Intensive in Somatics, Trauma, and Social Justice!

SAVE THE DATE: Intensive in Somatics, Trauma, and Social Justice! (Apr 23-25)
 
What: Intensive in Somatics, Trauma, and Social Justice
Who: Generative Somatics
When: April 23, 24, and 25 from 9am-5pm. You must attend all three days. Participation is limited.
Where: Seattle area (location TBA)
Cost: We hold a strong commitment to making this training accessible to folks regardless of monetary resources, but we do have to cover the trainers’ travel and stipends, as well as space rental and supplies. Therefore, we are charging a $150-$350 sliding scale fee for the course, with limited solidarity funds available for those who cannot afford the base fee.
 
Generative Somatics offers a body-centered framework for individual and collective healing, within a social movement context. This body of work was developed by Staci Haines, author of The Survivor’s Guide to Sex and co-founder of Generation Five, an organization committed to ending the sexual abuse of children within five generations.
 
This spring Staci will be making a rare visit to Seattle to hold a 3-day. This course will introduce somatics as a strategy for effectively addressing the impacts of both individual and collective trauma, while organizing for sustainable social change. This is a unique opportunity to build this work in Seattle and we hope that you will consider joining us!
 
From the Somatics and Trauma orientation, the aim of healing is to create more choice, more well-being and the ability to take more powerful and effective action in our lives and in the world. We don’t see healing as separate from our participation in our communities, the world, and social change, but rather as an essential part of it.
 
While somatics as a discipline has primarily been used as a vehicle to bring increasing resilience and capacity to the individual body - we believe that this framework can also be used in principle and in practice to inform a deeper understanding of systemic trauma and collective social change, and increase the holistic effectiveness of community organizing and movement building. We recognize that this framework is not only powerful for individuals and groups working on themselves, but has the potential to be a transformative framework for individuals and groups working to change relations of power in the world.
 
This intensive will introduce you to:
- a somatic understanding of how trauma and oppression impact individuals and communities
- body-centered practices for accessing resilience, experiencing mutual connection, boundary setting, centered accountability, and being present amidst deep emotion and transformation
- processes for transforming trauma and oppression in individual and collective bodies through somatic awareness, skills-building and bodywork
 
Staci Haines, along with a teaching team, teaches year-long courses in Somatics and Trauma in the Bay Area and has recently been expanding the work to social movement groups in New York, as well as to national collaboratives in Transformative Justice and social movement organizing. Through this training, we hope to build awareness and capacity in Seattle to begin using somatics as a framework for community healing and movement building.
 
The organizers of this event, Briana Herman-Brand and Nathaniel Shara, have been working at the intersections of social justice organizing, individual healing, and community anti-violence work for many years. In conjunction with this training, we are offering an eleven week somatics group beginning in late March. This weekly, sliding scale group will use experiential, body-based practices to explore individual healing and collective liberation.
 
If you would like more information or are interested in applying to participate in the training or the group, please contact Nathan and Briana at seattlesomatics@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!