Opening Ceremony/ Keynote
Mary Jo Hoven, Cynthia Pierro, and Glen Weimer

We begin by gathering in sacred space as Mary Jo Hoven welcomes us into ceremony, gently weaving our community together through breath and sound. This is an invitation to center, ground, and arrive — fully present in body, heart, and spirit.

Once centered and grounded, Cynthia Pierro guides us into movement with Polarity Yoga and expressive embodiment practices. Through the elements, we awaken freedom in body, mind, and spirit, aligning with the flow of life within and around us.

From this place of connection, Glen Weimer invites us to Enter the Dance and explore our ancestral roots and energetic lineages. Through guided experience, we honor where we come from while opening to the deeper mystery of Polarity within — the universe of our own becoming.

Mary Jo Hoven, RPP RPE

Mary Jo Hoven, RPP RPE was first introduced to the work of Dr. Randolph Stone in 1988 by Suzanne Roberts in Ohio. She completed her RPP certification in 2001 and became an RPE in 2003, training under Dr. Damon Fazio at Earthwise Polarity Therapy.

In addition to her work in Polarity Therapy, Mary Jo is a Clinical Herbalist, Sound Body Practitioner, and a retired National Board Certified special education teacher.

Mary Jo served on the APTA Board from 2010 to 2015, including as President from 2013 to 2014. She has also been a convention liaison and presenter at multiple APTA conferences and continues to contribute as a member of the 2026 Conference Committee.

Cynthia Pierro

Cynthia Pierro, B.S., MTI, NLPP, CYT, BCPP RPE began her healing art practice in 1984. She “Cynthesized” her specialties in Polarity Therapy, massage therapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, yoga, aromatherapy, and shamanic practices to clear core issues from all layers and dimensions encouraging one’s greatest Soul potential to unfold in a happy body.

In 1990, Cynthia began teaching in Doug Jansen’s Boston APP and RPP programs. In 1995, she assisted Chanda Becker in her Fayetteville, AR, APP program and in 1996 co-created with Damon Fazio her Dallas-based APP program.

Currently, she focuses on private sessions and advanced CE’s for massage therapists in Polarity Therapy. Cynthia has been an APTA member since the 1980s, served as the APTA Secretary 2014 – 2015, for decades she has enjoyed time as a conference committee member. Polarity principles continue to activate her best life ever!

Glen Weimar

Glen Weimar BCPP, RME, LMT is a Board Certified Polarity Practitioner, Registered Polarity Educator, and former American Polarity Therapy Association (APTA) board member. He was founder and former director of the Arizona Polarity Institute in Tucson, and former polarity education director at the New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts in Santa Fe.

Glen has taught at colleges, conferences, and both Polarity Therapy and massage schools around the USA.

In 2005, he gave the opening ceremony address at the APTA 20th anniversary conference in Potomac, MD.

NeuroEnergetic Therapy™—Taking Dr. Stone’s Vision

Into the Future of Integrative Healthcare

Roger Gilchrist MA, RPE, RCST

NeuroEnergetic Therapy™ (NET) is a modern, integrative approach that brings together Craniosacral Biodynamics, energy medicine, and nervous system resiliency. In my experience, a truly effective holistic therapy must address all of these dimensions.

In this presentation, I’ll share skills for assessment, triaging the human energy system, and supporting lasting shifts in nervous system set-points — the kinds of shifts that lead to deep and permanent healing.

I believe that if Dr. Stone were practicing today, he would be integrating current understandings of neuroplasticity, polyvagal theory, resiliency research, and psychospiritual dynamics. NET is a natural evolution of Polarity Therapy — and, in my view, it represents the future of integrative healthcare. I’ve been teaching this post-graduate training in seven countries and am honored to bring it to our conference community.

