Shiné: mind/body/spirit

6/17 sold out - hit me up with interest in adding another session in June

6/10 sold out - hit me up with interest in adding another session in June

Here’s one of the rain poems from yesterday!

PS - Roller Restorative with me & Jen Williams is sold out. Hit me up with interest in foam rolling self-massage, and we might add a second workshop 📿💫

See you Memorial Day Monday!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of guiding a really beautiful group of 32 Quakers at Pendle Hill in an exploration of the somatic imprints we’ve inherited from our people. In honing our awareness of the behavioral and relational patterns that live in our bodies, we become more able to choose which to support and which to transform. After a couple weeks of very light, spacious, nurturing practices, I was prompted to return to some more challenging stuff, following a conversation with someone from Shiné about how much they loved the practice we used to investigate Zenshu Earthlyn Manuel’s Opening to Darkness.

So I took a big chunk of time in the beginning of both Thursday classes to get a ‘feel’ for the room, and see what people were game for. In the first class, we went for it: a super challenging meditation about spinning with a sea creature at the bottom of the ocean. (she’s so great you guys.) The rainstorm provided the soundtrack. It was magical.

But the gentle class needed something very different: a slow, easy approach to hips and feet, with lots of touch. It was magical!

I love the way we adapt to what each group seems to need, finding what’s right for the vibe in the room. I’m grateful to you for your presence, and for staying true to yourself, and talking to me in subtle embodied ways that help us co-create the right medicine for bringing the group, as a collective, into balance. I thought I’d share with you the phrase Miyo left on the sign-in sheet, drawn from her study of Japanese tea ceremony: “Ichigo-Ichie” - this moment, these ones. Never again. (Heart)

Look for this week’s poems - and workshop offerings like foam rolling with me and Jen Williams, Somatics for Expanded States, and a restorative massage one-off in June - in your inbox on Sunday, in the newsletter. 💫

“Hold yourself at a more profound level, perhaps in your chest, solar plexus, or deep breath, but stay in your body-self somehow. Do not rise to the mind and its endlessly repetitive commentary. Just rest in what I like to call our animal contentment. It will feel exactly like nothing, like emptiness. Stay crouched there at the cellular level, without shame or fear, long enough for the Deeper Source to reveal itself. Universal love flows through you from that Deeper Source as a vital energy much more than an idea.” - Richard Rohr

Chris Rabb, y’all!
If you don’t know about the BIRT tax you don’t know how hard it’s gotten for us tiny businesses. We need a change!

Philly businesses face new city taxes and higher bills this season An exemption to the Philadelphia business income and receipts tax, known as BIRT, was eliminated in 2025, leading to new taxes for smaller operations.

Beautiful email from someone from Shiné:

“You described seeking for a poem to help make sense of this crazy light/shadow weather situation we seem to be given right now. Seems to me that much of how you structure the class does just that… I wanted to shine, well, a light on it! So often youll invite, and not press for, a position or movement that surely has challenge in it, adding that it’s just fine to do this or that instead. But I’d say the main beauty of that is beyond an either/or this is ok and that is ok too- but the way the allowing and acceptance of ease truly very often opens to the thing to be striven for happening with grace vs push and clench.

Analogy for me with a sword form I learned in tai chi. There was a sword to be twirled. The only way I could do that was by learning to hold the sword lightly, vs white knuckled.

Maybe, just MAYBE, this weird weather could be a course in moving with grace between those two seeming poles, in a way that integrates them into one whole with two aspects?

The acupoint Illuminated Sea describes how the light of a celestial body is held by the depths. “Achievement” through ease, and often, only through ease.”

Thx Anna!

So these last couple weeks we’ve been taking a little breather, in circle together. The intense weather in the astrology let up temporarily, even if the political climate has not, so we’ve been prioritizing radical rest and play. We’ve taken it on down to soft, to counter all the hard stuff. We’ve moved to light, playful music, and practiced resisting the grind that governs not just work life, but sometimes too the intensity of healing both inner and collective wounds.

One practice we devoted to delighting our inner child. We used bolsters to stand in for our favorite old stuffy, inviting in movement play, childhood imaginings, and tender touch for our little.

Another day was for our teen or twenty-something, with a sensual, sultry hip focus set to Liz Phair and St. Germain. I just typed “wet” by accident... coincidence?

Then we held space for honoring the passage to maturity, with a gentle approaches to our muscles and joints, and attuning our awareness of the ever-shifting field of what’s in the ‘ol energy tank on a given day - or even moment! The poems helped reframe the sacred slow energy that comes with perimenopause, which doesn’t receive its due in this culture of hustle and push.

Check out the newsletter this weekend for a few of the poems we moved to in class. Thanks, as always, for circling up with me!

This photo was from last month’s Embodied Roots of Quakerism retreat at Pendle Hill, with me and ,O. This weekend I’m going back, to lead a racial healing workshop for Quakers. As I create the handouts, I find myself describing the work we do together every week at Shiné. We are honing our awareness of the behavioral and relational patterns that live in our bodies, so that we might choose which to support and which to transform. As I prepare to invite new folks into these practices, I’m realizing that sometimes I take for granted how challenging the work we do together really is! Not everyone everywhere is ready or willing to undertake it. I’m grateful to you for your devotion to healing these patterns in ways that can’t help but ripple out into the world. Thank you for circling up with me!

Moms, I’m ready for you!
Ready for restorative yoga with hands-on healing, sunset Skyspace opening, & crystal bowl sound bath💫
Please say a lil prayer for an open Skyspace?