This year, we’ll explore our roots
Examining where we come from – our family history and genealogy – can put us in touch with the emotional resonance and hidden traumas of our ancestral history, opening up new possibilities for our future.
It’s often said that we are a country of immigrants, but what does that really mean? Recent headlines have brought the issue of immigration to the fore, but what is the spiritual perspective of immigration?
We'll explore the transgenerational transmissions in our ancestral stream that create individual symptoms of stress and trauma. Through acknowledging and integrating our ancestral heritage, we can begin to heal the painful divisions that often separate us. These are collective issues to address within the wider framework of community - join us in calling forth a new level of relatedness and responsibility.
Through relation, presence, and increased awareness, we’ll include mind, body, and emotions in guided collective healing processes that are only possible when working in a group. Mystical principles, spiritual teachings, meditation, music, and movement are offered to help heal collective trauma from the past and meet the creative challenges of the future.
Discover how our roots affect our ability to participate and fully engage the questions of our time.
“Knowing where you’re coming from has an effect on where your life is going. Looking into the past is like opening your way forward.”
– Thomas Hübl
Festival Schedule
SUNDAY
4:00pm - 7:00pm
Check In (Rooms available after 5:00 p.m.)
6:00pm
Program starts with dinner
8:00pm - 10:00pm
Festival Opening with Thomas Hübl
MONDAY
6:00am - 7:00am
Body Mind Awakening, Yoga, Tai Chi
7:00am - 8:00am
Meditation
8:00am - 8:45am
Commuter check-in (if not checked-in the previous evening)
8:00am - 8:45am
Breakfast
9:30am - 1:00pm
Thomas Hübl in conversation with …
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Lunch
2:30pm - 4:30pm
4:45pm - 6:00pm
6:00pm - 7:15pm
Dinner
8:00pm - 11:00pm
TUESDAY
6:00am - 7:00am
Body Mind Awakening, Yoga, Tai Chi
7:00am - 8:00am
Meditation
8:00am - 8:45am
Breakfast
9:30am - 1:00pm
Thomas Hübl in conversation with …
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Lunch
2:30pm - 4:30pm
4:45pm - 6:00pm
6:00pm - 7:15pm
Dinner
8:00pm - 11:00pm
WEDNESDAY
6:00am - 7:00am
Body Mind Awakening, Yoga, Tai Chi
7:00am - 8:00am
Meditation
8:00am - 8:45am
Breakfast
9:30am - 1:00pm
Thomas Hübl in conversation with …
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Lunch
2:30pm - 4:30pm
4:45pm - 6:00pm
6:00pm - 7:15pm
Dinner
8:00pm - 11:00pm
THURSDAY
6:00am - 7:00am
Body Mind Awakening, Yoga, Tai Chi
7:00am - 8:00am
Meditation
8:00am - 8:45am
Breakfast
9:30am - 1:00pm
Thomas Hübl in conversation with …
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Lunch
2:30pm - 4:30pm
4:45pm - 6:00pm
6:00pm - 7:15pm
Dinner
8:00pm - 11:00pm
FRIDAY
6:00am - 7:00am
Body Mind Awakening, Yoga, Tai Chi
7:00am - 8:00am
Meditation
8:00am - 8:45am
Breakfast
9:30am - 1:00pm
Closing Ceremony
Noon - 1:00pm
Check Out
Festival Offerings
The Celebrate Life Festival 2020 program is rich and diverse. Whether you come alone, as a couple, or with your family – you will quickly experience yourself as a part of a living, creative community. You will be inspired by a variety of teachers and enter into lively exchanges with many different people.
The program gives you opportunities to develop entirely new perspectives and experience expanded horizons. You are invited to learn more about your individual shadow, to transform limiting patterns, and become an active part of a new “Culture of We.” The multifaceted program includes various offerings of meditation, movement, individual process work, lectures, workshops, and collective processes, as well as artistic performances and dance evenings.
Body-Mind Awakening – Movement in the morning with Gary Joplin
6:00am, Daily
The Body-Mind Awakening Training from Gary Joplin is a daily invitation to deepen the connection between the physical, mental and energetic bodies, and an opportunity to more deeply ground and then open the body, both physically and energetically. Flowing, harmonious movement sequences supported by conscious breathing patterns are combined in a playful, organic way, allowing the body to simultaneously become more deeply grounded and to expand.
This work is based primarily on the principles of Gyrokinesis®, but also utilizes wisdom from yoga, Feldenkreis, and various dance forms. It is a great preparation for the morning meditation, as it not only fine-tunes the physical body, but also brings a heightened awareness to the subtle energy body while focusing and quieting the mind. Participants will leave the class feeling more grounded and alive with a new-found lightness and sense of bodily expansion.
Tonings with Thomas Hübl
4:45pm, Daily
Throughout the Festival, Thomas will lead “toning meditation” sessions every evening at 4:45pm. Toning allows participants to drop into meditative states and gain a profound experience of space, presence, and connection. The sound fields that are created stimulate the potential for deep healing and can help us respond more authentically with love and clarity in daily life. Tonings can be very powerful experiences, especially in larger groups, and participants describe them as a sacred fields of coherence.
Toning sessions typically begin with the creation of a sound field of humming, gradually reaching a crescendo of ritual toning. Through the sound vibration and through the coherence that is built through the sounds in the group, participants can find an inner connection to the subtle higher dimension, to their own life’s experiences, or to deeper creativity, insights, and innovation.
