CorePower Yoga | Bryan Sampson

Finding Yoga has been an amazing and wonderful reward after years of injuries from running, football, wrestling, baseball, dancing, parachuting, scuba diving, hiking, gymnastics, weightlifting and far more challenging activities. Even better than finding Yoga is the opportunity to share it with fellow teachers and students.

Culinary Experiences at La Cocina Que Canta | Denise Vivaldo and Cindie Flannigan

Denise is the owner of the Denise Vivaldo Group and is the author of eight books on cooking, catering, entertaining, and food styling. As a consultant, food stylist, and culinary producer, Denise has helped with numerous television productions, infomercials, food manufacturers, grocery stores chains, restaurants, publishers, authors and celebrities with their projects and products. Denise is a popular contributing blogger to the Huffington Post as well as her own blog, Denise Vivaldo Blogs. She also teaches food styling, catering and cooking classes and workshops in a multitude of locations across the country and internationally. She has been a featured guest expert on many television shows.

Cindie starting working with Denise in 2001 after graduating Chef de Cuisine from the California Culinary Academy. An accomplished food stylist, recipe and cookbook developer, instructor, and kitchen manager, Cindie has worked on some of the largest print, infomercial, series television, and celebrity cookbook projects, including Denise's own books, including the ground-breaking book The Food Stylist's Handbook.

Denise and Cindie offer three hands-on culinary experiences, 3.5 hours each, on Tuesday at 11 am and 4 pm and Thursday at 4 pm, during which you will enjoy preparing your own meal along with fellow cooks. Classes take place at La Cocina Que Canta, our culinary center.

For more information and registration, please click here.

Bird Week | Phil Pryde

"Wow, this is fun!" is frequently uttered by guests on their first Rancho La Puerta Bird Walk. Bird watching slows you down, keeps you looking up and challenges your senses. You'll discover that birds are great works of art and produce amazing music, and how bird watching can be a great escape and a form of meditation. In addition to daily bird walks, Bird Week features special events, including walks on the mountain, movies, and a friendly, low-key bird-count contest.

The Birds of Rancho La Puerta

Saturday 8 PM

Rancho La Puerta, with its rich and varied landscapes, is a magnet for birds. Bird Week is timed so that a colorful variety of both resident and migrant birds will be present while you're here. PHIL PRYDE has come to us from San Diego Audubon Society for the past decade and is very familiar with our local birds. His presentation will show you the most common birds you can see here, along with interesting information about them. You'll be seeing our Ranch birds all week, so join us and get to know them a bit - they're one of the many happy things to experience at the Ranch!

Bird Migration: Marvels, Myths and Mysteries

Tuesday 5 PM

For millennia, people have wondered at the mystery of bird migration. Where are they going? Why? How do they know how to get there? How far can they migrate in a day? And why do some not migrate? In this informative and entertaining slide show, Phil Pryde will answer these questions and many more. Did you know some birds migrate by walking? By swimming? By flying higher than the highest mountain on Earth? Do male and female birds migrate together, or separately? These little world travelers still amaze us in their annual migrations, but today we understand a lot more about how they do it (but not everything!). Come join us for this fascinating exploration into bird behavior, and be entertained by the marvels of bird migration.

Discover Your Inner Child | Elizabeth Levy

Sunday and Monday 3 PM

The Hunger Games, The Twilight Series, Broadway’s Matilda, many of the 21st Centuries’ most iconic movies, books and theater are works originally published for children and young adults. We will use short memory exercises, paired with the sensual and magical world of Rancho, to unlock the secrets of your imagination. The poems and stories we write will not necessarily be for children, and there is no homework. For those of you who want to learn more about publishing, I will give out a sheet of resources. Elizabeth Levy’s most recent book is Amber Brown is Tickled Pink, with Bruce Coville. She is the author of more than a 100 books for children and young adults with over 5 million books sold.

 

 

 

 

Movie Lovers' Evening | Marshall Marcovitz

Thursday 8 PM

Like Water for Chocolate

Our complicated relationship with food and love is a favorite interest of filmmakers around the world. How do different directors tell the story of life, love and friendship across the table? We’ll view film clips and discuss Alfonso Arau’s 1998 fantasy and celebration of Mexican culture Like Water for Chocolate. Food is so magical it inspires the characters to laugh, cry, and run naked. Marshall Marcovitz studied film with Roger Ebert, and now teaches courses at the New School in New York City, and previously taught at Northwestern University in Chicago. His expertise is his ability to help audiences use their own real life experiences to better understand the power of the movies. By tapping into the psychological, emotional and visual, we will understand why we respond so intimately to the movies. Marshall is also the founder and former CEO of the Chef's Catalog, a leading Internet and mail order cooking catalog.

