BraveSpace Body Temple (Weekday)
Your body is a temple, a place of meeting with spirit. Divinity—however we name or perceive it—flows through you and I as the animating force of our existence. This experience is essentially immersive; the water in which we swim. Ironically, the experience of living is often so full that it is easy to lose sight of our inherent divinity amidst its more mundane aspects. At least for a moment, and sometimes even for a lifetime, we may face the loss of our spark, gratitude, and love for life. It is at these times especially, and perhaps always, that you and I will benefit by consciously returning to our bodies. Our bodies, no matter their shape or condition, are available to be met through the somatic language of movement and awareness. If this statement finds a deep knowing in you, or just stirs your curiosity, I’d like to invite you home to your body in the simple loving action of somatic practice. You are worthy of your love, and there are no prerequisites to uncovering it. You need not feel any particular way about yourself, have had any particular experiences behind you, or subscribe to any particular viewpoint to arrive here. In this container you are asked to take response-ability for yourself in your practice, and I am here to support you to do so.
We create the BraveSpace group container by attending to the conditions that make it possible to be vulnerable together in our bodies. Your vulnerability is offered in your willingness to feel, and especially in feeling your body in the presence of others. How does this state of intimate authenticity land for you now as you read? Perhaps you feel it as I do–as a longing for belonging within yourself and with others. With this comes the familiar edge of my fear: What if the state of my feeling is too much for me? What if the expression of my feeling is too much for you? We all experience fear, and these are valid fears amongst many possible ones. The container of BraveSpace is intentionally constructed to be safe enough to acknowledge such fears without getting stuck in them, while also honoring and inviting the truth of our inevitable discomforts. In BraveSpace we choose to take the risk of being vulnerable so that we can playfully grow, heal, and rejoice in the resulting freedom.
The tools of BraveSpace are simple yet profound: In the Body Temple we engage our awareness and shift our state of consciousness with somatic practices in breath, movement, sound, touch, and conscious conversation. All elements of participation are optional and consensual—you are always at choice about what you do and are not pressured. The space opens with an inducted experience—a particular led practice of movement, breath, sound, and awareness—and then becomes an open and supportive space for your individual exploration and expression. Individual attention is available if you like. There is relatively quiet, organic music assisting you to feel the flow of your own vitality. Tools like rollers, yoga mats, pilates equipment,and other body supports are available. We close with a speaking circle to share, frame, and learn from the experience. You may recognize the format of Ecstatic Dance, yet this is probably more internal and meditative. Contact improvisation play is welcome for those who seek it if the space and consent of participants is met with presence. Professional bodywork, focused in myofascial, craniosacral, and somatic movement therapy techniques will be available from me in the space at an additional fee.
Once you have experienced the form of the BraveSpace Body Temple a few times you may come and go from the container as you see fit, yet it is very important that your first time you arrive on time so that we may generate the BraveSpace together. Every session will have a theme based on the principles of BraveSpace which you can find below. The studio will open 15 minutes before the session begins, and it is advisable to come a little before the start time to get settled. This is a trauma-aware container; it’s beneficial for us to check in before class if we’ve not yet met.
Wear clothes like you might for a yoga class or ecstatic dance—please avoid belts, buckles, or anything else that could scratch the floor. Please bring a water bottle with a sealed lid. A journal is recommended.
Bodywork will be available for $20 in 15 minute increments via cash, cc, or venmo.
BraveSpace® is a way of being together that acknowledges the primacy of the body for navigating how we relate, generating an environment safe enough to take the risk of being vulnerable.
Holding BraveSpace® together has fundamental principles:
- Somatic Research: We notice the sensations, emotions, images, and movements that we can perceive in our bodies. We collect this data without jumping to conclusions about its meaning or significance prematurely. Simultaneously, we recognize that the truth of our bodies cannot be manipulated away by our minds.
- De-shaming: We recognize our bodies as nature, both wild and civilized. We recognize and hold our judgements lightly in order to openly witness ourselves and each other. While we mindfully choose our actions, we release the need to control our experience, asking of our bodies and each other’s bodies what is being revealed through our perceptions.
- Trans-formation: We recognize that our movements and personalities are comprised of patterns that take form in our bodies and behaviors, and that these patterns may include traumatic responses. We are willing to change our form, face trauma, and invite discomfort in order to grow in alignment with purpose, truth, and community. We simultaneously seek to avoid injury to self, other, and world.
- Improvisation: We invite awe and wonder as we inhabit the mysterious gap between knowing and not knowing. We allow truth to emerge through us and recognize power as the ability to be with what is.
- Response-ability: We reposition ourselves in relation to others and the world in each moment seeking our consensual and coherent place of belonging. If we become overwhelmed, frozen, or otherwise unable to respond we do our best to speak to it openly and honestly. We do not attempt to control others’ actions in order to avoid shifting our own relationship to the external world, although we may share our perspectives and invite change.
- Heart-Centeredness: We recognize our hearts as portals to spirit and communal consciousness, with the potential to guide us through the limitations of our minds and individual identities. We embody qualities of unconditional love, healing presence, innate harmony, and compassion by calling our attention and energy back to our hearts and to the communal heart.
- Tensegrity: We recognize tensional integrity as a systemic wholeness of our physical bodies in space and also of the interpersonal and spiritual realms we inhabit together. We value and hold the tension of opposites as a necessary and healthy aspect of consciousness, and as a key to improvisational emergence.
- Risk: We recognize life as a place of inherent mortality and choose in BraveSpace the risk of intimacy with ourselves, each other, and the divine, knowing that none of us will complete our journey on this planet alive. Every phrase has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We embrace fear without being led by it.
- Eros: We recognize our bodies are charged with a force of life that is inherently erotic and which manifests differently for each of us. We celebrate our pleasure, vitality, and longing by meeting masculine and feminine dynamics within ourselves. In BraveSpace we direct sexual energy that may wish to fixate on others into making love with spirit in its many forms, including attuning with others.
- Interbeing: We recognize that we are simultaneously individual and collectively conscious beings in concert with an animate world. We attune to and contribute to communal fields of consciousness by noting our own values and preferences, voicing and moving them as they are given to us to share, and being willing to release them to impermanence.