In these deeply challenging times of such peril and pain, of both uncertainty and wild possibility, with displays of human care and beauty-making everywhere still…
We are dedicated to paying attention, to keeping our hearts open, to showing up in contemplation and action, all while appreciating the miracle of being alive.
In our personal lives and in our work with our beloved communities, we are sustained by turning toward beauty, by letting our grief and our pain for the world be felt and then guide us, and by attending to the inner landscapes of our own body-minds as a microcosm of the great earth.
Please note: Our gatherings intentionally create a space of care and respect for all who join us, including those with marginalized identities, whether based on gender, race, ability, background, language, class, or culture.
We believe belonging, communal kindness, social justice, and liberation are integral to the Great Turning toward a more life-sustaining way of being human. Everyone who registers for this course is asked to approach all participants with warmth, kindness, curiosity, and respect, regardless of identity.
On Sunday May 4th, we're taking Beauty as Ballast to resource ourselves as we harvest, in an embodied way, the abundant gifts in the wide, wild world and in our ordinary lives. We'll practice intentionally becoming permeable to the beauty and the goodness present in our lives, so easy to miss when we are distracted and distressed. Beauty offers ballast to help us meet the times as our most well-resourced selves.
On Sunday, May 11th, we'll take Grief as Guide and together, we'll feel the intelligence inherent in our sorrow for the world and invite our heartbreak to guide us toward both greater belonging and our unique contributions to collective healing. As Francis Weller writes, "When our sorrows are witnessed and held within a community of compassion, grief can surprisingly turn to joy, to a love emboldened for all that surrounds us." Let us welcome our grief to embolden our love.
On Sunday, May 18th, we'll dive into Body as Sacred Land. We'll deepen our connection with our physical bodies as the sacred landscape where it all happens, while growing our capacity to be grounded, spacious, and connected with our hearts, our strength, and our vitality, especially during challenging times.
We offer special thanks to the wonderful Kathleen Dean Moore whose exquisite book of essays titled Take Heart: Encouragement for Earth's Weary Lovers both inspired our weary Earth-loving hearts and gave us the name for this offering. We highly recommend reading it!
You are warmly invited to join us for 1, 2, or all 3 Sunday workshops.
Easy like Sunday morning style, we'll gather from 10am-12:30pm PDT.
Tuition is $60 each or $150 for all 3.
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 aim to create a nourishing refuge of deep care, exquisite experiential support, and potent practices for like-hearted companions who care deeply about our world.
We'd love to have your company on the journey.
Want to join us? We're thrilled!
Click below to sign up for individual workshops or all 3. 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 life-giving ways to transform the many metaphorical toxic waste dumps of these times back into beautiful wetlands anb blossoming meadows.
"This is the solitary work we cannot do alone." - Ira Progoff
Let's do it together.
The following reflections are from participants in past iterations of Take Heart:
"I feel more light-hearted and I allow myself to be so more often. Thank you so much for your openness, sincerity and truly amazing facilitation. I love how lovingly the two of you work together."
Mirjam R., Facilitator & Mediator, Germany
"I fell more deeply in love with the earth with every session. Having experienced so much joy and healing through these earth centered practices it has flowed naturally from me that I want to look at how I am interacting with earth, using her resources and protecting her beauties. To anyone considering signing up, yes! You should do it! It will shift your perspectives on life and perhaps why we are really here?"
Corinne J., Social Worker, Utah
"I've realised if I see from other minds (eg. ancestors, other beings) that the world narrative changes dramatically and I have words to say what I've been dying to say but have not been able; I've started bringing these perspectives into conversation with friends and loved ones where before I was afraid to speak up."
Sharron M., Homemaker, Mother, Sailor, Australia
"DO IT! You will never be the same! Erin, I've done groups with you and this one was as life-giving as the others. Leilani, I'm so happy to have been in this group with you as a co-facilitator! You two working together are more than the sum of your parts and WOW! That's saying a lot."
Bobbi M., Social Worker, Utah
"I now have more acceptance of others who hold different beliefs, values. A deeper connection to Gaia. Accepting all the small changes that occur from my efforts. Such sweet gift received of care, comfort, connections, learning, and growth. Thank you both for bringing these needs with you."
