movement, movement metaphors, body part mythology, dance explorations, guided imagery, expressive arts, and Life/Art dialogues.
No previous art experience is necessary.
DEEP FEMININE CIRCLES
A safe space to share the ways you embody the archetypal energies of the feminine in your mythic journeys and life cycles.
The circle will have an opening and a short guided somatic movement practice with a central theme or question for the day. Following that, the space will be open for speaking and listening from the heart. Aesthetic interventions and responses are offered from witnesses. As we close the circle we harvest the learnings, insights, questions that each participant has identified.
Space limited to 12 participants per session. Application required.
Fourth Friday of the month.
Time: 12pm ET – 2pm ET – Other time zones please look here.
Stillness is where creativity and solutions are found.
– Meister Eckhart
Rondas lunares de mujeres creativas
Cultivando y fortaleciendo la sabiduría femenina a través del movimiento somático, la mitología, arquetipos y las artes expresivas.
En estas rondas mensuales cultivamos un círculo íntimo, seguro y poderoso de co-creación para situarnos en el momento en que estamos viviendo a nivel personal e identificar retos, oportunidades y recursos para seguir avanzando en nuestro caminar.
Cada Ronda se abre con una práctica guiada de movimiento somático alineada con la fase lunar de ese día y que nos introduce al tema central de la sesión. El espacio se abre para hablar y escuchar profundamente con y desde el corazón. Atestiguamiento compasivo, acuerpado y libre de crítica nos permite ofrecer un reflejo y sostener la sabiduría que nace en cada una.
Dirigido a toda mujer hispanohablante que tenga experiencia en escucha profunda y respetuosa.
Cupo limitado a 12 participantes para lograr una mayor conexión y atención a los procesos personales.
Hora:
7pm – 9pm CDMX – Colombia
5pm – 7pm California
Busca tu hora local aquí: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience we just need help in learning how not to run away.
– Pema Chödron
CARRYING TRUST
AFTER MISCARRIAGE
AN 8-WEEK SOMATIC AND EXPRESSIVE ARTS HEALING PATH FOR WOMEN
Two days after having had a miscarriage I barely felt my pelvic area. I was teaching my weekly Somatic Dance class and when I tried to do some movements like rolling the hips, I could not do them. It was as if my uterus, bladder, cervix were all hardened making a fist. I was scared, disappointed, angry, and sad. I decided to let my body lead the way of my next steps, I needed to come to terms that I was pregnant and then I wasn’t. It sounds simple, but it was complex: something in me was alive and then something in me was dead.
For many women, miscarriage is a wounding experience of loss for which they need adequate support to heal. Healing from miscarriage entails a grieving process often accompanied with symptoms of PTSD, including numbness, hypersensitivity, or pain often localized in the pelvic area. Health care professionals and family members usually downplay the effects that miscarriage has on women and overlook the emotional pain. Women are left to their own to deal with a sense of mistrust, guilt, and shame over their body. How does somatic movement and expressive arts support women in healing after having a miscarriage and regain trust and vitality in their body?
Pelvis is associated with the cycles of birth/death/rebirth. With miscarriage, the pelvis goes from being a fertile womb to a cold tomb. A frozen pelvis is experienced as lack of sensitivity, mobility, hypersensitivity, or pain. I desinged this 8-week program to support women in completing and integrating the grieving experience of miscarriage and reclaim trust and joy in their body.
Throughout the program I will hold space for you, support you, guide you and offer you effective tools so you can:
- Encounter and express your grief, and the variety of feelings that you are experiencing.
- Identify parts of your body that have gone numb or are hypersensitive, and recover sensation and mobility.
- Guide you safely into creative ways to express your story.
- Create your own healing ritual(s).
Pre-requisite:
Please schedule a 20min conversation to determine if this program is right for you.
Contact me for more information, availability and fees: mythiclifecenter@gmail.com
SOMA’S MYTHIC PATHWAYS SERIES
Pelvic Wisdom Series: Embodying the Cycles of Life and Death
How are ancient myths rooted in particular body experiences? How does somatic movement help us become aware of our shared humanity? And how can myth be used in somatic movement practices as a tool to better develop this awareness?
Ancient myths sprang from the body experience. Myth and somatic movement are two ends of a spectrum and metaphors are the vehicle to travel between the two. Both, somatic movement and myth are modalities of the imagination –for image is not just visual but it is also a felt sensation. From an archetypal psychology perspective, somatic movement is a myth making and soul tending practice. Somatic and expressive movement takes us across into the phenomenology of myth and leads us to an embodied understanding of our life as a unique and living expression of a larger myth.
