Fall has always carried a back-to-school energy, no matter how old you are. Even decades after that last first day of school, there’s something about September that makes learning something new feel especially exciting.
Fortunately, you don’t have to take out a student loan or quit your day job to head back to the classroom. Cabrillo Extension offers community education classes without grades, tests or long-term commitments, making it possible to explore everything from art and cooking to nature, professional development and personal growth.
And this fall, wellness seems to be showing up everywhere.
“Given what we are all facing in our day-to-day lives, it makes perfect sense,” says Jill Gallo, an Associate Director at Cabrillo Extension. “I’m proud of the diverse and meaningful resources our program offers to the community.”
Gallo has noticed an interesting shift in recent class proposals. Art instructors, naturalists, culinary teachers and professional development facilitators are increasingly incorporating some aspect of wellness into what they teach.
“Creative wellness, wellness in the workplace, and how nature provides wellness,” she says. “Our program is designed to be responsive to the needs of the community, so this shift is a reflection of what students want, and what instructors, who are also our ‘customers’, want to share with the community.”
The result is a fall schedule that makes wellness look much broader than an exercise class or nutrition workshop.
New offerings include Psychedelics & Aging, Sound Healing, Women’s Rhythm: Navigating Midlife with Vitality and Vibrant Woman—A Transformational Workshop to Reignite Your Purpose. Full disclosure: I’m adding my own Eat to Feel Better class to the mix, focused on the connection between food and well-being.
What caught my attention is how many classes cross traditional category lines.Is making art a creative pursuit or a wellness practice? Increasingly, the answer may be both.
Offerings such as Living an Art-Full Life, Healing Mandalas for Regulation and Creativity, Art Journaling and Connecting with Creative Source, Writing to Feed the Inner Self: Poetry Workshop and Zentangle use creativity as an avenue for exploration, mindfulness and self-expression.
In transformational painting classes offered through Cabrillo Extension at her private studio, instructor Majio explores the relationship between creativity and the human experience. Her students work with ideas involving somatics, dreams and archetypes in a space designed to support creative exploration.
Zentangle takes a different approach. The method uses simple, structured patterns called “tangles” to create unplanned, nonrepresentational drawings, one line at a time. Instructor Lisa Hoesing begins with breathing exercises before guiding participants through the process, encouraging what the practice calls a “no mistakes, only opportunities” mindset.
For anyone who has ever stared at a blank page convinced they aren’t artistic, that alone sounds therapeutic.
Nature is finding its way into the wellness conversation too.
Longtime Cabrillo Extension instructor Gary Marcoccia brings his experience as a naturalist, hiking guide and kinesiology instructor to two new offerings: Rooted in Resilience: Nature Support for Those Touched by Cancer and Rooted Wisdom: Life Lessons from the Coast Redwood.
The titles reflect another emerging theme: learning can happen through experience as much as instruction. A redwood forest can become a classroom. Drawing can become a mindfulness practice. Preparing food can become an exploration of how what we eat affects how we feel.
And then there’s sound.
Wellness is a full-sensory endeavor, yet sound may be one of the senses we explore least intentionally. We readily understand the soothing effects of a walk beneath the redwoods, the aroma and flavor of a nourishing meal or even the tactile experience of practices such as facial gua sha. Sound Healing adds another dimension, inviting participants to explore how listening and vibration can become part of a wellness practice.
Maybe that’s why these classes feel so timely.
Personal development can start to sound like another job if we’re not careful: improve your diet, exercise more, meditate, sleep better, manage stress. Yet learning something because it fascinates you offers another route to well-being. Taking a class gets us out of our routines and often into a room with people we might never otherwise meet.
There’s value in that, especially now.
Trying something new can build confidence and creativity. A class can introduce us to a new interest, reconnect us with an old one or offer a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon. It can also provide something increasingly valuable in our screen-centered world, face-to-face connection around a shared experience.
You might leave with a whole new approach to Mediterranean style cooking, a Zentangle drawing or a new appreciation for the redwoods. You might also leave having had an interesting conversation with someone you just met. In my experience, the opportunity to connect with like-minded community members is as valuable as the learning.
Fall is a natural season for recalibration. As schedules settle and summer winds down, perhaps the back-to-school season still has something to offer those of us whose school days are supposedly behind us. Except this time, it’s entirely on your terms.
