I am honored and excited to invite you to practice with me this season!
Join me in a powerful, respectful, and life-giving context where we can come together to engage in potent practices and smart tools to meet our times with grounded presence, with the support of the Web of Life and our own knowing bodies, with our hearts and eyes open and clear. And importantly: with the buoyant support of a committed, compassionate community that meets in Rumi's field - out beyond ideas of right and wrong.
I would be so grateful to have you join.
"I cannot recommend this course and Erin Geesaman Rabke enough." - Cynthia Jurs founder of Gaia Mandala, Buddhist teacher in the Order of Interbeing, and carrier of the global Earth Treasure Vase practices.
Tuesdays 9 am-noon MDT
over 10 weeks
from March 29- May 31
Note that in the US, we shift into Daylight Savings Time on March 13th.
Join me for a 10-week immersion on Tuesdays
Please read my cancellation policy before you sign up. 
Now offered in a pay-what-you-can model. $750 is the standard price of the course. I want to make it accessible because I want you in the Great Turning with me! And because I sense that many of us could really benefit from coming together in the spirit of this work. And because it feels really good to be generous. I hope it feels really good to you to be generous too. That's what could make this sliding scale model sustainable and of benefit to many. Let's do it!
I made a little video to tell you about it.
You can also read more below.
"So so beautiful! All the beautiful things you shared. Thanks for the heartbreaking, heart-lifting, inspiring, grounding words." - past course participant
" I've been quite amazed to see how my consciousness and actions are shifting already. They are slight movements, but they are undeniably present. This has been percolating in the back of my mind for so long, with sadness for inaction. A supportive community, your loving, gentle yet fierce ways, this is what I needed! I'm so grateful." - past course participant
"I’m so beyond grateful for your course! I love it all. I love the way I’m able to hold it now. It is moving me in ways I couldn't move before." - past course participant
I want to take your hand and warmly invite you to do this work with me - together - with respect, kindness, and room for it all.
I know it can be terrifying to take off the blinders and really let our hearts break when we see what is unfolding all around us. And I know how empowering it can be when we do it linking arms together with kindhearted companions.
I know the incredible sense of empowerment and fierce love that blossoms in us individually and collectively that can support our determination to do whatever we can to support thriving life on earth. When we consider supporting the lives of future beings of all species with our every action, our lives become so beautiful today!
This is so deeply important. Right now. Our wisdom, courage, and actions will have significant impacts on future generations.
What kind of impact do you wish to have?
What kind of ancestor will you be?
Your voice, your broken-open heart, your love, and your unique way of responding have never been more needed.
In this course, we'll be meeting in Rumi's fertile field, out beyond ideas of right and wrong. We'll root all of it in love.
Waking up to the reality of our times - both the grave dangers and the exciting potentials - and then entering the long and humbling and beautiful process of embodying our values in this world that is so full of suffering and loss and beauty and possibility...
This is the kind of practice I respect and the kind I hold space for.
Let's nurture our embodied resilience and kindle our courage to meet these turbulent times with eyes and hearts open, with as much beauty and soul and compassion as possible.
I hope you'll consider joining me.
What Is It?
A journey into embodied practice, deep ecology, systems thinking, and the joy of reconnecting with self, community, and the natural world.
"The central purpose of the Work that Reconnects is to help people uncover and experience their innate connections with each other and with the systemic, self-healing powers of the web of life, so that they may be enlivened and motivated to play their part in creating a sustainable civilization."
–Joanna Macy
Our time together will include:
- gentle and potent embodiment practices
- embodied listening practices
- guided meditation
- personal explorations of deep ecology and systems thinking
- small breakout groups and intimate conversations
- a weekly exploration of powerful practices from the Work That Reconnects, developed by wise elder Joanna Macy
- and of course, we’ll be engaging all of this with respect, kindness, and all kinds of room to find *your own way.*
- While we will not be doing Feldenkrais lessons live weekly, as part of your tuition, you'll have access to the Embodiment Lab where Carl and I teach weekly movement lessons. Instead, we'll focus on specific embodiment practices that directly nurture the qualities we need to nurture to embody the Great Turning!!
For sure, this is the solitary work we cannot do alone.
Let's usher in this season of change with clarity about what really matters and clarify our values as to how we want to meet our extraordinary times.
We were made for these times. We will be shaped by and can powerfully shape these times. Let's make it beautiful. Open eyes and open hearts. Rooted in rhythms of action and rest. Free of shoulds and shame and full of courage and heart.
