Half Day Workshop

Jade Scarlett

Some things are just too big, too tangled, or too tender for words—and that’s exactly where art journaling comes in. It’s a gentle, creative practice that lets you process what you’re feeling without needing to explain, justify, or even fully understand it yet. The page doesn’t ask questions. It just listens.

In this workshop, we’ll trade the pen for watercolors, markers, colored pencils, fineliners, crayons, or whatever art supply you prefer, using color, texture, and mark-making as another language for the things sitting quietly inside us. The only requirement will just be a willingness to be honest on the page, one messy, imperfect layer at a time.

You’ll learn simple techniques for turning a feeling, a memory, or a chaotic day into a visual journal entry—layering color to hold a mood, using line and texture to give shape to emotion, and building pages that aren’t about “good art,” but about true expression. It’s part creative practice, part quiet self-care, and part permission slip to feel what you feel.

Bring your emotions, whatever state they’re in, and some art supplies. We’ll bring instructions for a few easy and effective techniques and plenty of gentle guidance. No experience needed—just a curious heart and hands willing to make a beautiful mess.

“Creating art is a form of meditation and spiritual dialogue. Within the subconscious, there is a rich world of images; a wealth of connections and memories, built layer upon layer, much like my art works. As a spiritual and reflective person, I am compelled to search through these images for meaning and significance. As an artist, I seek to refine this information and create personal work with substance and beauty, work that translates the rich landscape of my dreams, the imagery of my inner worlds, and the breathtaking nature around me.” —Jade Scarlet

Note: You are welcome to bring whatever art supplies you have or prefer to use for this workshop. We are providing the link below to art supply resources as a guide to what art supplies would work best for the techniques that Jade will be covering in the workshop. No particular art supplies are required of participants.

Resources for art supplies

Jade Scarlett calls herself a “Creativity Possibilitarian,” which is a made-up term that perfectly describes what her life is all about―making living a creative life possible for everyone. She has been an organizer and promoter of classes for major retailers, museums, and public institutions — including Michael’s, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library. She is skilled at designing curricula and projects that build confidence in beginners while keeping experienced students engaged. Jade is also known for an upbeat, patient teaching style, strong organization, and ease at adapting to new audiences and venues. jadescarlett.com

Mary Greer

This afternoon’s workshop will be led by the renowned tarot master Mary Greer, whose book Tarot for Yourself changed the field of tarot reading for a generation. In this workshop, Mary Greer will focus on how to raise your powers of clarity as a reader for yourself or others. Every tarot reading, whether for a client or for yourself, moves through recognizable stages — but most readers never learn to name or strengthen them individually. This workshop unpacks a six-step process that turns reading from something that feels mysterious or hit-or-miss into a skill you can consciously develop.

We’ll work through each stage: the initial gut reaction or sentient feeling a card evokes before thought intervenes; distilling the situation into a short headline; noting keywords, numbers, suits, symbols, colors, and positional meaning; weaving these into a story specific to the querent and their actual issue; the crucial skill of catching where your own bias or projection ends and the querent’s material begins; and finally choosing between offering prediction-advice or posing a leading therapeutic question that empowers the querent to find their own answer.

Through guided exercises, you’ll practice isolating each step so you can feel where your reading currently gets rushed, foggy, or hijacked by your own opinions. And you’ll learn techniques for staying grounded and open as you read. This structure works whether you’re reading professionally for others or keeping a personal practice for self-reflection; the steps are the same. You’ll leave with a concrete, repeatable framework, tools for separating intuition from bias, and greater confidence in your own reading voice. 

Note: This workshop is suitable for beginners who want a clear foundation and experienced readers looking to refine and deepen an intuitive process they may never have consciously broken down before.

Note:  A recording of this online workshop will be available for 1 month for students who register for this workshop.

Mary K. Greer is a renowned tarot expert with over 40 years of experience, known for creating inspired teaching methods. The author of 11 books on tarot and magic, her 1984 book Tarot for Yourself changed the field of tarot reading. It was the first to offer in-depth techniques for reading tarot as a practice of personal inquiry, not by memorizing someone else’s meanings, but by discovering your own relationship with each card. The approach was so influential that it reshaped how an entire generation learned to read. Her work has always been focused on personal insight and creativity in her tarot practice. marykgreer.com

A Positive Psychology Approach

Stephen G. Post, PhD, and Joanna Kaczorowska, PhD

“What if the love that changes lives isn’t just a feeling, but a force — a force that 80% of adult Americans report having directly experienced, yet rarely have language for?” 

Discovering how to tap into how the spiritual and transformative power of pure unlimited love can positively impact your well-being, especially in times of chaos, greed, hostility and violence. Drawing on over 40 years of scientific and spiritual research and his new book, Pure Unlimited Love: Science, Spirit and the Seven Paths to Inner Peace, Dr. Stephen G. Post in this workshop explores practical pathways to cultivate inner peace, strengthen human connection, and foster ethical, compassionate care in daily life not just through human love, but with the influence of a Higher Love.

