Cultivating A Healthy Connection With Spirit
Embodied Approaches For Being With The Divine.
Embodiment as a Bridge to Healthy Spirit Connection
Being Grounded and With In Your Own Agency
This course offers a practical framework to support you to be more grounded and nourished in your everyday personal experience of the Divine.
The aim of this course is to support you to grow your own relationship with Spirit in a simple practical way, so that you can access it when you want, gain insights, receive unexpected support and feel more connected to the vast, dynamic weave of life.
It is for supporting your ongoing journey from a place that honours the reality that we are not alone, nor meant to do it all alone and we are certainly not built to know everything! We are not designed to work it all out from within our own single little organism.
There is a larger field of Intelligence we can rest into, from a place that honours choice fullness and the sovereignty of our own bodily experience.
Let us begin there - in a way that feels within in our ability, is led by curiosity and rooted in ritual safety.
You will find support to trust your own instincts and intuition. Keep what works, discard what doesn't and develop more refined discernment.
The aim of this course is to support you to grow your own relationship with Spirit in a simple practical way, so that you can access it when you want, gain insights, receive unexpected support and feel more connected to the vast, dynamic weave of life.
It is for supporting your ongoing journey from a place that honours the reality that we are not alone, nor meant to do it all alone and we are certainly not built to know everything! We are not designed to work it all out from within our own single little organism.
There is a larger field of Intelligence we can rest into, from a place that honours choice fullness and the sovereignty of our own bodily experience.
Let us begin there - in a way that feels within in our ability, is led by curiosity and rooted in ritual safety.
You will find support to trust your own instincts and intuition. Keep what works, discard what doesn't and develop more refined discernment.
Why This Course?
This course aims to open up the possibility that this work is very normal for our species and accessible in a way that is no-nonsense and nourishing.
Something very old in us remembers how to do this. Our ancestors worked in this way for many thousands of years. So let's think of this as a remembering or a reconnection.
This work aims to remind us that a direct connection is not only possible, but part of our design.
We re-member Spirit as a vital reference and guide in the navigation and stewardship of our everyday, embodied experience. We honour its sacredness and potency without dissociating, or losing ourselves or our connection to the here and now.
How might we root this sacred relationship into the soil of our everyday life and not save it only for special occasions or psychedelic states?
Something very old in us remembers how to do this. Our ancestors worked in this way for many thousands of years. So let's think of this as a remembering or a reconnection.
This work aims to remind us that a direct connection is not only possible, but part of our design.
We re-member Spirit as a vital reference and guide in the navigation and stewardship of our everyday, embodied experience. We honour its sacredness and potency without dissociating, or losing ourselves or our connection to the here and now.
How might we root this sacred relationship into the soil of our everyday life and not save it only for special occasions or psychedelic states?
Time Energy & Commitment
This course takes place over eleven live workshops and nine live integration meet ups. The integration spaces are for weaving in the learning and to support those joining via other time zones. You will also be offered a small group for peer support and home enquiries for integrating your discoveries.
Each live workshop runs for 90 minutes. Each includes a deep dive visioning process along with breakout rooms, teaching and group sharing.
Each workshop weaves around a different theme and follows a fractal like unfolding progression.
There are spaces built in after each three-week block for rest and digestion. This work is metabolic, in the sense that the whole body / whole self is re-membering the connection. For digestion to happen we need space and time! Re-connection to this work is primal and natural for us. None-the-less, it has been a while and we need rest to digest it all!
The vibe is laboratory style with exploratory and interactive learning. Live online workshops, facilitated integration spaces, home enquiries, peer sharing and small group enquiry will assist you to integrate the learnings.
After each workshop, you will be given follow up emails to capture the information in a more practicable, cognitive way.
INTEGRATION MEET UPS
These are predominantly to support people who are doing the course from different time zones but they are open to all and a great way to deepen the learning.
Plus you will be invited to a private off-Facebook community on Mighty Networks to share your experiences.
If you miss the call live, you can always catch it on the recording - these will be uploaded to the course hub within 24 hours of each live call.
You will have access to the course for a full year from sign up.
Each workshop weaves around a different theme and follows a fractal like unfolding progression.
There are spaces built in after each three-week block for rest and digestion. This work is metabolic, in the sense that the whole body / whole self is re-membering the connection. For digestion to happen we need space and time! Re-connection to this work is primal and natural for us. None-the-less, it has been a while and we need rest to digest it all!
