Cheers Institute: Riding the Wave of Life

You know the drill: Day in and day out you run around taking care of half a zillion things and counting the minutes until you can get to that weekly workout, that yoga class, that much needed cocktail, that heavenly massage. If you have ever yearned to escape this endless cycle, the CHEERS-Institute welcomes you to get acquainted with other dimensions of your daily experience, no matter the situation at hand. Co-founders Jeffrey Tippman and Amona Buechler have drawn on a wide range of body-oriented, psychological and spiritual approaches to offer an eclectic program focused on challenging habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, moving and, ultimately, reacting to life's inevitable ups and downs. Jeffrey and Amona say, "the tools offered in the so-called lifesurfing-program, if regularly practiced, open a different perspective on life, enabeling one to respond out of love and intelligence to whatever we encounter."

An extensive menu of ongoing activities features an early morning Silent Sitting session designed to prepare you for the day ahead, as well as weekly classes in Active Meditation and a variety of awareness exercises. Monthly activities include Meditative Hiking and Spiritual Films, while special Retreats and workshops take place periodically both in the Chicago area and in Europe. A free 3-evening program series called "How to Find Peace in the World of 1001 Things" has been designed with the newcomer in mind. Overall, the emphasis is not so much on changing or correcting any aspect of an individual's reality, rather on providing a supportive setting where participants can "surf" through the many layers of their awareness in a safe and creative context, thereby learning to let go of fixed, judgemental perspectives.

A Guild-certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method, Ms. Buechler also teaches weekly group classes and private sessions in this universally acclaimed system of somatic education. Focusing on the relationship between movement and thought, Feldenkrais is for anyone who seeks to avoid stress and injury while enhancing their mental, emotional and physical abilities. In the words of founder Moshe Feldenkrais, an essential tenet of the work is to "make the impossible possible, the possible easy, and the easy elegant."

In 2006 Cheers-Institute renamed itself Inner Metamorphosis University and moved to a new location at 1418 Howard Street in Chicago. The new location includes classrooms and a vegetarian cafe.

To find out more about the CHEERS-Institute, check out their website at www.lifesurfing.com or phone 773.262.1468.

This article appeared originally in the Spring 2004 issue of Chicago Learning Guide Magazine. Some information has been updated since the story's initial publication.