CommonRoot Course Descriptions 2017

Creating Safe, Functional Groups

Together we'll engage principles that birthed from decades of facilitation and observation of families and small groups working together to support each other.  Principles will be laid out and demonstrated as a common foundation for relating and give us something clear and simple to guide our time together. They will inform what we do with our attention, intention, eye contact and touch and will help ignite the experience of group oxytocin and support the co-regulation of the autonomic and social nervous systems.
Facilitated by: Elan Freydenson

Connect & Ground: Yin Yoga Massage

Deepen your awareness through breath connection, partner yin yoga and Thai Yoga massage. Access the nourishment that becomes available when being in service through the healing act of conscious contact.  Join James & KristaLove to confidently and intuitively connect with others through witnessing, compassionate touch and active listening. Together we'll co-create a safe environment and cultivate trust to experience playfulness and healing, by seeing and supporting the goodness in one another.
Facilitated by: KristaLove and James Kapicka

Belly2Belly Intimacy Embodied: Sovereignty and Connection

Intimacy Embodied is an experience of profound simplicity and potent connection. Based on the work of David Cates and his Belly-to-Belly practice, we explore what it is to establish and experience intimacy within our ownselves and what happens as we share intimately with another. Throughout the session we'll alternate between being in sovereign space as well as working with several partners to share some of the most fundamental facets of our being - breath, touch, eye contact, conversation - in meaningful ways.  Our focus will be establishing a foundation of deep relaxation and curious awareness of our felt experience, bridging the divides we, so often, use to separate ourselves from one another.  Come find your way towards connection in, perhaps, the most unlikely of places. 
Facilitated by: Darshana Avila

Morning Practice: Awakening Sensation

A gentle practice designed to ground you, open your feeling body, and help you arrive into your day filled with an appreciation for the brilliance of your body's impulses.  Come attend to yourself. Follow breath, follow impulse, follow sensation.  Leave with a sense of ahhhhh...
Facilitated by: TBD

Dance & Live Music

Community Circle

Men's Circle

Women's Circle

The Dance of Boundary & Relationship

A common trait of all living things is that we are contained within our own skins or cell walls. This essential boundary between "I" and "Other" represents the most basic aspect of cellular wisdom. Selective Permeability is the capacity to recognize what to keep out and what to allow in.  Without this defining boundary, the cell dissolves into the ocean around it. Without the ability to take in and pass outward, the cell perishes. We pulse and shimmer when another draws near, opening or closing as our deep cellular wisdom surfaces. Our needs to be both solitary and in communion drive the joys and the dramas of our daily lives.

Through simple somatic and relational explorations, we will take our time to drop into a felt sense of these core motivations. Dance, play, and ritual will be our landscapes. Safety and a patient cultivation of mutual respect will be our guides. 
Facilitated by: Stephanie Meux

Baring Witness, Listening from the Heart

This community conversation may very well be the heart of what we have come together at CommonRoot to do. This will be a time for the women to be witnessed by the men and for the men to be witnessed by the women. Our intention is to speak and listen from the courageous heart, to express our longings, experiences, similarities and differences and to be received with openness and compassion.  Together we'll enter into the power of embodied expression.
Facilitated by: Jim Matto-Shepard and Dev Bry

Touch: The Art of Feeling and Being Felt

It's no secret that as a collective, our culture is touch-deprived. Nor is it a secret that in many relationships, the quality and frequency of touch is the source of much agnst and disconnection among partners. Let's learn more about the art of touch and how we can cultivate greater skill and presence through our tactile sense to support more meaningful and fulfilling connection. Embody the difference between touching for your pleasure and that of another. Explore different tones such as soothing, supportive and sensuous touch. Take a journey into feeling more in and through your body and how to better attune with those who offer you the gift of touching them. *This is a non-sexual offering and no partner is required.
Facilitated by: Darshana Avila

Solidarity with Self: A Continuum Integration

There is no isolated Self. You are Nature and you are Source. Come together to discover the gift of resourcing within and without. Let your fluid body vibrate with the pulse of aliveness and pleasure. Continuum is a somatic exploration and today our shared intention is to integrate, make sense of and settle into your present moment experience at CommonRoot. We will spend time being horizontal and use gentle sounds to slow-down and invoke a felt-sense of holding and oneness. Bring a Yoga mat if you have one (not required).
Facilitated by: Elan Freydenson

Community Check-in: Deepening as Allies

We will gather again as community to integrate all that has been stirred and enlivened during our time together. We will speak about what has heart and meaning as we reflect on what can support us as allies, as individuals and as world citizens. In this alchemical vessel, we hope to inform and evolve the story of what it means to cocreate as embodied members of community.
Facilitated by: CommonRoot Team
 

Cocréa: Leading from the Core and the Art of Receptivity

There is no isolated Self. You are Nature and you are Source. Come together to discover the gift of resourcing within and without. Let your fluid body vibrate with the pulse of aliveness and pleasure. Continuum is a somatic exploration and today our shared intention is to integrate, make sense of and settle into your present moment experience at CommonRoot. We will spend time being horizontal and use gentle sounds to slow-down and invoke a felt-sense of holding and oneness. Bring a Yoga mat if you have one (not required).
Facilitated by: Wren LaFeet

Morning Practice: Body as Resource

The body is a grand messenger, guide and ally, if we are willing to listen. During our morning practice, we will welcome ourselves and each other more fully into the day ahead by celebrating the present moment. We will explore some simple yet powerful ways to open more deeply to the wisdom and aliveness that flows through our breath, bones, muscles and fluids. We will explore how sensation, relaxation, impulse, nurturing touch and curiosity can become resources available to us in each moment.
Facilitated by: TBD

Feeding the Soul of Community: The Feminine-Masculine, a movement ritual

A Soul Motion inspired movement odyssey for ancestral, archetypal, and personal healing.
A community celebration.
 

Facilitated by: Dev Bry w/ the CommonRoot Team