The vibe is laboratory style with exploratory and interactive learning. Live online workshops, facilitated integration spaces, home enquiries, peer sharing and small group enquiry will assist you to integrate the learnings.
After each workshop, you will be given follow up emails to capture the information in a more practicable, cognitive way.
INTEGRATION MEET UPS
These are predominantly to support people who are doing the course from different time zones but they are open to all and a great way to deepen the learning.
Plus you will be invited to a private off-Facebook community on Mighty Networks to share your experiences.
If you miss the call live, you can always catch it on the recording - these will be uploaded to the course hub within 24 hours of each live call.
You will have access to the course for a full year from sign up.
Course curriculum
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A message from Rachel
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The flow and rhythm of the course structure
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Initial Reflections and Survey
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Set up / Meet up / Story Share / Intention Setting
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Imagination is Part of it!
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Earthing & Embodiment First
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Live Zoom Workshop - Lesson 1
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Recording of LESSON 1
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Home Enquiries for Week 1
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Orienting Via Resource
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We are a Species who Learn to Self Regulate via Co-regulation
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A Felt Sensing Experiment
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Ritual Shape and Ritual Hygiene
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Live Zoom Workshop - Lesson 2
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Recording of LESSON 2
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Home Enquiry for Lesson 2 & Sharing update
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Integration Meet Up 1
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Recording of Integration Meet Up 1
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Live Zoom Workshop - Lesson 3
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Cultivating a Sacred Space / Physical / Spiritual
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Anchoring Helpers in Somatic Imprints & Physical Objects
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Recording of LESSON 3
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Home Enquiries for Lesson 3
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Additional Audio only drop in for deepening connection - lesson 3
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Integration Meet Up 2
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Recording of Integration Meet Up
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Cultivating A Healthy Connection With Spirit
- A practical framework to support you to be more grounded and nourished in your everyday personal experience of the Divine.
- Eleven live workshops and nine live integration meet ups.
- Sign up to the waitlist to be notified when the next live course is running.
What does Embodiment have to do with Spirit Connection?
What do we mean by 'embodiment'?
Being in a body is the situation - or condition - in which we find ourselves in this life time. Embodiment is a condition of being alive. Being in a body is not separable from having a brain or having thoughts: Your head is also part of your body. Cognition happens in your body, because where else can it happen?
We may have grown up letting our thoughts run the show, which can get exhausting and cause all sorts of imbalance.
In this course, we will be exploring ways of seeing, listening, feeling, and knowing, that might not be the ways we are so familiar with. Thinking is also welcome as part of our whole embodied experience though it will only be one way we are paying attention.
How does that feel to read?
It might sound obvious, but our bodies are our instrument of connection!!
Many of us have grown up in spiritual or educational traditions which deny, ignore or make wrong the body and embodied intelligence. This denial has created a dismemberment from our natural and organic connection to Spirit. Embodiment is foundational and essential to this work. We might even say it is a core ethical value. Without it, the connection severs, or becomes unmanageable, like a flailing garden hose!! Without it, we can be dangerous to ourselves and the world. So let us first be present to ourselves in a living body.
Let us begin with the place we are in contact with the earth. Be with ourselves here first - then we can set out on this adventure of re-connection to Spirit from a place of embodied groundedness and resource.
Being in a body is the situation - or condition - in which we find ourselves in this life time. Embodiment is a condition of being alive. Being in a body is not separable from having a brain or having thoughts: Your head is also part of your body. Cognition happens in your body, because where else can it happen?
We may have grown up letting our thoughts run the show, which can get exhausting and cause all sorts of imbalance.
In this course, we will be exploring ways of seeing, listening, feeling, and knowing, that might not be the ways we are so familiar with. Thinking is also welcome as part of our whole embodied experience though it will only be one way we are paying attention.
How does that feel to read?
It might sound obvious, but our bodies are our instrument of connection!!
Many of us have grown up in spiritual or educational traditions which deny, ignore or make wrong the body and embodied intelligence. This denial has created a dismemberment from our natural and organic connection to Spirit. Embodiment is foundational and essential to this work. We might even say it is a core ethical value. Without it, the connection severs, or becomes unmanageable, like a flailing garden hose!! Without it, we can be dangerous to ourselves and the world. So let us first be present to ourselves in a living body.
Let us begin with the place we are in contact with the earth. Be with ourselves here first - then we can set out on this adventure of re-connection to Spirit from a place of embodied groundedness and resource.
