2018 Course Descriptions
Elders Circle (special offering for HoneyRoot Elders)
Growing old does not make one an Elder. Elderhood is not a stage of life. Very few have grown up surrounded by honored Elders who demonstrate their importance in all areas of living. If we are fortunate, we had the grandmother or mentor who offered their stories and experience as a point of reference to guide us when we were confused and hurting. Taking our place as an Elder is an act of Service…..not of servitude. Developing our Elder self-requires preparation to fully embody this way of being.
Facilitated by Judy Lay, Laura Linsteadt, Margo Stebbing & Cris Mulvey
Welcoming the Body of Sensation
In this session we will set the context for our embodied explorations and support our animal bodies in the process of arriving more fully in the present moment by orienting to the physical space, connecting with our body of sensation, practicing riding the waves of aliveness and discovering pathways of connection to one another.
Facilitated by: Stephanie Meux
Invoking Mother through Priming, Rooting & Motion
Discover the joys, struggles and wisdom of the sacred spirit body using ancient and contemporary Pan-African movements. Explore old and new pathways, collective and individual connections, priming into tenderness, dropping into the root. Share our authentic selves, discover our untold power-filled stories, journal, tell our stories and create opportunity for life force to flow freely.
Facilitated by: Uzo Nkem Nwankpa
Root Relations: Embodied Connections for Social and Earthly Healing
For me, colonization has been a highly functional mechanism for disconnection. Each oppressive system strives to separate, be it from ourselves, our own bodies, one another, the living Earth, our ancestors, our cultures, our innate wisdom, our humanness, our earthliness, the Cosmos, Spirit, and from reality, itself. It's quite profound how well it works.
Decolonization, then, is the reconciling force -- it helps us connect. In this workshop, we will be exploring how the soma - the living body - can help us anchor in relationship and stay in contact across difference (of social location). An exploration of the will of a wild being. Full of the ability to remain flexible, spontaneous and connected to others, we will work towards creating a more whole community.
Facilitated by: tayla ealom
Embodying Unity without Sacrificing Diversity
How can we create a more intersectional space — a space where our differences can breathe without being homogenized under an idealized branding. Join us as we feel into our bodies and our ancestral lineages, giving voice to what it is like to bring our otherness into a room that honors & celebrates our diversity.
Facilitated by: Hannah & Tina
The Movement of Grief
Instead of waiting for the funeral or taking it to your therapy, what if GRIEF were just another expanding capacity that we tended to daily? As a community of Embodied Wholeness, we strive to work with Grief as an energy that can be acknowledged, allowed, moved and honored.
This ceremony will name our Grief, build capacity for holding and moving Grief as energy, and honor each Grief using Mother Earth, Water, Fire and Air as resources.
Facilitated by: Judy Lay, Cris Mulvey, tayla ealom
Free Your Voice
Sing, sound and speak your truth with more confidence in this playful workshop that covers classical voice instruction, chanting, singing, sound meditations, expressive arts and improvisation.
Facilitated by: Amber Field
Reclaiming Eros, Repairing Trauma
Pleasure, creativity, aliveness, passion and desire-- these qualities encapsulate the wisdom of Eros. In the aftermath of trauma our connection to these life enhancing, animating forces unfortunately become compromised. Please join Lorina to gather tools, support and embodied experiences to help you reclaim your potency, repair trauma and liberate the Eros within.
Facilitated by: Lorina Manzanita
Nature as Mirror
As we breathe in the oxygen of the green beings all around us, we receive their information. As they breathe us in, they receive ours. In essence we are mirrors of information reflecting one another. We will sit facing the mirror of nature together and, with the help of the plants, glean wisdom living within our own bodies. With the support of this wisdom we will practice walking our life Prayer into form. Leave feeling relaxed and empowered!
Facilitated by: Erin Summers
The Movement of Emotions: Making Room for the Whole Spectrum in Yourself, in One Another
Unlocking the energy of anger allows love to flow. Melting frozen fear allows trust to deepen. Surfing the waves of pain allows pleasure to wash over us. Come get a felt sense of how emotions through the body. Discover the intrinsic wisdom of your emotions and how they can truly serve you and others. When you learn how to ride your emotional waves, you can then be more welcome of others'. Together, we'll practice feeling ourselves, expressing ourselves, welcoming one another.
