Honoring Winter: 15 day practice begins January 8th
15 days of virtual somatic practice to support deep rest, introspection, and presence
The long and the short of it:
Our winter 15 day practice begins January 8th. We get on zoom live every morning (9am EST) for a 30-minute guided breathwork, movement, and meditation. The class recordings are available for those who can’t make it live.
We commit to the same practice every morning to deepen into the gifts it has to offer us. Sometimes this might mean resistance and frustration, other times this might mean an openness and ease. Either way, we’ll choose to show up to each moment fully and wholly without judgment.
To connect to the natural rhythms of nature (which include our very own bodies), there will be further education and holistic resources about the teachings that the winter season and this practice have to offer us. These resources will be steeped in somatic psychology, neurobiology, yogic philosophy, and ancient Chinese medicine. There will also be a community chat to connect with others. It will be a time for deep introspection and stoking the fires of our intuition, creativity, and inner healer.
Past participants have called this practice, “transformative,” “life changing,” and “powerful.” I can’t promise it will feel the same for you, but I can promise that you’ll get exactly what you need from it if you join with an open mind and an open heart.
If this feels like something you might be into, I do hope you’ll join us:
The long and the long of it:
I began offering these 15 day practices back in November 2023, and they have honestly been one of my favorite things I’ve ever offered (and I’ve offered a lot over the years).
There is something so uniquely powerful when a community of people commit to a singular practice together. The practice of showing up day after day, even if/when it feels hard to do so, even if some of the postures and breathing techniques aren’t our favorite, even when the mind gets agitated and wants to just get on with the day already.
There is something so uniquely powerful about reconnecting to not just our bodies as isolated vessels carrying us through life, but to reconnecting to our bodies as part of something larger than ourselves. Because our bodies are not just islands; they are interconnected and interdependent with everything and everyone else around us. The more I connect with my body through breath and movement, the more I know this to be true.
I offer these 15 day practices seasonly - 4 each year - to help us reflect on and honor the gifts that each distinct season provides for us; to connect and become one with the cycles that surround us, rather than fighting them. This allows for more flow, more ease, and more energy when the time calls for it.
Sometimes I downplay the role breathwork and yoga have played in my own life out of fear of sounding too reductive or salesy. I’m a skeptic at heart, so it feels almost too good to be true that such simple practices can change our genetic makeup, neurobiology, and physiology. Sure, there’s research to support these claims, but such transformation and healing must be more complicated. Right?
Actually, no.
What’s complicated is our learned defenses and coping mechanisms. What’s complicated is our traumas, our inherited patterns, our intergenerational wounds. What’s complicated is going against our natural instincts and intuitions. What’s complicated is our cultural systems that sell us the ever more complex - the latest and greatest - product, device, or service.
I know because I’ve tried a lot of them. I know because I’ve forgotten the importance of simple practices more times than I’d like to admit. I know because my skeptical brain tries to pull me back into complicated every chance it gets, while my body gently nudges me towards simplicity and consistency. And let me tell you, not one of the more complicated solutions I’ve tried over the years holds a candle to the simple act of returning back to the body and breath in stillness and simply…listening.
That is what the 15 day practice is about. Deep listening…to the body and to the rhythms innate within and around us.
It’s simple, and yet so wildly profound that it’s just something you have to experience for yourself to feel and believe it.
I hope you’ll give yourself the gift of simple this winter.
If you feel the call I’ll see you on January 8th,
The practicing part