Is This Course For Me?
This course is for you if you are curious to cultivate a direct and enjoyable connection with Spirit.
It is suitable for you if you have an active contemplative practice and have some experience of inner work. This might be via your own spiritual practice, visioning, creative practice, somatic work or therapy.
This course is for those whose curiosity has led them here. You are welcome at any stage of your spiritual or somatic journey.
It offers a structure to begin to explore in a healthy way.
Traditionally, the one who guides and stewards our connection with Spirit, might be called a Priest, Priestess or Ritualist. This is an important role in human culture. It is one which can be attractive to wounded healers and unstable nervous systems and/or held in a way that doesn't always honour and respect the experience and sovereignty of the experiencer.
This course hopes to weave some healing and re-connection here, by anchoring this work in your primary, somatic experience and choice-fulness. So you can move towards the teacher or path that feels resonant for you.
It does not offer a therapeutic process, nor is it a substitute for therapy. So if you are brand new to this territory, you may find it helpful to support yourself with a parallel therapeutic process.
It is not a teacher training, but for your own personal use.
It is suitable for you if you have an active contemplative practice and have some experience of inner work. This might be via your own spiritual practice, visioning, creative practice, somatic work or therapy.
This course is for those whose curiosity has led them here. You are welcome at any stage of your spiritual or somatic journey.
It offers a structure to begin to explore in a healthy way.
Traditionally, the one who guides and stewards our connection with Spirit, might be called a Priest, Priestess or Ritualist. This is an important role in human culture. It is one which can be attractive to wounded healers and unstable nervous systems and/or held in a way that doesn't always honour and respect the experience and sovereignty of the experiencer.
This course hopes to weave some healing and re-connection here, by anchoring this work in your primary, somatic experience and choice-fulness. So you can move towards the teacher or path that feels resonant for you.
It does not offer a therapeutic process, nor is it a substitute for therapy. So if you are brand new to this territory, you may find it helpful to support yourself with a parallel therapeutic process.
It is not a teacher training, but for your own personal use.
Hello! I am Rachel
I am your facilitator. Here's a little bit about my journey with this work.
I am a daughter, sister, wife, aunty and proud bonus mum. I am descended from - way back Scottish, Scandinavian with some more recent English ancestry. Most of my living people inhabit Australia: some were fairly recent migrants by choice, others had migration forced upon them as convicts.
I am a Somatic Coach, Trainer of coaches, Theatre Maker, Somatic Educator and Feldenkrais Practitioner. I teach coaches to work with embodied intelligence at The Somatic School and have been supporting clients to work with Spirit as a resource in my 1:1 sessions and group somatic coaching workshops for about a decade.
I've been slowly gathering this material into a teachable format over several years in response to nudges from students and Spirit teachers.
It has taken a while to feel like I am ready, but I am being shown that it is now time to properly emerge from the spiritual closet.
My connection to the metaphysical has always come naturally from very young. But my personal entry into working with Guides specifically, began with the sudden appearance of one, when I was 30 - so 21 years ago(!). It was vivid and significant, but, having no clue how to work with him I kind of ignored him and hoped for the best.
He hung around. :-)
Always standing guard to my left. Always a very powerful, benevolent, sub-bass presence. Over the years, he began to show me how to work with him via my body work practice - I would often let him guide my hands. Show me what was needed with clients. He also helped me with boundaries and discernment.
I began exploring how I could nurture this connection via pagan ritual practices and hands on healing trainings. I thought I was getting the hang of it.
Then, about eleven years ago, I experienced a kind of cataclysmic deluge of Spirit information coming through me in a way that was quite overwhelming and very difficult to ground. I've written about this event elsewhere in more detail, if you're curious to read more. It lasted for three days and was so strong it became immediately apparent I needed a much more robust tool kit! I urgently sought out teachers, ritualist, healers, practices and lineages that prioritised healthy ethical and spiritual boundaries.
Parallel to this and for many years prior to it, I was doing a lot of somatic trainings, trainings in performance and improvisation and also nervous system healing. I begin to notice a connection. At first, I noticed how well it supported me in this kind of work, then eventually how absolutely foundational it is to it.
When journeying, or working with Plant medicine, or doing intensive awareness practices, I 'knew' ways of working choice-fully and safely, because of my somatic trainings and creative practice. Some pieces began to re-connect. This course is a weaving together of some of these knowledges for the curious student.