Roger Gilchrist founded the Wellness Institute in 1991. He has served as a consultant to the National Institutes of Health (USA) and is widely published in the field of complementary and alternative therapies. Roger has been a leading voice in teaching biodynamic principles to the allied health professions worldwide. He studied directly with Franklyn Sills, the originator of Craniosacral Biodynamics, and later assisted Sills in both foundation and advanced trainings. Roger is the author of Craniosacral Therapy and the Energetic Body.

An Aroma Trauma + Tension Release Exercise (TRE®)

journey with scent, movement, and energy

Tracy Griffiths, BA, RPP, RPE, CMT, RYT 500

In this experiential workshop, I invite you to explore how Polarity Therapy, Trauma Release Exercises (TRE®), and aromatherapy can come together as a powerful path to embodied renewal and energetic coherence. From tension to tremor to transformation, we’ll weave the five elements of Polarity with somatic science to support the release of held stress and the restoration of natural flow.

I’ll guide you through the three steps of the Memory Resolution Technique—a gentle way to help the nervous system complete unresolved stress responses—alongside the seven tremor-inducing exercises of TRE®. We’ll also work with specific essential oils to deepen the sensory and energetic experience, enhancing emotional clarity, balance, and resilience.

Through breath, movement, and energetic awareness, we’ll tune into the body’s natural rhythm of healing. This session blends teaching, guided practice, and polarity-based exchange, all grounded in the wisdom of the body and the elements.

Tracy Griffiths is a passionate health advocate and healing arts educator with over 30 years of experience in Polarity Therapy, Craniosacral work, aromatherapy, and massage. She is also a Reiki Master and Certified Dream Coach®, supporting others in aligning with their purpose and creating meaningful transformation. Tracy is the creator of Aroma Yoga® and directs the Urban Zen Integrative Therapy program in Los Angeles, where she teaches the applications of therapeutic grade essential oils in integrative medicine and mind-body wellness.

The Endocrine System Orchestration
“The Pleiades of the Microcosm”
Janice Marie Durand, NC LMBT, BCPP, RPE, ATM

In this interactive, experiential workshop, I explore the interface between the chakras and the endocrine system, inviting participants to bring conscious awareness to the body’s seven glandular “guardians of health”—our interior stars: the pineal, pituitary, thyroid, thymus, pancreas, gonads, and adrenals.

I introduce how these glands secrete their inner elixir—hormones that direct vital physiological processes and support balance and equilibrium throughout the body. Together, we explore the endocrine system as a subtle, powerful super-system that is deeply influenced by stress, emotions, and our external physical environment.

Participants leave with practical tools and a deeper appreciation for the intelligence of this system. We complete our circle in a sacred hive of collaborative table exchanges, bringing vitality to the endocrine system through the Fire Spiral and six-pointed star.

Janice Marie Durand, (jMarie) is the founder and director of Tree of Life Center in North Carolina. She is a Board-Certified Polarity Practitioner (BCPP), APTA Registered Polarity Educator (RPE), North Carolina LMBT #1349 and ABMP Certified Somatic Therapist. Her Polarity Therapy Somatic Energy Healing School is an APTA Approved training for APP, RPP, BCPP students. All programs emphasize embodied, whole-brain, experiential learning. jMarie’s passion is to guide and empower students and clients to listen to their bodies’ internal nature and wisdom on all levels. She teaches embodied movement classes — T’ai Chi, Qigong, and Gentle Energy Yoga. She is currently an active member of the APTA Standards for Education committee helping to guide the revamping of the 10th edition Standards for Education & practice with colleagues. Her private Polarity Therapy practice outside of Hillsborough, NC specializes in trauma healing and the Attachment Nervous System. She has been practicing and teaching for over 30 years.

The Vagal System and Its Relationship to the Ultrasonic Core
Heather Principe BCPP, ATM, PWE, YTT200/500

In recent years, Western science has made remarkable progress in understanding the vagus nerve and its role in health, regulation, and emotional balance. As a Polarity practitioner, I’ve long recognized this same relationship through the autonomic nervous system and its elemental foundations. In this class, I’ll explore the connection between the elements and the afferent action of the vagal system, weaving together both scientific insight and energetic awareness.

