Closer to Home: Connect to Enchantment & Steady Guidance through uncertain terrain

A meander towards re-enchantment & remembering through somatics, within a supportive community setting online. 

For practitioners, space holders, care workers, community leaders, artists, facilitators, dreamers & changemakers who want to craft devotional embodiment practices that are meaningful to you and rooted in your unique heritages - known, felt and imagined...

... so that you can feel more steady and guided in your offerings to the collective as we navigate uncertain terrain.

Within a small group, we'll explore Queering Lineage, Ancestral Wisdom, and Devotion in Practice - through shared ritual, collective guided embodiment practice, self-paced reflection and sharing circles. This offering is open to all (queer and not queer, BIPOC and not BIPOC, neurodivergent and neurotypical).

Online on Zoom + recordings + journal.

To benefit from the live community setting and foster connection within the small group, I ask that you commit to an intention of attending at least 2 of the live sessions.

Week 1: Queering Lineage

Wednesday 19th November, 6pm - 8pm GMT 

Week 2: Ancestral Wisdom

Wednesday 26th November, 6pm - 8pm GMT

Week 3: Devotion in Practice

Wednesday 3rd December, 6pm - 8pm GMT

Sliding scale pricing (Root / Sustaining / Care):

2 x £70 Root spaces, 3 x £140 Sustaining spaces, 2 x free Care spaces for BIPOC / trans people

The roots of 'Closer to Home'

This workshop series evolved from my own explorations around diaspora, place, displacement and home over the past few years. As a queer person of mixed English - Sudanese - Syrian - Scottish heritage, who has never been to Sudan or Syria, my imagination and felt sense has been a portal to ancestral connection in a way that has surprised, supported, and at times unnerved me. Crafting devotional practices informed by self-trust in my own experiences and lineages, has felt like opening up to the gifts that are ours to receive... bringing me, somehow, closer to home.

This offering is particularly inspired by my experiences with politicised somatics, Black feminism, rhizomes, Coniston Water, grassroots community centres, calendula petals, corner shops, mustard plant seed pods, song as portal, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, hibiscus, the fells and tarns of The Lake District, stories from Khartoum, and ancestral wisdom.

Introduction to how embodiment practice can support us to move into deeper ways of sensing, feeling rooted and experiencing connection within a lineage and sense of purpose that queers the experience of space and time.

Where have you learned - from our natural world / teachers of all kinds / loved ones / art in all its forms / beings you know or admire, who are living or have passed - that has influenced the ways you show up in the world?

What do you not yet know, what do you feel curious about?

What does queerness have to tell you about your lineage?

Exploring the different ways we might access an expansive kind of ancestral wisdom, through memory, felt sensing, and imagination.

How might we queer and expand our understanding of ancestors, beyond blood relatives, to include kin across unknowns?

What does resonance feel like in your bodymind?

How might ancestral wisdom resource us to feel purposeful as we move through the world?

 

Taking the first steps towards crafting practices that are meaningful to you, rooted in your unique relationship to your heritage.

What noticings have emerged from your explorations of your lineages and ancestral wisdom?

How might we create the conditions, through intentional practice, to notice and respond to different ways of knowing and sensing?

What will support you to feel ease, enchantment and devotion to these emerging practices?

What's Included:

• 3 x 2 hour live online sessions in a small group (maximum 7 participants, no breakout rooms)
  
• Each live session includes shared rituals, collective guided embodiment practice, self-paced reflection, and a sharing circle. There will be a short break halfway through each workshop
• Recordings of all live sessions
• 'Closer to Home' Journal (pdf) - containing additional journal prompts & mini practices for each week, so you can continue to reflect at your own pace
• 3 x 'Crafting A Practice' recordings, sharing personal insights of how I've incorporated these explorations and challenges around lineage, ancestors & devotion into my own life as embodied practices & rituals

Before the first session, you will be emailed the Zoom link, Workshop outline, and your 'Closer to Home' Journal. Recordings for each week will be sent to you within 48 hours of each live session.

