Shiné: mind/body/spirit

02/27/2026

On astrology, AI, and politicized somatics, from last week's newsletter:
Oh man y'all... we got buried again - just like my altar in this photo. How can we keep our head above the snow? As I add some spring offerings to the mix, in this newsletter, I'm trying to remember daylight savings is right around the corner, soon we'll have longer days and more light. And there are big changes astrologically speaking, too...

ZZZZZZZT! The record might scratch right here, for you, as soon as I mention the stars. So let me pause and add an aside for the skeptics in the house:
SKEPTICS! I FEEL YOU!
AND this is how I've managed the resistance I've learned from this culture's fixation on rationality and scientific proof, which sets itself above other ways of knowing. We kinda need to interrogate what this thrall to the forebrain has taken from us. Cross-culturally, looking to the sky is one technology for humans to find their way. We who have largely forgotten how to use the stars - who can't even navigate our way home with them - could cultivate a little humility with what we do and don't know. It might be important, given the dissolution of the systems this way of knowing has birthed, to open to forms of wisdom and guidance that existed for thousands of years prior. Rant over.

So the astrology this week has been major! We're living through an astrological threshold that feels less like a doorway and more like a tectonic shift. From what I understand from Mindy Nettifee and Chani Nicholas, if we're to handle all the stuff that's about to go down in watery Pisces, we're going to need practices that anchor us without hardening us. Saturn and Neptune move through this fishy sign, dissolving old certainties even as they ask for spiritual maturity. The atmosphere is electric and oceanic at once: lightning striking the sea. Saturn/Neptune in Pisces is like a reality check on what's real, AND an amplification of our longing for transcendence - an everything everywhere all at once kinda feeling. Maybe a little bit like the endless snow this winter that offers stillness and beauty, even as it totally f***s with all the systems we rely on.

Speaking of systems, Pluto is settling into Aquarius for the long arc ahead, meaning that deep currents of power, technology, community, and collective imagination are being rewired. The hidden circuitry of our societal structures are coming into view for review. The architectures of surveillance, the myth of neutrality in technology, the brittle hierarchies disguised as progress... we've got a long way to go, baby. From what I've learned, this astrological signature insists on a kind of collective reckoning. Aquarius dreams of liberation, but Pluto is the underworld planet, and it demands we confront the shadow threaded through every utopian vision. Like, a big nope to dreamy bypassing? Even as we're buried in a blanket that keeps us inside? It's COMPLICATED!

So maybe we're feeling both exhilarated and unmoored, as if the future is arriving faster than we can metabolize. And it is! So we each need a practice, as Rev. Kyodo Williams assures us, if we are to catch our bodies up to speed in meeting this moment. There's the temptation to numb out (Neptune is the dreamy and maybe slightly escapist planet, but also a good source for out-of-the-box innovative thinking), so we need to cultivate devotion to what we care about, to our purpose, without delusion. We're asked to cultivate discernment without cynicism, and opinionated superiority. Sometimes I feel like a broken record. It's not enough to think differently, we have to FEEL differently! But you know how you heard that yoga cue for like 10 years before your body had any idea what it meant? I'm thinking of, like, "hollow your armpits." And then one day you're in a handstand (or preparing for one) and you're like "OH!" Sometimes we need to hear something 50,000 different ways and then one day something clicks. So I'll keep trying to articulate this:

A politicized somatic practice understands the body not as a private escape hatch, but as a living archive of the past and our only canvas on which to paint the future (to mix my metaphors). Our muscles hold the memory of institutions. Our fascia is drawn together according to culturally-inherited patterns. Our breathing apparatus encodes adaptation to surveillance, scarcity, and control. To practice somatics politically is to recognize that regulation is not merely self-care; it's required homework, in terms of our preparation for liberation. Somatic work teaches us to track sensation, to differentiate blind fear from wise intuition, and collapse from surrender. It builds our capacity to stay present in ambiguity. Instead of dissociating in the face of vast change, we learn to widen our window of tolerance to staying in and with our bodies, as they ARE not as we will them into looking. And the work we do together refuses to approach healing as an individual achievement, appropriate only for therapy spaces. Solidarity might be more physiological than ideological - the feeling of being human among humans is more about the syncing of hearbeats than matching up opinions. In a time when technology mediates so much of our connection, returning to breath, to gravity, to the simple fact of shared space becomes radical.

