Welcome home
to your body
Welcome to a community exploring the intersection of somatics and body liberation. This space is dedicated to liberating ourselves from historical, media-driven, and institutional messages about what bodies “should” look like, do, and perform to be “acceptable.”
Beyond Body as Project: A New Paradigm
What if …
your body isn't a problem that needs solving?
instead of constantly seeking to improve or fix your physical self, you could experience your body as a source of wisdom and belonging?
Understanding Body Liberation
EXPLORING THE BODY THROUGH THE BODY
What is Somatic Practice and Why Does it Matter?
“The body is a place of connection to our daily life and profound experience, a place of historical habit and survival strategies, and our interdependence with Land and the Mystery. When we talk about embodiment, or living through the body, we mean opening to more life, more aliveness, more discernment, and more skillful action.”
Most of us spend our days living from the neck up—thinking, planning, worrying, doing. We move through life often disconnected from what our bodies are feeling, needing, or trying to say. Somatics is the practice of coming home to the body. It’s about paying attention to the wisdom that lives in our muscles, our breath, our posture, and our nervous system. It’s about realizing that the body isn't separate from the mind, but is the ground of our emotions, our beliefs, our patterns, and our power.
Somatics asks us to dance with questions like:
🌀 How do you know what you know?
🌀 What sensations arise in your body when you're angry, scared, fully alive, or deeply seen?
🌀 How do the narratives of your life—your traumas, cultural experiences, and identities—express themselves through your tissues, your breath, your movements?
Somatic practice encompasses techniques and exercises designed to increase our awareness of the experiences of our bodies in space and time. These practices might include things like mindful movement, breathwork, sensory awareness, communication practices, and body-centered meditation. Somatic practice helps us recognize and understand bodily sensations, emotions, and habitual patterns, fostering deeper self-awareness and clarity about how we show up the world and the gap between that and what we’re longing to do, embody, or become. This awareness opens the door to choice, to healing, to resilience, and to more embodied presence with others. It’s not just about thinking differently; it’s about living differently—more whole, more rooted, more awake.
Is this community for you?
We believe in creating welcoming spaces for all bodies, regardless of ability, size, health status, or appearance. Your body is not a problem that needs solving or an ongoing improvement project. Your body is a source of wisdom and belonging.
We welcome those who are curious about…
What cultivating a different, more compassionate relationship with our bodies might unlock in our embodied presence and our daily practices.
Exploring alternatives to the narratives, beliefs, compromises, performances, and choices we've made to help our bodies survive and navigate the world.
How changing our relationship with our own bodies could transform our connections with others.
The ways we might be consciously or unconsciously withholding self-compassion, joy, and pleasure from our lives due to the complexities of our body relationship.
If you're feeling a resonant 'yes' in your body as you read this, you're in the right place.
Welcome to a community committed to body liberation, curiosity, and profound compassion.
Finding Sanctuary in the Wilderness
Many of us engage the world like "floating heads," disconnected from the wisdom of our embodied experience. When we disconnect from the body, we disconnect from the present moment and miss vital information about ourselves, our needs, and our boundaries.
This community invites you into a sanctuary space to engage in conversation with your body. It's like entering uncharted wilderness - leaving familiar territory of cultural body "management" to discover your authentic embodied self. We offer support and deep compassion, walking this unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable path right alongside you.
What questions will we be holding together?
HOW TO Engage
Collective Learning in Circles: Regular opportunities to share insights, resources, and experiences in a supportive community circle. [affinity groups around topic, open enrollment, rolling basis and/or series]
- Practice Integration: Small groups to help each other develop new approaches to body liberation and somatics that honor body diversity and inclusion principles. [affinity groups around certain practices/types of professionals? Existing teams? Team coaching?]
- Personal Exploration: Asynchronous exercises and resources available to help us reflect on our relationship with our bodies through somatic practices, storytelling, and guided inquiry. [one-on-one coaching (your offer or you personal development), consulting]
Your Guides
Abby Thies and Shenandoah Weiss are somatic leadership coaches with a passion for building community and creating inclusive spaces where we can explore our sometimes dicey relationship with the lived experience of being in a physical body. Through an open mind, heart, and spirit (and a touch of humor) they help clients flow more of their aliveness toward what matters most in their lives.