Kelly O., Wisconsin
"I loved being in the large group and that your facilitation seemed to flow with the wonderful grounding at the beginning, the gorgeous beauty as ballast that set a sacred tone of why I'm here, lesson and song and movement and discussion all intermixed. I feel that I am growing into the person I want to be, and I know I will continue to stay connected with the Work that Reconnects. I looked forward to this time on Sunday each week. It was a very sacred time for me. Thank you, thank you."
Lisa H., California
"I felt more grounded. More able to sit with myself and others during these VERY VERY challenging times. And to hold space for those who I feel angry at. This has been very nurturing, supportive of mental and spiritual health. Very grounding and it can give a "bigger purpose" and guidance when one feels scared, lost and confused. I am SO thankful for your deep work that shows and that you so willingly and lovingly give and and want to share. I feel seen, heard, and held. Safe space. Sacred space and community building in very troubling times."
Andrea B., Utah
"This is the type of workshop and time together that feels so incredibly important right now. Afterwards, I felt more connected to myself and life, which is such a gift during these times. The care and presence that Erin and Leilani brought to the group (along with all the dear ones who joined), the shared beauty and togetherness that was created, and the wonderful practices shared really created a sense of ground and resourcefulness for me. I can still feel it lingering within me. Deep gratitude to you both for the medicine you offer the world."
– Lauren R, Georgia
"What a tender and strengthening gift these deep times were. Still ringing in my heart. Grateful to have these resources."
- Brooke K., Therapist and Educator
Each Sunday, we will make time and space for
potent teachings
experiential practices
inspiring poetry
and
sharing in community.
Sunday May 4th, 10am-12:30pm PDT
In this workshop, we'll nourish ourselves with beauty and embodied gratitude. This is NOT gratitude instead of grief, but gratitude as grief’s potent twin that offers us necessary ballast to meet the times. We'll savor beauty as sustenance.
Join us in a few of our favorite practices where we will savor:
- the natural world
- our own bodies
- the tiny miraculous details of our ordinary lives
- human creativity and beauty-making, even in the worst of circumstances
Our intention in this workshop is for you to
- feel nourished
- meet beauty and gratitude in a fresh way
- gather new ballast for your vessel
- and carry with you a practice or two that you feel really good about returning to
"I envision people recognizing, perhaps for the first time, the dazzling gifts of the world, seeing them with new eyes, just as they teeter on the cusp of undoing. Maybe just in time. More than anything, I want to hear a great song of thanks rise on the wind. I think that song might save us."
–Robin Wall Kimmerer
Sign Up Here for Beauty as Ballast
Sunday, May 11th, 10am-12:30 pm PDT
In part 2 of this workshop series, we'll open space for the truth of our grief and pain to be spoken and heard. We view our pain for the world as a necessary intelligence that's part of the complex system called "life on Earth." We know that unburdening ourselves of the grief we may have carried quietly is essential, and allows deeper connection with our hearts and each other.
Join us in a few of our favorite practices for
- becoming unafraid of our grief, fear, and anger in response to what's happening in our world
- navigating blame and judgment, whether directed inward or outward
- letting our grief be held with great compassion and guide us into skillful action
Our intention in this workshop is for you to
- open a more life-giving relationship with your grief and your heartbreak for the world
- connect with like-hearted community
- hear and be heard
- let grief embolden your love to flow through you and out into the world
- learn a practice or two that you can carry with you and return to whenever you need
"To acknowledge our grief is to free our love to fall outwards into the waiting world. Something is stirring in the depths of the times. Our collective denial appears to be cracking. We can no longer deny the fact that the world is radically changing. We sense in our bones the breakdowns occurring and, along with it, our hearts feel weighted with grief. It may be our shared sorrows, stirred by our love of this singular, irreplaceable planet, that will ultimately activate our communal commitment to respond to the rampant denigration of the world."
– Francis Weller
Sign up here for Grief As Guide
Sunday, May 18th, 10am-12:30 pm PDT
In part 3 of this workshop series, we'll greet our bodies as sacred landscapes. Just as the Earth is a body, our bodies are landscapes. Our bodies are the sites where it all happens: our physical experiences of strength and tenderness, of hardship and of taking action, our emotional experiences of gratitude, grief, and deep care, our feelings of despair, and our feelings of inspiration. Our embodiment is our embeddedment in the great web of life.
