Towards an Earth-Centred Subjectivity
Somatic Education for Earthlings
PROGRAM MOVED TO FALL 2023
THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FALL 2023 DUE TO LOW REGISTRATION.
WE WILL SEND OUT INFO ON THE RE-SCHEDULED DATES WHEN READY.
Access & Links to this program's readings, recordings and resources page will be e-mailed to you with your registration confirmation
Towards an Earth-Centred Subjectivity
A 4-week program in Somatic Education for Earthlings focussing on Brian Swimme's Powers of the Universe including Radiance, Synergy, Interrelatedness & Transmutation
with Cassandra Wells, Ph.D.
It is clear that we are living at a time when Earth and the systems it has evolved to sustain life are in decline due to the influence of extractive and accumulative human cultures. At the core of these cultures is the modern view of humanity as separate from and more evolved than Earth and other creatures arising from it. This myth of separation forms the basis for the only world most Western people have known; a world in which human culture has transcended nature, and nature has been demoted to the status of resource, commodity, or property. This relation to Earth is not only cultural, in that our societies are organized around it, but also embodied, in that we live with a somatic sense of separation, rather than connection, with Earth and ‘the environment’ in our everyday lives. In order to live within the web of life on Earth, an embodied sense of connectedness with Earth is needed.
Join physical educator and ecozoic futurist, Dr. Cassandra Wells, in a 4-week exploration of the forces that connect your own human body with the Earth. Using your body’s capacities to sense the inner and outer world (capacities like touch, sound, balance, and interoception), participants can develop the ability to “feel” their place in the ecological system of Earth. The sessions will be composed of exercises drawn from Awareness Through the Body (ATB), a physical education system based in the integral yoga. The exercises work by first developing a sensitivity to the many and varied inputs that our bodies are continuously receiving from the inner and outer world. With this enhanced sensitivity, participants can discover and deepen their awareness of their connection to Earth through exercises that brings the attention to some of the forces that connect us.
IN THIS PROGRAM WE WILL EXPLORE THE POWERS OF RADIANCE; SYNERGY; INTERRELATEDNESS; and TRANSMUTATION.
While the structures of colonial capitalism will need to be dismantled everywhere to preserve our ecology and the conditions for life, this political and communal work cannot be done without also exchanging the modern embodiment of self-Earth separation with a felt sense of self-Earth connection. Undoing an internalized pillar of modernity is careful and gradual work, but it is a necessary step towards recovering an Earth-centred, rather than human-centred, mode of being in the world.
PROGRAM SUMMARY **
Week 1 - May 23, 2023
RADIANCE - Explorations of different energetic states of the body, and the ways in which energy is gathered, radiates, and is exchanged through the body and with the Earth community.
Week 2 - June 6, 2023
SYNERGY - Here, we explore the creative power of synergy, the way certain relationships between bodies become the basis for a new kind of elaboration of life. Exercises designed to observe and somatically sense some of the biological relationships upon which the elaboration of human life (i.e., the body) depends.
Week 3 - June 13, 2023
INTERRELATEDNESS – Exercises that enhance the felt sense of interconnectivity within the body and amongst all bodies/beings.
Week 4 - June 20, 2023
TRANSMUTATION - Exercises to bring into awareness the body’s participation in the ongoing process of self-transcendence, of bringing forth newness.
**
Each week will include exercises (games, movements, experiments) to direct and focus attention, to build up the capacity for concentration within the body, and to help us become aware of our capacity for awareness. All explorations of the powers of the universe rely on the capacity for sensing and directing the attention.
Cassandra Wells, Ph.D. is a running coach, theorist of the body, and ecozoic futurist, working broadly in the field of physical and ecological education. She currently coaches and teaches at the University of Toronto, and supports the programming efforts at Programs in Earth Literacies. Her work centres on the theory and practice of body-based methods for teaching and learning in order to begin dismantling the internalized structures of modernity, and to open a space for a more intimate and integrated experience of the world.
Dates:
4 Tuesdays - May 22, June 6, 13 & 20, 2023