working at the confluence of eco-therapy, eco-somatics, and eco-spiritualityworking at the confluence of eco-therapy, eco-somatics, and eco-spirituality
ABOUT
GROWING CULTURAL LIFEWAYS OF BELONGING
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Belonging is hardwired into our blood, bones, waterways and stones.
Belonging is your birthright. As beings woven into an ecological tapestry of interdependence, belonging is an inherent, relational capacity born of the collective field we all share. ​
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Belonging is an embodied journey of remembering your way HOME.​
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We borrow from biology the term homing to describe our innate ability to navigate the dislocation of modern day empire towards embodied belonging. Through earth-centered and body-based study, research and practice we seek to nurture our ancestral roots, relational bonds, and ecological entanglements by:​​​​​​
repairing ancestral relational ruptures,
reconnecting to embodied intelligence,
recovering technologies of animist wisdom,
restoring a secure attachment with ancestors + earth,
remembering divinely guided, earth-rooted wisdom,​​​
rooting into networks of care aligned with decolonization.
WE EXPLORE ANCESTRAL LEGACIES OF LIFE MAKING & KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION VIA ECOSYSTEM ENTANGLEMENT
EARTH IS CALLING
We believe that belonging arises from an earth-honoring way of life as old as creation.
We also understand that systems of oppression work hard to sever us from this innate and vital connection with our body/lands/stories.
We recognize that what ails humanity is a disconnection from our own bodies (mind/body split) and from the greater body of our living earth (spirit/matter split) - the source of our spiritual sustenance and aliveness.
Separation from and domination over land/body is a core wound stored within the collective soma of humanity. It expresses fragmentation in myriad ways as it alienates and cuts us off from the intelligence of our ecological nervous system, communal ways of surviving, and relational resilience.
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We believe that earth is calling to humanity through the collective discomfort and cultural crises of these times and is asking each of us to rise and reclaim our purpose in service to planetary healing and collective liberation.
This means interrogating and actively resisting the oppressive systems that bolster racial capitalism and ongoing imperialism, genocide, Indigenous land theft, settler colonialism, slavery, exploitation, extraction and war. Simultaneously it means imagining and actively co-creating the kind of world our hearts long for.
Thus we root our work in a personal commitment to dismantling systems of oppression internally and externally while growing our collective capacity for an Indigenous land-back future.
To this end, we believe it is imperative that we align with a vision of the world that liberates all lands and people, and reclaim our unique power, responsibility, ecological purpose and place of belonging within the web of life.
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Together, let us foster a resilient earth culture for generations to come.
Born in the Piedmont South, Way Of Belonging is home to the Cape Fear River Basin and is shaped by and responsive to the socio-cultural-ecological landscape in which it grows.
GREETINGS & WELCOME!
We are Jess & Michelle and we are SO honored to have you here. We are life partners, researchers, teachers, and politicized embodiment practitioners reclaiming euro-traditional folkways. Our work is in service of growing cultural lifeways of belonging through embodied earth community practice.
Our people come from western and eastern European disaporic communities residing on Turtle Island. We currently occupy the unceded Indigenous territories of the Eno, Catawba, Occaneechi, Sappony / Saponi, Shakori, and Sissipahaw nations in the Piedmont bioregion of North Carolina.
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Together we work at the confluence of spirituality, embodiment, ecology, and justice. We curate spiritually transformative, body-centered and nature-based healing spaces that support folks to nurture ecological wisdom, restore their primal connection with the living earth, and reconnect to their sacred role and responsibility in the web of life. ​
​​We offer trauma-informed, somatic-based, anti-oppressive healing sessions for individuals seeking therapeutic support outside of the mental health industrial complex. We offer custom, in-person retreats for individuals and groups as well as guidance for designing custom rituals related to life-transition moments. We also host the Sacred Grove, an online ancestral healing program and community dedicated to radical remembrance and reclaiming earth-rooted cultural life-ways.
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We are heading the call to embody the dream of earth by weaving ourselves back into kinship with the living world. We are remembering our way home by recognizing our shared struggle in the right to exist and thrive in harmony with the more-than-human world. We are apprenticing ourselves to the way of nature by living in alignment with natural rhythms, nurturing radical remembrance, cultivating a reciprocal relationship to place, and awakening to the dream of earth stirring in our souls.​
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We hope to meet you!