Someone from Shiné (Cyane) sent me that NYT interview with Michael Pollen about what AI is teaching us about consciousness, and reorienting our definition of what it is to be human. If machines can think, are we more like intelligence machines, or are we more like feeling, breathing animals? Embodied practice rehumanizes us. We practice grounding transformation in the body. Why? Because we know we need embodiment more than analysis, if connection is the key to change! Hope some of these winter-to-spring offerings can help us practice presence - awake in our flesh, accountable to one another, and responsive to whatever this month brings. I'm so sad I'm not going to see you tomorrow morning. Hit me up if you think we should reboot our zoom room so we can convene for online practice, when necessary. Love you all, good luck in the white stuff...
Check out the website for March offerings like:
-Somatics for Expanded States
-Repatterning Domination; Reviving Mysticism
-Fireside Restorative w/ Hands-on Healing
-Body/Mind Centering with Nicole Bindler
-Somatics for the Givers (Wednesdays at 5)
https://www.katyhawkins.com/upcoming-workshops.html

02/25/2026

LAST 2 SESSIONS OF THE SEASON:
March 1st, 4:30-6:30 - 3 spots left
March 8th, 4:30-6:30 - 1 spot left

Surrender to the need for radical rest, in this extended restorative practice in our cozy fireplace room. As you settle body & mind you’ll receive hands-on healing touch. This gentle practice of soothing poses (mostly seated and supine, and supported by blankets and blocks) is open to all levels of practice. Expect to emerge grounded and nurtured.

Limited to just a handful of folks, to give you aaaall the hands-on.

Register info: https://www.katyhawkins.com/upcoming-workshops.html

02/23/2026

MARCH 15, 4:30-6:15PM

How do we get free of the perceptual and somatic shaping that is rooted in domination culture? That is to say, can we create new grooves in the place of sticky feelings of scarcity, perfectionism, superiority, or competition? How do we return to older ways of knowing?

A whole-self approach to social change takes into account the ways that certain ways of being inherited from the culture around us are imprinted into our bodies. Repatterning the rhythms and habits of thinking and feeling takes time, attention, and care. To engage this challenging work, we draw from two orientations:

-social justice somatics (how collective change can only happen in relation to an inner transformation of every level of our being - including sensing, feeling, and intuiting)
and
-a return to mystical ways of knowing (with "mysticism" defined as the belief that we receive messages of wisdom from bigger, broader currents in the world, in direct and deeply embodied ways)

How can we move collectively into a more open experience of body, mind, and heart, to take part in reshaping the world that is constantly shaping us?

Registration info here: https://www.katyhawkins.com/upcoming-workshops.html

02/20/2026

Wednesdays this spring - Please weigh in on dates & times! Maybe 5-6:30, 3/11-4/15?

Calling all teachers, activists, and caretakers to circle up and synchronize our movements and our hearts, to replenish our energy for the work at hand.

75 minutes of Shiné somatics (yoga, polyvagal techniques, and other embodied strategies for soul-spelunking) will be followed by an activity for connection.

Those of us who are socialized to overgive need to resist the flooding that can happen when we put out more than we take in. We're besieged every day by fear tactics and social media distraction, and the overwhelm makes it easier to hole up and shut down. Come resource from the strength of the collective, and remember what it feels like to be held inside it.

We are "phase locking" our neural patterning with one another, to remember the feeling state of belonging. To keep committing to the things we care about, we need to resist the pressure to fall into fear, dissociation, and shut-down. If we can resist being bamboozled out of trusting our senses - eyes and guts - we can tap into a deep way of knowing that restores our resilience.

Come circle up and attune to the heart of the whole, remembering how to receive.

Please weigh in on possible structure:
​Wednesdays 5-6:30, 3/11-4/15?

02/18/2026

Tonight’s workshop cancelled due to snow!
Register now for 3/16 - more info here:

https://www.katyhawkins.com/upcoming-workshops.html

BONE, FASCIA, & MUSCLE:
An Intro to Body-Mind Centering with Nicole Bindler
February 23rd, 7-9pm
& March 16, 7-9pm

Registration info: https://www.katyhawkins.com/upcoming-workshops.html

These two workshops at Shiné can be taken independently or as a pair. They will cover the relationships between form/function and structure/movement in the body. There will be a brief overview of the embryology, anatomy, and physiology of these three body systems, followed by a generous amount of time for somatic meditation, bodywork, and improvisational dancing. All levels of experience are welcome! Participants will come away with a deeper understanding of their skeletal, fascial, and muscular systems, and a sense of groundedness, interconnectedness, and soft strength.

Nicole Bindler is a dance-maker, Body-Mind Centering® practitioner, writer, and activist. She is a registered Master Somatic Movement Therapist through The International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. Her work has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships, and presented on four continents. To learn more about Nicole's work, including recent projects in somatic research, Palestinian rights, and editorial projects, check out her website, nicolebindler.com

02/13/2026

VALENTINE'S FIRESIDE RESTORATIVE & MASSAGE FOR COUPLES

February 15th, 4:30 - 6:30PM

Space out on Valentine's Day and need an awesome, connecting gift idea? Done with the same ol' dinner and movie date night?
Here's an intimate way to celebrate connection with your sweetie, your bestie, anyone human who is dear to you. A typical restorative practice of soothing supine and seated poses in our cozy fireplace room, with lots of healing touch from me, but with a few partner poses added into the mix.
Limited to a small group of six to guarantee plenty of hands-on attention. There’s room for one more couple.