Please contact me if you have any questions.
When? Where?
We will be meeting on Zoom. It would be wonderful if you can dial in from a quiet place with a good internet connection, your camera on, and in a space where you can move on the floor supported by padding like a carpet, a yoga mat with a blanket on top, or other comfortable support. You may also wish to have a meditation cushion or a comfortable chair in which you can sit upright.
Tuesdays 9 am-noon MDT (8 am Pacific, 11 am Eastern)
over 10 weeks
from March 29 - May 31
click here to find your time zone.
How Much?
I normally charge $750 tuition. This spring I'm trying something new (which I may never do again - we'll see how it goes!) I'm offering this course to a larger group with a pay-what-you-can model. Please read more about this below.
Your Tuition includes:
- 10 live 3-hour workshops
- an online course hub for you to access recordings of all classes as well as supplementary resources and a non-social-media place to connect with companions in the class (all available long after the course ends)
- camaraderie with a powerful circle of beautiful humans who care deeply about the world
- my wholehearted support and encouragement and the most powerful tools and practices I have to offer, shared with deep respect for your autonomy and wisdom
- heartening poetry, inspiring articles, and abundant resources to support you
A portion of proceeds will be donated to Treesisters, an organization I’m honored to have supported over the last several years.
This is an anti-oppressive, anti-racist community.
All respectful and kind-hearted adult humans, of any skin color, cultural background, faith tradition, and gender expression are welcome.
No unsolicited advice-giving or hate speech will be allowed in this space. We endeavor to foster the most respectful and most pleasurable experience for all.
Some extra notes on tuition, please read this section only if you like:
Please read my cancellation policy before you sign up.
$750 is the standard price of the course. While $750 is half the price I normally charge for my similar-length in-person live courses, I'm experimenting with a pay-what-you-can-afford model. I want to make it accessible because I want you in the Great Turning with me! And because I sense that many of us could really benefit from coming together in the model of this work. And because it feels really good to be generous. I hope it feels really good to you to be generous too. That's what could make this sliding scale model sustainable and of benefit to many. Let's do it!
Being clear with yourself and your financial situation when engaging with sliding scale pricing grows strong and sustainable communities. It also respects the work of teachers, like me, who have families to support and bills to pay.
Additionally, when I am paid fairly and even generously, I am able to invest more time and resources into creating free and lower cost offerings, and investing in my own continuing education, so the cycle can continue! Thank you for investing in me, in the Great Turning, and in a sustainable, equitable community!!!
Click here to register for the Tuesday class 9 am-noon MDT. Pay what you can.
I love to imagine us sitting around a sacred fire together, sharing our heartbreak, our deep love for the world, our most courageous ideas and inspirations, our deep dreams, our one-of-a-kind wisdom, held by wise practices, and cheering each other on all the way.
While rather than gathering at the firepit, our fires will be in our hearts and in the candles we may have lit in our own homes.
What is the Great Turning?
Excerpted and edited from The Work That Reconnects Network:
"Now the climate itself is unraveling worldwide and the sixth great extinction of species is underway. Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and wildfires, amplified by global warming, leave millions of people without shelter, food, or potable water. Bee colonies are collapsing. Whole ecosystems are being destroyed.
Military operations and conflicts, as well as famine and drought, drive staggering numbers of refugees to flee for their lives across borders, often to be turned away, incarcerated, enslaved, or consigned to refugee camps for years on end. Systemic racism and long-standing cultural and religious enmities flare up, taking an immeasurable toll in human suffering.
The Great Turning is for those of us who see the Great Unraveling and don’t want it to have the last word.
This is the story of the transition from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Society. Attitudes shift from exploitation to respect, from extraction to regeneration, from competition to cooperation. More and more people come to see how interwoven we areas peoples and recognize that solidarity with one another is a way through these crises. So we join together to act for the sake of life on Earth."
Let's practice together to embody the Great Turning, in the outer world, yes, and also in our own bodies, hearts, and minds.
Together we will explore
nurturing our grounded presence,
practicing embodied listening,
resourcing foundations of sustainable, non-dominating embodiment practices
and exploring potent practices from the Work That Reconnects to transform despair and overwhelm into courage and inspired action.
And of course, it's all rooted in
the foundational, lifelong practice of bravely befriending exactly what's here.