My work is not rooted in any one tradition, but is supported by many and is a synthesis of many teachings, trainings and experience. Please take a look at the 'honourings' section below for more detailed lineage acknowledgements and gratitudes.
I stand downstream of giants and am a daughter and a student.
I am a Somatic Coach, Trainer of coaches, Theatre Maker, Somatic Educator and Feldenkrais Practitioner. I teach coaches to work with embodied intelligence at The Somatic School and have been supporting clients to work with Spirit as a resource in my 1:1 sessions and group somatic coaching workshops for about a decade.
I've been slowly gathering this material into a teachable format over several years in response to nudges from students and Spirit teachers.
It has taken a while to feel like I am ready, but I am being shown that it is now time to properly emerge from the spiritual closet.
My connection to the metaphysical has always come naturally from very young. But my personal entry into working with Guides specifically, began with the sudden appearance of one, when I was 30 - so 21 years ago(!). It was vivid and significant, but, having no clue how to work with him I kind of ignored him and hoped for the best.
He hung around. :-)
Always standing guard to my left. Always a very powerful, benevolent, sub-bass presence. Over the years, he began to show me how to work with him via my body work practice - I would often let him guide my hands. Show me what was needed with clients. He also helped me with boundaries and discernment.
I began exploring how I could nurture this connection via pagan ritual practices and hands on healing trainings. I thought I was getting the hang of it.
Then, about eleven years ago, I experienced a kind of cataclysmic deluge of Spirit information coming through me in a way that was quite overwhelming and very difficult to ground. I've written about this event elsewhere in more detail, if you're curious to read more. It lasted for three days and was so strong it became immediately apparent I needed a much more robust tool kit! I urgently sought out teachers, ritualist, healers, practices and lineages that prioritised healthy ethical and spiritual boundaries.
Parallel to this and for many years prior to it, I was doing a lot of somatic trainings, trainings in performance and improvisation and also nervous system healing. I begin to notice a connection. At first, I noticed how well it supported me in this kind of work, then eventually how absolutely foundational it is to it.
When journeying, or working with Plant medicine, or doing intensive awareness practices, I 'knew' ways of working choice-fully and safely, because of my somatic trainings and creative practice. Some pieces began to re-connect. This course is a weaving together of some of these knowledges for the curious student.
My work is not rooted in any one tradition, but is supported by many and is a synthesis of many teachings, trainings and experience. Please take a look at the 'honourings' section below for more detailed lineage acknowledgements and gratitudes.
I stand downstream of giants and am a daughter and a student.
Gratitudes & Honourings
I honour the original stewards of the unceded territories of my birth & childhood - The Muwinina, Bungalung & Eora Nations. I express deep gratitude for the ancestral and spiritual lineages and trainings I am blessed to carry forward with this work.
I'd like to honour the following wisdom holders and teachers, who have helped me to earth this material and work with it in more choice-ful, healthy ways.
My maternal Grandmother, Joyce Voysey, and the wider council of Ancient Grandmothers and Grandfathers, Sankan Usna at Onyana Joni Shipibo, Comprehensive Resource Model, Dr. Amber McZeal at De-Colonising The Psyche, Dr.Daniel Foor at Ancestral Medicine, Francis Briers, Uwe Hirschberg, Moshe Feldenkrais and Gabrielle Roth. The many teachers of Theatre and Ritual Technologies. The generative environment at The Somatic School. Also the Medicines of Crow, Stone, Olive Tree, Big Waters and Song.
And to Shad and Akash and the beloved chosen family that holds me so well here by the sea on Albion Isle.
I'd like to honour the following wisdom holders and teachers, who have helped me to earth this material and work with it in more choice-ful, healthy ways.
My maternal Grandmother, Joyce Voysey, and the wider council of Ancient Grandmothers and Grandfathers, Sankan Usna at Onyana Joni Shipibo, Comprehensive Resource Model, Dr. Amber McZeal at De-Colonising The Psyche, Dr.Daniel Foor at Ancestral Medicine, Francis Briers, Uwe Hirschberg, Moshe Feldenkrais and Gabrielle Roth. The many teachers of Theatre and Ritual Technologies. The generative environment at The Somatic School. Also the Medicines of Crow, Stone, Olive Tree, Big Waters and Song.
And to Shad and Akash and the beloved chosen family that holds me so well here by the sea on Albion Isle.
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