SOMATICS
The word somatics comes from the Greek root soma, which means ‘the living organism in its wholeness.’ It is the best word we have in English to understand human beings as an inegrated mind/body/spirit, and as social, relational beings. In somatic speak, we call this embodiment ‘shape,’ and the collective ‘body’ or collective psychobiology. Somatics is a path, a methodology, and a change theory by which we can embody transformation, individually and collectively. Embodied transformation is foundational change that shows in our actions, ways of being, relating, and perceiving. It is transformation that sustains over time. Somatics pragmatically supports our values and actions becoming aligned. It helps us to develop depth and the capacity to feel ourselves, each other and life around us. Somatics builds in us the ability to act from strategy and empathy, and teaches us to be able to assess conditions and “what is” clearly. Somatics is a practice-able theory of change that can move us toward individual, community and collective liberation. Somatics works through the body, engaging us in our thinking, emotions, commitments, vision and action.
POETICS
Poetry is a spell. Writing is spellcrafting. In any space I facilitate drawing, writing, crying, cooking, singing, dancing and more all count as poetry. The Greek root word of poetry means ‘to make; to create.’ The creative process required to bring something to form contains the entire somatic arc of transformation. I offer writing/making workshops as a practice (space) to build reps attending to every phase of becoming. This helps train our attention and our practice to notice what we notice and how we notice it about where we get constrained or stuck in our relationships and rituals to transformation.
FOLK MAGIC
Magic is relationship. To me, folk magic/traditional magic is the study and practice of tending and attending to ancestrally appropriate ways of relating to myself, others, and the more-than-human. This work is rooted in the the wisdom of right-relationship in pre-christian, pre-capitalist, pre-colonial ways of being so that we may bear fruit for futures of collective liberation. I find my magic is inseparable from somatics as I continually learn to tend my body as first altar.