Having been engaged in my own grieving and reorienting process over the past several years as I let my heart break open to the realities of the climate catastrophe, the rampant racism, the violence and abuse that are so normalized in our culture, and the many challenges facing us in the world both in human culture and in nature, I feel strongly called to create a community gathering place and a supportive learning context where we can both deepen and employ our embodiment skills and personal well-being and simultaneously aim them toward the healing of our world, while leaning into a caring community. I want to be in a context where we can admit how much we care and how much our hearts are aching. A place where we take time to listen within our own body-minds for the wisdom we need at this time. A context where we can nurture joy and courage as we make space for grief and reckon with big challenges.
I believe we see more clearly when we gather together. As my mentor, Francis Weller says, "It's the solitary journey we cannot do alone."
I know in my bones that there is guidance in the grief and outrage we feel when we see destruction and disrespect happening all around us.
I know there is wisdom in the particular ways you love the world.
I know that when we come together, we can support each other to step over the bullshit voices we’ve heard all our lives: that we don’t really understand how the world works, that we should just be quiet, that we should not disturb anyone and be nice, that we should just let the people in power do their thing, that it's not really that bad.
There's no more time for that nonsense.
Our voices, our choices, our lives, and our actions matter.
Whether you are a parent, an activist, an artist, a healer, a writer, an elder, a computer programmer, a student, or a weary earth lover of any kind at all... you are invited. This is for you.
Let’s support each other to meet these times with courage, with our unapologetic knowings, and with our tender hearts, supported by our grounded presence, our spacious awareness, our vital breath, and the living earth.
Let's practice embodying anti-oppression and creating a beautiful, reverent, curious, good-humored, and non-dominating way of being human together.
Let's heal ourselves while we commit to the healing of this beautiful, fragile world.
Let's lean into our connections with one another, our connections with the wise ancestors, our connections with our sibling species and the natural world. We are not alone.
As one of my beloved elder mentors, Deena Metzger writes, "The changes required are systemic and cellular. Too often these days, the very framing of the issues limits the possibilities. How will we survive? How will we thrive? How will we prosper? [These] may no longer be the questions, if the WE refers only to humans. We have to free ourselves from the programming, at the least, of the last century. It is a huge task and it is possible. We have allies. They are not all human. The future is possible BUT we have to offer ourselves to it, unconditionally. When we do, guidance occurs. Spirit speaks to us when we open to it... As extreme, at this time, as are the dangers to all, are the signs of possibility we witness and experience each day."
It's time we lead with love.
It's time we imagine and embody those life-giving possibilities.
For sure, how you treat your own body, mind, and inner life is connected with how you show up in the world. Let's practice ending the violence and the manipulations within and without. Let's make it all respectful, powerful, and pleasurable. Why not? I'm passionate about supporting us to make our wholehearted engagement as sustainable and joy-filled as possible.
Can I be candid? Having done many retreats and many somatic and spiritual practices and been a part of many communities over the past 30 years both personally and as a guide for others, I can wholeheartedly say that I find deep value in many of them - from meditation to movement to restorative practices, silent time, breathwork, prayer, and more. But for me, in 2021, it truly does not compute when I see many folks flying around the world, most of whom I imagine don't tend to carbon offsets, to do "spiritual" retreats that pay little to no attention to the current circumstances of our climate catastrophe and the many crises we are facing in culture and nature. I wonder - how can that yoga, that meditation truly be a spiritual practice when it basically encourages adults to stick their heads in the soothing sands of "self-care" while ignoring the impacts our actions will certainly have on future generations? What are we getting strong, flexible, centered, well-rested or compassionate for? To ignore the news and each other? To look away from the painful losses, extinctions, sufferings of our siblings? To blissfully zone out in our bubble of privilege as the world burns? The children deserve better from us. And so do we.
I wonder if it's because people are too scared to look these inconvenient truths in the face. That I understand and have great compassion for. And that is exactly why I've reoriented my life and my teaching in recent years. Because we cannot ignore this anymore. Because we need each other and need great compassion to face it. We can support one another to embody our practices in *this* world. Do we need self-care and rest? Of course! We won't neglect that in this course. But does the world also need our care and attention and dedication and willingness to be present and bear witness to what is occurring without having our blinders on? More than ever. As Joanna Macy says, it's this knife-edge of uncertainty we're standing on that can elicit our greatest gifts and our greatest unfolding. I hope you'll consider joining me.
With all my love and wholehearted dedication to you and to the future generations of all species on this fragile, sacred world,
Erin
p.s. Wondering who I am? Read more about me here.