Facilitated by: Deepika Sheleff
Our Womb's Stories
Wombs, whether physical or energetic, are carriers. In addition to timeless wisdom, our wombs can hold unprocessed energy of our birth, past relationships, pregnancies, miscarriages, abortions, past sexual encounters, surgeries, et al. Together, we'll create a space where our wombs can rest and unwind -- a space where they can tell their story and be honored and revered for their layers of experiences. Tell your story.
Be received.
Facilitated by devorah bry
Relational Contact - exploring shared ground, edges and center
What happens in your body when you reach toward connection? What are your modes and patterns of relating, and how can you discover and learn more about them through the movement story of your body? Employing subtle and basic Contact Improv principals, we let our bodies tell us more about how we move towards and move away, and how to cultivate a deeper relationship with our ground and center through all of our relating.
Facilitated by: Odessa Avianna Perez
Disability Sensitivity & Waking Up
For far too long, those of us with physical challenges have been denied an equal seat at the table of life. Join us as we illuminate this blind-spot. We will explore things like ableism, the social model of disability, and "inspiration porn". As a person who's lived seventeen years with paraplegia after a spinal cord injury, Misha is well attuned to the cultural's need for reform. She will share a glimpse into her world, which will include how the injury is not merely a hardship, but is and always has been her alignment. Embodiment and wholeness are equal-access territories for each of us, and we will be stretching the boundaries together to include more of what her injury allowed her to know -- we are unbreakable!
Facilitated by: Misha Montoya
Dance time: The Body of Release
DJ'd by: Barbi & dev
Morning Practice: SOMA
An integrative somatic movement practice to reconnect to our natural inner rhythms. We explore the subtleties of movement and stillness, support and freedom.
Facilitated by: Barbi Samayoga
Home Groups
In years past we’ve received feedback about the importance of dropping in with words amidst so much journeying through our bodies, and our home groups are one way to ensure there’s an opportunity for this each day. On the first day of the retreat you’ll be placed into a group with several other participants who will become your “home” group for the weekend. You’ll connect with your group several times over the course of the weekend. Each of you will have time to share on the theme that’s introduced and/or to check in about anything that feels particularly alive for you in the moment.
Facilitated by: HoneyRoot team
Exploring Self in Nature
We will embark on an exploration of weaving nature and art as individual creators to a collective masterpiece. This will be an opportunity to connect with nature and learn more about what's alive within you and within the group as a while. We will go on a medicine walk to gather gifts from what calls out from within. We will then use SoulCollage and mandalas, as a powerful and meditative tools for this unfolding.
Facilitated by: Joy Khoo
Re-Membering, Our Souls in Motion
Soul Motion Dance Ritual
Facilitated by: Rev Dev
2018 Schedule
2017 Course Descriptions
THURSDAY - Rooting Down
Elders Circle (special offering for HoneyRoot Elders)
We welcome you to the Elder's Wisdom Council Day to explore and strengthen your work as an Elder at this retreat and to carry that into your community, once you leave. We will use this day to explore our Elderhood through the teachings from the Four Sacred Directions…listening to the wisdom inherent in the qualities and aspects of each quadrant, exploring our growing edges, and moving with the Elements. Listening deeply to the medicines in each of these Cardinal directions laid down upon our Mother Earth, we gather and embody our own wisdom. With journaling, guided meditations, music, poetry and movement we deepen our connection to that which sustains all of our lives, and rise to the soul’s longing that we came to this world to sing.
Facilitated by Judy Lay, Laura Linsteadt, & Lynley Hall
Opening Circle: Orientation. Building a Group Field. Welcoming Body.
Facilitated by: Dev, Darshana, Ember, and Tayla
Body as Resource
The body is a grand messenger, guide and ally if when we take the time to listen. During this session, we will welcome ourselves and each other more fully to the retreat and into the present moment by exploring some simple yet powerful ways to open more deeply to the the wisdom and creativity that flows through breath, bone, muscle and fluids. We will explore how breath, sensation, relaxation, impulse and curiosity can become resources we can draw upon throughout the retreat and beyond.
Facilitated by: Odessa Avianna Perez and Deepika
Nourished by Nature
Nature lives within us, what we see around us is a reflection of our inner world. As we breathe in the oxygen of the green beings all around us we receive their information. As they breathe us in they receive ours. In essence we are mirrors of information reflecting one another, dancing in symbiosis. Let us sit in front of the mirror of nature together and discover the nourishment we receive from being present with her/ourselves. In our world of countless distractions, options, diversions, learn to listen to the natural world as your guide to your essential self.
