The Poetry of Eco Somatics

Join us for this workshop that offers a poetic meditation on Earth as a hyper object —a vast, interconnected system that we are intimately part of. Through the emerging field of Eco-somatics, which blends the wisdom and knowledge systems of Somatics and Ecology, we will explore how expanding our felt sense of self can include the wider web of our wellbeing and relationships to the more-than-human world.

What to Expect: We will engage in practices that bring us back into our bodies, awakening our sensory perceptions to experience the interconnectedness between our own being and the world. Drawing from the work of facilitators who work at the intersection of ecology, poetry, and embodiment, this workshop will guide us to perceive the body as a microcosm of Earth.

The Approach: Using Somatic Therapy techniques and embodied poetry practices, we will cultivate an embodied sense of entanglement with the world around us. Through meditative states and storytelling, you’ll build a felt sense of mutuality with the environment and awaken sensory perception.

Why It Matters: We are constantly co-regulating with the environment, our nervous systems and mirror neurons in sync with all other living material around us, human and more-than-human. In this workshop, we’ll explore the idea of Earth, land, or place as a primary attachment figure, offering grounding and support, especially in times when human connection may feel distant, and we may not have access to a ‘safe-enough’ other in our lives.

“We can sense the world around us only because we are entirely a part of this world, because - by virtue of our own carnal density and dynamism - we are wholly embedded in the depths of the earthly sensuous. We can feel the tangible textures, sounds and shapes of the biosphere because we are tangible, resonant, audible shapes in our own right. We are born of these very waters, this very air, this loamy soil, this sunlight. Nourished and sustained by the substance of the breathing earth, we are flesh of its flesh. We are neither pure spirits nor pure minds but are sensitive and sentient bodies able to be seen, heard, tasted, touched by all the beings around us.” - David Abram, Becoming Animal  

Shannon May Powell
Shannon May Powell is an artist, poet and somatic therapist who specializes in trauma informed embodiment practices for nervous system regulation. They work with individuals and groups and have a background in movement, writing and meditation. Their practice is grounded in the body and relationally activated by the people and places they collaborate with. Their work has featured at the Emerging Writers Festival, Berlin Feminist Film Festival, New York Art Book Fair, Centre for Contemporary Photography, The Wheeler Centre, PHOTO 2022 festival, and the National Portrait Gallery among others. In 2022 they published their debut poetry and photography book, 'Can we rest tonight in the amnesia of pleasure,' with no more poetry. Much of their work was developed during the VARDA houseboat artist residency in California where they were fortunate to return during 2018, 2019 and 2020. Recently they were engaged in the Pocoapocco artist residency in Oaxaca, Mexico where their poetry practice began mutating into more ephemeral mediums of performance art.