Salon: The Path to Being in Contact With Others

Facilitated by: Sonja Saltman, MFT – EHI Core Instructor, and Joshua Diliberto, LCHC, NCC, RYT- EHI Teaching Assistant

Location: Online Via Zoom

Host: Existential-Humanistic Institute (EHI)

Registration: https://ehi.ticketspice.com/the-path-to-being-in-contact-with-others

Registration fee: $25 for General tickets. To promote effective discussion, we are limiting registration to 30 people. We do not want cost to be an issue. We offer economic inequality/hardship tickets for $10. Please contact Michelle via our contact form to get a code for this ticket level.

On December 2nd, EHI is hosting a two-hour virtual community space for exploring “The Path to Being in Contact with Others.” Personal, relational, and cosmological aspects are considered in group discussion, practical demonstration, possible dyad or small group engagement—we will be flexible to follow emergent wishes from the group.

We are excited to be continuing the series of experiential salons and to hold one more before the end of the year. The intention for these salons is to honor EHI’s commitment to experiential learning as well as the time honored group process of discussion and integration.

General Outline (2 hours): 

● Welcome and Introductions

● Conceptual frames for “The Path to Being in Contact with Others”:   Contact is vitalizing. Contactful experiences center around our senses and involve being touched. Seeing is being touched by light waves, hearing happens via sound waves, smelling and tasting is being touched by various substances. Talking and moving are also ways to create contact. Once contact has been fully established through one of these functions, a sense of full engagement is the result.
In contrast, diminished contact can be the result of personal distancing such as inertia, disinterest, environmental hindrances, or psychological overload causing distress. For example, looking away to lessen the impact of potentially impactful experiences. A person can also selectively choose what to say or hear and ignore listening to more than just the words.

● Attendees are invited to share their own perspective

● Demo

● Experiential Dyad Exercise or Deepened Group Discussion: We will decide in the moment as a group

● Final Large Group Process

 As we acknowledge that the word “salon” implies a more free flowing structure this is a flexible outline that will be modified by Sonja andJosh to work with what is happening in the moment for the group.