Registration info here: https://www.katyhawkins.com/upcoming-workshops.html

02/04/2026

March 29, 4-6:30

A supportive collective space to practice somatic techniques that can facilitate the healing potential of journeys into expanded states of consciousness.

We begin with an accessible somatic practice, with various tools from polyvagal techniques to EFT (tapping) to embodied parts work. We move towards a period of solitary integration, with time for journaling (or drawing or contemplative practice), and an option for drinking in the James Turrell closed loop of the Skyspace, "Greeting the Light." Our time together wraps up with discussions in small groups and a closing circle.

Although psychedelics are not required for shifting perception, many folk are encountering them that way these days. Until our culture can embrace this cutting-edge healing modality, engaging in psychedelic work can be lonely and stigmatizing. Here is an intimate space to build camaraderie and connection with other seekers exploring the subterranean worlds of the soul. ​

Preparation: Please reach out to hawkinskaty@gmail.com to set up an appointment to speak by phone with any questions you have, especially about how to prepare for our time together.

Registration info:
https://www.katyhawkins.com/upcoming-workshops.html

02/04/2026

BONE, FASCIA, & MUSCLE:
An Intro to Body-Mind Centering with Nicole Bindler
February 23rd, 7-9pm
& March 16, 7-9pm

Registration info: https://www.katyhawkins.com/upcoming-workshops.html

These two workshops at Shiné can be taken independently or as a pair. They will cover the relationships between form/function and structure/movement in the body. There will be a brief overview of the embryology, anatomy, and physiology of these three body systems, followed by a generous amount of time for somatic meditation, bodywork, and improvisational dancing. All levels of experience are welcome! Participants will come away with a deeper understanding of their skeletal, fascial, and muscular systems, and a sense of groundedness, interconnectedness, and soft strength.

Nicole Bindler is a dance-maker, Body-Mind Centering® practitioner, writer, and activist. She is a registered Master Somatic Movement Therapist through The International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. Her work has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships, and presented on four continents. To learn more about Nicole's work, including recent projects in somatic research, Palestinian rights, and editorial projects, check out her website, nicolebindler.com

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.

01/31/2026

Mysticism & knowing our purpose:
There are those who would say that to talk about the mystical during these times is some kind of a ‘spiritual bypass,’ ignoring the realities all around us. Sometimes those voices are absolutely correct… And yet it is also through people’s experiences of the mystical that so much - innovation, strength, inner peace, courage, compassion, right-action, right-livelihoods, power, possibilities, new opportunities for previously unimaginable actions - can and regularly does emerge.

…Many of the most well-known world-changers (amongst whom activists are only some) have found the cultivation of the inner life and deepening into that surprisingly fluid space between one’s personal interiority and the expansiveness of the web of interconnected relationality to be where Truth has and can be found.

…Experiences of homecoming, belonging, and safety are common themes; so is being able to extend ourselves across ourselves towards another. Perhaps intentionally, perhaps unbidden, we find ourselves experiencing love/agape. Sometimes such experiences can be filled with awe. There are transcendent, star-filled experiences and very quiet ones. Such experiences all by themselves do not prevent violence. It does not prevent abuse. I wish it did. It can enable integration. It can support peace.

…A corporate group of people can experience it as well as individuals. Quakers often refer to this as the experience of a ‘covered meeting’ - when I have experienced this, it is as if great big bird-wings are surrounding the entire body of those who are gathered, and there is both a one-ness with one another as well as a clear sense of particularities.

…I very much appreciate this reflection from German Lutheran liberation theologian Dorothee Soelle (in her book, The Silent Cry): ‘the history of mysticism is a history of the love for God. I cannot conceive of this without political and praxis-oriented actualization that is directed toward the world. (In other words) the point of knowing God is to know what we are called to do.’”
-Sara Jolena Wolcott

01/26/2026

Different traditions have nuanced associations for the qualities of sun and moon (which for me, don’t benefit from being correlated with oversimplified gender stereotypes), attributes that ask to be balanced in us. This technique, the only one ever to arrive whole and complete in one meditation sit, helps me balance them in myself. I should add that this “download” is of course impacted by acculturation - influenced by Buddhist and Hindu iconography I’ve seen, yogic practices I’ve had the privilege of studying, and very cursory learning about Egyptian and Sufi maps of the body, just for starters - and all the problems of appropriative reclamation of indigenous practices by people from privileged social locations inhere in me sharing it. AND practices for working with solar and lunar energies are also part of the indigenous European cultural heritage erased by Christianity, and if we're not open to how they might be re-membered in our bodyminds we'll only ever be plundering other cultures for them. It’s been a true gift, and has proved over the last 3 or 4 years of practice to be super useful in centering me, recalibrating my own imbalances, and helping me become a clearer channel for Spirit, Quaker-style. So I’m taking the risk of sharing it.

01/26/2026

No classes Monday!