Together, we’ll learn and practice the four-step technique of Vagal Balancing, a simple yet powerful Polarity approach that helps restore harmony in the nervous system. We’ll also explore how breathwork supports this balancing process — not only as a therapeutic tool for clients, but as a personal practice for our own wellness, regulation, and grounding.

Heather Principe is one of the leading human energy and consciousness teachers on the East Coast. She has been teaching yoga and Polarity Therapy for over 25 years and is the founder of The Yoga and Polarity Center, a center for teaching Yoga, Subtle Energy Healing Arts including Polarity and Pranic Healing, Energetic Listening Skills for Bodyworkers, Hermetic Law and the underpinnings of Vedic yoga.

Heather is on the staff of The New Seminary and the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, and runs retreats worldwide in all forms of Energetic Healing. She served on the APTA Board of Directors from 2009–2010 and 2015–2016. A journeywoman of the old ways, she has taught Polarity internationally to hundreds of students since 1995. Her guiding star is the Lodge of Cree Medicine — and she is the grateful grandmother of three blessed souls.

Venus and the Five-Pointed Star: Embodying the Elements of Evolution
Scott Ashwell, BA, APP, NC LMBT

In this workshop, I explore how the Five Elements and Dr. Stone’s understanding of the soul’s path—its involution and evolution through matter and experience—come alive through the sacred geometry of the Five-Pointed Star. Observed since the world’s earliest civilizations, this geometry reflects Venus’s eight-year, five-petaled star pattern as it orbits the Sun, long associated with collective and personal cycles of descent and rebirth. Every eight years, Venus traces this five-pointed pattern through five 584-day synodic cycles, each point expressing the movement of energy from spirit into form and back again—the essence of Polarity.

I offer brief contextual framing of the Venus cycle, introducing how Venus as the Morning Star reflects a rajasic current of outward creation, how the retrograde and inferior conjunction embody a sattvic pause of integration and renewal, and how the Evening Star reveals a tamasic return to receptivity and embodiment. I explore how these phases can be applied in Polarity Therapy sessions to support timing, intention-setting, and integration, with particular attention to Venus’ inferior conjunction, when Venus appears to descend between Earth and the Sun—an archetypal seed moment of change well suited for identifying what is ready to be released, clarified, and re-embodied in the client’s process. I then guide participants to embody these elemental rhythms through movement, breath, and self-contact using the Self Five-Pointed Star, an energy exercise developed by John Chitty and Mary Louise Muller. This practice supports practitioners in sensing elemental currents within their own bodies and provides a clear, teachable protocol they can offer clients as an at-home tool for grounding, reflection, and emotional regulation.

Rooted in the principle of “as above, so below,” this workshop offers a concise, embodied introduction to Venusian sacred geometry as a living expression of Polarity Therapy.

Scott Ashwell is the founder of allstarsbodywork, an integrative practice that weaves together Polarity Therapy and Evolutionary Astrology as distinct modalities and as a unified path of embodiment and awareness. He offers Polarity Therapy sessions, Evolutionary Astrology consultations, and integrated AstroPolarity sessions that bridge Dr. Randolph Stone’s five-element system with cosmic cycles and archetypal principles. Through touch, movement, and reflective inquiry, Scott supports clients in aligning their inner and outer worlds and experiencing energy as a living dialogue between body and cosmos. He is a third-year RPP student at the Tree of Life Center and a second-year student in the FCEA Master Astrologer Certification program with Steven Forrest, and he invites practitioners into a felt exploration of healing that honors the principle of “as above, so below.”

From Ether to Earth: Building a Soul-Led & Successful Practice
Grace Harrington Murdoch, RPE, Narrative Astrology Teacher, Author, Reiki Master Teacher

In this interactive workshop, I’ll share a creative, elements-based approach to growing your healing practice or energy-based business. Using the Five Elements and the step-down process—from Ether to Earth—I’ll guide you through a journey of aligning your business with your energetic truth.