WE CAN SUPPORT YOU TO
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REPAIR EARTH/SPIRIT + MIND/BODY DISCONNECTION
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NURTURE EARTH LITERACY & WILD FLUENCY
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BEFRIEND GRIEF AS A COMPANION TO BEING HUMAN IN THIS WORLD
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MARK & RITUALIZE THRESHOLD MOMENTS, RITES OF PASSAGE + TIMES OF TRANSITION
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ORIENT TO SEASONAL + CYCLICAL LIVING
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INCREASE YOUR CAPACITY TO PERCEIVE WITH YOUR SENSES
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PARTICIPATE MORE ACTIVELY IN THE FORCES THAT SHAPE THE WORLD
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NURTURE ECOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE (ATTUNEMENT TO RELATIONSHIPS, FEELINGS & FORCES)
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SLOW DOWN, FIND PLEASURE IN SIMPLICITY, & CULTIVATE SENSUAL ALIVENESS​​
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LISTEN TO THE WAY YOUR SOUL SPEAKS TO & THROUGH YOU​
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CREATIVELY ADAPT TO THE TIMES IN WHICH WE LIVE
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RECONNECT TO THE WILD, EROTIC POWER OF BEING FULLY AWAKE
“Our bodies know that they belong; it is our minds that make our lives so homeless. Guided by longing, belonging is the wisdom of rhythm. When we are in rhythm with our own nature, things flow and balance naturally."
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- John O'Donohue
WHAT WE VALUE & PRACTICE
Cyclical Attunement
We divest from colonial practices of separation by re-attuning to the rhythms of nature that prioritize the healing powers of expansion / contraction, creation / letting go, life / death.
Ancestral Recovery
We actively seek to remember our roots deeper than whiteness, reclaim ancestral wisdom as a necessary part of resistance, and strive to live in a good way by learning from those who have come before us.
Beauty Making
Beauty is the Spirit of Life revealed to us through nature. Communing with nature awakens the soul, inspires us to live reverently, and compels us toward poetic embodiment.
Queer Entanglement
We practice embodied interrelating by expanding our felt sense of self to include the ecological relationships that encircle us and queer notions of love to include our more-than-human relatives.
Decolonial Solidarity
We divest from systems of oppression rooted in white supremacy, extractive capitalism and settler colonialism toward the rematriation ofIndigenous land and life.
Right Relationship
Right relationship arises when we know ourselves as belonging to a place to whom we are beholden and responsive to the needs of our mutual thriving.
Creative Reciprocity
We ground our care in the context of interdependence. We offer our creative expressions generously in service to life. We acknowledge and receive gifts with humility and give in return as a gesture of gratitude.
The Art of Listening
We create space in our lives to slow down, lean back, and touch into the heart of silence which renews our spirit and allows us to listen for the voice of Earth speaking in and through us.
Play as Prayer
Play opens the heart toward connection and joy. It is a pathway toward communion and fosters innovative forms of exploration in relationship to the spirit of life.
Relationship with Land is at the heart of our work
Way Of Belonging is currently led by queer, white settlers and are offering this work from the occupied ancestral territories of the Catawba, Eno, Shakori, Tutelo, Sissipahaw, Occaneechi and Saponi Nations, and specifically within the Cape Fear River Watershed of NC.
We approach our work with the understanding that loving earth and each other means carrying the sacred responsibility to understand the present day impacts of our shared history on the lands that we call home.
We recognize that our being here is inextricably linked to the oppression and attempted erasure of Indigenous peoples as well as the horrific legacy of chattel slavery. The processes by which our ancestors came to reside on Turtle Island are steeped in injustice and violence. Our Community Care Practices is one way that we humbly attempt to repair some of that harm.
We also see it as part of our work to continually deepen our learning around what it means to embody right relationship, to live in alignment with our deepest held visions, to understand our unique roles in relationship to place, to enact our responsibilities as settler-occupiers on Indigenous lands, and to cultivate authentic relationships of solidarity and shared struggle towards collective liberation.
We are rooted in a commitment to the ongoing work of unsettling whiteness and the ideologies of domination and supremacy that uphold it; dismantling both internalized and systemic manifestations of colonial capitalist violence; and building toward radical visions of the future rooted in collective liberation.
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With that being said, our offerings are not spaces for spiritual by-passing or escapism. We seek to ground our work in the realities of our living world, much of which requires a willingness to get uncomfortable and to create space for the holy shadow - those things that have long been denied and dismissed - to teach and guide us
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COLLABORATORS