Facilitated by: Rev. Erin Summer
Beginning the Journey: An Opening Ritual
Facilitated by: Devorah Bry & HoneyRoot Team
Family Groups
In years past we’ve received feedback about the importance of dropping in with words amidst so much journeying through our bodies, and our family groups are one way to ensure there’s an opportunity for this each day. On the first day of the retreat you’ll be placed into a group with several other participants who will become your “family” group for the weekend. You’ll connect with your group several times over the course of the weekend. Each of you will have time to share on the theme that’s introduced and/or to check in about anything that feels particularly alive for you in the moment.
Facilitated by: HoneyRoot team
Evening Performance: Circle Songs
Be soothed and serenaded by beautiful music and voice as a way to transition into dreamtime.
MacKenzie Myers & Claire Kimmel
FRIDAY - Turning In/Including It All
Opening the Senses: Following Rivers of Sensation
A pleasurable practice designed to ground you, open your channels, and help you arrive into your day filled with appreciation for the brilliance of your body. Come attend to your body. Follow breath, follow impulse, follow sensation. You will leave with a sense of ahhhhh...
Facilitated by: Laura Linsteadt
Gettin' in the Driver's Seat of Your Life Force: Regulating Your Nervous System
Cultivating our resources! Building energy, releasing energy. Feeling tension, finding relaxation. Together, using stillness and motion, we'll move in and out of different energetic states, discovering our edges and learning to be kind to ourselves as we engage with them. Conducting our own life-force is one of the most empowering tools we can have. Not only will this session set you up with a way to track yourself this weekend, it will allow you to engage your life with greater confidence, nuance and grace.
Facilitated by: Devorah Bry
Meditative Movement: Moving with Inner Waters
Together we will slow down to drop deep into the subtle movement of our inner waters. We will use sound, movement, breath, and touch, to connect us directly to sensations of fluidity that often move just beneath the surface of our awareness. We will find balance in embracing what is present in the moment while encouraging ease and grace in the body.
Facilitated by: Ashley Newton
The Motion of Emotions: Welcoming and Befriending the Whole Spectrum
Unlocking the energy of anger allows love to flow. Melting frozen fear allows trust to deepen. Surfing the waves of pain allows pleasure to wash over us.
Come get a taste of how to move emotions through the body, rather than having them stuck, bottled, tangled, and frozen in the body. Discover the intrinsic wisdom of your emotions and how they can truly serve you. When you learn how to ride your emotional waves, you connect with your deepest truth and aliveness. We'll practice ways to move from blame and disempowerment to feeling your strength, juiciness, and tenderness. Together, we’ll explore… we’ll experiment… we’ll dance the power and passion that emotional energy provides, and come back into alignment with who we really are!
Facilitated by: Deepika Sheleff
6 Skills to Move Through Challenging Feelings with Grace
The skills and tools featured in this class has been successfully taught to a number of women in Lorina’s self-love skills class online program (empoweredinterdependentloving.com). In this rare in-person, in-body exploration of the the material you will be introduced to 6 skills to help you navigate uncomfortable and tricky emotions with more presence and grace. Lorina will share tools to skillfully metabolize grief, anger, fear, internal conflict, insecurity and joy (yes joy). Anticipate moving gently with stuck feelings and coming out the other side enjoying a more intimate communion with yourself, others and Life. The class will include succinct introductions to the skills, guided embodied group processes and dyads and triads.
Facilitated by: Lorina Manzanita
Everyday Erotic: Including Our Sensual Nature
What does it mean to you to embody your eroticism? Is it one and the same as your sexuality? Or can you hold a wider perspective that your erotic nature encompasses ALL of your creativity and sensuality? Let’s drop deep into our bodies to discover what erotic is to us and how we feel called to express it. We’ll explore different dynamics around consent, communication and connection, allowing our senses to take center stage and our sensibilities to fall away during this lovingly held and luscious playshop. *Note that you are ALWAYS at choice for how much or little participation you want to engage in.
Facilitated by: Darshana Avila
Voice: Opening to Our Natural Voice
We turn in and listen deeply to a pure vibration that is the essence of all sound (naad). By directing awareness to our lungs, heart and throat, we find ways to express sound from a natural openess. We begin to tune into the subtle currents of sound and explore how they travel through the energetic pathways of the body (nadis), helping us to attune to a deep well of inner stillness.
