While living in rural Nova Scotia two years back and finishing up my doctorate in clowning and land communication as healing practices, I put up a few brochures around town advertising my Clown Coaching services. A local creative approached me in our small town library holding the brochure and suggested that I offer a workshop called Laughing and Singing Our Way Through Fear. I felt a big YES from that and began to offer workshops based on this idea: meditation, collaborative group improv via singing/banjo and theatrics, acting back of personal scenarios, art integration, and discussion based on the work of Karla McLaren around the featured challenging emotion.

I have started to think of these workshops as a kind of “pre-clown”, great for grown ups who are interesting in playing, expressing, and low-key improvising but aren’t quite ready to jump into a full-on clown situation. They help practice emotional navigation and saying yes to the unknown in a supportive and generous context. Since we tend to get pretty silly, they can help with feelings of burn out, stress, and isolation. They are particularly tailored towards folks who live with chronic anxiety, situational depression, or shyness. Participation of every aspect is always voluntary.

I would like to offer an experimental group online version of a workshop I do called Laughing and Singing Through Anxiety. Depending on interest, it could be a monthly thing with a different emotion every month, which is how I have offered them in the past. This workshop will be by donation, with all profits going to a fundraiser held by a friend of a friend for a family of five in Nicaragua that is in crisis.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/supportingometepe

The date is Sunday, September 6th from 1-3 pm pacific time.
You will need an active Zoom account.

Please PM me or email meganhyslop@yahoo.ca to register so I know who to expect and so I can share the private Zoom link and info sheet for the workshop.

Much love!