What People Say

This is a brand new series, but the way I hold space is the same... here's what workshop participants have said this year:

You may enjoy this series if you:

• want to feel more rooted, so that you can feel steady in the collective offerings you create
• want to explore a nuanced understanding of your heritage, that holds space for unknowns, gaps and the wholeness of your identities within the realities of the world we're in
• want practices & rituals that emerge from your own heritage, experiences and ways of sensing, rather than borrowing from cultures that are not your own
• feel curiosity, longing or grief about what was here before colonialism
• may have a complicated relationship with the idea of "ancestors" and long to feel more supported energetically
• don't have a physical connection to your lineage, or have experiences of displacement, and want ways to feel connected to place without being there in person
• aren't especially interested in "consistency" or "productivity", but feel drawn to the idea of devotion and commitment
• are a person of BIPOC identity and want to practice in a space that values the multiplicity of BIPOC experiences
• are a person with white heritage who is already engaged in anti-racist enquiry and practice

You may enjoy this somatic approach if you:

• can access a sense of curiosity around sensations that arise in your body
• can be non-judgemental and compassionate towards thoughts and feelings as they emerge
• may experience chronic pain and/or may identify as neurodivergent, and want simple practices that feel accessible
• enjoy the process of self-reflection and reflection with others in a small group
• feel able to be in choice about how you participate in the workshop

Please note, this is not a therapy space, and would not be suitable for you right now if you are experiencing mental health crisis or are looking for therapeutic support.

Our identities within the space

I am committed to naming and working with my racialised identity as a mixed-race Black person of English-Sudanese-Syrian-Scottish heritage (along with ancestry that I do not know). Because these workshops explore heritage, it's important that, if it's also part of your heritage, you are able to name, be with and be curious about whiteness as a cultural and racialised identity which informs how you show up in the world.

At times during workshops, these racialised identities may ask to be explored or named, and it’s important that we are each engaged in anti-racist inquiry outside of this space, to understand our conditioned embodied tendencies and our edges, so we can tend to what’s present as it emerges within this diverse group, from a centered place.

Sliding Scale Pricing

This series is offered at different price points (Root / Sustaining / Care) according to your socio-economic circumstances:

• Root: 2 x £70 spaces
• Sustaining: 3 x £140 spaces
• Care: There are 2 free places for people who identify as BIPOC or trans. The free spaces are popular and first-come-first-served, so before booking please check in with your availability for the live sessions. If you book and then change your mind or can no longer attend, please let me know so I can offer the place to someone on the waiting list.

You can learn more about the ecosystem of Everyday Writes offerings here: 

About the facilitator

dia (they/them), aka Everyday Writes, is an embodiment coach & writer, holding space at the intersection of somatic remembering, fugitivity, queerness, neurodivergence, disability & music on repeat.

Everyday Writes spaces are anti-racist, anti-homophobic, QTIBIPOC-led, neurodivergent-led, celebrating of trans people and people of all genders, value the lived experience of all participants, and aim to be actively inclusive and accessible. Please only come along if you share these values.

Gathering Agreements

This is a co-created space to model the world we yearn to live in through practicing together. By participating in this series live or via replays, we agree to practice:

- Arriving and staying as our nuanced selves, being in choice throughout as to how/whether we participate

- Being with “what is here now” as it emerges

- Going gently, understanding that embodiment practice can be activating, and honouring our individual capacity and our edges

- Creating and allowing space & silence to feel into our bodies and process without urgency

- Being attentive to the multiracial nature of the space, and seeking to be actively anti-racist, including a practice of inviting BIPOC folks to share first before opening to the whole group

- Inviting each other into consent, not making assumptions and, when sharing, offering content warnings where necessary

- Relating to each other with care, kindness and belonging, respecting the confidentiality of each other’s shares and holding each other in our dignity

Any questions before booking?

Email dia: info@everydaywrites.com

Join the waitlist

If the series is sold out and you would like to be added to the waiting list, please send me an email (info@everydaywrites.com), and I will let you know if a space becomes available and when the course runs again.