Facilitated by: Barbi Samayoga
Sacred WOMByns Mysteries - For Every Stage of Being
Welcome to women of all the phases of our sacred lives -- maiden, mother, queen, changing woman and wise woman. Join us for teachings, sharing and a guided womb meditation to explore the power of our Wombyness. So rich are the mysteries of the blood and womb - a portal between the seen and unseen realms. Learn more about opening and tending the gate to your inner wisdom and power and how to use your cycle to manage your time and energy. I will also be speaking on: "When the women return their blood to the earth, the men will stop shedding blood in war. When the women's wombs are reconnected to the earth, harmony and balance will be restored."
Facilitated By: Layla Centorrino
Embodied Conversation: Time With Elders
As a community we are deeply fortunate to have the wisdom of ones who have walked before us down their own unique, yet in ways similar, path to embodying themselves as women. In these afternoon conversations you are invited to curl up, express what's been repressed, unwind and enter into conversation about what is stirring in you. It’s also an opportunity for us to honor our elders’ journeys, and all that they have to offer as well experienced women. Hosted by HoneyRoot elders who take pride in supporting our community in this way.
Facilitated by: Judy Lay
Evening Council: Widening Our Circle, Creating Space for More Expressions of Woman
Facilitated by: Uzo, Dev, Margo, Judy, Tayla, Erin, Pilar
Evening Performance: Lullaby
Be soothed and serenaded by beautiful music and voice as a way to transition into dreamtime.
Leah Lowthorp & Tatiana Berendei
SATURDAY - Relational Heart
Body with Body
On this day of exploring the relational heart, let’s wake up and start by relating to our bodies - both with ourselves and with others! Imagine yourself as a bear cub or a kitten, stirring from slumber and eventually finding your way toward the other creatures of your same kind. . . that’s how we’ll journey! In this somatic exploration we invite our senses forward, stretching, moving, breathing and more, tapping into our innate animal nature and letting things unfold from a place of curiosity and playfulness. Incorporating elements of gentle stretching, authentic movement, partner yoga and breathwork, together we’ll co-create a space to awaken and enliven these bodies of ours in preparation for the day ahead.
Facilitated by: Darshana Avila
Uncomfortable Grace: Explorations of Internalized Oppression
Each of us exist at the countless intersections of our privilege and our oppression. In a time when we are being called to come together and awaken the feminine power of the world, we must take seriously the task of increasing in our individual and collective capacities for grace in the face of uncomfortable truths about how we both impact, and are impacted by, the world. To be truly empowered in who we are, we must get real about all aspects of ourselves so we can make conscious ripples in the collective exchange of life. This offering will be an in-depth and in-skin exploration of how oppression has shaped our bodies, and how our bodies then shape society.
Facilitated by: Tayla Ealom & Devorah Bry
Embodied Education: Conscious Communication and Healthy Boundaries
In this workshop we will explore and cultivate being grounded in self, become more aware of our boundaries and practice mindful ways to communicate with clarity and kindness. At this potent time, it serves us all to develop a deeper awareness and commitment to self care and a more skillful means of communicating what is true for us. These skills are especially useful for empaths, coaches, healers, mothers, parents of sensitive children and anyone who, at times, feels jostled by what is around them. Join us in a playful experiential skill-building time together.
Facilitated by: Layla Centorrino
Getting Down, Together: Priming and Dropping
Discover the joys, struggles and wisdom of the sacred spirit body using ancient and contemporary Pan-African movements. Explore old and new pathways, collective and individual connections, priming into tenderness, dropping into the root. Share our authentic selves, discover our untold power-filled stories, journal, tell our stories and create opportunity for life force to flow freely.
Facilitated by: Uzo Nkem Nwampka
Movement Practice: Empathic Contact Improv
As an empath, you feel the emotional frequency of others easily. You may experience this as a great hindrance at times, and a superpower at other times. Greater awareness and presence can help us build this sensitivity into a tool. Contact Improvisation is a body based movement practice that invites us into the deeper subtleties of our bodies. Combining conventional Contact Improvisation exercises with energy healing techniques, we will get grounded in our own bodies and explore the realm of contact with others. We’ll explore questions such as: What subtle changes do we notice when we commune with another? Is it possible for us to feel ourselves, feel others, and then feel the combination of both fields as we dance?