We’ll begin in the Ether and Air phases, where inspiration and ideas are born, and explore how each element brings both momentum and potential blocks. For instance, I’ll offer tools to help you identify and move through limiting beliefs that might be holding you back at different stages of business development. As we move through Fire, Water, and Earth, you’ll learn how to take aligned action, build nourishing relationships with your clients and community, and bring your offerings into grounded form.

This class is reflective and practical. I’ll weave in key principles from my “Manifesting Your Magical Business” program, which I’ve been running successfully for over a decade with my Massachusetts community. I’ll also share some of the marketing strategies that have helped me sustain a six-figure energy-based business while staying true to my values and purpose.

You’ll leave this session with clear insights, new tools, and inspired steps to evolve your business in a way that’s deeply aligned, creative, and energetically sustainable.

Grace Harrington Murdoch is a Polarity Therapy educator, astrologer, and author with over 16 years in private practice and 6 years teaching Polarity Therapy. 

She is the founder of Flowers & Stars Shop in Magnolia, Massachusetts, where she facilitates in-depth energy medicine education, including Polarity Therapy, Reiki, Crystal Healing, and her signature annual course Narrative Astrology.

Grace is also the creator of the online class Manifesting Your Magical Business, which supports holistic practitioners and creatives in building abundant & soul-led practices rooted in intuition and universal law. She has been teaching this to her community for the past 10 years. 

She is the author of The Crystal Universe Deck and the book Child Awake, and her work has been featured in Astrology.com, Vogue, The Boston Globe, and Sanctuary.

Welcome Session 1 

Mindful Movement

Led by: Kieran Jordan, MA, BCPP

I invite class participants to come into a deeper connection with themselves through movement that fosters grounding, release, creativity, and vitality. My approach draws from a range of somatic practices, including Bartenieff Fundamentals, Authentic Movement, Polarity Yoga, and dance. 

I offer guided prompts that encourage you to move from within — to set an intention and follow your own intuitive expression through the body. Each exploration is rooted in Polarity Therapy concepts, such as expansion and contraction, chakras, elemental triads, and oval fields. 

This movement practice often feels like receiving a Polarity Therapy session — restorative, rejuvenating, and deeply balancing. It’s an opportunity to release, reset, and flow into alignment with your natural rhythm and vitality.

Kieran Jordan believes deeply in the wisdom of the body and what it has to teach or reveal. Whether she is working as a dancer, movement teacher, or energy healing practitioner, her programs create opportunities for embodiment, connection, and soul-expression. Kieran received her Polarity Therapy training through the Polarity Therapy Institute and earned the BCPP qualification in 2024. She now practices Polarity Therapy in Boston and Kennebunk, Maine.

Welcome Session 2
5 Element Yoga
Led by: Zaria Davies

I’m thrilled to share a fun and inspiring movement class where Polarity Therapy meets yoga, and yoga meets Polarity. Together, we’ll expand our awareness of breath, mind, and body, weaving the five elements through gentle yoga postures and Polarity exercises, completing the session in deep, awake rest.

For me, a great class leaves participants with a deeper awareness of where they are — because the body doesn’t lie. My intention is that you leave feeling more connected to your physical beingness, having noticed something new about yourself — however subtle. Maybe you’ll discover where in your body you feel more free, or where a little more letting go is ready to happen.

The body loves attention and movement; it feels lighter, happier, and more alive afterwards. Through this practice, I hope to deepen your felt sense of how the elements move and play through the body, and to explore the involution and evolution of the breath. This class also serves as a gentle reminder — especially for us as therapists — of how even a little nurturing movement can go a long way.

Zaria Davies is a physical therapist, certified yoga instructor, and Polarity Therapy practitioner. Her work blends movement, mindfulness, and energy awareness to support whole-body healing. She is currently completing module seven of Anna Chitty’s Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy and Polarity Therapy training, further deepening her integration of somatic and energetic approaches.

