Somatics & Poetry For Feeling
Your Feet on the Ground
An experiential workshop.
Faciltiated by Brooke McNamara & Rachel Blackman
Recorded April 2025.
What it is
Join Rachel Blackman and Brooke McNamara for a 2-hour workshop as we tend to the wisdom of feeling our feet on the ground through gentle guided somatic practices and visualizations, nourishing community connection, and the potent emotional and imaginal medicine of poetry.
This is the first workshop of our new monthly writing membership. KIN: Writing From Connection With the Wider Web of Life. If you are part of our membership, you will automatically be granted access to this workshop as part of your package. If you'd like to simply sign up to this as a stand alone workshop, you can do that too. More info on that further down. This is the first of two workshops Brooke & Rachel will be running together that is open to the general public.
Our feet are always right here, teaching us directly about contact with ground and Earth. About the interplay of sensitivity and sturdiness, balance and resilience, rooting and springing.
Our feet can push and press, and they can listen and receive. Always, when offered attention, they siphon awareness and energy down through the great trunks of our bodies, so we can be lovingly anchored and tethered where we actually are. So we don’t drift away in worry, fear, what if’s, and shouldn’t haves. How can we lean back into the support of this most primordial of our ancestors? This place we both spring from and return to - the land on which we walk?
This is a workshop where you can bring the truths of your rootedness, as well as your readiness to traverse the many paths of this life. And may we walk away on wakeful, grateful, smiling feet and nourished by the blessings of each other's expression!
This is the first workshop of our new monthly writing membership. KIN: Writing From Connection With the Wider Web of Life. If you are part of our membership, you will automatically be granted access to this workshop as part of your package. If you'd like to simply sign up to this as a stand alone workshop, you can do that too. More info on that further down. This is the first of two workshops Brooke & Rachel will be running together that is open to the general public.
Our feet are always right here, teaching us directly about contact with ground and Earth. About the interplay of sensitivity and sturdiness, balance and resilience, rooting and springing.
Our feet can push and press, and they can listen and receive. Always, when offered attention, they siphon awareness and energy down through the great trunks of our bodies, so we can be lovingly anchored and tethered where we actually are. So we don’t drift away in worry, fear, what if’s, and shouldn’t haves. How can we lean back into the support of this most primordial of our ancestors? This place we both spring from and return to - the land on which we walk?
This is a workshop where you can bring the truths of your rootedness, as well as your readiness to traverse the many paths of this life. And may we walk away on wakeful, grateful, smiling feet and nourished by the blessings of each other's expression!
'When the roots are deep, there is no reason to fear the wind.'
~ African proverb
Why this work?
We are living through weird and de-stabilising times. Change seems to be accelerating, and what is happening every day in the world is so very hard to make sense of. Game changing, yet highly distracting technologies tug on, gnaw at, and fray our attention until it can be hard to remember we even have a body.
There are so many pressures in and around us that threaten to snatch us from our primary connection with the planet; unmoor us from this most basic and healing of invitations: to feel and sense our feet on the ground.
The incomparable, late Vietnamese Zen Master, Thích Nhất Hạnh writes in How to Walk:
'You have feet, and if you don’t make use of them it’s a loss and a waste. Someone is telling you now so that in the future you cannot say: ‘No one told me that it was important to enjoy using my feet.’
In this workshop we will begin by remembering our literal connection with the floor / ground / planet underneath us via somatics and ritual. And then we will invite the land to speak through us. Then we will create poetic expressions that flow through from this connection.
Let's try a little bit of it now as you read these words. Let's do a little bit less for a moment and tune in... Which places in you are making contact with the surfaces underneath you right now? Your butt on the seat perhaps. The soles of your feet on the floor. You might notice that beneath the floor is the earth, holding you up. You might notice that these surfaces are carrying your whole weight. How might it be to allow yourself to simply be held by the surfaces underneath you for a moment? Give the surfaces the gift of your full weight. What's that like? What do you notice?
Now what kind of expression wants to emerge from this place in you? This place of connection?
If this patch of earth that holds you had an intelligence and a life force, what might it want to say?
If the soles of your feet could speak, what might they long to tell you?
This is the kind of territory we will be investigating in this workshop. Because we believe that the change we want to see needs to begin from this place of feeling rooted, on earth and not separate.
This workshop is an example of the kind of space holding and quality of exploration you can expect from the regular workshops Brooke & Rachel will be facilitating in the KIN membership program.
