02/01/2026
We saw a bunch of bright new faces in January. Maybe the process of inviting folks in to what we're up to reminded you of the uniqueness of what we're practicing together. There's something different about the space we practice in. It's the big wraparound windows looking out on nature in our practice room. It's in the signs around you: NO ICE, Practice Radical Empathy, Human Rights for All. Maybe you get a glimpse of the worship room, light streaming around the quiet benches, structured in an egalitarian inward-facing pattern rather than hierarchical rows. There's a book of poems propped up next to the yoga props - poems that our movement is thematized to explore - about shifts in the natural world or sacred moments on the calendar, from Imbolc to MLK Day. I can try to say a bit more about each of these elements to re-mind us of what we already know, since to understand something is a process of "realization" - an accretive process of making something real that usually requires repetition. That is to say: thinking differently, like any other somatic shift, takes practice.
A Quaker meetinghouse is a space shaped by a commitment to listening, simplicity, equality, and countering our culture's individualism with a commitment to the collective. For 300 years Quakers have been practicing many of the "new" radical organizing principles that many progressive activist groups are now adopting. This is part of what you might be feeling when you walk in the door: the spirit of a collective where all voices count equally, where everyone chips in to support the life of the Meeting, where lots of time and effort and organizational structures go into discerning the way forward for a community. You can feel the energy of so many hours of shared worship. There's a kind of residual juju from a practice of reciprocity and responsiveness that refuses extractive speed, scarcity, urgency, where Friends gather to slow down, to experience one another and the unique organism that emerges from a gathering of souls that's different every time.
This is part of the ethic we're practicing. We come together to experience ourselves as embedded in a living web of relationships to other humans and to the sentient world around us. The belief here is that devoting our attention to one another and the world around us has the potential to clarify Next Right Steps for our actions, and to unravel socialized patterns of exploiting nature (including our own and others' bodies). It also reminds us of what we care about - if we never have moments of bliss, surrender, pleasure, and true inner freedom, we forget what we're fighting for and we fall into the spell of the many addictions designed to keep us compliant. So these are some of our commitments: attention over authority, presence over performance, finding the sacred all around us. We are reclaiming the importance of slowing down together to drink in our humanity and listen for wisdom from someplace higher than our rational brain.
Then there's the nitty-gritties of what we do together, which doesn't promise to give you a better butt or an amazing handstand. The word "somatics" is all over social media, sometimes just used as a catchphrase for things that aren't AT ALL in the spirit of healing or liberation (like working smarter at your cubicle or getting a flatter belly). Somatics is a word to indicate that the heart and soul of what we're doing with our bodies and minds is designed not to make us fitter or more attractive, but more centered and sane. We are focusing on patterns of sensation like reactivity, delight, and the subtle inner terrain of choice, in response to a culture that trains us to override pain, numb out, and push through. This attention alone is a form of resistance. We are becoming aware of what's going on inside so that we can bring a more authentic way of being into our relationships, and a clearer sense of purpose into our lives. We listen closely to our own embodied experience, to those around us, and to the aliveness and messaging within the natural world and the spaces that hold us. This quietly and firmly challenges many of the assumptions we've inherited: that bodies are machines to be optimized, that nature is inert and available for plundering, that our worth is measured by productivity and control. And speaking of control, here's one point of clarity: the goal in our work together is not simple "regulation." In fact, the idea of "regulating" the nervous system is an extension of the lockstep maneuverings of empire's demands on us: to stay calm, stay quiet, and keep working. What's sometimes denigrated as "dysregulation" could actually be the inner foment required in and among us to make change. We explore these sensations and emotions to better understand them, and in a way that's different from what might be accomplished in therapy, because...
..because we need to feel that we're not alone in these feelings! We need opportunities to see what scares and inspires our neighbors. We need to feel and feed one another at a deeper level than the bland stamped-and-approved cocktail party topics of conversation: the weather, our kids, where we're going on vacation this summer, etc. What we're making space for together doesn't make the bold claim to being "safe" - meaning, you might be triggered by a particularly intense didgeridoo jam, or a pattern of movement or vocalization, or someone's check-in, and no amount of trauma-informed holding can or should promise to protect you from any and all uncomfortable feelings. I think it's Sonya Renee Taylor who instead came up with the image of a "soft space" - like a playground from the 80's where there's some unruly equipment (like that spinning metal thing) but where there's also rubber padding on the ground. Even as we're tasting the sacred to remember what's important, we're also confronting learned patterns in our thoughts and behaviors that aren't always pretty. This isn't about our personal defects; learned patterns aren't always pretty because the culture in which we've been socialized isn't exactly pretty. So everyone is encouraged to proceed in bite-sized nibbles, going at your own pace. You are always at liberty to take or leave an offering, to peace out to grab a drink of water, to dip into child's pose, to take care of yourself in any way you need to. There's a lot of energy among us in this moment to make change, which is great, AND we also need to think about cultivating resilience for the long haul. That resilience comes from being able to show up as we are, and make mistakes, and also maintain contact with the inner sturdiness to make repair. We resource from connecting with others and with deep mind, to fill our tank so we can stay in the game.
Drinking in all these elements a couple times a week has the potential to reshape how we perceive. And perception shapes how we move, relate, and act. Our somatic practice at Shiné helps restore capacities we need for collective care and change: attunement, inspiration, authenticity, rest, grief, pleasure, and honest reckoning with our limits and tendencies. Sustainable healing, at the individual and the collective level, depends on bodyminds that can stay in relationship, that can fully and courageously sense, that can respond to the sentient natural world, that can feel all there is to feel in this business of being human. I'm so grateful the intensity of this moment is something I'm feeling in circle with you all.
