ABOUT MARCIA -and PLAY

ABOUT MARCIA




By the age of nine, neighborhood kids were coming to Marcia for help with their troubled hearts; she's been at it ever since. Today, after three decades of "Love Arts" service within two interrelated careers, her natural talents and skills as a hypnotherapist and spiritual relations mentor, an expressive artist, and hands-on healer have merged as a mature and compelling body of work called THE TAO OF PLAY.

Marcia completed her Master's in Clinical Social Work at U.C. Berkeley in 1970, surprising everyone by spending the next 15 years honing her singer-entertainer talents on live stages in the United States, Europe, and the Far East and appearing on top radio and television shows. In 1985, her natural healing abilities took center stage and in 1990 her Foundation For Intimacy training programs and private practice were established, assisting hundreds of clients and students from ages 10 to 94 to achieve better lives.

A natural innovator, Marcia, along with noted sex therapist Bryce Britton, helped articulate a conscious language of touch in 1988 with “Touch Awareness Trainings” for The Wellness Community in Los Angeles. Other innovations of Marcia’s include a body-centered hypnotherapy, which she presented at hypnotherapy conferences and consciousness expos as early as 1983. In 2004 Marcia presented "The Tao of Play" to the L.A. chapter of The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), a 50,000-

member organization founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell after his historic flight to the moon.

Marcia has always been smart—intelligence tests for private school at age 12 revealed an I.Q. of over 180—but brains alone couldn't prevent lifelong depressions. Her high sensitivity, intellectual depth, and creative genius were destined for healing and growth work. To "en-Lighten up," she wrote "conscious" Hollywood scripts, songs, and voice-overs (she is a member of the SAG/AFTRA actors' guilds); created cartoons; fashioned talisman dolls and masks; wrote poems; and danced to regain her footing. Marcia's facility in these art forms helps make her an outstanding helpmate and dazzling presenter.

Playshops evolved out of the author's love affair with improvisational theater games and performing once in the late 1970s in a San Francisco comedy venue with actor Robin Williams. Marcia immediately set about adapting improvisation to her passion for self-discovery, establishing herself as among the first to develop theater games (and a lexicon) specifically for this purpose. In 2000, Marcia developed a course and manual for The Learning Annex (San Diego/Los Angeles) and produced a playful series of cable shows in 2002 with young professional actors and one with seniors from her community college class.

Marcia describes her work as "high play." She is currently creating "edu-play-tional" programs for community colleges, senior living communities, and private clients. Publication of The Tao of Play book and companion wisdom card deck will "legitimize” the importance of the subject matter in the corporate arena.