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; preceded by many years of experiential curriculum design and teaching in healthcare systems around the US and Canada; as well as eight years facilitating an experiential astrology group in Santa Fe (and later online in the pandemic) and the past five years conducting many astrology workshops and retreats 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.
I felt like I was on pilgrimage with fellow travelers.
— Eliza B.
What I love about how you teach is the electric connections that occur. I find that everything gets sparkly and I sense more readily how the signs are woven into or reflected onto other disciplines that I work with.
— Margaux Crump
I feel that more than any other work I have done, this course opened the potential to learn beyond the cognitive comprehension of the signs.
— Angela Billings
I found the course is setup with deep intelligence to help one walk through the corridors of one's own psyche and arrive at answers/conclusions/reconciliation/freedom from the areas affected by Sign and house. This method has helped me enormously to go places I would not have otherwise, simply because so much time and patience is required to loosen up the stuck places and when you get there, trust is essential to be vulnerable and then the process will reveal a nugget of gold which will be useful in your life.
— Zeb Javed
I was SO moved by the work we did, I still can feel it in my body and soul. I remain in touch with the consciousness of other dimensions, new languages and other ways of existing.
— Sonia
I always feel like I enter a different psychological space in classes and the workshop, and sometimes I get something out of it, but also there's value in just being in it, in a dream, letting images come to me, letting words and anecdotes come to me while just letting myself be.
— Aaron
I feel that it has given me tools to engage with astrology beyond the technical, prescriptive ways that I was taught. It has helped me to reimagine the dramas and my life and my relations as symbolic and timeless, but with specificity and dynamism.
— Miatta
I’m much more aware of my surroundings and the content of my dreams. I’m more tuned-in, ’to seeing, and to recognizing,’ opportunities to make relevant connections between my evolving self and the numerous touchstones, markers, and symbols that the Universe continually places in my path.
— John Salvi
You don't just lecture, you entice us to act out the charts; it all activates our unconscious and knowledge together. This enables us to embody astrology, have a better understanding and gives unique insight.
— Jane Puryear
Hearing other people in class speak about their experiences, and sharing my own experience, is where I probably learn the most and have the most fun. The artwork also feels like an important piece, and it would feel like something was missing without it.
— Emily Samet
I really appreciated and enjoyed the art making prompts that were given throughout the course, they helped to land the material in a way that works with my brain & were a delight to focus on/think about in between sessions.
— Dominique Pozo
It has been really nourishing to hear other travellers' perspectives, vulnerabilities and experiences.
— Nicolette Dixon