Body As Wise Healer

These times are a lot. Being a Therapist in the midst of all this complexity requires a great deal of us. We all need vessels for transformation of pain into potency - Body Songs: Movement for Therapists, May 27-31, at Hollyhock Retreat Center

“All of us alive today live at an evolutionary threshold. Whether we are headed toward a more sustainable future or moving toward our own demise is yet unclear…. we all have a choice of whether or not we want to take an active part in creating the conditions that allow life to thrive, regardless of the outcome. Rebecca Solnit (2016) reminds us that ‘the future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.’”

(Steffi Bednarek, Climate, Psychology, and Change: Reimagining Psychotherapy in an Era of Global Disruption and Climate Anxiety).

Body Songs: Movement For Therapists: Registration is open for this restorative somatic self care workshop for therapists, at Hollyhock Retreat Center - Hollyhock is a dynamic center for health and leadership trainings and retreats.

Learn a gentle, enlivening approach for homecoming with the body and nervous system modulation, while deepening resilience and confidence.

Learn how to create the conditions that help clients feel safer to explore embodied inquiries, and how to ease into movement conversation in a way that reduces anxiety and fear, shame and self consciousness.

Learn how to weave somatic resources through movement inquiries, in a way that supports healing from traumatic injuries gently and potently.

Learn how to play with somatic movement inquiries collaboratively and improvisationally together with clients through embodied methodology that rests in attuned curiosity.

Discover movement as personal and collective liberation practice.

Learn a myriad of pathways to revitalize your relationship with Earth and Body; discover somatic experience as a reliable homeland for belonging, courage, and creative aliveness in Life.

This program is specifically for Therapists, Counselors, Chaplains, Social Workers, Art Therapists, Psychologists.

Hello Dear Community, I invite you to a nourishing voyage this summer - a residential retreat on Salt Spring Island - movement, somatics, and expressive arts to support Vitality, Voice, and Vision: Earth As Body Song. Gathering together to feel and move with the hum of the murmuring deep....Today is the last day of the early early bird rate. There are limited spots for this voyage. Perhaps you might weave in?

Vitality, Voice, and Vision, Salt Spring Island Residential Retreat, July 31 - August 4, 2025 — BODY AS WISE HEALER Dance art and writing for vitality, voice, and vision, a salt spring island retreat body songs creative play in community

The Booking Portal is Now Open for this residential retreat on Salt Spring Island, Summer 2025.

We are living in turbulent and painful times. Many of us are exhausted and needing solace, needing time and space to touch the Land and feel our hearts beating together. Even in the darkest of times there is a vitality current that moves through Life into form. Between each one of us is a vibrant ecotone yearning for unfolding - a wildly fertile place to kindle and strengthen creative life force. Come, gather around this generative fire and collaborate in the making of supple magic.

From July 31st-August 4th, 2025, we will gather at this beautiful venue to nourish our vitality, strengthen voice, and spark the creative callings that long to emerge into clearer and focused shapes. Movement, art, writing, somatic inquiry, playfulness, spaciousness, deep relations with Earth and Sky, resonant listening and quietude.

Salt Spring Island is gorgeous, and easily accessible from Victoria and Vancouver. Forested with majestic Old Cedars, Hemlock, and Douglas Fir, salal and ferns, and colourful Arbutus, this Island is a gem.

Stowel Lake Farm provides a lush setting that is steeped in intentional care through permaculture, bio-dynamic farming, and organic agriculture. The Land feels loved there and the deeply artistic community is welcoming and offers a place for restoration of soul, heart, mind, and body. The lodgings are cozy, the vegetarian food is delicious, and the studio space is Filled with light. There are cozy nooks to gather into for solitude or conversations with others, and trails, meadows, and beaches for wandering.

This retreat is a creative cauldron to nourish deeply. Folks who care for others need nourishment of depth. Folks on the receiving end of microaggressions and assaults to dignity need nourishment of depth. Folks who feel the profound pain of these times need nourishment of depth. Folks feeling called to step more fully into their own wisdom currents need nourishment of depth.

The door is open to step in, to tend our instinctive and improvisational creativity in a loving collective rooted in magic, in brave space, the arts, Q***r praxis, and love of Earth.

Vitality, Voice, and Vision, Salt Spring Island Residential Retreat, July 31 - August 4, 2025 — BODY AS WISE HEALER Dance art and writing for vitality, voice, and vision, a salt spring island retreat body songs creative play in community

dear friends, these are times full of grief, full of fear, full of suffering. Here is a little beauty for the day, the song The Lost Words Blessing, whose lyrics are written this way:

THE LOST WORDS BLESSING
COMPOSER & COPYRIGHT
Original song by Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter, Jim Molyneux, Kerry Andrew.

RECORDING

LYRICS
Enter the wild with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you travel far from heather, crag and river
May you like the little fisher, set the stream alight with glitter
May you enter now as otter without falter into water

Look to the sky with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you journey on past dying stars exploding
Like the gilded one in flight, leave your little gifts of light
And in the dead of night my darling,
find the gleaming eye of starling
Like the little aviator, sing your heart to all dark matter

Walk through the world with care, my love
And sing the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you stumble through machair sands eroding
Let the fern unfurl your grieving, let the heron still your breathing
Let the selkie swim you deeper, oh my little silver-seeker
Even as the hour grows bleaker, be the singer and the speaker
And in city and in forest, let the larks become your chorus
And when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home

The Lost Words Blessing Spell Songs is a musical evolution of both The Lost Words & The Lost Spells books by acclaimed author Robert Macfarlane and award-winning illustrator Jackie ...