 

 

Finding Your True North: Live Your Passions | Paul Williams

Tuesday 8 pm • Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 2 pm

Finding Your True North: Live Your Passions is a values-based process to understand and map your individualized goals. There is nothing more satisfying than getting in the driver’s seat of your life and doing the things you are most passionate about, no matter what your age. Finding Your True North allows you to discover and refine your passions, desires, wants and needs to identify which direction you should be going – a roadmap – to the intentional and deliberate life you desire. In this straightforward yet enlightening four-part program, you will be lead through a systematic process that will assist you in identifying what you are most passionate about and help you incorporate those passions into your daily life. By living our true passions, we can be a happier and more fulfilled person.

Paul Williams is a brainstormer and professional problem solver who turns brains into idea machines. He founded Idea Sandbox to help companies create remarkable ideas to grow their business. He offers the same hand-crafted creative problem solving process he uses with organizations - taking a look where they are, where they want to go, and what they need to get there - for individuals. Paul has worked with and for companies including: The Disney Company, Starbucks Coffee Company, The Woodhouse Day Spa, USA TODAY, Panera Bread Company, Seattle’s Best Coffee, The Microsoft Corporation and Wells Fargo. Paul lives just outside Washington D.C. in Alexandria, Virginia.

All You Need Is Love And Other Lies About Marriage | John W. Jacobs, M.D.

Sunday 8 PM and Monday 4 PM

In this session Dr. Jacobs will explain why marriage has become so unstable in the 21st Century and then present clear suggestions for how to combat the forces that are driving spouses apart. Time will be left for the audience to ask questions.

Session Two: Facing Marital Problems Head On

In this session Dr. Jacobs will focus on three areas that cause couples particular problems: Communication, Children, the Capacity to Change. Time will be left for questions from the audience.

John W. Jacobs, MD is a board certified psychiatrist practicing in New York City. He is a graduate of Brandeis University where he received his Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honors in Psychology in 1965. In 1969 he received his Medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. After a year of medical internship he became a psychiatric resident at Jacobi Hospital in New York where, in his third year, he was appointed chief psychiatric resident in the out-patient department. Following his residency he became a Fellow in Consultation and Liaison Psychiatry. Between 1973 and 1975 he worked on the medical wards of Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, NY dealing with the psychiatric problems of patients with medical illnesses.

Over the next 10 years he then served as the Director of Out-Patient and Emergency Psychiatry and the Director of Psychiatric Residency Training at Montefiore Hospital. In 1986 he became the Director of Postgraduate Training in Psychotherapy at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He was a student at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute from 1973-1979. During his entire career he has been a teacher and supervisor of psychiatric residents in training. Currently he is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at New York University Medical College and teaches couples and family therapy to third and fourth year psychiatric residents at Bellevue Hospital.

Beginning in 1975 he became increasingly interested in the problems of married couples and the emotional consequences of divorce. His first peer reviewed paper on the subject, "Divorce and Fatherhood: The Struggle for Parental Identify," was published as the lead article in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1983. This was followed by other peer reviewed articles on marriage and divorce and eventually resulted in the publication of his book, "All You Need Is Love And Other Lies About Marriage: How To Save Your Marriage Before It's Too Late," by Harper Collins in 2004.

Face It: Understanding the Psychology of Beauty | Vivian Diller, Ph.D.

Sunday 1pm

Dr. Diller, a psychologist and former Wilhelmina model will discuss her book, Face It: What Women Really Feel As Their Looks Change (Hay House, 2010). She will talk about the challenges facing men and women today who are living longer in a youth and beauty obsessed culture. Her six-step psychological process creates internal change that leads to external results.

Replace Magic Potions with Cognitive Solutions

Monday 1pm

Dr. Diller will discuss how contemporary culture has influenced the meaning of beauty. She will provide cognition solutions that help men and women enjoy their appearance at any age.

