An enduring intimacy is one of life's greatest treasures. It is a treasure that accumulates gradually as we bring our attention over and over again to each present moment of our being together. Being present together means to wholeheartedly immerse ourselves in whatever experience life has to offer us right now. Now we may be a "we," wonderfully/onefully together. Perhaps now we are two, a separate "me" and "you," a collision of differences. By turns, our being together may be blissful, funny, sad, tender, hurtful or healing. It is continuously and kaleidoscopically changing. And by staying present while going through all these changes together our intimacy and our love are enriched.
This weekend for couples is an opportunity to enter deeply into the experience of being present together. This experience is love's best medicine. It creates a spaciousness ample enough to hold the whole human truth of who we both are - our beauty and our embarrassment, our courage and our cowardice, our failings and our capacity for forgiveness, as well as all our uniquely sweet ways of giving and receiving love. Being present, we are also able to find each other again and renew our love, free from past happenings, hurts, and fears about the future. This moment is the only moment we can meet - here in the preciousness and poignancy of the present - where never before meets never again. Finally, being present enables change to happen on its own, naturally, without contrivance. We do not need to try to change each other, the relationship, or ourselves because, in the present, change is always, already happening - if we allow it.
In this workshop, we will share the heart of what we have learned about being and staying together from our experience of being a couple for 32 years, and being couple therapists for 27 years. We will share with you several of the elegantly simple exercises that we use to practice being present with each other. These exercises, when practiced over time, cultivate a profound sense of connectedness. The workshop, much of which will be spent with partners, involves lots of humor, music and movement as well as talk, demonstrations, and group sharing.
Our aim is to create a safe haven for you to renew, deepen, and celebrate your love. The workshop is open to all couples - young or old, married or unmarried, straight or gay - who are eager to learn more about the intimate art of being present together.
We invite you to join us for this retreat, a lovely warm-up for Valentines Day.
Antra and Richard Borofsky have been a couple for 32 years. They are the founders and directors of the Center for the Study of Relationship in Cambridge, MA, where they provide therapy, groups, and workshops for couples and individuals on the practice of relationship. Antra has been a Gestalt Therapist and Marriage and Family therapist for 27 years. Richard has been a clinical psychologist in private practice for 30 years. He was co-director of the Boston Gestalt Institute and an instructor at Harvard Medical School for two decades. They are contributing authors to On Intimate Ground: A Gestalt Approach to Working with Couples, and in 1995 Boston Magazine gave them the Best of Boston award for their work with couples. Their daughter, Larissa, loves Rowe Senior High Camp.