Kindness:

Biodiversity is health

We come to gatherings from very different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Many of us have experienced pain and suffering in relation to collective and personal dynamics of harm; many of us carry some fear of other humas as a result, and groups are a place where our fears can surface.

Biodiversity is health. We humans can practice relaxing into welcome with one another. Many of us dear humans are working on releasing patterns of tension, judgement, rejection, fear, shame, exile. Body Songs Movement Community is a place for developing a felt sense of greater safety in groups, homecoming to our own body beings, and homecoming to belonging in community. Biodiversity is health.

In Body Songs Movement Community, we practice emptying and releasing patterns that constrict. We actively change patterns of harm, through our movements with one another, through the maps and methods of Relational Ecology. This is a deeply important and meaningful practice for humanity, and all Earth - disarming our reactivity so we can stop blasting and bombing each other. Growing a felt sense of safety to be together, each with our own right to dignity and our own responsibility for creating a collective of kindness and community care.

Biodiversity: I am Queer, neurodivergent, unilaterally Deaf, gender fluid, white bodied, a European immigrant and First-Generation Canadian, born in Canada while we were passing through on route from England to Japan back to England and then to Canada again. I immigrated to Canada in 1976, then to the US through marriage in 2006 and returned home to Canada again in 2020. I have been migratory in my life, and my ancestors have been migratory for several generations, from Denmark, Scotland, and South West England.

Respect on the Dance floor

Each of us inhabits a Temenos, a Kinesphere, what some might call a ‘personal space bubble’. This Kinesphere or Temenos is 360 sphere, filled with our own energy and movement potentials in all directions. When we come close to another, we step inside each other’s kinesphere. There is an intimacy to closeness, that can be beautiful when consensual.

We humans carry much complexity regarding personal space, boundaries, and consent. Some folks need or prefer more personal space, other folks need or prefer closeness. For most of us, our needs and desires around personal space shift in different contexts and with different people.

How we articulate our personal space needs, preferences, and desires on the dance floor is a practice, and an art. How we listen for the personal space needs and preferences of others requires deepened sensitivity, curiosity, and embodied listening. I value this practice.

Boundaries can be many things, including the edges of our personal space or Kinesphere; boundaries mark how near, how far we’d like to be from another. We can communicate our boundaries by moving through our kinesphere, travelling through the room, turning towards and turning away, making eye contact.

Body Songs, Soul Motion is a place to practice Temenos, Kinesphere. A place to develop greater sensitivity in the nuances of boundaries, consent, and proximity.

Decolonizing

& Land Back

Here in North America we live within Land and Relations that carry the living impact of genocide, betrayl of agreements, and ongoing racism and systematic marginalization. As a Nordic and Celtic first-generation Canadian & immigrant, I am woven into this history and woven into Truth and Reconciliation. I am deeply committed to ongoing practices of learning and unlearning, to being a wise, skillful, loving, and respectful treaty relative.

Land Back: 20% of proceeds from Victoria Body Songs classes will be returned to the Lekwungen People, whose lands we are dancing with - The Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. Why? I hold a value of repair of colonial harms. This is one small way to put this value into action.

An important aspect of Decolonizing and ReIndigenizing is learning and practicing loving respect and reciprocity with Eairth - practicing Relational Ecology, kinship with all beings. Body Songs, Soul Motion is rooted in Relational Ecology and woven as Body As Earth Song in every class, workshop, and retreat. Come, experience Relational Ecology through movement. This practice nourishes relational embodiment, deepens relations with Earth and Sky, with gravity, and Earth’s support, with rivers, mist, rain, and bird songs. You may feel your own fronds, feathers, branches, and paw pads…