Morning Movement #1

Energy Exercises
Led by: James D. Arena, RPE

Join me for a revitalizing session exploring Dr. Stone’s Easy Stretching Postures — simple, accessible movements that align the body’s energy fields and reconnect physical movement with spiritual awareness. We’ll incorporate gentle stretches, breath, and sound to soothe the nervous system and support emotional and physical balance. These exercises are deeply restorative and energizing, offering a powerful way to return to your body’s natural rhythm and vitality.

James D. Arena  is a seasoned practitioner, devoting over four decades to the study and practice of Polarity Therapy. A lifelong student, he has over 4,000 hours of training in Polarity and somatic education. In 1980 James began teaching Polarity Therapy programs in New Orleans and later expanded his work to Los Angeles and Albuquerque. His powerful and compassionate presence was shared with private clients in all three states. James brings a rich background in humanistic psychology and Polarity Therapy to his teaching, grounded in a lifelong inquiry into how life shapes the human experience. He is passionate in sharing  Polarity principles because they give him the courage, wisdom, and determination to meet life’s challenges and continue evolving.

Morning Movement #2a

Polarity to the People: Elemental Embodiment Through Polarity Somatic Yoga
Led By: Amanda Lux LMT, BCPP, RPE

In this interactive workshop, we’ll move through the five elements — Ether, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth — using the dynamic lens of Polarity Somatic Yoga. This approach blends gentle, adaptable yoga asana with Polarity exercises, guided visualizations, and expressive free movement drawing from ecstatic dance, Body-Mind Centering, and trauma-informed nervous system co-regulation. Together, we will explore how each element expresses itself through the body, breath, and field, and how movement can become a doorway into energetic balance, intuitive insight, and creative flow.

Amanda Lux is an artist, author, podcaster, dream worker, and the founder of the Elevation Hive Center for Somatic Healing Arts in Olympia, Washington. She is a Board Certified Polarity Practitioner, Registered Polarity Educator, RYT-500, and Program Manager of an APP program taught in a geodesic dome on the shores of Oyster Bay. She is the creator of Polarity Somatic Yoga, integrating embodied movement, energetic intelligence, and the body’s innate wisdom.

Morning Movement #2b

Breath of Life in Motion: A Somatic Journey through the Elements
Led by: Candice Sinai, BCPP, RPE, SEP

Join me for a restorative immersion in the life force. We’ll begin by connecting with the source of the Breath of Life as a calming, organizing presence within, allowing that presence to guide us into movement.  

Through inner listening and energy exercises, we’ll explore the dance of the gunas with the elements: the steadiness of Earth, the softness that Water brings to our efforts, the focused intention of Fire, the openness and expression of Air, and the spacious awareness of Ether. The pace is unhurried, supporting ease in the nervous system, grounded presence, and regenerative rhythm you can carry into both practice and daily life. 

Candice Sinai is a somatic practitioner, educator, and coach whose work is rooted in Polarity Therapy, movement, and the intelligence of the body. Over five decades she has taught ballet, yoga, Synergy Dance and Movement, and elemental classes. A health crisis led her to develop Regenerative Somatics as her way of healing. She invites heart-centered practitioners to slow down, listen, and let movement become a living conversation with the Breath of Life.

Morning Movement #3a

Moving with the Chakras and Elements
Led by: Barbara Fahringer RPP, RPE

Emphasizing  self-care, I use movement and simple self-massage to bring deeper awareness to the chakras and the elements. We will look at how places of ease and strength in the body can support areas of discomfort. By energizing and grounding these experiences in the body, I also explore how this embodied awareness shapes our relationship to the world and our place within it.

Barbara Fahringer has studied dance, movement, healing modalities, and esoteric subjects for over 40 years. She is a Registered Polarity Practitioner and a New York State licensed massage therapist, and holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in dance education. Her love of dance was further inspired when she joined the Sacred Dance Guild, where she currently serves on the board of directors and contributes to their online journal. Barbara has also studied astrology since 1985 and has been a speaker at astrological conferences since 1998.