Facilitated by: Odessa Avianna Perez
The Feminine-Masculine Soul in Motion
Playing with feminine and masculine archetypal energies can be potent and expansive, to say the least. Join us for an embodied mythopoetic exploration of polarity play and our inherent, indivisible wholeness. Using somatic inquiry, we will slow down and drop into the deep well of wisdom that resides just beneath the surface. Come reclaim and remember that which is essential to our ongoing personal evolution - - our feminine-masculine nature - - our wholeness.
Facilitated by: Denay Joy Woodman & Devorah Bry
Embodying Unity without Sacrificing Diversity
How can we create a more intersectional space — a space where our differences can breathe without being homogenized under an idealized branding of the feminine. Join us as we feel into our bodies and our ancestral lineages, giving voice to what it is like to bring our otherness into a room that honors & celebrates our diversity.
Facilitated by: Margo & Tina
Nature Connection: Relational Earth
Your womanly body is naturally intimate with the Earth, the elements and the play that is nature. When we drop into our ground, our roots in nature, we open to a simple yet profound relationship with life in her many forms. This experience-based exploration will invite your soft body to root down and open to the beauty and sensory-pleasure of being a body in contact with earth, water, wind, fire. We will begin with movement exercises, breath and sound to call forward a resting place in the felt sense of the body. From this settled and receptive place, we will listen, receive and communicate with the beautiful creek and surroundings of this special place called Shady Creek. Bring whatever you need to be comfortable sitting, lying or walking on the earth.
Facilitated by: Siri Shakti
Embodied Conversation: Time With Elders
As a community we are deeply fortunate to have the wisdom of ones who have walked before us down their own unique, yet in ways similar, path to embodying themselves as women. In these afternoon conversations you are invited to curl up, express what's been repressed, unwind and enter into conversation about what is stirring in you. It’s also an opportunity for us to honor our elders’ journeys, and all that they have to offer as experienced women. Hosted by HoneyRoot elders who take pride in supporting our community in this way.
Facilitated by: Laura Linsteadt & Layla Centorrino
Nature Connection: Reclaim Your Natural Eros
What happens to your aliveness and creative life force when you can drop into an intimate communion with the wisdom of Nature? So much conflict, constriction and chaos is created when we push our bodies into man made constructs. This class is an opportunity to shed some of the conflict and intentionally absorb the brilliance of Nature into your body. Through this guided, embodied and meditative process offered in Nature you can reclaim your natural eros. This learning experience will help you alchemize disowned, stuck energies and cultivate empowering and pleasurable new pathways.
Facilitated by: Lorina Manzanita
Evening Performance: Story Telling
Live story-telling by our local poet laureate, Loraine Webb.
Dance time: Dance Unleashed!
DJ'd by: Barbi & Devorah
SUNDAY - Weaving
Morning Practice: Growing at the Speed of Body
This gentle and energizing morning yoga practice will focus on the integration your HoneyRoot journey through movement, breath, sound and contact. We will weave the likely familiar poses and movements of Hatha Yoga with spaces in the body that support our deep connection to self in all her beautiful forms. This practice will start slow, stay nourishing, and encourage your body to discover itself anew in support of a grounded, centered and open transition from our time together to our return to daily life.
Bring: Yoga mat
Facilitated by: Siri Shakti
Re-Membering, Our Souls in Motion
Soul Motion Dance Ritual
Facilitated by: Rev Dev
Continuing Your Journey
Life after HoneyRoot. Transitioning back into our day-to-day. Staying connected.
Facilitated by: Devorah, Deepika, Darshana & Ember
2017 Schedule
2016 Course Descriptions
THURSDAY - Rooting Down
Elders Circle (special offering for HoneyRoot Elders)
Come sit in a circle of women wanting to live into their elder years with consciousness, enthusiasm, heart and grace. Through gentle movement, poetry and reflective questions we will spend the morning dropping into connection with our bodies and souls, and with each other, to explore together the gifts, challenges and invitations that aging and elderhood can offer ourselves, our families and our communities.
Facilitated by Judy Lay, Cris Mulvey, & Laura Linsteadt
Opening Circle: What is Embodiment
Facilitated by: Dev Bry, Steph Meux, Darshana Avila
Body as Resource
The body is a grand messenger, guide and ally if we are willing to listen. During this session, we will continue to welcome ourselves and each other more fully to the retreat and into the present moment by exploring some simple yet powerful ways to open more deeply to the the wisdom and creativity that flows through breath, bone, muscle and fluids. We will explore how breath, sensation, relaxation, impulse and curiosity can become resources we can draw upon throughout the retreat and beyond.
