Retreats and Workshops
If you would like to have Joy speak, or lead a workshop or retreat, please contact her. Workshops or retreats can be combined and structured according to the requirements of your group. Joy also develops special workshops/retreats to meet the specific requests of your group. If you are a religious or spiritual group, she will design worship services and spiritual exercises for the event. Workshops or retreats can range from several hours to a half day to a full weekend.
A few samples of Joy’s workshops and retreats are listed below.
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Enriching Our Friendships
When we have healthy friendships, we feel supported and have confidence that our friends will be there for us in joys and sorrows, successes and failures. But significant relationships require nurturing, effort, work, and time. This workshop explores difficulties that can occur in relationships that are brought on by extreme sensitivity, unhealthy envy, unnecessary competition, insecurity, unresolved anger and aggression, inadequate boundaries, or poor communications. We learn how to cultivate qualities and skills that help us have more loving and lasting friendships, how to listen attentively, face issues openly and honestly, establish appropriate boundaries, forgive, be truthful with kindness, be flexible, and have a sense of humor.
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Putting Sabbath into Our Daily Living
Our lives are hectic, stressful, and complicated. As life rushes us along, very few of us are strong enough to stop and take the time to rest and restore ourselves. This workshop explores how we can leave behind our frantic lifestyles in our everyday living; ways to enrich our souls through daily, weekly, and monthly Sabbath practices; meditations, storytelling, spiritual journeying, music, rituals, affirmations of faith, and prayers that provide us with new energy and meaning.
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Breaking the Habit of People Pleasing
We want to be nice people, and we like making people feel happy. However, some of us may have an unhealthy need to gain the approval and praise of others. We may suffer from being people pleasers. This workshop explores the consequences and physical, emotional, and spiritual costs of being people pleasers; how to say “no” if and when it is appropriate; how to take other peoples’ real needs into consideration while honoring our own; along with practical and positive methods to deal with people pleasing
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Preparing Ourselves to Face Losses in Life
Every day we are forced to face losses out of our control due to illness, disabilities, divorce, death, moves, job loss, natural disasters, along with living in a complex and uncertain world. We may not be prepared to deal with the pain and the losses that occur in life. This workshop explores how to identify our strengths, special gifts, and potential; how we can expand our options even when faced with loss and difficult situations; practical and spiritual ways to grieve and mourn our losses; and spiritual exercises to reduce stress, develop courage with hope, and provide more meaning in our lives.
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Finding Spring in the Darkness of Winter
In the deepest winter of our souls, we may feel rigid and cold, that our lives are “frozen” and stuck. At such times, the promise of spring seems like a long way off. This workshop explores ways to identify and find tiny signs of hope that may be hiding in the midst of “winter”; how to ask for help; how to be kind and gentle to ourselves as well as others; how to set small, reachable goals for ourselves; and how to turn over what appears to be dark puzzle pieces of our lives and discover a more hopeful picture.
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Affirming Life in a Time of Fear and Uncertainty
For most of us, our lives are complicated, full of stress, and moving far too quickly. We often feel frightened and overwhelmed in this "out of control" world and yearn to have peace of mind and a more spiritual way of being in the world. This workshop will provide participants the opportunity to learn a variety of spiritual practices that are easily accessible and relevant that are calming, reduce fears and stress, and help provide new energy to every aspect of life. It includes different types of rituals, prayers, spiritual exercises, and storytelling from religious traditions.
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Facing Up to Boundary Issues
In our roles as compassionate and helping people, we often attempt to respond with kindness to the countless demands of people who are hurting or who are in pain. We may not know how to say "no" to the many requests for help that we hear every day. In this very practical workshop, we learn how to define "adaptable boundaries" and how to avoid suffering from burnout. We explore ways to protect ourselves from being overwhelmed or injured by activities and people that are harmful to us. We are introduced to spiritual exercises and prayers that will help us develop and keep compassionate boundaries.
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Spirituality, Healing, and Wholeness
Present day living is stressful, impersonal, fragmented, and violent often causing us to feel threatened and afraid. Every one of us has been wounded in some way, and most of us want to be "healed," to have peace of mind and a more "whole" way of being in the world. This workshop explores the effects of our beliefs and practices on health, healing and wholeness. Topics include what is involved in living fully and having a more restorative and peaceful life. Questions are considered such as "What is the connection between spirituality and health and healing?" and "What is the role of rituals and celebrations in spirituality, healing, and wholeness?"
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Forgiveness: Its Healing Power
Most of us are walking around with guilt and shame and the need to forgive someone who has hurt us or to forgive ourselves. We ache to forgive, to be forgiven, and to wrap ourselves in God's forgiveness. In this restoring workshop, we learn how we can begin to return to the spiritual core of our existence. We will learn about relevant spiritual exercises that can reduce stress and help us find forgiveness and reconciliation with others and with ourselves. In the process we may find new energy and meaning in our lives.
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Drawing Closer to God’s Heart
Many of us yearn to have peace of mind and a more spiritual way of being in a world that is filled with anxiety, fear, loss, instability. We ache to draw nearer to God and to wrap ourselves in God's healing love. In this healing workshop, we learn how to return to the spiritual core of our existence. We have an opportunity to experience relevant spiritual exercises, music, meditations, rituals, storytelling, and prayers that calm, reduce stress and help provide new energy and meaning in our lives. We have the opportunity to refill our tanks, to change the picture, to provide a way to find greater significance and meaning in our life. We also explore, understand, practice, and experience ways to move inward toward the heart of God.