Thomas describes toning as both an individual and collective experience. The beautiful sound-space of toning is a collective composition orchestrated with each individual’s sound. As the individual harmonizes with others in the collective space, each unique sound remains vital and powerful, supporting the collectively shared conscious space that yields mindfulness and wakefulness.
Guest Speakers
Several unique guests will contribute to the festival by offering a talk, workshop or conversation with Thomas. Participants at past festivals have enjoyed the skillful interweaving of guest speaker’s expertise and experience as it enriches the themes we are exploring together. This year’s speakers will be announced soon!
Teachings with Thomas Hübl
Daily
Thomas will guide us in an exploration of timely teachings, to deepen the themes we are exploring together at the festival. There will be various opportunities to ask live questions - your participation and interaction within this generative field is the ground for an emergence of brilliant new forms and possibilities.
Evening Performances
Spontaneous creativity, joy, and playfulness abound at the Celebrate Life Festival. Dancing late into the evenings to great DJ’s and live bands, you’ll experience the freedom of radical self-expression. Beyond entertainment, these nights of music and dancing offer you the chance to meet yourself and others in the raw beauty of authentic revelation. A profound sense of intimacy and expansiveness are the sacred gifts of these celebratory spaces.
WE Labs
Daily meetings
WE Labs are groups with a maximum of eight festival participants who come together at the beginning of the Festival and meet daily throughout the week. You are invited to share what has happened during the day, what moves you, what needs to be processed, what you would like to have witnessed. The WE Lab is a place where you can move at your own speed with whatever wants to be deepened or developed in you. You will be assigned to your We Lab groups in the Main Hall at the beginning of the Festival and will have support from the WE Lab team as needed.
The WE Lab is a generator of a new We for the entire Festival. Apart from personal questions and individual development, WE Lab explorations include developing a perception of the field that is alive between the individuals, as well as other aspects of shared consciousness. Insights, experiences, and questions from the groups flow back into the festival field and serve as new impulses for exploration. The We-Space is not a physical space outside of us, but an interior dimension of consciousness and awareness. Access to the We depends on the capacity to hold a healthy felt awareness of oneself while also being aware of the other. The designation “WE Lab” goes beyond a simple group of friends sharing experiences. It is the energetic backbone for the festival field, the elementary basis for the entire festival organism.
Transparent Communication Practice opportunities throughout the Festival
Everyone communicates, but few of us understand how to fully open ourselves to the potential of the relational field and bring higher levels of awareness into even the briefest interpersonal exchanges. It’s so easy to postpone practice. To think, “I’ll practice later. I’ll have more time later. I’ll feel better later.” The contemplative arts teach us that there is no postponing of experience, there is only arriving in the present moment. This is transformational. When we know that every moment counts, that our awakening literally happens now, we become constantly surrounded by opportunities for profound growth.
Thomas Hübl brings these enduring principles to the study and practice of Transparent Communication, transforming small moments with others into expressions of higher purpose and opportunities for innovation. Transparent Communication is the art of communication from the mystic’s perspective, a contemplative approach where we learn how to communicate with deep authenticity and broaden our ability to empathically attune to others.
This dramatically increases our skillfulness in relationship, and allows us to introduce more openness, clarity, and presence into everyday interactions – turning otherwise ordinary communication into an instance of spiritual practice.
The Cave Meditation
24 Hour Meditation
Shared meditation is an essential part of the Celebrate Life Festival. The Cave Meditation is a collective spiritual practice available 24 hours a day from the opening of the Festival until the closing. This year’s Cave will take place in the Sanctuary at Omega; perched on a hill and surrounded by trees, the Sanctuary is the spiritual heart of Omega’s campus.
You can access the Sanctuary by stepping through the archway next to the Juniper classroom and taking the stone stairway. Along the way, you’ll pass the Yearning Pond, curving stone walls, ever-changing cairns, and more. The space will be cared for by the Festival’s Cave Team, whose intention is for people to intuitively come together to meditate, so that at least one person is always holding the space – also throughout the night.
A continuous field of mindfulness gives rise to a powerful shared space of peace, silence and inner reflection. As the active mind withdraws, transpersonal insights deepen, allowing us to embrace more and more of reality within an alert inner space. The spaciousness and depth of the Cave practice reflects throughout the space of the Festival.
You are invited to participate regularly to hold this collective meditative space.
Celebrate Life Family Program
Children of all ages are welcome at the Festival! The Celebrate Life Family Team is happy to host a specially prepared space for children and families at the Festival.
In our Discovery Space, we will host simple resourcing play areas with creative materials for children of different ages. This is an open space to explore, enjoy, be present with yourself and your child, and listen. We invite those of you who are parents, grandparents and caregivers to spend time with your children in this space during the Festival. Connect, relax, witness your child.
Our Celebrate Life Family Team will also provide fun, contemplative and creative experiences for families to feel connected in presence and play, such as Family Yoga and Parenting Discovery Circles.
Assistants Team
available as needed upon request
The Assistants team has been an integral part of the festival for many years. If you require individual support in deep personal processes, there is skilled support and guidance available. All assistants have been engaged with Thomas Hübl’s work for an extensive period of time. They are also clinically or scientifically trained in psychotherapy or body therapy or have received intensive education and training in how to support process work at seminars and events. An assistant trainee may be present during individual sessions. Assistants are also available for other issues that arise, such as dealing with couple dynamics or one’s spiritual practice.