Facilitated by: Steph Meux
Connect with Land as Resource
Facilitated by: Brooke Sullivan
Opening Into Sisterhood
Honoring our own essence while we simultaneously relax into this common ground called HoneyRoot together. Welcoming ourselves into connection by being witnessed in our own experience, receiving reflection back from different faces of the feminine, and melting barriers to our collective sisterhood.
Facilitated by: Lisa Schrader
Evening Performance: Music
Facilitated by: Laura Inserra
FRIDAY - Turning In
Opening the Senses: Following Rivers of Sensation
A pleasurable practice designed to ground you, open your channels, and help you arrive into your day filled with appreciation for the brilliance of your body. Come attend to your body. Follow breath, follow impulse, follow sensation. You will leave with a sense of ahhhhh...
Facilitated by: Dev Bry
Move and Include
On the Open Floor we move and include the juicy moments of joyful release, as well as the challenging ones: pain in the body, shyness, self-limiting beliefs, a sense of isolation. This is how we learn to be true, fluid and whole. In this offering we will explore how each and every moving, breathing being can find their place in the dance and on the dance floor.
Facilitated by: Claire Alexander
Meditative Movement: Ritual to Bless the Space Within
We will use movement, breath, awareness and touch to gently open our inner space and bless all that we find inside with warm acceptance. Meditative space, soft guidance, with as much or as little movement as your body desires.
Facilitated by: Siri Shakti
The Motion of Emotions: Welcoming and Befriending the Whole Spectrum
Unlocking the energy of anger allows love to flow. Melting frozen fear allows trust to deepen. Surfing the waves of pain allows pleasure to wash over us.
Come get a taste of how to move emotions through the body, rather than having them stuck, bottled, tangled, and frozen in the body. Discover the intrinsic wisdom of your emotions and how they can truly serve you. When you learn how to ride your emotional waves, you connect with your deepest truth and aliveness. We'll practice ways to move from blame and disempowerment to feeling your strength, juiciness, and tenderness. Together, we’ll explore… we’ll experiment… we’ll dance the power and passion that emotional energy provides, and come back into alignment with who we really are!
Facilitated by: Deepika Sheleff
Hand Crafting: Embodying the Holy through Wet Felting
We will open this practice with a ceremony to bless our Sacred Tools, your hands. As a way of giving respect and living in gratitude for the ancestors, we will give you some of the historical and cultural aspects of this amazing craft. Using our hands to bring forth something new, we work side by side with Mystery, feeling Her rhythms awaken in our bone-memory. Your felted piece will serve as an offering to the Holy Ones. We learn the lessons of patience as we slowly and attentively piece together the life we yearn for.
There will be a $7 materials fee for the wool paid to facilitators at the time of the workshop. Space limited to 15 participants. Workshop is offered once on Friday and once on Saturday. Participants may choose Friday or Saturday.
Facilitated by: Judy Lay, Rebecca Roveto
Embodied Conversation: Emotions. What's Up With Those Things?
Come be with Dev and Steph as you digest all that moved (or didn't move) for you during the morning session. Through conversation, somatic awareness, movement, and creative play, we'll dive into the emotional body and see what it has to say. The more curiosity you bring, the further we can take this conversation.
Facilitated by: Dev Bry, Steph Meux
Sensation to Song: Singing From the Pelvic Floor
Learn and practice how to source the beauty of your song from the muscles of the pelvic floor. We will tune into sensations in the yoni through simple breathing techniques and Bija Mantras (seeds sounds) to prepare our bodies to sing together. That's right:: Wake up your pussycat ladies :: It's time to Meow!
Facilitated by: Lauren Ashley Brown
Nature Connection: Our Bodies, Our Earth
Women’s bodies are exquisitely attuned to the earth and the cycles of nature and are intricate vessels of the sense-based intelligence that weaves our world together. The sensory and sensuous knowing inherent in the female form and physique are an innate invitation to be grounded in being while doing, to heal the axial disconnect between the head, the heart, and the belly, and to bring both self and world into a deep communion with the felt self. During this time among the trees and by the rumbling creek, we will dive deep into the complexities of our bodies and our felt sense and the direct relationship between our inner landscape and the environment we inhabit. Join us as we walk, sense, and move with the elements, entering a deeper communion with nature and with one another, and exploring a part of our feminine nature that is often silenced by cultural normalcy.
