Two Spots remain open for this round of Ecosystem Spoons. Registration closes on September 27th before the 2nd group call.
"Ecosystem Spoons" is a somatic support group for people who are living with energetic sensitivity, chronic illness, and/or neurodiversity that requires them to slow down to a different rhythm of reality underneath the pushing through of the dominant culture.
Feedback from previous participants:
"It was the most profoundly supportive space I have experienced in forever."
Time slowed down during our group in a way that felt deeply calming and restorative. There is so much that I struggle to access on my own and the regular, loving reminder from you that that makes total sense and is an ok place to be right now felt so supportive and helpful to my often pressure-full system. The potent magic of the group container helped me reconnect to the wider web in ways that have been holding me on my own, even in moments when I am having trouble connecting, because my body remembers more of what's possible now, and more of what's real and available...The guided time in our bodies was soooo helpful and dynamic. As I turn my energy back towards myself and divine energy and all the ecosystems of which I am a part for the first time in years, I feel really intimidated and out of my league sometimes. The way you guided us and also the topics you dove into throughout the groups felt really accessible and unintimidating, even as the subject matter was experientially complex and profound. I felt SO supported in Ecosystem Spoons! "
—Parker Rice
"Powerful group container, experientially nourishing."
I have a deeper felt sense of being held by the larger field. Helpful on multiple levels. I was amazed by the depth of connection expressed and experienced by all across a wide variety of locations through Zoom. The power of community cannot be overstated!"
— Patti Gmeiner
"I LOVED it! It felt warm, welcoming, gentle, and supportive."
I’m so grateful for the threads that lead me to Ecosystem Spoons. It has felt really special to find a space to explore the nuances and complexities of living with invisible illness/sensitivities, alongside others who are interested in outlooks and approaches other than the clinical/medical. I could feel the cohesion growing over the weeks and my appreciation for the group grew week on week too....Sharing and feedback from other group members gave me an insight in real-time into the energies, emotions and messages that were alive in my own system, which helped to bring some clarity and ease...The group sat really well alongside my own practice and helped to facilitate a gradual and general shifting and settling..."
—Susie Crampton
"A support group for the chronically ill that doesn’t turn into a fix fest or victimpalooza or the ghosts of abelism - praise be!"
This feels like a nourishing counter point to the systems and cultures we currently try to survive in. Dancing with ways to pull these ways of engaging into everyday life." —Kate Munson
The next Ecosystem Spoons group will run
mid-September to mid-December 2023,
meeting most Fridays, 2:00-4:00pmCT.
What are "Ecosystem Spoons"?
"I don't have the spoons for that," is a phrase that people living with invisible illnesses or neurodiversity will often use to describe the limits of their energetic capacity.
Those of us steeped within modernity are living in a society where there is a near-universal deficit of "spoons," as people are navigating exhaustion within a dominant culture shaped by overriding the discernment of the body, dissociating from the wider contexts of our relatedness, and feeling immense isolation because of a lack of authentic nutrients. So many of us carry an ingrained sense that the expression of our embodied aliveness will be "too much" for the capacity of the humans around us or even to ourselves when we're alone.
"Ecosystem Spoons" are the relational pathways of support that are often numbed or hidden within the perceptual narrowings of colonization. These pathways include the primal intelligence of our animal bodies, the support of nature beings and deep time ancestors, our access to rest and play, and enough spaciousness in our nervous system for curiosity and creative responsiveness when we encounter experiences of stuckness or overwhelm.
Through sensing into pathways of support beyond the rational human mind, Ecosystem Spoons offers an embodied experience of the way that perception can begin to shift when a wider sense of holding is possible.
In the container of Ecosystem Spoons, when a participant shares a deep thread of their experience, I will often invite the whole group to pause, to feel into the web of beings that holds us—this wide nest of support from the land and radiant ancestors, presences of wider capacity and a deeper context of time than the humans in the space—and I will invite the person who shared to energetically stay with the experience-texture that’s moving for them, and just feel the fullness of the web that is there with them in that process of existing.
Those moments of shared presence can be deeply whole-ing, as even just five minutes of that being-with without needing to change anything subtly allows the experience to breathe and feel itself witnessed in a way that gives it permission to transform.
So much of our experience has just not had enough air time to be held within a space of aliveness without needing to contort itself to belong.
This is how creative change can emerge. Slowly, subtly, as unfolding process over time. Through the being-with, through the meeting what is without needing it to be different. Through feeling of being accompanied, even just for a moment, in the fullness of your expression of aliveness.
Group sessions meet weekly over zoom video calls.
The rhythm of group sessions will include:
SHARING CIRCLE
Each session of the group will begin with a sharing circle, during which participants can speak about what is moving in their life and receive resonant witnessing from the group field. Even just this process of having a weekly space to speak into those aspects of energetic and embodied experience that are often invisibilized or shamed by dominant culture starts to create a sense of a place to rest and exist in as an organism that most participants struggle to find access to within their daily lives. Also the process of noticing the resonant threads or generative contrasts within other people's sharings allows for participants to feel a sense of themselves being woven into a collective body that is learning and growing together.