There are so many pressures in and around us that threaten to snatch us from our primary connection with the planet; unmoor us from this most basic and healing of invitations: to feel and sense our feet on the ground.
The incomparable, late Vietnamese Zen Master, Thích Nhất Hạnh writes in How to Walk:
'You have feet, and if you don’t make use of them it’s a loss and a waste. Someone is telling you now so that in the future you cannot say: ‘No one told me that it was important to enjoy using my feet.’
In this workshop we will begin by remembering our literal connection with the floor / ground / planet underneath us via somatics and ritual. And then we will invite the land to speak through us. Then we will create poetic expressions that flow through from this connection.
Let's try a little bit of it now as you read these words. Let's do a little bit less for a moment and tune in... Which places in you are making contact with the surfaces underneath you right now? Your butt on the seat perhaps. The soles of your feet on the floor. You might notice that beneath the floor is the earth, holding you up. You might notice that these surfaces are carrying your whole weight. How might it be to allow yourself to simply be held by the surfaces underneath you for a moment? Give the surfaces the gift of your full weight. What's that like? What do you notice?
Now what kind of expression wants to emerge from this place in you? This place of connection?
If this patch of earth that holds you had an intelligence and a life force, what might it want to say?
If the soles of your feet could speak, what might they long to tell you?
This is the kind of territory we will be investigating in this workshop. Because we believe that the change we want to see needs to begin from this place of feeling rooted, on earth and not separate.
This workshop is an example of the kind of space holding and quality of exploration you can expect from the regular workshops Brooke & Rachel will be facilitating in the KIN membership program.
“Don’t take a walk,
give one.
Barefoot or shod,
pause ever
so briefly as you press
your sole’s soft center
to the ground.
Hikers of switch-back trails
call it the rest-step,
which is a kind of meditation
at the heart of going.
The planet can feel
this lost harmony
of the body and its breath
pathlessly meandering
through trillium silence
in the dangled gaze
of columbine
over the moss’s green glow,
caressing the loam,
never quite arriving.
This way,
you won’t disturb the marmot
at his prayers.”
~ Alfred K. LaMotte
Who is it For?
Everyone with a body and an imagination is most warmly welcome. No experience is necessary other than being a human.
This workshop might be for you if - you are someone who is curious about how embodiment and creative practice and can assist you with coming more fully into contact with the ground beneath your feet.
- You long for more of a sense of being rooted in the soil of your being during this time of intense cultural flux and instability. (The world needs people who can feel the ground under their feet!)
- You are someone who wants to breathe more life into your relationship with the land on which you stand which gives you your life.
- You love to be held as you explore expression through writing and sharing your writing.
- Or you are someone who is curious about how you might write from places in and around you other than your head.
This workshop might not be so relevant for you if you prefer to work cognitively rather than imaginatively. Or are not interested in writing as a creative form of expression.
To participate in the workshop, please bring a notebook, a pen, comfortable clothes you can move in, your own wild heart and your curious feet! Please note that you dont need to have any experience of somatics or poetry to be able to be nourished by this work.
This workshop might be for you if - you are someone who is curious about how embodiment and creative practice and can assist you with coming more fully into contact with the ground beneath your feet.
- You long for more of a sense of being rooted in the soil of your being during this time of intense cultural flux and instability. (The world needs people who can feel the ground under their feet!)
- You are someone who wants to breathe more life into your relationship with the land on which you stand which gives you your life.
- You love to be held as you explore expression through writing and sharing your writing.
- Or you are someone who is curious about how you might write from places in and around you other than your head.
This workshop might not be so relevant for you if you prefer to work cognitively rather than imaginatively. Or are not interested in writing as a creative form of expression.
To participate in the workshop, please bring a notebook, a pen, comfortable clothes you can move in, your own wild heart and your curious feet! Please note that you dont need to have any experience of somatics or poetry to be able to be nourished by this work.
'When we walk, we can walk for our ancestors and future generations. Maybe they had to walk with sorrow; perhaps they were forced to march or migrate. When we walk freely, we are walking for them.'
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Flow of the Workshop
Opening Prayer & Intention setting
Arriving in the body & an initial poetry prompt - Brooke & Rachel
Somatic drop in - Rachel
Sharing Circle
Poetic expression - Brooke
Sharing Circle
Onward Pathways & Worldly Actions
Closing
Pricing Options
There are two ways to pay for this workshop. For the same price you can either sign up to the workshop only, or gain access to the workshop as well as our KIN writing membership space for one month. Please read the below items carefully to make your choice.
