The UnPrescription
Improvising Health and Happiness
An Antidote to An Algorithmic World
Beyond Holistic offers The UnPrescription as an antidote to prescriptive concepts about health, well-being and the algorithmic practices in medicine.
The UnPrescription is an introduction to various improvisational practices to cultivate an approach to medicine, health, and life that is based on the reality that everything, everybody and every moment is unique and constantly changing.
These are reflective, joyful, healing, freeing sessions for anyone in a healing profession, or associated in any way, shape, manner, or form to anyone in the healing professions. If you have ever even just consulted a healer you are welcome. We are addressing occupational burnout, fostering the creativity necessary for progress, countering cancel culture, and holding at bay the takeover by artificial intelligence.
There is a growing cultural expectation, particularly in the healing professions, to always be good and right. This is understandable, intense, and unrealistic. Our society is becoming increasingly unforgiving. It can get very stressful because nobody is always good and right. The UnPrescription offers an opportunity to be encouraged to express oneself “in draft.” It is important for every human being, including healers, to have a space in which to just be free to be, without evaluations.
You aren’t supposed to be good, right, nice, beautiful, amazing, attractive, successful, etc….
You are supposed to be free.
-jaysi
Participants will practice improvisational skills in a series of facilitated improvisation sessions exploring spontaneous writing, dancing, singing, drawing/painting, acting, playing, rhythm making, cooking, and more. You can drop in for any session or attend the whole series. Please join us and so many others from all around the world.
Next series starts April 2022 on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays at 10-11am Pacific Time:
Register to receive video portal link
Although there is no fee, we welcome your financial support to cover the $2200 cost of each series. And as always, I welcome your support for any of our efforts.
Future sessions in the series:
If you want to be informed of future series, please let me know.
I’m Keen! Keep Me in the Loop!
The UnPrescription is an antidote to prescriptive ideas about health and well-being.
There is a no one correct way to be healthy and happy. Everyone is different. Every environment is different. Every circumstance is different. Prescribing one correct way of living is impossible, and possibly inhumane. A humane society will do its best to offer equitable access to the basic needs necessary for sound health.
Creativity is often required to fulfill a self-expressed, satisfactory life. Improvising is creativity applied to whatever is present at any given moment. Improvisational skills are a practical necessity of daily living. Everything, including conversations, transportation, eating, working, and relaxing requires spontaneous responses to current circumstances.
One great source of stress is to think that our current experience is not the one we are supposed to be experiencing. When things do not go as prescribed or expected, our best recourse is the unprescribed way, improvisation.
To paraphrase clowning instructor, Jon Davison:
‘Upon close inspection, most things are improvised, our bodies, our movements, our ideas, our emotions, our words, our relationships, the universe. One aim is to transform failure into success, fear into laughter, suffering into joy. Nothing needs to change. Just take another perspective. Anyone can do it.’
Improvising one’s life makes us feel more alive, more free, more connected to the spirit of each moment, to one’s own humanity.
Improvising diminishes the suffering caused by our desire to be correct, avoid mistakes, appear good and do what we “should.”
Improvising makes life less intimidating and allows us to be less inhibited and self-absorbed, while encouraging generosity and forgiveness with oneself and others.
Improvisational skills train us to become more aware of the present moment, to notice what is available, to accept what the situation is offering, and to respond with respect and playfulness.
With improvisation we engage in a dance between awareness of what is happening, responding with respect and acceptance, and leading the present moment forward. One develops a “jazz” approach to life and health, letting go of the need for a recipe or a score. One is never more alive than when living in the improvisational mode.
Benefits:
- Intuition
- Creativity
- Empowerment
- Confidence
- Agency
- Playfulness
- Inner Guidance
- Freedom
- Expanded Limits
- Deeper Relationships
- Rich Experiences
Challenges
- Effort
- Awareness
- Focus
- Personal Responsibility
- Shifting Concepts of Control
- Personal Criteria
- Recognizing Opportunities
Facilitators:
Renée Benmeleh brings over 20 years of world music and vocal performance experience to her workshops and team building events. Renée is the founder and facilitator of Sound Nourishment, and a certified Music Together teacher who has been joyfully leading adults, children, teams, and families in facilitated musical experiences since 2001. Renée was honored to be a music facilitator at the Oakland Children’s Hospital cancer unit between 2006 – 2008, and she is currently a member of the National Organization of Arts in Health.
Nate Barton is an artist who teaches art. He works in multiple mediums from oil pastels to watercolors, pen and ink, ceramics and wood. He has more than 25 years of experience and loves teaching nearly as much as he loves making art. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and two sons. His works can be found on Instagram @etannotrab and on his wesbsite
Jayshree (Jaysi) Chander is a practicing physician by profession, a performing artist by obsession, a writer by accident, a yogini by temperament.
While she grew up playing word games with her family on long road trips, she only discovered her love for writing when poetry began “falling into her lap.” She’s been a consistent participant in Laurel Braitman’s Writing Medicine group and has led several sessions as a substitute facilitator. Many years ago Thaisa Frank exposed her to the practice of improvisational writing.
Jaysi took her first ballet class at the age of two and has been dancing ever since. She loves movement and music. She has studied kathak, tabla, kanjira, violin, bharatnatyam, contemporary, contact improvisation, tango, flamenco, and tap.
While form and discipline are her strong suits, she recognizes the pinnacle of mastery of any art or science lies in the freedom to improvise spontaneously. As such she is enthusiastic about studying improvisational acting, clowning, and cultivating her natural knack for punning.
Jeni Swerdlow is a dynamic and engaging facilitator, presenter and trainer with a passion for drumming and a mission to build connections through rhythm. She calls herself a chief rhythm activator. She is the founder of DRUMMM’s popular facilitated drum circles and interactive rhythm events which engage 10,000 participants a year at a variety of settings in the U.S. and abroad.
Jeni is a Certified Village Music Circles Global Trainer, Registered Art Therapist (ATR), REMO-Endorsed Drum Circle Facilitator, and trained HealthRHYTHMS and Rhythm2Recovery Facilitator. She is a faculty member at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and Women Drummers International, and a professional member of the Drum Circle Facilitators Guild.
Ben Yates began improvising in 1993. He has performed with various groups in the Bay Area, including The Clean Comedy Company, Pan Theater, BATS Sunday Players, ‘Trapped in a Rumor’, and his own ‘Zen Improv’. Ben began teaching improv with Under the Sun Studios in 2008 and with Magic Jester Theater in 2010. His teaching style encourages players to bring authenticity into their characters, so that everyone can learn and be affected by human truth and emotional honesty. This is built, however, on remembering that joy that is the base of improvisation. It is play, after all!
Past Events:
9 April 2022: Nate Barton facilitating Paint Your UnPrescription
11 September 2021 Jaysi facilitating Write Your UnPrescription
28 August 2021 Jaysi facilitating Write Your UnPrescription
Please Note: Doctor Chander cannot practice medicine via the internet; no matter how hard she presses on the keyboard she won't be able to feel your pulse. Doctor Chander will not dispense medical advice via email - if you have health concerns please schedule a consultation or see your doctor. For full disclaimer please see Disclaimer Page.
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