GUIDED PRACTICE
Drawing on the themes of the sharing circle, I will listen to the field of the group and sense into what form of guided practice wants to emerge. There will often be a long-form guided practice for integrating the themes that are present in the group field, during which I offer invitations to enter a space of imaginative rest and play focused on nourishing our nervous systems and connecting to supportive ecological and ancestral presences. These guided practices may include invitations to sense into deeper layers of embodied presence, to feel the guidance of nature beings and radiant ancestors, and to notice where your organism as a whole is wanting to unfurl. I may offer spoken prompts or I may sing or offer energetic accompaniment in silence. This practice is in service to the group body as a whole, making visible the energetic field of beings that each participant brings with them and beginning to weave those threads into a container of relationship that can support emergent process. Another way to receive the guided practice time is as earth-rooted ritual or animist prayer, a movement towards a kind of collective ceremony that offers space for energetic-emotional metabolizing and creative emergence.
EMERGENT PROCESS
In the final portion of the group, participants will share their experience of what moved for them during the guided practice and any questions or themes that are very present for them in that moment. I will listen for where the aliveness is calling and will make space for different forms of process play to happen, which might include Systemic Constellations, Embodied Metaphor, or other forms of energetic attunement practice, where we will focus on a theme from a participant for 5-20 minutes at a time. We will wrap up our group with another sharing circle where participants will have space to reflect on their experience and what is simmering for them at the end of the session.
In addition to the weekly group calls, participants will have access to:
TWO PRIVATE SESSIONS
Each participant will also have focused time with me in a private session near the beginning and end of the three month time frame. This session will be a time to sense into specific intentions for their journey within the group that we can track throughout journey.
TEXTING AND VOICE NOTE SUPPORT
Participants will also be able to communicate with me through a What'sApp thread where they can leave voice notes or text messages that I will respond to during a weekly text check-in day, which will be another opportunity for sensing into the energetic field of their process and sharing intuitive invitations for practice.
Logistics for the Group
The full tuition for Ecosystem Spoons is $550, which includes nine 2 hour group calls, two 45 minute private sessions, a learning portal with access to past recordings, and text check-in support over three months.
Payment plans for full tuition are also available.
There will be a limited amount of partial scholarship slots as well.
The group meets most Fridays, 2:00-4:00pmCT over zoom.
Dates for the group are:
September 22
September 29
(pause week for integration)
October 13
October 20
October 27
(pause week for integration)
November 3
November 17
November 24
(pause week for integration)
December 8
with an optional bonus reschedule day/feedback session on Dec 15.
Participants are asked to try to attend at least two sessions a month as their health symptoms allow, and to catch up on any missed classes via recording, ideally before the next live session. Note that some class sessions may need to be rescheduled as Shante' is also living with unpredictable chronic illness.
Group agreements for Ecosystem Spoons:
This is a container for accompanying each other on our journeys as sensitive bodies experiencing shifting textures of limitation and capacity.
We are committed to trusting the innate wisdom of each person’s system in how they’ve learned to exist given the context of their lives.
We agree to release any focus on “fixing” or “problem solving” for ourselves or other participants within the context of this container. If we notice “the field of fixing” coming up in ourselves or others, we will gently practice naming that this field is present and reorient back towards being with what is.
This is not a space for “healing” or forcing any kind of change or improvement, it is a space where we can invite our systems to notice what is already present (including what may be hidden or obscured through habitual patterns), to subtly orient towards possible sensations of support and nourishment, and to let this gentle curiosity reshape us in the just right way for our systems at each moment in time.
We honor each other’s confidentiality within this space by not sharing details of other participants’ personal experiences outside of the container of the group. If we want to reflect on our own experiences within the group with people outside of this container, we can share about what is moving within our own systems and the broad themes that are moving within the group as a whole without identifying others specifically.
Within their capacity in the moment, each participant commits to tracking their own inner experience and “yes,” “no,” and “maybe” through the group. If there are moments of dissonance that come up within your system, you can pause or stop at any point. As the facilitator, I will also be listening for energetic patterns of intensity that feel overwhelming to my own nervous system or the group body, and will sometimes call pause or invite another layer of slowness into the group body to give some more space for something to metabolize.
GRATITUDE TO THE TEACHERS WHO HAVE INFLUENCED THIS CONTAINER
Bree Greenberg Benjamin for her maturation model of uncoupling from dependency systems and attuning to relationship with erotic life force.
Larissa Kaul for their guided animist practices within the Animist Arts patreon playground, especially You Feeling Me Feeling You, which are the inspiration for much of how I invoke ecological and ancestral supports and guide somatic process.
Liz Koch for her teachings on attunement to subtle movement towards nourishment and fluidity, as well as the sense of landing and locating, following the biointelligence of our animal bodies.
And many more teachers and modalities who you can read about here.