Upcoming Events
In 2026 I Want - An IFS x Desire New Years Workshop
Reconnect with What Feels Good
Clarify What You Want
Sunday, January 18 • 12-1:30pm ET • Live on Zoom
Sliding Scale: $35/$55/$75
A Workshop for People Who Want to
Orient Our Lives Towards What Feels Good
So much of New Years resolution/reflection culture is about being more virtuous, more restrictive, controlling more; a sense that if you push harder someone outside you will reward you. But none of that is how to actually build a life you want — a life that feels good.
You find a life you want by listening inside to what feels good and what doesn’t feel good, listening to your desires and needs, and learning to care for yourself generously.
Through meditation, writing, and sharing, we’ll use tools from Internal Family Systems to connect with your pleasures and longings in 2025, and what different parts of you desire for 2026.
What To Expect:
Discussion of pleasure, desire, what they feel like, and their roles in our lives - theory, research, poetry, personal experiences
IFS meditation and journaling on what felt really good for different parts of you in 2025
IFS meditation and journaling on what different parts of you want in 2026
Gentle intention setting based on this information about what feels good and what you want
Sharing and conversation on our relationships with pleasure and desire, what we’ve learned, and how we’re feeling after connecting with pleasure and desire
Think of this workshop like calibrating the North on your compass. Your pleasures get to be your North, that you keep orienting towards throughout the year!
What You’ll Leave With:
More clarity on what’s feeling really good to you right now. Sometimes it’s not the things you expect!
More clarity on what pleasure/enjoying actually feels like for you
More intimacy with yourself, and all the different parts of you
More trust, safety and confidence in yourself
A sense of clarity and orientation to inform your choices throughout the year
This Workshop Is For You If:
You want some wide open time to really feel and celebrate what you enjoyed in the past year
You want a clarifying framework to guide your priorities and decisions for the year to come
You’re curious to explore your own relationship with pleasure and desire
You want to shift away from making decisions from a place of trying to “be good” or please others — and towards providing for yourself generously too!
You want your life to be a pleasure!
I can’t wait to support you to connect with what you want, what you don’t want, what feels good, and anything that needs care for you to move towards this.
About Your Facilitator
Rakhel Shapiro, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, Internal Family Systems Therapist (Level 2), meditation facilitator, and movement artist. Hi!
I have decades of experience meditating and facilitating meditation workshops; and I have nearly a decade of experience as a therapist, integrating IFS, attachment, somatic, and meditation frameworks and practices. I see connecting with pleasure and desire as part of becoming who I actually am. I can’t wait to share that with you. You get to want what you want! You get to feel what you feel! You get to live as you!
FAQ
Q: Can I participate asynchronously? Will you share a recording?
A: This workshop will take place virtually, on Zoom. Everyone who registers will receive the link via email. In order to create safety and trust during this program, I won’t share the recording with anyone who wasn’t there live. So, unfortunately, there isn’t an asynchronous option for participating in this program. Folks who attend live will receive a recording that you can go back to and review as you like. I may share some clips of myself talking on socials after the program, but nobody else’s likeness will be shared beyond the group who attends live.
Q: Is this workshop about sex?
A: It’s so interesting. Whenever I use the words “pleasure” and “desire,” people think I’m talking about sex. But pleasure and desire apply to all areas of life! If you want to explore sex in this workshop, you’re absolutely welcome to. This is a sex-positive space. And, you don’t have to. Every moment is filled with pleasure and/or displeasure, desire and/or fulfillment. Let’s explore these themes throughout our lives!
Q: How many people will there be at the workshop?
A: This is a live, interactive workshop. Space is intentionally limited to keep it intimate.
What Past Participants are Saying About Rakhel’s Programs and Meditations:
“★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Thank you so very much! I learned a lot about myself and how so much of what looks like self sabotage and self-destruction is misguided self love. I can work with that.”
“★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Rakhel’s style is seasoned and practical but with a sense of self-compassion and lightness that is unique. ”
“★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Just what I need right now. A fresh guilt-free perspective.”
“★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Tears of gratitude. Thank you.”
Introduction to IFS for Meditators
I’m super excited to be offering an introductory workshop on Internal Family Systems (IFS) — specifically for meditators!
I’ll be co-leading this workshop with dear friend and Level 3 Certified IFS Therapist Michelle Barsky, LMHC, LPC.
You may remember, Michelle and I facilitated this program a few months back. People loved it, and I’m so happy to have the opportunity to share it with more of you.
In this workshop, you’ll get an introduction to the IFS model, an experiential taste of IFS work, and specifics on how IFS and meditation intersect and enhance each other — and diverge.
Plus, time to ask me and Michelle all your questions — nerdy, neurotic, nit-picky, enamored, ask us anything!
Sunday, November 9, 12-2pm ET
On Zoom
P.S. Everyone who registers will get a recording of the Zoom session that you can listen to on your own time anytime
Gesture Theater + Krista Jansen
This is a split-bill dance + movement performance, featuring choreography by Krista Jansen and Lou Sydel. Rakhel Shapiro is performing in Krista Jansen’s work.
Krista Jansen plays with a dance that floats and curls around a seesaw. As Nina Simone musically sets up a structure and then absolutely tears it down to play all over it, and buttoned shirts multiply, Annie Wang has described “Seeing a person wholly realized through movement, revealed in the whirlwind.”
Gesture Theater presents a dance-theater-clown piece complete with masks, linguistics, and big suits. In a testament to queer futurity, we “admit that … ‘transsexual is not identity but desire is to admit just how much of transition takes place in the waiting room of wanting things.” (Andrea Long Chu).
@kristajansendownfordancin, @gesturetheater
Gesture Theater + Krista Jansen
This is a split-bill dance + movement performance, featuring choreography by Krista Jansen and Lou Sydel. Rakhel Shapiro is performing in Krista Jansen’s work.
Krista Jansen plays with a dance that floats and curls around a seesaw. As Nina Simone musically sets up a structure and then absolutely tears it down to play all over it, and buttoned shirts multiply, Annie Wang has described “Seeing a person wholly realized through movement, revealed in the whirlwind.”
Gesture Theater presents a dance-theater-clown piece complete with masks, linguistics, and big suits. In a testament to queer futurity, we “admit that … ‘transsexual is not identity but desire is to admit just how much of transition takes place in the waiting room of wanting things.” (Andrea Long Chu).
@kristajansendownfordancin, @gesturetheater
IFS Research Meeting: Connection, Collaboration and Mapping Next Steps
Come join fellow IFS nerds as we talk about the current state of IFS research, and our visions and desires for its future.
As part of this program, I’ll be giving a presentation on my dissertation research, on IFS meditation, self-compassion, and decentering in a trauma exposed sample.
This program is part of the larger IFS Conference. If it becomes possible to participate in this program virtually, or separately from participating in the larger IFS conference, I will post that information here!
Studio Time: Half-Day Creative Retreat
Studio Time is a half-day creative retreat.
We’ll start with some facilitation for connecting with yourself and your creative practice.
Then we’ll have a solid block of open time where we’ll all experiment and create. Choose your medium, choose your setting, we’ll do it alone-together — the adult creative version of parallel play.
Then we’ll come back together and share about the process and experience.
This is time to engage in whatever creative project your heart desires. Write some poetry, choreograph a dance, draw, sew, decorate a room you’ve been neglecting. Whatever you’ve been wanting time for, this is the time for that — with the support of others creating by your side, but without interrupting you.
This program is on Zoom, and you’ll get the link when you register.