Facilitated By: Stefana Serafina
Continuum Embodiment Explorations: Our Senses are Divine Thresholds
In the overwhelm of these times, we tend to reach towards all manner of addictions to numb and disassociate from the loud demands placed on our survival circuitry. The antidote? We must slow down and discover the intimacy that is required to access the inroads that take us home to the heart of who we are. From here we can live, moment by moment from the authentic Eros that brings clarity of direction, purpose and belonging to the unfolding of our precious lives. We each have a unique place of purpose to bestow as a blessing-force in this world. When this is lived and embodied we discover what it is to thrive- not just survive.
Facilitated by: Ajaya Sommers
Embodied Conversation: The Red Tent, Cycles of a Woman's Body
The Red Tent is our sacred time to share our stories, our concerns, our fears ~ and get the low-down on how to stay loving in our relationships with our bodies.
Facilitated by: Ashley Ross
Embodied Conversation: Maiden's Sharing Circle
Transforming from maiden to woman can be a sticky, sweet, and at times scary journey. In this embodied conversation, we will tap into the resource of your body’s innate wisdom before making use of the juicy resource of sisterhood.
Facilitated by: Rachel Wylie
Our Cycling Bodies
Each season of our life cycle is perfectly crafted. It’s designed to support us, keep us healthy and stretch us into our fullest self. However, being in a woman’s body challenges us at every stage ~ we often hear disrespectful and confusing messages from outside and punishing voices from within. With the power of our collective, we allow our fears, our longings and our strengths to deepen our love for our extraordinary bodies ~ in all our incarnations.
Facilitated by: Ashley Ross, Judy Lay, Rachel Wylie
Evening Performance: Poetry Dive, Inviting the Dark Mother
Facilitated by: Cris Mulvey and guests
SATURDAY - Relational Heart
Yoga Flow: Being in Body, Being in Heart
Breath. Movement. Sound. Sensation. Begin your day by truly being with yourself in the intimate space of your body and in full presence with your heart as we take time to nourish, feel and open into a deeper relationship with our own selves. Weaving slow flow vinyasa with threads of tantric wisdom, this class is suitable for all who wish to explore the sacred relationship of the dynamism of the Feminine and the consciousness of the Masculine within their own being. Please bring a yoga mat.
Facilitated by: Darshana Avila
Embodied Metta Meditation
A journey to the center of your heart. Together, we’ll create more internal space using breath and visualization. Learn to amplify the energies of your heart chakra by drawing in earth and sky energy through gentle movement. Practice compassion for yourself and others and cultivate a felt experience of self-acceptance. Leave feeling expanded and deeply nourished. A gentle movement class suitable for all bodies.
Bring: A yoga mat and a strap or sarong.
Facilitated by: Julia Tindall
Opening the Feminine Heart through the Flow of the Senses
Together, we will dive into the sensuous richness of the deeply felt world within our bodies and open the heart to the flow of the senses and the timeless feminine remembered in our tissue. Finding the earthly circle of our breath and the snake in our spine, we will rediscover the innate undulation remembered in our hips and attune to the rhythms of our wombs, surrendering body and soul to their flow, and waking open the feminine heart.
Facilitated by: Stefana Serafina
Movement Meditation: Alone, Together
Together, we will soften and connect to the heart by slowing down to feel ourselves in relationship to the earth and the fluid rhythms of the body. We will use sensation, movement, and sound to guide us into finding embodied states of connection and a felt sense of being held and supported.
Facilitated by: Ashley Newton
Shakti: Tapped In, Turned On, Attuned to the Heart
Our sacred feminine life force energy, our SHAKTI, is the most potent energy we have access to as women. A woman alive to her Shakti has a deep capacity to love herself and others. She’s rooted in her sensual body, allowing her to tap into sustainable energy, giving and receiving pleasure, to source her creativity. She recognizes the feminine divine in the center of her life. Join Lisa Schrader as she guides you through meditation, inquiry, embodied practices, massage, gentle kundalini activation, Tantric teachings and soul-sharing with sisters to awaken the spirit, heart and erotic wisdom of the goddess within.
(Please bring a journal, pen, and yoga mat or something comfortable to lay on)
Facilitated By: Lisa Schrader
Movement Meditation: Resourcing
We will use movement, breath, inner listening and touch to open to our body's wisdom. A meditative journey to support you in finding the nourishment and expression your body is calling for.
