Meet Erin

Hi! My name is Erin Elizabeth Geesaman Rabke.

A few perspectives on who I am and what I’m about:

By training and profession, I am a somatic educator. For more than 25 years I have studied and taught many kinds of embodied practice. It started organically with dance, then for many years I studied yoga and yoga therapy, specializing in back pain. For many reasons, I left teaching yoga in 2006. At age 18 I began to study tai chi and bagua and in 1996 I was certified as a Tai Chi teacher. I completed a 4-year professional Feldenkrais training in 2007 and a 3-year Embodied Life training in 2014. I am also a nursing school dropout. After working for a semester at the V.A. hospital as a student nurse, I knew the western medical system would kill my spirit. After quitting nursing school I designed my own degree in Integrated Somatics at the U of U. I also study and work with somatic meditation and the profound practice of embodied inner listening known as Focusing, Embodied Listening, or Somatic Descent. For the past several years, I've been regularly mentored by Francis Weller in Tracking Soul and Grief Tending, both personally and communally. Over the past many years, I have been fortunate to be mentored by wild and wise elder, Deena Metzger in The 19 Ways. I've completed a year-long training as a facilitator in the profound body of work known as The Work That Reconnects pioneered by Joanna Macy, which includes Deep Ecology, Systems Thinking, and Mindful Practices, and I weave it with somatics, soul, and embodied practice. I'm deeply interested in anti-oppression and liberation for all beings. I'm continuing to learn from many wonderful teachers in this realm. I'm developing a powerful, living body of work that I call Evolutionary Embodiment. It beautifully braids together mindful embodiment and contemplative practices with the profound practices and anti-oppression perspectives of Deep Ecology and The Work That Reconnects, dedicated to thriving life for all. I feel its deep importance for our times.

My work is about sharing potent practices to not only heal and befriend the body, but to enter into a radically new, non-dual, and liberating relationship with embodiment itself; and through that, with the world and life itself. My work is about listening to Life through the ever more finely-tuned instrument of the living body. My work is to support people in learning to move with greater awareness, pleasure, ease, and clarity – a surprisingly powerful and unending education that affects everything else in life in deeply potent ways – and to bring that into the movement of the Great Turning toward a life-sustaining way of being human in the greater Earth community. My work is in helping people soften and befriend themselves such that they become available for deep listening for how to be in a life-giving relationship with land and community and have the courage to bring forth their inherent, unique gifts.  I believe embodied learning, decolonizing our body-minds, and returning to our intelligent, organic wholeness are intimately connected with the healing of our world, the ending of harmful systems of dominance, and the creation of a more beautiful world. I believe mindfulness and loving-kindness must be lived, embodied practices dedicated to the welfare of all, now and into the future, rather than focused solely on personal evolution in order to be of genuine benefit. I believe contextualizing these practices in light of the current context of the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and a culture rooted in racism and kyriarchy is essential. Read my piece here about why to do Feldenkrais and how it relates to all these rich topics. I believe in holding courageous love at the center of it all. 

By lineage and inclination, I am a meditator and spiritual practitioner, blessed by many years of study and practice in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions of Dzogchen, Lojong, and Somatic Meditation. In the past 15 years, I've loved diving into the inevitable return to animism and ancestral reconnection – both of which are a remembering of wisdom my bones already know. I'm passionate about home herbalism, permaculture gardening, bee-centric beekeeping, sharing beautiful food and poetry with people I love, and parenting our beautiful son. I'm passionate about learning deeply from and about plants, animal kin, and the living Earth. I'm passionate about honoring natural cycles and re-aligning my life with them. I'm passionate about The Great Turning and inviting everyone into taking part. I am profoundly grateful to my teachers.

My work is to grow the capacity for grounded, centered, embodied presence and vast, spacious awareness, dedicated to the welfare of all life. Together, these offer generous room for the broken-open heart that can fully welcome the beauty and heartbreak of this precious life and respond with courage and skill. I also consider it my work to grow brave and unconditional friendliness toward what is – and to support my clients and students to do the same. This kind of brave lovingkindness is an embodied wisdom that can transform all that it touches – body, mind, soul, community, and world. Additionally, I’ve been powerfully called to Tend the River of Grief. Alongside this, Praise Practice is an essential thread of my calling. My work is about waking up more and more fully so I can live a life of benefit to the whole web of life. I commit to using all that arises in my life in support of this intention. By blood lineage, I am a white woman of Bohemian Czech, Scottish, German, and English descent. I respectfully acknowledge that I live and work on the gorgeous stolen ancestral lands of the Shoshone, Ute, Paiute, and Goshute nations. 

By choice and good fortune, I am honored to mother an impossibly beautiful and bright 12-year old child. I am ever-honored to be partnered with Carl, my beloved companion in all things that matter.