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Living Life to the Fullest: Embracing Our Life & Our Mortality
Almost everyone wants to live life fully and die with dignity. The Dalai Lama has said that if we want to die well, we need to learn to live well. This dynamic workshop explores the realities of life, illness, death, and bereavement. We examine what is involved in a more restorative and fuller manner of living and dying and how that can take place. The wisdom from experts in the field and from other cultures and traditions are also examined. A number of reflection questions, suggested activities, and techniques that have proven useful in preparing and healing for living life fully and dying peacefully are introduced.
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The Power of Our Stories
Our world seems filled with distressing news of terrorism, war, unemployment, financial insecurity. We hear almost more than we can bear about tragedies and losses. We desperately need to "hear" stories that aid us in our search for hope and meaning. In this vibrant workshop we have the opportunity to share our story, to experience and practice a variety of spiritual exercises and rituals that will address such issues as finding our special gifts and human potential in our stories; learning to expand our horizons even under difficult situations; understanding how to face life's challenges with peace of mind and calmness of spirit; and reflecting on our story and finding new meaning in our lives.
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Loneliness: Agony or Ecstasy?
In our Western culture, many of us have an enormous fear of being alone or of being lonely. Yet more and more of us are alone due to divorce, death of partners, single parenthood, even a conscious choice to remain single. This workshop addresses such issues as: finding special gifts and lessons in solitude; learning how to deal with being alone; learning to face ourselves and even to expand our horizons when alone; finding peace of mind, calmness of spirit, gentleness of heart and joy in our solitude; learning how to reach our authentic and highest human potential; understanding how to face life's challenges; reflecting on life and finding meaning and clarity in our lives; and reclaiming parts of our own undiscovered selves.
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Spiritual Passages: Growing in Grace
We live in a society that fears the aging process and rarely values the wisdom of its elders. In this workshop, we examine significant moments and events of each phase of life, the people who guided and influenced us during each period, and what each phase contributed to the continuum of our lives. We look at spiritual exercises that help us harvest the experiences of our life at all ages. We also work on discovering future directions for growth, forgiveness, understanding, and re-contextualizing of our lives. In the process, we may learn what is our greatest potential, our authentic self, and we may learn how we can unleash new energies for spiritual development and special contributions in the world.
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Keeping Compassion in Care-giving: For Care-givers and Care-Receivers
At one or more times in our life, each one of us will be care-givers or care-receivers. This workshop explores the realities of care-giving for givers and receivers. We examine what is involved in a more restorative and enriching manner of care-giving and receiving and how that can take place. Participants learn techniques and approaches that others have found useful as care-givers and care-receivers such as how to recognize their own limits, how to be gentle with themselves, how to deal with suffering, how to forgive one's bouts of impatience or guilt, how to strengthen their listening skills, how to acknowledge their own needs, and how to avoid burnout.
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Transitions: Blessing or Curse?
Many of us have an enormous fear of being in transition, of not knowing what lies ahead. This workshop addresses such issues as finding our special gifts and human potential during times of transition; learning to expand our horizons even under difficult situations; understanding how to face life's challenges with peace of mind, calmness of spirit, and a sense of joy. Participants will experience spiritual exercises that are calming, reduce stress, and provide hope and courage during times of transition.
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Recovering from Traumatic Experiences
In a world filled with traumatic threats of terrorism and war, economic and job instability, anxiety and loss, we can be shaken to our very core. We may feel hopeless, trapped in grief, pain and fear. This workshop explores the numerous and diverse ways that we can be helped to "heal" following traumatic experiences in our lives. Although there is no one single path to wholeness or wellness, there are some common themes. This workshop is structured to help us face our needs, fears, and problems with greater understanding, clarity, and openness and to help us discover opportunities to become more courageous and hopeful, more "healed."
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Living Prayers and Healing Rituals
Richard J. Foster has written that God aches about our distance and preoccupation with the "things" of life. God mourns that we do not draw near. God longs for our presence. We too ache to draw nearer to God and to plunge ourselves into the inner bath of love in prayer. In this workshop, participants have an opportunity to explore, understand, practice, and experience prayer as a way to move us inward toward the heart of God, and outward toward ministering to others. This is not about definitions of prayer nor arguments about prayer nor terminology about prayer. Some of the types of prayer to be practiced may include: Centering Prayer, Prayer of Examen, Martin Luther's Four-Stranded Garland, Intercessory Prayer, Lectio Divina, and other healing rituals.
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Experiencing the Passion of Christ
Long ago, Christians were aware of the importance of engaging their heart, mind, and soul in the story of the Passion of the Christ. Today because we have become almost superficially familiar with the story through repeated cerebral readings, we long to enter more profoundly into the story. We yearn to discover its freshness, its meaning, its power for our lives. In this renewing retreat, we have an opportunity to experience the Passion of Jesus through faith-inspired exercises, meditations, and activities that will help us have new awareness of this special season and will challenge us to see, hear, touch, and taste the mystery of Jesus' Passion anew. Music, rituals, meditations, and prayers will be used to feed our souls and provide us with new meaning.