Vivian Diller, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice in New York City. Dr. Diller was a professional ballet dancer before she became a fashion model. She was represented by a top agency, Wilhelmina Models, appearing in Glamour magazine, Seventeen magazine, national print ads, and TV commercials. She left modeling in the late 1970s to begin her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University. After completing her Ph.D., she went on to do postdoctoral training in psychoanalysis at NYU. As a psychologist, she often works with young adults, specializing in helping dancers, models, actors, and athletes as they leave their youth oriented professions. She does short and long-term psychotherapy with people of all ages. Dr. Diller wrote her doctoral dissertation on the psychological profile of the professional dancer. Her dissertation has served as a model for character studies at Ph.D. programs in psychology around the country. She has been consulted for pieces written by others on beauty, aging, eating disorders, models, and dancers. She has served as a consultant to a major cosmetic company interested in promoting age-related beauty products, and has made numerous appearances on television discussing issues about beauty and aging. Dr. Diller lives with her husband, Dr. John Jacobs and her three children, Jordana, Gideon and Gabriel.

Website: www.FaceItTheBook.com

Classical Music Today, a presentation in two movements | Hugh Levick

Wednesday and Thursday 5 PM

First Movement

We will start with the following experiment: Close your eyes and listen to any sound you hear—a scraping chair, a cough, fabrics rubbing together, the wind outside,etc.-- as music.

To continue we will talk about what music is.

We will see how a person's answer to that question will probably determine how he or she experiences the classical music being written today.

Several questions will be asked and discussed:

What happened to classical music? Why did it change? Why can't a composer today write music the way it was written by Beethoven, Mahler or Debussy?

The first night's discussion will cover aspects of the social/historical context at the beginning of the 20th century and why this was such an important factor in transformations that took place in all the arts.

Samples of the music of Schoenberg, Stravinsky and others will be played and discussed.

Classical Music Today, a presentation in two movements:

Second Movement

Examples of the music of individual composers from the 20th and 21st century will be played.

Questions will be asked:

What does this make you feel?
How is it different from the previous selection?
Why do you like or not like it?
How would you describe in words what you just heard?

At the end of the presentation a list of composers and compositions will be passed out for those interested in doing some more listening.

Graduating cum laude from Yale University, and with an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, Hugh Levick set off for Paris to write a novel. In Paris he returned to his musical beginnings and the saxophone, studying and playing with Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy and the Chicago Art Ensemble, amongst others.

Later in NYC he studied composition at Julliard with Stanley Wolfe and David Diamond, and privately with John Cage and Vinko Globokar.

During the 1980's and 1990's in both the US and France, Levick composed, directed and performed the music for over two dozen stage productions.

Levick's solo performance piece, KID COPY, for a musician and his pre-recorded video double, was produced by the EDAC of Poitiers, France and toured in both France and the US. It was performed in the Bing Theatre at LACMA where two concert readings of his chamber opera, THE EMBRACE OF REASONABLE TERROR, were also given.

For the Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Celebration Levick was awarded grants by the NEA and the NY State Council for the Arts to create the Imago Ensemble, a combination of live and video-taped musicians. He also received an Artist-in - Residence award from PASS in NYC, and was awarded a studio in the Cite International des Arts in Paris.

Levick has written the libretto and the music for an opera, BANG FOR THE BUCK, and has adapted Kafka's first novel, AMERIKA, into an opera entitled THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED.

NOSOTROS- a violin solo with electronics— was premiered by Davis Brooks in 2006, and will be included on Brooks' CD of pieces mixing electronics and the violin.

In April, 2010, Ben Perrone's On Going War Installation opened at the Burchfield-Penney Museum in Buffalo NY using WMD—WAR MAKES DEAD—Levick's cello solo as an integral element.

Also in April, 2010, the world premier of Levick's string quartet, MORNING EVENING LOVE BEARS ALL, was performed by the Denali String Quartet in Los Angeles.

In May 2011, HEAR NOW…A Festival of New Music by Contemporary Los Angeles Composers, created by Levick and attended by SRO audiences, took place in Venice, CA.

Levick's composition, for soprano and piano, THE ANGEL OF HISTORY, was premiered in Los Angeles in May, 2011.

In 2012 Signature Records, the dynamic and eclectic label sponsored by Radio France Musique will produce and record the DIOTIMA STRING QUARTET playing Levick's three string quartets: MORNING EVENING LOVE BEARS ALL, EMPIRE Inc., and THE UNIMAGINED: PREPARATIONS FOR THE UNKNOWN.

In March 2012 Levick's flute solo, THE I-TYPE OF BEING, was premiered in Los Angeles.

In August 2012 Levick's mixed quintet, CODE V, was premiered as part of the HEAR NOW Festival in Los Angeles.

In April, 2013 the DIOTIMA will perform Levick's three string quartets as part of the Interpretations Series at Roulette in Brooklyn,NY.