Paul has been offering workshops and seminars on a wide range of topics for over 30 years. His present workshops focus on a transpersonal perspective he identifies as "The Way of the Descended Path".

These include both individual and couples day-long and weekend experiences.

Workshops for Couples

The couples offerings, designed from his Shadow Marriage book,
are presented with Paul's wife, Connie Jones Dunion.

These include the following:

• All You Need is Love

  Contemporary cultural images of love suggest that the above line from a Beatles' song depicts what needs to happen in a committed relationship. This workshop explores the energy of love, its strengths and limits. We'll examine the challenge of receiving love and how to work with diverse expressions of love. The workshop considers four manifestations of love: Agape, Eros, Philia, and Storge.

• Shadow Marriage

  This retreat explores the nature of Shadow not only as those elements of the personality we deem unacceptable but also as our own unique personal gold. Special attention is given to the roles of denial and projection of shadow and their impact upon a marriage. We will explore ways to welcome Shadow into a marriage in order to deepen our capacity to have intimacy. This retreat also focuses on ways that we can cope with conflict through creative self-empowerment and radical self-responsibility.

• Initiation by Intimacy

  This couples retreat for couples explores intimacy as a powerful initiation. We will identify the three stages of initiation and the resources a couple will need in order to maximize the initiatory experience. We will also examine the role of power in an intimate relationship and identify how couples abuse and abdicate power as they relate to one another. This retreat includes a model for creative empowerment which allows couples to minimize abuse and abdication of power. We will also focus on the roles of shame and regression in an intimate relationship with emphasis upon techniques for de-shaming and moving out of regression and back into adulthood.

• Birthing Eros

  This retreat for couples will focus on the qualities attributed to the Greek God Eros and what we can apply to our own lives from such an understanding. We will identify what it means to keep desire and love awake and vibrant in a relationship. We will examine how to sustain emotional and sexual intimacy. Particular attention will be given to the role of denied grief and its capacity to obstruct Eros. We will explore ways to carry tension so that the dynamics of catastrophizing and excessive drama can be kept to a minimum, allowing for the free flow of desire.

• Couples, Communication, and Irreconcilable Differences

  The most misleading relationship issue is the alleged problem of poor communication. In this one-day workshop for couples, we will examine why ineffective communication is a symptom but hardly ever the real problem. We will concretely identify the actual problems which show-up symptomatically as poor communication. We will also explore how to address those problems and alleviate issues of ineffectual communication. The workshop will also clarify how to creatively work with irreconcilable differences making them a natural part of any relationship.

• Intimacy, Truth-Telling, and Compassion

  This one-day workshop for couples focuses upon the role of truth-telling and compassion in the creation of intimacy. Couples will have the opportunity to identify choices that they make to both promote and obstruct the evolution of intimacy in their relationships. We will explore the challenges facing couples as they seek to bring deeper levels of authenticity to themselves and to their partners. Also, couples will examine ways to deepen their experience of compassion in the context of their relationships.

• The 4th Alternative

  When couples face challenges in their relationships, they commonly resort to 3 ways of interacting: they attempt to influence others; they become adaptive;they avoid or withdraw physically and/or emotionally. This workshop focuses upon strategies for interrupting each of these intimacy-reducing patterns. Couples will have an opportunity to identify which patterns are most active in their relationship and how to provide themselves with the safety necessary to deepen intimacy. Couples will be given specific skills for creating and maintaining individual and collective empowerment.

• Daring to Walk a Path with a Heart

  This workshop for couples explores what it takes to live a relationship with heart. Learning to deepen self-trust and the discerning employment of boundaries allows a relationship to be infused with heart. We will examine how taking risks creates an opportunity for greater wildness as well as sweetness in a relationship. Couples will be given specific skills for guiding yourselves along a path with heart.

Workshops for Individuals

The individual offerings are presented by Paul Dunion.

• All You Need is Love

  Contemporary cultural images of love suggest that the above line from a Beatles' song depicts what needs to happen in a committed relationship. This workshop explores the energy of love, its strengths and limits. We'll examine the challenge of receiving love and how to work with diverse expressions of love. The workshop considers four manifestations of love: Agape, Eros, Philia, and Storge.

• A Call to Spiritual Maturity

  When there is a cultural distortion of values, it can be very difficult to know what to trust and believe. Such trauma easily leaves us confused and/or indifferent about a life characterized by authentic spiritual devotion. This workshop clarifies some of the ancient meanings of the word "spirit" and bridges the gap between spirituality and psychology. We will focus on three specific expressions of immature spirituality and what it means to respond to a larger spiritual call. The workshop explores four spiritual crises and how we can allow these challenges to deepen and expand our spiritual vision.

• Regression, Shame, and Creativity

  This one-day workshop will examine the life conditions which are inclined to stimulate a regressive pattern, leading us to think and act in ways that are less than adult. We will describe indicators of regression, and what can be done to return to adulthood. We will also explore the impact of denied shame upon our essential goodness and upon our creativity. This workshop investigates what it means to summon the courage needed in order to live our creativity as a daily practice.

• The Way of the Descended Path

  This is one-day workshop for individuals. So many of the ancient stories and myths speak of the hero or heroine trying to get home. This workshop focuses upon what it means to make our way home to ourselves. A significant portion of the journey will inevitably be a descent into insecurity, doubt, hurt and loss. We will lose loved ones, parts of ourselves, and lose our way. The workshop explores how we can prepare for the trials awaiting us in the Descent. We will examine what it means to allow ourselves to be Initiated into our own depths as well as into the deep waters of Life.

• Stepping into the Waters of the Wound: Choosing a Life of Healing and Learning

  This Workshop explores the sacredness of the wound as a source of learning, strengthening our capacity for compassion while deepening our own humanity. We will examine healing as the willingness to enter into a creative and dynamic relationship with our own woundedness, rather than be seduced into a mechanistic paradigm which mandates that our wound be fixed. We will review how the real psychological demons are the ways we attempt to protect ourselves from our wounds, and not the wounds themselves.

• Ritual Soul Work

  Ritual Soul Work is a 12-session pilot group experience for individuals, utilizing psychodramatic interventions based upon the archetypes of sovereign, magician, warrior, and lover - as explained in the writing of Robert Moore (please see http://www.robertmoore-phd.com. Participants will have the opportunity to design rituals which dramatize areas of concern or desired change, as well as interrupting hindering patterns in their lives. The enactments to be employed will allow participants to examine Shadow Material, or aspects of the personality which have been denied or have not been fully integrated.

• Path of the Novice Mystic

  This workshop expands this idea of mysticism as a way to have an authentic relationship with life and with ourselves, and possibly, God. We'll examine what it takes to quiet the rumblings of ego which attempt to call us away from being students of life. The workshop focuses upon the attitudes which allow us to quiet ourselves in the presence of loss. We will explore what it means to allow our wills to dance with fate, creating our personal myths and destinies. What to bring: Writing materials, a back jack or a favorite pillow to sit on, and heavy socks or slippers to wear on a wooden yoga floor. Please note that no food or drink are allowed in the studio space. Please bring your own picnic lunch; we will offer various teas in the outer room.

Paul also presents seminars for men as well as leading men's groups. In January 2006 he co-founded a Leadership Training Program for men.




For more detail, please go to Upcoming Events