We are excited to announce the NYC premiere screening of #EmergingProud (dir. by Katie Mottram, 2016) with a special performance by the film’s featured musician Eddie Shiffler of Dogz of Zeus. The screening will be followed by a discussion on spiritual emergence with NYC-based holistic psychotherapist and transpersonal researcher, Katrina Michelle, PhD(c), LCSW. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

The film was created from numerous video blogs of personal stories and interviews featuring people all around the world #emergingproud and talking openly about their own transformation experiences, many of whom were labelled as mentally ill.

#EmergingProud is a grassroots social movement aiming to re-frame ‘Madness’ as a catalyst for positive transformation. The launch of International #Emerging Proud day on Friday 12th May aims to expand the public perception of ‘normal’ all over the world. https://emergingproud.com

Director Katie Mottram is an international speaker working to normalize spiritual experiences in the mental health system. She worked in the mental health system when she ‘woke up’ to her spiritual self, and ironically she had to seek support outside of that system in order not to have my experiences pathologised.

“I now know that what I experienced was a spiritual emergence, and although it’s actually very common, it is hugely misunderstood within the Western cultural framework. Thankfully, because I was able to frame my crisis in a more empowering way, it has been transformative for me and has ignited a huge passion to support others who may not have been so lucky in finding such a helpful framework for understanding their own distress.” — Katie Mottram

“I have been a singer/songwriter my entire life.  My mother died when I was six weeks old at the amusement park, Great Adventure, on a roller coaster.  Ever since that moment, I have had a connection to the spiritual realm.  I evolved through the years through many great teachers.  When I was eighteen years old, I was in a bad mental state.  A friend introduced me to some writings.  I attempted the meditation techniques within the book, and to my surprise, I went through an out of body experience in a very real and literal sense.  I flew above my body, looked back down and zoomed through the floor, into an underground tunnel.  I was floating down a stream, with roots hanging down into the subterranean cavity.  I could hear thousands of voices, in which many started to converge into a single question: “Who is Eddie Shiffler?”  At the end of the tunnel was a light.  The voices began to unnerve me, so I imposed my will upon the situation and declared, “I AM!”  At that moment, I began to lose the ability to continue down the stream, and soon returned to my body, feeling exhausted and electrically twitching.  It was the last time I ever questioned the existence of my soul.” — musician Eddie Shiffler of Dogz of Zeus

#Emerging Proud is ultimately a campaign about providing hope; that breaking down does not mean we are broken; it means that we can be amidst a difficult journey to ‘breakthrough’. In the same way that the caterpillar completely dissolves before emerging as a butterfly from its chrysalis, the human ‘emergence’ process can look exactly the same. #Emerging Proud aims to add to the voices aiming to create a society in which it feels safer to speak out about our extreme experiences without fear of being told there is something wrong with us, or that we are “crazy”.

 #Emerging Proud acknowledges, in equal measure, both the extreme crisis and positive transformation potential contained in the ‘emergence’ process; what we consider important, is to shift the focus away from something being ‘wrong’, to the growth potential, deep meaning and wisdom psychological trauma can contain.

International Emerging Proud Day is dedicated to exploring the potentialities of spiritual experiences and psychological crises and reconsidering the impact of the current diagnostic medical model. Please join us for this paradigm-shifting, community-building event.