During these strange and challenging times, we invite you to join us in a brand new summertime workshop series we're thrilled to offer: Pockets of Flourishing.
Join us if you'd like:
- to feel better in your own skin
- to slow down to the speed of life and the nourishing pace of soul
- to blow on the embers of your kindness, wisdom, and sanity
- to be connected with inspiring and kind-hearted others
- to feel re-inspired about what is possible
- to nourish your own capacity to be a force for good in this suffering world.
We're inspired again and again by the essay on Refugia from beloved writer Kathleen Dean Moore that includes these words:
"If destructive forces are building under our lives, then our work in this time and place...is to create refugia of the imagination. Refugia, places where ideas are sheltered and encouraged to grow...
From these sheltered pockets of moral imagining, and from the protected pockets of flourishing, new ways of living will spread across the land, across the salt plains and beetle-killed forests. Here is how life will start anew. Not from the edges over centuries of invasion; rather from small pockets of good work, shaped by an understanding that all life is interdependent, and driven by the one gift humans have that belongs to no other: practical imagination – the ability to imagine that things can be different from what they are now."
These workshops are refugia - protected places we can grow essential qualities rooted in embodiment, imagination, soul, compassion, gratitude, grief, belonging, stillness, movement, and more.
During the breezy and languid days of summer, we'd like to explore some of our favorite practices and themes in short workshops.
You're welcome to join one, a few, or all. We'll meet live online, and recordings will be provided, so you're welcome to join us even if you can't attend live.
Later in the summer, we'll be inviting a group of folks to dive deep with us into this territory in the Fall and over the coming year in our Refugia yearlong apprenticeship and training.
We are happy to offer brief and accessible experiences of these potent teachings and practices for anyone who would like to join us.
We imagine it's obvious, yet we will say it anyway: Our gatherings intentionally create a space of care and respect for all who join us, including those with or without marginalized identities, whether based on gender, race, ability, background, language, class, or culture.
If you're a kind and respectful human, you are both welcome and treasured in our world.
On Sunday, Jun 8th we loved exploring these rich themes: The Embodied Ground & The Fierce Courage of an Open Heart. These potent teachings and perspectives on embodiment, ground, and fierce lovingkindness are the ground of our lives and of every kind of teaching we offer. Deepen intimacy with your body and your kinship with the Earth, sourcing deep support to stay courageous and openhearted, even during challenging times. Recordings are available for purchase here. Just $35.
On Sunday, June 29th, we explored the enlivening expanse of our capacity for sacred relationship with the terrain between grief and gratitude through Reviving Soul Manners & Learning to Swim in Dark Waters. Our deepest satisfaction and most intimate aliveness are found in this terrain. Let's refresh the practices of thanksgiving and grieving well as a primary soul responsibilities and as doorways to our full humanity. 10 am - 11:30 am Pacific time. Recordings are available for purchase here. Just $35.
On Sunday, July 20th, we explored the rich terrain of intentional receptivity in A Thousand Ways to Listen. Listening with the fine-tuned instrument of your own body, listening to your inner life, listening to the living Earth, listening for what is calling you, listening to the world behind the world... Growing our skills to listen well is such an essential skill. Recordings available here for $35.
On Thursday, July 31, we opened many doorways to Reweaving the Tattered Cloak of Belonging. For so many, belonging can feel threadbare and confusing. We'll step out of the wounded approach to belonging - cutting off aspects of ourselves in order to fit in - and step into adult belonging - weaving ourselves into intimate, caring connection with our bodies, our places, and our communities. Recordings available here for $35.
On Sunday, August 10, we let it flow in Like the River Flows, Embodying Soul Medicine & Becoming Visionary. We explored freeing our voices and freeing our visions for bright and life-giving futures, rooted in our unique gifts and soul medicine. Recordings available here for $35.
Finally, on August 21, we practiced both nourishing movement and nourishing stillness in Sacred Stillness, Silence, Spaciousness & Reviving the Soft Animal of Your Body. These enlivening practices help us return to the richness of intimacy with our own embodiment, the wisdom in our moving bodies, and revive our access to the natural peace found in silent, spacious awareness. Recordings available here for $35.