Embodiment and movement practices have been strong currents in both our lives and work for many years, and we're especially looking forward to meeting you at this confluence.
Join us in a few of our favorite practices for:
- cultivating a sense of groundedness and renewed capacity
- clearing stagnation related to our emotions
- listening to the intelligence of our bodies as we respond to our world
- finding ways to reduce tension and increase pleasure as we show up for life
We'll be sharing practices from our lineages of qi gong, Feldenkrais, self-acupressure, Embodied Life, meditation and more
Our intention in this workshop is for you to:
- learn practices that help you take care of your body and show up feeling resourced
- deepen the connection between your body and the body of the earth
- recognize some of the ways that tending to your own body is an intimate part of the life-giving change we wish to see in the world
“You could cut off my hand, and I would still live. You could take out my eyes, and I would still live. Cut off my ears, my nose, cut off my legs, and I could still live. But take away the air, and I die. Take away the sun, and I die. Take away the plants and the animals, and I die. So why would I think my body is more a part of me than the sun and the Earth?”
Sign up here for Body as Sacred Land
Or Sign up Here for all 3 Take Heart Workshops
Recordings will be provided
About Leilani Wong Navar
Leilani Wong Navar is a mother, an acupuncturist, and a dreamworker. With groups, she facilitates the Work that Reconnects and teaches practical wisdom from Chinese Medicine.
In clinical practice, she supports people dealing with pain, disease, infertility, and stress, using acupuncture, traditional herbal medicine, modern functional medicine, and dreamwork. She hosts Turning Season Podcast, a series of deep conversations with people around the world who are rising to their own roles in the adventure of our time.
Born into Chinese and Jewish families, Leilani carries on her ancestors' holistic, poetic medical science, and their dedication to asking big questions. She is in collaboration with her husband, whose work is dedicated to personal and collective transformational processes, her two children whose emergence into their teen years is endlessly enlivening, her beloved friends and family, and countless seen and unseen beings of the more-than-human world.
Leilani attended Evergreen State College where she studied Political Economy and Holistic Health, and earned her Masters of Science in Oriental Medicine from the National University of Natural Medicine. She is in ongoing, heartening study within multiple lineages of wisdom for the well-being of the landscape of the body and the body of the Earth.
About Erin Geesaman Rabke
Erin Geesaman Rabke is a Somatic Naturalist & Embodiment Mentor; a mother, a writer, a teacher, and a possibilitarian.
Professionally trained as a Feldenkrais® Practitioner, an Embodied Life Teacher, a Work That Reconnects Facilitator, and a Community Grief Ritualist, over the past 30 years she’s been trained in many somatics lineages, in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions of Dzogchen and Lojong, as well as being engaged in ongoing deep mentorship in soul work, the mythopoetic, the 19 Ways to the 5th World, anti-oppression work, and the art of teaching and facilitation. She designed her own degree at the U of U's Bachelor of University Studies in Integrated Somatics. She is currently at work on her first 3 books.
She is a meditator, an animist, a lover of poetry, a convener of soulful community, and is devoted to the wild Earth and to creating life-giving culture. She is a home herbalist and a beekeeper, dedicated to ripening mature human beings and to stewarding Refugia. Descended from ancestors of Bohemian Czech, Scottish, German and English lineages, she makes her home, along with her husband, Carl and their 14-year old son, many wily animals, and a wild permaculture garden in Salt Lake City, Utah, the gorgeous, unceded ancestral homelands of the Shoshone, Ute, Goshute and Paiute nations.
Together Carl and Erin host the Embodiment Matters Podcast, an ongoing, rich conversation about what it means to be embodied, and why and how embodiment matters in our daily lives and in our world. Guests include wise and insightful teachers from the realms of somatics, meditation, social justice, indigenous traditions, psychotherapy, soulful living, mythology, movement arts, bodywork, martial arts, neuroscience, ecology, poetry, and more.
Each week 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 oureselves. 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 kindred community, with kindness, courage, and respect.
We hope you’ll consider joining us.
With love,
Erin & Leilani
