Spirituality and Physicality: Crossing Thresholds

Your physically felt body is, in fact, part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people, in fact the whole universe. This sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the body as it is felt from inside.  Eugene T. Gendlin 1978

Inspired initially by the arrival of the Olympic Games to the UK in 2012, the theme of this conference has grown to encompass Sport and Physical Education, Counselling’s use of focusing and the felt-sense, our spiritual relationship with the natural - physical – environment, and our spiritual relationship with our own embodied selves.  Often seen as separate realms, the physical and the spiritual meet in many places.  This conference explores the thresholds between the physical and the spiritual, drawing on many sources related to the spirituality of children and young people.

The conference includes keynote lectures and academic seminars, but also workshops giving opportunities to take part in physio-spiritual practices such as Shiatsu, Labyrinth Walks, Meditation and Clowning.  The conference also includes (optional) visits to the Pilgrimage site of Walsingham or the Ringsfield Ecocentre, and the Shrine of Julian of Norwich or the Norwich (Anglican) Cathedral, as well as to the University’s Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and Sports Park.   

The conference invites academics, teachers and practitioners to share ideas about the relationships between the spiritual and the physical, and about how we can use physio-spiritual ideas and practices to transform the lives of children and young people.  Please submit abstracts for proposed talks or workshops to the conference organisers by 31 May 2012.

The full conference fee includes accommodation, meals and tours.  You are welcome to register for single days, and for day rates that do not include accommodation.  When you register you will see the different options available.