In this workshop, you’ll learn to:

• Give and Glow — Experience the unexpected benefits of kind giving on your well-being.
• Heal with Kindness — Harness the power of compassionate interactions to reduce stress and enhance healing for yourself and others.
• Follow Your Calling — Identify and pursue your unique talents to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.
• Raise Kind Children — Apply science-backed strategies to nurture empathy, resilience, and flourishing in young people.
• Know the One Mind — Connect inwardly to cultivate awareness, oneness, and lasting inner peace through knowing the “one mind” (all individuals are interconnected) as the ultimate reality.
• Cherish Nature — Reconnect with the natural world to restore awe, wonder, and balance.
• Honor the Spirit of Freedom — Recognize that the Golden Rule is the basis of all successful individual and societal freedom, as it is founded in Pure Unlimited Love and gives rise to inner peace and cultural renewal.

The focus of the workshop will be as follows:

• The Wheel of Love — A practical framework mapping love’s expressions across family, schools, and workplaces, including psychiatrist M. Scott Peck’s concept of care-frontation — and why it may succeed where confrontation fails.
• A leadership philosophy in action — How these principles have shaped compassionate care initiatives at Stony Brook’s Renaissance School of Medicine since 2008.
• Human love vs. Pure Unlimited Love — Distinguishing everyday love (real, but often unstable and myopic) from something researchers describe as ineffable, transformative, and startlingly common.
• Eight doorways to the ineffable — synchronicity, premonition, unbidden creativity, meditation, vision, flow, déjà vu, and deep prayer — illustrated through striking historical accounts, including a mathematical genius’ visions at the feet of a goddess and an artist’s dream of a descending angel.
• Community dialogue — Participants are invited to share their own encounters with this kind of love.
• Daily practice — Morning meditation as a way to set intention, and an evening practice for becoming soul conscious before sleep.
• Guided meditation — The workshop closes with a 30-minute meditation along the seven paths to Inner Peace, with space for participants to propose an eighth path.

Should we establish inner peace instead of fleeting happiness? The reframing of these terms sits at the heart of the workshop — an invitation to consider love not as an emotion to chase, but as a state of being to return to, again and again.

Seven Paths to Inner Peace

The workshop will open as participants are invited to share brief personal narratives about where these paths to love have brought benefit to them or their loved ones — grounding the session in lived experiences from the very start. Setting the tone, the internationally acclaimed violinist Joanna Kaczorowska, a Stony Brook colleague and veteran of the renowned Emerson String Quartet, performs live — offering a moment of musical meditation before the group turns to deeper reflection. This live performance will bring in an atmosphere of a presence into the room before a word of theory is spoken. From there, the workshop explores a question inspired by Sir John Templeton’s final challenge to Dr. Post: Is Pure Unlimited Love the ultimate reality underlying human experience?

Dr. Post will lead participants through a meditation on the difference between human love — with its natural fluctuation, myopia, and instability — and Pure Unlimited Love, a more perfect, ineffable form. Drawing on Dr. Post’s Wheel of Love, he will explore how love expresses itself practically in daily life: in families, schools, and workplaces, and as the foundation of the core virtues of positive psychology. Along the way, participants will examine the idea of “carefrontation” — a term coined by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, and consider why a psychiatrist might feel we need a gentler alternative to confrontation.

The conversation will turn to definitions about human love, most simply, when another person’s security and well-being feels as real to you as your own. Pure Unlimited Love is harder to define — ineffable, yet remarkably common. A national survey research, featured in The Heart of Religion, suggests a striking majority of American adults have experienced “love” at least once, with a smaller but significant portion experiencing it regularly or even daily — often through synchronicity, premonition, unexpected creativity, meditation, visions, flow states, déjà vu, or deep prayer. Participants will be invited into open dialogue to share their own brushes with their experiences with love , or those of people they know.

The workshop will also explore contemplative practice: the special value of early-morning meditations a way to set intention and connect with the Supreme Being, and the practice of envisioning the people you’ll meet each day and asking what expression of love they might most need. Evening practice will also be explored — how to become soul conscious; even after a long, materially demanding day, using simple grounding phrases and deep breath to find inner peace.

The workshop closes with a guided half-hour meditation along the seven paths to inner peace, with an open invitation for participants to reflect on whether an eighth path belongs on the wheel.

Whether you’re a leader, healer, parent, or seeker of personal growth, this session will equip you with actionable practices to transform your life and your community. 

