Queering Power: A somatic practice group for embodying our rage, grief and joy was born of these questions.
Queering Power is an in-person guided space to expand our capacity to embody rage, grief and joy as portals to centered collective action toward liberation. This politicized group offers somatic practice time, education on embodiment and the nervous system, and community connection for queers.
The work begins by asking the important question: Why feel?
Interested but not ready to complete the application?
What are the gifts of rage, grief, and joy?
How can these emotions inform our political work?
What do they have to share with us about our work for liberation?
Why even make space to feel these often uncomfortable emotions?
Why should we even open ourselves
to the uncomfortable experience of feeling?
We start from the knowing that these three emotions can be especially difficult to hold, and we validate the life experiences that may have led us to suppressing, bypassing, or avoiding. Our strategies for avoidance and disconnection are also framed within the context in which we find ourselves--we acknowledge the impact of the systems of oppression that organize much of our life. This is not a space to pathologize, but rather to recognize the brilliance of our survival strategies, and develop the capacity to make different choices. Somatic Experiencing (SE) and generative somatics (gs) are the lineages that ground this space.
Using the language and practice of Somatic Experiencing we cultivate the capacity to notice our experience with curiosity, and the trust in our own ability to be with what arises. No previous experience with somatics is necessary because we work on expanding our vocabulary to notice, name and express what we experience.
Generative somatics, a politicized somatic lineage, provides language and practices to explore our shifting experience through a liberation oriented framework. This transformative methodology helps us cultivate alignment between our personal and collective practices with our principles, moving beyond patterns developed through, and because of, internalized oppression.
Connection and community building is woven into each session. Always grounded in consent, shared practices are an invitation to stay present in ourselves as we make contact with the other and with the collective. Past participants have reported that being in a queer space created a deeper sense of relative safety that enabled them to deepen into the work and practice vulnerability.
Curios about the kind of container offered in Queering Power?
Check out our group agreements to get a feel for the culture we are building.
