Foundations

DEEP TIME

Indigenous wisdom and the sciences have helped us to rediscover what our ancestors knew: that the same creative force which brought forth the stars, Redwoods and Ravens is also coursing through, and informing, each one of us. We begin with the recognition that life is self-organizing and is imbued with intelligence. As Cosmologist Brian Swimme says, “Take hydrogen and leave it alone for 13.7 billion years and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes and humans.” Our approach is to become more adept at listening and responding to this emergent creative force - our own deepest nature - in order to expand our experience of the world and our role in it. 

Our original identity was vast - intertwined with the Earth, the stars, and all that brought us forth. We were nested within a family, a clan, a species and a living, breathing planet and cosmos that held us in place, with purpose and belonging. When we remember who we are as interconnected beings, in relationship with the vibrant web of life, we root ourselves in that which lies beyond our differences—that which continually adapts with intelligence and resilience , through the cycles of time and change.

ECOLOGY

People from many traditions have consistently brought themselves to the land to remember and be initiated into their authentic place amidst the larger web of Life. When we leave our everyday context and immerse ourselves in the rhythms and cycles of the earth, we are drawn beyond the confines of our usual definitions, and become more receptive to all of life as kin.

On each of our programs, we live close to the earth (with varying degrees of infrastructure) to support greater intimacy and awareness. Through curious eyes, we apprentice to the ecology of place, orienting to the way organisms within an ecosystem adapt, and in relationship and in process with the whole web of Life. Deepening our awareness of living systems while immersed on land supports us in shifting from a worldview where we exist as individuals in competition with others to experiencing ourselves as part of a community, in a cooperative dance. 

Each day, we open to and explore what it is to live in reverential movement between matter and mystery, where Bobcats, Oaks and rivers are imbued with their own communicative intelligence. Daily, we will move beyond the conditioning that assumes that humans alone are sentient and open to what it is to be informed by the greater mystery, listening and responding to the myriad ways that we are guided. 

SOMATIC RESILIENCY

We each carry, in our body memory, personal, collective and generational layers of trauma that can leave us fragmented—from ourselves, from the innate intelligence within our bodies, and from the creative force that seeks to inform us. While many of us are conscious of the need to move beyond the habits and patterns that bind us, it is one thing to know this intellectually and another to realize it in the very fabric of our being. 

To assist in embodying and living our inherent belonging and expression, we integrate somatic resiliency in implicit and explicit ways throughout our facilitation and in what we teach. Somatic resiliency skills, based on cutting-edge research about the brain and our biology, are powerful tools that draw on the body’s natural capacity to heal and support us in decolonizing layers from our individual and collective bodies. As we build our capacity to recognize as well as release the identities, roles, beliefs, divisions (inner and outer) that live within us, we open the way for a clearer expression of that which seeks to live through us, in all of our actions—in how we live and how we serve..

Dominant culture favors the rational while discrediting somatic knowing and intelligence. Yet, our bodies are incredible receivers, attuned to what is happening within and around us through multiple senses. Those who are marginalized based on race, class, gender, sexuality, disability and other statuses know what it is to tune into what their bodies are telling them about whether a situation is safe or unsafe, approachable or dangerous. We all have the capacity to attune to what our bodies know, to the land, to the seen and unseen and to what is drawing and calling us in any one moment. By paying attention to sensations, affects, impulses, visions and dreams, we reclaim and re-member what is authentic and spontaneous, vibrant and liberatory. 

By working with our body’s natural capacity to heal, in rhythm with the greater body of the Earth, we increase our innate resiliency, strengthen our ability to navigate change and build our capacity to be present and available, to ourselves and each other.