This course represents an offer inside of a larger lineage of politicized somatic practice and is meant to support activists, organizers, healers, educators, and cultural workers in our work for liberation. 

We live inside of conditions where change often feels impossible, still the call for a world where life gets to flourish mobilizes many us towards action. We want the action we take to mean something, we want it to matter, we want it to support the material conditions of our lives to change in fundamental ways. 

There is so much that we are up against that gets in the way of visions becoming reality, but through the body we get to uncover the power and the possibility that has always been there. 

We know that our longings can't wait for the right conditions or the right moment, but politicized somatics gives us a path to living our longings on an individual and collective level in the here and now. 

Through our long tails inside of social justice movement, we see  that what our movements are missing right now is the capacity to hold vision and action at the same time and to hold the complexity that allows these ingredients to exist in their right mix. This is how we arrived at this series of courses that will grow your capacity to: 

• name your longings, know your limits, and take decisive action towards what you care about 

• move from a place of dignity and power rather than shame and internalized oppression 

• work with conflict in a generative way that builds a shared future rather than leaves you or anyone else behind 

We hold that these competencies require us to hold more and more complexity that allows for more and more of our aliveness and more and more of our power, alone and together. 

This four day in person course will build your capacity, embodiment and understanding of yourself, specifically as it relates to healing shame, for the sake of supporting your healing and your work inside of liberation struggles. We support politicized healing and we believe movement work includes all work, including care work, creative work, and support work. This course is for you if you care about working towards liberation and feel stuck inside your current embodiment.  

This course is open to all. We are committed to uplifting politicized somatics inside of all communities working towards liberation and holding generative and accountable multiracial spaces. Queer, trans, black, indigenous, people of color are encouraged to apply (QTBIPOC).

The world we live in and the seeming impossibility of our conditions often shapes us away from our dignity, and our power.  Underneath that shaping, often lies shame: the inherent belief that we or the people we care about are fundamentally wrong, unworthy, or unlovable. Shame is powerful and it takes its toll. It diminishes our capacity to take action where and when it really matters. 

In moments of movement upsurge, like the moment we find ourselves in, we are faced over and over again with the cycles of feeling for our beautiful and joyous collective power to make change, and the inevitable defeat that follows. This too, takes its toll. We end up feeling burnt out, exhausted and we end up blaming ourselves and each other as the pressure rises. This too is anther cost of shame. 

Our bodies hold the potential for another way of being in response to the inevitability of these cycles. What if instead of internalizing these messages of failure and defeat we were able to embody our power, our dignity and our joy in ways that fed the possibility for change over the long haul? 

We hold that shame is fundamentally a wise and protective response to our conditions and the oppression we are working so hard to transform on a systemic level. This course will dignify what has been taking care of you all along, and open up a range of new, embodied choices though somatic practice. We will practice listening to the body and encouraging opening towards a new shape that is sustained by action.

We promise that you will leave this course with a clearer sense of your own commitments, a sense of how to support yourself and those you care about to take choiceful action, and a clearer sense of how to feel for and build sustainable power individually and collectively. 

• Four days of in-person sessions, 10-6 PM Wednesay, Thursday and Friday, and 10-4 on Saturday

• On-site small groups, partner work, individual work

• One to one and small group coaching

• Somatic bodywork to deepen your experience of healing directly through the tissues

• Practice in the Jo Kata, a martial arts practice from the Japanese lineage of Aikido

• Free time to swim, rejuvenate, be in beautiful nature and practice embodied resilience 

• Pre-work and curated reading list

• Embodied daily and weekly practices to take home