socialised as a human being in a human-centric age, i have a tendency to prioritise human matters first and see myself as separate from the rest of life. this is part of what is making me/you/earth sick. i am learning to view myself as earth first—connected with all that's more-than-human, and i bring this invitation into our research spaces. 

i believe that healing can't happen without addressing and connecting with the collective, systemic & planetary aspects of a system. some things that are making me/you/earth sick started long before our lifetimes. to truly shift those, we need to be many bodies, connecting, caring & dreaming through a long period of time. what we can do as small groups is become part of that movement: acknowledge our conditions, examine the ways our bodyminds usually react to them, and slowly create more possibilities to become more response-able.

there might be parts of you—and of me—who've internalised messages from oppressive systems with the hopes that this would keep us safe. for a while, it probably did. but then came another message, repeating that we are somehow not worthy, that we should change ourselves to fit. those messages are not ours, and the parts trying to protect us by complying with them have far more important things to do. let's meet them together, with love & compassion.

our bodies hold the answers. the systems that have taught you&me that our bodies are the problem—capitalism, binary gender, colonialism, patriarchy—they are the problem, harming you, me and our earth~body. these systems will always encourage us to drain our energy through punching inwards, downwards and sideways. i want us to observe the water we swim in. i will remind us over & over again: our body are not a problem.

a contained environment, slowness and a group~body can allow for complex emotional states—ones that might stay hidden in other settings—to surface. together, we try and come into being with these, at a pace our nervous systems can process. we move at the pace of trust.

how can we accept what we can't change ~ while working together to change what we can? how can we tell the difference between what is already manifested (can we be with that?) and what can be prevented? how can we be of support in a process of larger-scale transformation & systems change?

we learn through pleasure, through joy, through curiosity, through a percieved sense of safety. when we play together, when we love on each other, when we connect with what makes us feel good — we have much greater chances of being able to tackle the difficult things together.