Facilitated by: Laura Linsteadt
Hand Crafting: Embodying the Holy through Wet Felting
We will open this practice with a ceremony to bless our Sacred Tools, your hands. As a way of giving respect and living in gratitude for the ancestors, we will give you some of the historical and cultural aspects of this amazing craft. Using our hands to bring forth something new, we work side by side with Mystery, feeling Her rhythms awaken in our bone-memory. Your felted piece will serve as an offering to the Holy Ones. We learn the lessons of patience as we slowly and attentively piece together the life we yearn for.
There will be a $7 materials fee for the wool paid to facilitators at the time of the workshop. Space limited to 15 participants. Workshop is offered once on Friday and once on Saturday. Participants may choose Friday or Saturday.
Facilitated by: Judy Lay, Rebecca Roveto
Embodied Conversation: Embodied Intimacy
You're invited to journey deep into the realms of relationship with your own self mirrored through the body, heart and breath of another in this practice of profound simplicity. Working with various partners throughout the session, we'll explore the theme of intimacy - in our bodies and in our relationships - by deeply relaxing our nervous systems and courageously opening our hearts with breath, sound and touch as our primary tools. Dropping into the receptive quality of the Feminine, we'll have ample opportunity discern what is most alive and in need of tending in our immediate experience and receive reflection and support from other sisters in this exercise of embracing the whole of ourselves.
Facilitated by: Darshana Avila
Embodied Conversation: The Shadows of Sisterhood
So many women have experienced significant loss or injury in their womb space. Even the imprint of past sexual experiences can hang out in the womb. Whether it be challenges of pregnancies, miscarriages, abortions, surgeries, or physical injury, our womb spaces can be left with a deep need to be held in safety, to tell its story, to be honored and revered for all it has experienced. This is where healing happens. Come to the conversation of the womb that so often goes unspoken. Bring us your version. Teach us what you know from your experience. You are not alone.
Facilitated By: Dev Bry, Steph Meux
Wild Women Singing Their Hearts Alive
Come, come whoever you are as we weave songs into a tapestry of harmonic sound. We will learn songs that have been sung by circles of women across different cultures, times, and traditions that facilitate the opening of Love's presence. May you experience the miraculous change that comes from hearing the sound of your voice singing the songs of life echoed by women doing the same.
Facilitated by: Lauren Ashley Brown
Embodied Conversation: Sex: Sacred Energy eXchange and Sisterhood
What does sex mean to you? How does it express through you? Does talking about sex strike you as taboo or turn you on or maybe both? In this space we are co-creating a sacred container for the sisterhood to gather, discuss and feel around the topic of sex and sexuality. Guided by Lisa Schrader and Darshana Avila, the resident tantrikas of HoneyRoot, each woman is invited to bring the authentic whole of herself and her experience to the mix as we go deep into our bodies, feel fully with our hearts and give voice to what moves in us on the matter of sex.
Facilitated by: Lisa Schrader and Darshana Avila
Temple of the Heart: Embodying Compassion
Journey into the Temple of Compassion. In this ceremonial circle we will explore specific hand gestures (MUDRAS), sound syllables (MANTRAS) and imagery as ways to have a direct experience with the energy of the Goddess of Compassion that lives within us all. Experience ancient anointing practices with sacred oils as a dance of devotion and healing. We will co-create a forgiveness practice and transmute anything that is ready to be released.
Facilitated by: Natalia Price Vales
Evening Performance: Storytelling
Facilitated by: Sirena Andrea
Dance time: Women Unleashed!
Facilitated by: DJ Claire
SUNDAY - Weaving
Hatha Yoga
Energize and integrate with breath and asana (yoga postures). This class starts with long, deep breathing to draw in life force energy and breathe in the fullness of our HoneyRoot experience, thus far. The poses will focus on grounding to ensure we are rooted firmly in our bodies before we leave, and cleansing as a way to release anything that still needs to be cleared. Leave feeling relaxed and refreshed!
Bring: Yoga mat
Facilitated by: Julia Tindall
Sound Meditation
Take a bath of sound-healing to greet the new day, dosed with the medicine of music.
Facilitated by: Lauren Ashley Brown
Re-Membering, Souls in Motion
Soul Motion Dance/Ritual
Facilitated by: Rev Dev Bry
Continuing with Embodiment, Sisterhood and HoneyRoot
Life after HoneyRoot. Transitioning back into our day-to-day. Staying connected.
Facilitated by: Dev, Deepika, Darshana and Stephanie
