What is Experiential Astrology?
Redreaming and Reimagining the Stories We Live
An Immersive Approach to Education
The model for experiential education in these classes is based on the Latin root of the word — educare — “to bring forth that which is within.” It builds on over 14 years teaching experience at Southwestern College in Santa Fe, an experientially-grounded graduate school for counseling and art therapy whose teaching philosophy I helped to develop; as well as eight years facilitating an experiential astrology group in Santa Fe (and later online in the pandemic) and many astrology workshops around the world.
In this educational model, conventional approaches to education such as texts and didactic/lecture are seen as only one dimension of a much more comprehensive engagement of the many ways we come to learn and know. This educational approach seeks to engage the whole person: the rich tapestry of love, emotion, sensation, intuition, thoughts, desires, memory, dreams, rhythm, non-ordinary states, and our embeddedness in the web of all our relations (cultural, ancestral, animal, spiritual). This enables a deep level of comprehension and knowing beyond the heavy emphasis on left-brain, language-based approaches, restoring us to our natural experience of connection and flow with the currents of the archetypal world.
If we rely solely or primarily on intellectual-rational-empirical-language-based ways of knowing, the stories we live and share are much more likely to be narrow, enclosing, and based in notions of separation and hierarchy, lacking a living relationship with Soul — the very kind of stories that have led to such profound alienation and destruction in this world we share and love. They will be an approach to Soul (Psyche) that is devoid of Love and Life (Eros). Experiential astrology is a practice and restoration of the marriage of Psyche and Eros, the union of Heart and Soul with Stars and Stories.
Methods of experiential astrology include: story-hearing and story-telling; art-making and other imagistic approaches; hearing and making music; body movement, dance, and rhythm; astrodrama (enacting the planets and other features of the sky); exploration of dreams, memories, and altered states of consciousness; stargazing; relating with our Circle of Animals and All Our Relations (ancestors, lands, seas, skies) on earth; and sharing and relating with our fellow human beings.
Every time I take an astrology class with Jason, I'm left not only in awe but with a feeling that I’ve connected with deep mystical parts of myself. A class with Jason is not only a learning but an experience and personal journey. What I’ve learned and experienced in these classes has brought me more embodied empowerment, freed up parts of myself for more expression, and brought me greater understanding of who I am.”
— B.B., Artist and Energy Healer
Jason’s astrological seminars are great fun and a fantastic way to learn the wisdom of astrology. Psychodrama is the highlight of Jason’s seminars. Jason is a skilled, highly educated, dynamic psychodrama facilitator. Jason presents vibrant deep presentations on astrology and Western mythology and how this knowledge in integrated into current psychological methods. The psychodrama or “astrodrama” facilitates the transfer of didactic intellectual material into the body so that participants have a felt sense of astrological archetypes. Participants embody their natal and transit charts by acting out the planet archetype in group theater. The result is an experiential felt sense in the body how each planet manifests in their lives. This experiential knowledge is rare and hard to find in today’s culture. This method is a way to quickly cut through the difficult technicalities present in astrology and lead to a timely personal astrological awareness that may not be available through other methods.
— Bryan Stuppy, Psychotherapist and Astrologer
I have been taking Jason’s classes for years and they are a powerful, transformational catalyst on my path of empowerment. I experience Jason as a master astrologer, healer and teacher who brings humor, vitality, joy and a lifetime of embodied wisdom to share. I profoundly benefit from the experiential astrology as Jason holds a safe and magical space where there is the opportunity to experience a felt sense of the archetypes. Jason’s teachings support me in deepening my awareness of my own archetypes which has empowered me to make more conscious choices in my life.
— M.C., Psychotherapist