Workshop will teach participants to embrace emotions Ventura County Star

At a glanceWhat: Mastering Me.When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 20. Where: Center Cheap Rosetta Stone Software for Spiritual Living, 880 Hampshire Road, Westlake Village.Cost: $100 per person; 50 percent will be donated to the Center for Spiritual Living.Information/registration: cslwestlake.org. Carrie Zivetz believes emotions help define us, but some people are unfamiliar with their feelings and view them as the enemy.To help address the problem, Zivetz will present Mastering Me, a workshop in Westlake Village designed to educate participants about their emotions.“Emotions are like another language for understanding, communicating, responding and reacting to our world and to each other. They are the unspoken language with which we communicate with ourselves,” Zivetz said. “This unspoken language expresses as energy moving in the body ... this energy is active inside of us, whether we wish it or not. Avoidance of or ignorance about this energy denies us access to. inner resources, to intuition, to greater empowerment and ultimately to our authenticity.” A certified life coach, Zivetz has watched clients and students continually making choices based on their fear of and ignorance about feelings and emotions, so she was inspired to create a workshop that would address the issue.The daylong workshop, for people 18 and older, Rosetta Stone Spanish Latin will take place Nov. 20 at the Center for Spiritual Living in Westlake Village.“We’re all doing the best we know how with the resources we have and the education we’ve been given,” Zivetz said. “We’ve educated our minds, trained our bodies and sought spiritual enlightenment, but when I looked around I couldn’t really find anyone teaching about emotions and self-expression.” Her “experiential” workshop will be limited to 14 people. “This allows me to give personal attention to each participant,” Zivetz explained. A resident of Sherman Oaks, Zivetz has a bachelor’s degree in theater arts from UCLA. She has been teaching acting and personal development for more than 25 years in the United States, Japan and Australia. “Over the years I have been teaching I have noticed how often people make decisions based on an attempt to avoid, deny or repress feelings rather than making decisions based on their own best interest,” Zivetz said. “Time and again I’ve witnessed students and clients so emotionally overwhelmed that they cannot see clearly enough to make positive choices for themselves.” While most of us have been to school and educated our minds — and while many of us take the time to exercise our bodies — our emotional selves get left behind, she added.“The emotional component of who we are plays a profound part in how we feel about ourselves, our health, the decisions we make and ultimately the quality of our lives. Mastering Me is Rosetta Stone Software about learning to work with our feelings instead of them working us. This creates greater freedom and more options in life.”