You are cordially invited to join us for one or more of these summertime workshops aimed to deeply nourish your wisdom and wellbeing which serve the wellbeing of all.
We'll meet live on Zoom. Recordings will be provided to all who register, so you're welcome to join us even if you cannot attend live.
We'd love to have your company on the journey.
Read more about Carl & Erin, your Pockets of Flourishing hosts, right here.
Want to join us? We're thrilled!
Click below to sign up for individual workshops or sign up for all at a discount. We can't wait to gather with you.
The world desperately needs awakened, embodied people who are willing to feel what's here to be felt and see what's here to be seen, willing to courageously envision a life-giving culture and world for all life, willing to stay present and embodied (or at least have reliable ways to return to embodied presence) as we discover creative and life-giving ways to transform the many metaphorical toxic waste dumps of these times back into beautiful wetlands and blossoming meadows.
"This is the solitary work we cannot do alone." - Ira Progoff
Let's do it together!!!
During each 90-minute workshop, we will make time and space for
- potent, transformative teachings
- embodied, soulful & somatic practices
- inspiring poetry
- sharing in community.
Our intention in each of these Pockets of Flourishing workshops is for you to
- feel more embodied, centered, nourished, and resourced
- receive potent experiential teachings in a fresh way
- be touched and heartened by soulful poetry and practices
- gather ballast to steady you during challenging times
- tune deeply to your own wisdom and what matters most to you
- feel well held in a group of like-hearted, deeply good human beings
- and carry with you practices, poems, and perspectives you feel good about returning to to bolster your flourishing anytime you like.
Erin and Carl Rabke are two of the most awake, compassionate, and embodied practitioners I have worked with. Both of them bring inspiration, subtlety, and exquisite nuance to their instruction. They are deeply in touch with their audience, and I would entrust anyone to their reliable hands.
Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi
http://www.dianemushohamilton.com/Home.html
I have known Erin and Carl for about fourteen years as students, friends, and colleagues. They integrate deep somatic understanding with their devoted meditation practice in ways that are very helpfulfor both very experienced and novice meditators. Speaking as the founder of The Embodied Life School with more than 45 years of experience as a Feldenkrais teacher and a nearly 50-year practice of Zen meditation, I wholeheartedly recommend their teachings. I can also attest to their integrity as both teachers and as human beings. 
– Russell Delman, Feldenkrais Trainer and founder of the Embodied Life School
Erin and Carl Rabke are refreshingly genuine, deeply skillful, and grounded in their beings. They invite us into the wild mysteries of incarnation —of being in our sensual, animal body with attention, care, and warmth, while
coaxing us, ever-so gently, outward into the world. Their lives are devoted to soul, family,
community, and the repair of this beautiful, struggling world, for which they carry an immense affection. I highly encourage everyone to discover the gifts carried by these two thoughtful, loving humans.
– Francis Weller, MFT
Psychotherapist, Soul Activist, and author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
Carl and Erin's teaching style is gentle, yet displays a deep understanding of the body and methods for working with it. From conversations with participants, I had the sense that many carried away a new and more subtle awareness of the spaces within and how to open to them. 
Michael Mugaku Zimmerman Roshi
http://twoarrowszen.org/
During each Pockets of Flourishing workshop, we’ll gather in a sacred (rectangular) circle on Zoom.
We'll move and we’ll be still.
We’ll center and we'll expand.
We'll tune into the voices of wise and wonderful poets and writers.
We’ll courageously listen to our inner lives, our bodies, each other, and our world.
We'll resource ourselves.
We’ll share.
We’ll expand our circle of care and compassion, starting right where we are with our embodied selves, and from there grow to include more and more of our world.
And we'll do it together, in a kindred community, with kindness, courage, and respect.
We'd love to have you join us!
We hope you’ll consider joining us.
With love,
Erin & Carl