This is an invitation and an application to get into politicized somatic practice together in person this Spring for three days in Los Angeles, CA from Friday March 29th to Sunday March 31st at the Pilipino Worker's Center.
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.
Framework for Embodied Boundaries in LA :This three day in person course will build your capacity, embodiment and understanding of yourself, specifically as it relates to boundaries, 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).
We hold that boundaries can serve as the gateway to our longings being realized in the world. They have a tendency to delineate our actions, carve out space inside of our relationships, and support our agency and choicefulness. Knowing our boundaries and our limits is one of the key competencies inside of visioning towards a different world, an invaluable skill for this moment. In fact, an embodied knowing of where we end and someone or something else begins actually leads us to more capacity to be with complexity and change.
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, how to support yourself in your own healing and life choices, and how to make choiceful impact in this moment. In practice together we will generate a greater understanding of your relationship to boundaries that align with, and support fulfillment of our deepest longings.
Working at the level of the tissues, we will explore:- what is my contribution in this moment and how does my body support that contribution?
- what is my broader vision? what kind of future am I working to produce?
- how do boundaries support my relationships and what's possible for me inside of them?
- what are my lines that I won't cross? How do I build the capacity to hold these lines when safety, dignity, and belonging are on the line?
- who and what supports me to take action towards what I care about?
- how do boundaries support my relationship to contradiction and unanswerable questions?
- when is the time to redirect, insist, and quit?
Structure of the Program
- Three days of in-person sessions, 10-6 PM Friday and Saturday, and 10-4 on Sunday
- On-site small groups, partner work, individual work
- One to one and small group coaching
- Practice in the Jo Kata, a martial arts practice from the Japanese lineage of Aikido
- Pre-work and curated reading list
- Embodied daily and weekly practices to take home
Financial Contribution
The financial contribution for this course is on a sliding scale from $1600-$2500. There are 4 solidarity spaces available at $700 for BIPOC participants who would not otherwise be able to participate.
Covid Safety and Accessibility
We acknowledge the covid-19 pandemic as a mass disabling event that is still occurring. Accordingly, we take covid safety very seriously. N95 masks are encouraged and we will require daily testing. Please let us know if you have other access needs or requests.
Deadlines
Please submit this application by Friday March 1st
We will notify you of your acceptance status by Friday March 8th
Your registration and first payment will be due by Tuesday March 12th
We reserve the right to cancel the course if it does not fill and will make that call by Wednesday March 13th
For any questions email: b@haveheartsomatics.com
Your Teachers
This course is led by B Stepp (they/them) and Ream (they/them). Our work is based in our organizing experience inside of movements for racial and economic justice, labor movements, and our training within Generative Somatics and Strozzi Institute.
B Stepp (they/them). B is a black, mixed, non-binary somatics practitioner, facilitator, and organizer. They live on unceded Duwamish and Coast Salish land (Seattle). They became politicized in the wake of 911 and began organizing inside of the anti-war and student movements that followed. In most recent years, B has been an active tenant organizer, building power in their own building, and city-wide, and organizing for healing and transformative justice inside of the movement for black lives, including inside of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone that was established in the wake of the George Floyd Rebellion. B has been practicing with Generative Somatics since 2010 and has been teaching with Strozzi Institute since 2022.
Ream (they/them). Ream is a white queer organizer and somatics practitioner on unceded Ohlone Land, organizing for economic and racial justice and immigrants’ rights, for over 25 years in the labor movement and currently as the Strategic Campaigns Director for the United Domestic Workers’ Union. Ream began practice with Generative Somatics in 2011 and is a Community Teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland.