I am a daughter, a sister, an auntie, and a friend. I am a writer, a photographer, a passionate learner, and a convener of inspired communities. I am a naturalist and a lover of wandering in the wilderness. I am a fortunate student of many powerful and profound teachers. I live with my family, our beautiful cat Freya, our gecko Geeky, our python Luna, a million good books, thirteen hilarious hens (Gylfie, Fluffy, Nacho, HeiHei, Speckles, Petite, Feisty, Popcorn, Moira, Goldie, Pepper, Queenie, and Saffron), an abundant and wild garden, and countless altars to the sacred in many forms. It's usually a beautiful mess and I love it!

My work is to honor my good fortune with gratitude of equal measure and to use my great good fortune and privilege in working toward the healing of our world. I’m deeply inspired and humbled by Nelson Mandela’s phrase: “Free yourself. Free others. Serve every day.” This is my work.

I am devoted to growing:

  • embodied presence,
  • intimacy with life,
  • an awake, open, listening heart-mind,
  • spacious awareness,
  • and embodied freedom in myself and in the world
  • all dedicated toward the welfare of Life now and into the future,
  • deeply rooted in intimacy with the land, ancestors, future beings, community, and the living Earth.

I am called to help my clients and students develop:

  • integrated embodied experience and intimacy with life,
  • unconditional, brave friendliness within and without,
  • embodied compassion
  • reverent curiosity and learning how to learn (beyond systems of domination and indoctrination)
  • their unique place in The Great Turning toward a life-sustaining culture
  • authentic gratitude and joy
  • spacious, grounded, aware presence
  • deep trust in their own capacity for direct knowing and wisdom, (gnosis liberated from guru culture)
  • courage and wholehearted participation and a deep sense of workability,
  • somatic intelligence and physical autonomy,
  • a courtship with their unique genius and gifts,
  • dedication toward the welfare of all life, now and in the future
  • a good sense of humor
  •  trust in the indigenous soul and the embodied perspective.

I am inspired to help my clients and students uncover:

  • a sense of self as vast and open as the sky,
  • a heart as naturally warm as the sun,
  • trust in the uncontrived indigenous naturalness of body and mind
  • reverence for the holy in nature both within and without
  • and dedication toward a life-giving future for the generations we'll never see.

I am motivated to help my clients and students develop:

  • skills of deep listening (inner and outer),
  • unprecedented creativity in many aspects of life,
  • a gorgeous courtship with their unique genius (which is often connected with a soul wound.)

I am honored to help my clients and students to develop:

  • a sense of play mind,
  • possibilitarianism,
  • authentic, unforced gratefulness
  • a compassionate and courageous relationship with grief,
  • sustainability rooted in reduced effort and increased pleasure, even in the most challenging situations
  • potent practices of positive neuroplasticity
  • and to free their inherent love for Life.

A few more things:

I love poetry. I've been weaving the poets' wise voices into my teachings for over 25 years. I've never owned a bathroom scale, a television, or a microwave. I adore good questions, especially unanswerable ones. I’m a hardcore introvert and small talk drains my life force more than anything else. I'd rather do grief ritual with you than small talk any day. I'm a voracious reader and a lover of books. I go barefoot as often as possible. I love to cook. I love to learn. I love to wander in the wilderness. I love to have my hands in the soil. I love to hear what's deep and true and emergent in your heart.

Some of my heroes are Joanna Macy, Maya Angelou, Mary Oliver, Georgia O’Keefe, Pina Bausch, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Brother David Steindl-Rast,  Ruthy Alon, Mr. Rogers, Leymah Gbowee, Pat McCabe, Rigoberta Menchu, Wangari Mathai, Cynthia Jurs, Ruthy Alon, Vandana Shiva, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Kathleen Dean Moore, Deena Metzger, Shabkar, and Pema Chodron.

I have a special resonance with the high desert beauty in southern Utah, southern Colorado, and northern New Mexico.

I am in love with my morning coffee and am an unapologetic coffee snob. I also love good whiskey and big red wine and love sharing those with people I love. I try to celebrate every single day I'm lucky enough to be alive. 

I am seeking a sane and humane relationship with digital technology. It ain't easy.  I adore silent retreats and time in the wilderness. They fund my life.

I am so blessed with incredible friends, mentors, students, community, and natural beauty, and truly, I am nothing without them.

I’m an INFJ Scorpio Ox, and my top 3 strengths are Connectedness, Empathy, and Positivity. I really love being alive. A lot.

Thanks to the amazing writer, Kathleen Dean Moore, for the framing (training and profession, lineage and inclination, choice and good fortune.) Her self-reflection inspired mine. If you haven’t read her book Great Tide Rising, may I highly recommend it?