Stephen G. Post, PhD has spent four decades researching what love actually does to us — physically, psychologically, and socially. He is Founding Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, and President of the Institute for Research on Pure Unlimited Love. A bestselling author on the science of love, altruism, and human flourishing, his books include Why Good Things Happen to Good People (translated into several languages) and Pure Unlimited Love, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama. stephengpost.com

Joanna Kaczorowska, PhD is a Polish-born, internationally acclaimed violinist and Director of Undergraduate Performance at Stony Brook University Department of Music. She has performed with Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and the New World Symphony at venues including Carnegie Hall and Suntory Hall, and is founder and Artistic Director of New York Chamber Musicians. A prizewinner at the 2009 Liszt-Garrison International Piano Competition, she was also awarded the Grand Prize to perform at the 2010 Richard Wagner Festspiele in Bayreuth. joannakaczorowska.com

Maria A. Basile, MD, MBA is a physician, educator, poet, and dedicated advocate for compassionate, human-centered healthcare. As Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University and Associate Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics, she helps shape the next generation of physicians through teaching, mentorship, and leadership. She is an award-winning poet and published author whose work explores the human side of medicine and the connections that define healthcare.

William J. Kaplanidis L.Ac., MS, MA

“Your emotions — sadness, anger, fear, anxiety, worry and joy — are all intimately involved in your early process of learning how to survive and be in this world.” — William Kaplanidis

In Chinese medicine, emotions are one of the three major causes of disease when they are in excess or unresolved over time. Each emotion affects the heart but also has an affinity with a specific organ system. For example, sadness and unresolved grief tends to affect the lungs. Fear and anxiety can cause an ongoing loop of adrenal exhaustion and insomnia. Overthinking and worry are linked to different digestion disorders. Migraines, digestive issues, menstrual problems vision issues, and substance abuse are just a few that can often be traced back to unexpressed anger and resentment that was never released or healed.

This phenomena is can be seen in one of by William Kaplanidis’ patients who had had back pain for 20 years. The patient had no history of physical trauma or any abnormal tests. After many inquiries, the person was found to be holding anger towards a teacher who put him down when he was 11 years old. In Chinese medicine, anger often connects with the liver. Various pain symptoms are caused by the liver energy getting stuck. Another example was a patient with chronic asthma which had started when he was a child around 8 years old.  Six months prior,  he had lost his parents to a car accident. Now in his late 30s, he continues to carry the grief through the asthma located in the lung area. 

Both of these two patients had their conditions resolved.

Other issues and cases that have been addressed through treatment with the methods of Chinese medicine include:

• 20 years of migraines and sciatic pain, triggered from resentment.
• a 68-year old with fluid in their lungs from emotions that got triggered from a fight between her husband and son and which was rooted in an insult from a doctor when she was 11. 
• women who were not getting their period, which was rooted in past sexual abuse and/or eating disorders.
• bloating connected to fear of public speaking.  
• constipation due to the fear of letting go. 
• getting pregnant after resolving guilt of an abortion from over a decade earlier. 
• ending chemotherapy after a second bout of breast cancer,
• resolving a brain tumor by a regular Qigong practice on the beach. 

In this workshop we will explore an East-West perspective on how the emotions relate to the body, mind, spirit and the environment. You will become more aware of how emotions affect you and begin to recognize the patterns. 

You will learn practical ways to release, channel and transform your emotions to better serve you and help you move toward better overall health and well-being. These techniques will include acupressure, healing sounds, Qigong, T’ai Chi, meditation, changing the story, the empty chair and tapping into your inner power. 

Come and start to release unknown patterns that have affected your health and stopped you from living a more fulfilled life.

William J. Kaplanidis, L.Ac, MS, MA, a licensed acupuncturist with 35 years of experience in several healing and martial arts, developed the Acudragon® Wellness System to rapidly and safely assist people on their path to healing and transformation. He has also had extensive training in hypnotherapy, meditation, Qigong, t’ai chi, aromatherapy and the Sandlin technique.  William J. Kaplanidis.

Using Shame as the Key to Access Our Best Self

Melissa Petro

Shame is one of the most powerful—and least examined—forces shaping our lives. It governs what we say, what we silence, and how visible we allow ourselves to become.

In this immersive writing workshop, we’ll approach shame not as something to overcome, but as something to understand, decode, and ultimately transform. Drawing from the ideas in Melissa Petro’s book Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, we’ll explore how shame operates culturally—especially in a media-saturated world where exposure and judgment are constant—and how it quietly constrains creativity, ambition, and self-expression.

Through guided writing, close reading, and shared inquiry, participants will enter their own stories with precision and curiosity. Writing becomes both method and medium: a way to surface what has been hidden, to question inherited narratives, and to reclaim authorship over one’s life.

Melissa brings a rare vantage point shaped by lived experience—navigating stigma, public scrutiny, and reinvention—and offers a framework for transforming vulnerability into insight, language, and agency.

Together we will:

• Trace  the personal and cultural contours of shame
• Identify the narratives that limit expression and possibility
• Experiment with writing that converts exposure into clarity and authority
• Practice listening and responding in a space of rigor, discretion, and trust

Note: No prior writing experience is necessary. All that’s required is a willingness to think, to feel, and to tell the truth—on the page and beyond.

Melissa Petro is a cultural journalist and author of Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, a hybrid memoir and cultural investigation into how shame shapes women’s lives. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation and New York Magazine. melissa-petro.com