Mitsui Collective offers embodied Jewish learning both crafted entirely by Mitsui Collective and infused into larger programs (national conferences, professional trainings, regional convenings, fellowship seminars) through direct programs and consultation. We are available for programs and consultation both locally in the Cleveland area as well nationally and internationally.
In this time of isolation, we are particularly focused on developing virtual workshops and seminars aimed towards embodied self-care, wellness, and long-term resiliency building practices for Jewish communities and professionals. Our racial equity work focuses on embodied healing practice for Jews of Color and applied somatic theory in antiracism work. We run in-house programs in these areas and are available for workshops and engagements.
Mitsui Collective is also available as a consultant and/or program partner to craft experiences centered around JOC needs and desires for programs both exclusively catering to JOC or as part of larger multi-racial gatherings. Topics include best practice for JOC inclusion and programming focusing on wellness & spirituality offerings, leadership development, and skillbuilding around resiliency and personal ecology.
Additional topics for speaking engagements include:
- Jewish Nature Connection
- Jewish frameworks for wellness
- Best practices in Jewish Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
- Jews of Color in the North American Jewish Landscape
The following sessions are available as workshops and seminars, and may be adapted to suit your community and needs in both content and format. Please be in touch for pricing and other details.
Jewish Movement, Wellness, and Nature Connection
Movement Minyan: Optimizing Jewish Movement Intelligence
Humans are born movers … but how intelligent are you in your movement? Whether as an athlete, dancer, musician, or simply as a human being, Jewish movement minyan sessions create dynamic, engaging, and seriously playful learning that will enable you to bring greater intention, skill, and range to the ways you move and generate embodied creative expression.
*Can be done as one session or as a series.*
Jewish Movement Ecology
The Jewish story is a story of movement — wilderness, exploration, diaspora, soul-searching. What does it mean to move in relationship to the environment and to those around you in community? Engage in individual and collective nature-based movement engaging all five senses and full body from head to (barefoot) toe alongside text-based learning and discussion.
Jewish Movement and Mindfulness
The compliment to a movement practice is a stillness practice, and mindfulness is often the key to bringing greater intention and learning to both. Learn how to bring greater intention and Jewish inspiration to both movement and stillness as part of your mindfulness practice.
Jewish Nature Exploration
The fully experiential complement to Jewish Movement Ecology, this session takes us into nature to observe, explore, play, and learn as we (re)connect with our innate human movement potential and Jewish connections to nature and place.
Stack Your Life
When self-care is just another item on our to-do lists, we’re often just setting ourselves up for failure. Instead, what does it look like to bring a permaculture-inspired “function-stacking” approach to integrating personal, social, ecological, and professional needs in ways that reinforce rather than compete with each other? This workshop introduces stack-your-life concepts and provides tools to audit, analyse, and adapt your life to reduce silos and increase stacking.
Movement Infusions
Even or especially during intensive convenings with rich but heady discussion and minimal access to outdoor environments or wellness space, movement infusions can help to re-energize, re-focus, and take us out of our heads and into our bodies for brief periods of much-needed balance. Movement infusions are brief (5 – 20 minutes); are inherently dynamic, fun, and engaging; can be catered to nearly any group size; and can be customized to many different goals and outcomes. These include:
- Strengthened social connection through chevruta (partner) based movement;
- De-constricted flow from brain to body through focus on thoracic spine, neck, and shoulder opening;
- Expanded mindfulness;
- Intellectual stimulation through embodied “brain confusion” activities that unlock creative flow;
- Overall wellness — increased bloodflow, calm, and energy;
Avodat Lev: Soulful and Accessible Jewish Prayer Experience
Experience the “Service of the Heart” originally created by the Adamah Fellowship and learn how this rich and adaptable method allows people from all backgrounds to become quickly immersed in a soulful and accessible Jewish prayer experience.
Additional Workshop & Program Topics
- Camp-style Teva (nature) programs
- Night Hike / Nighttime Sensory Experience
- Shelter Building
- Teambuilding: low-ropes / no-ropes
- Song-leading
- Soulful alternative prayer experience
- Food Justice & The Jewish Agricultural Tzedakah Program
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Jewish Community and Beyond
Power & Privilege, and Building Vibrant Jewish Communities
This workshop is an introduction to how vectors of power and privilege play out in our Jewish communities with guided learning and discussion on how we may shift these dynamics to build greater diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Jews of Color in the American Jewish Community
Recent studies demonstrate that at least 12-15% of the American Jewish community are people of color. Yet these numbers are rarely fully represented in the Jewish spaces we frequent. How might we shift our mindsets and our institutions to embrace the full diversity of the Jewish community?
Experiential Jewish Education: Pedagogy & Practice for Skill Building & Engagement
Nature-based Jewish Education 101
Build your toolkit for sensory and exploration based Jewish nature encounters that provide for ample opportunity to learn, play, and connect with the natural world and Jewish tradition. Appropriate for any natural space — courtyard, garden, farm, forest, or wilderness.
Jewish FLOW Learning
From Shabbat to night hikes to afternoon creek stomps, craft Jewish learning experiences that utilize the natural rhythms and energies of the Hebrew Calendar and the human spirit! This workshop models and introduces frameworks for program planning and facilitation from short programs to multi-day experiences and more informed by both modern education research and ancient Jewish wisdom.
Playing Jazz: Skill Building for Improvisation & Mastery
Isolate, Integrate, Improvise: Experience how this simple formula for skill acquisition and mastery can be implemented across virtually any program or content area to increase engagement and accelerate adaptive and emergent learning.
Design Thinking for Jewish Educators
No group of people are exactly alike and yet we still have to plan programs in advance. This workshop introduces principles of design thinking to help us empathize with our program participants, bring more innovation to our programs, and minimize risk while creating greater opportunities to prototype and test those brilliant ideas your program staff already excel at bringing to the table.
Jewish Design, Arts, and Culture
Landscape Linguistics and Hebrew Metaforms: Creating a language of landscape design for Jewish meaning & identity
What does Jewish landscape design look like? In this session we explore how new vocabularies and conceptual frameworks might enable us to dig below the surface when designing Jewish outdoor and nature spaces for learningful experience and meaning-making.
Seven Dimensions of Place: Torah, Kabbalah, & Empowering Actualization
From the Star of David to the harvest rain dance (aka shaking the Lulav), Jewish symbols of seven are powerful keys for unlocking deep connection to place and spirit. This session explores the intersection of place, culture, and Jewish tradition to deepen our understanding how we relate to ourselves and the places we inhabit.
Embodied Jewish CoCreation
Explore Kabbalah, Shabbat, Melachot, and the role of humans as active co-creators of the world through creative practice and expression in this combo hands on and text-based learning and discussion session.