The Posture of Presence is a nine-month, closely held container of study and practice. It will be open by application to a cohort of eight students.

This close study cohort is specifically tailored for people living with chronic conditions. When physical pain is a daily experience, it’s easy to want to separate from our bodies. This strategy is helpful in the short-term, but eventually cuts us off from the very internal processes that catalyze healing and maintain health. Movement activates metabolic transformation, digesting what is old and stuck and replenishing us with fresh experiences and insight. This process reorients us to the source of our innate vitality, restoring health from the inside out.

Three Quarters

Our movement studies will be oriented around the cycle of the seasons as mapped by the Chinese solar calendar and Five Organ Theory. Tracking seasonal changes through the body reorients us to the larger cycles of time that govern our physiology. This in itself allows our systems to co-regulate with the natural world. You do not need any prior understanding of these systems to participate.

Through this cycle you will develop strength in the foundations of daily movement practice suited to your body’s specific needs. We will establish core practice routines rooted in Qi Gong, along with additional methods to enhance skeletal alignment and muscle tone. When the body’s natural posture is restored, the flow of Qi is free to support health on all levels.

Each Quarter will have a unique focus and additional practices related to the seasons and their respective organs.

Mapping the Body

Included in this seasonal movement exploration will be learning to map the elemental balance of your own body. You’ll gain the conceptual background needed to understand patterns of imbalance in your system and practices you can apply to best support yourself.

We’ll work with visual maps as well as stories that provide landmarks for where we are in our experience and where our longings want to go. You’ll regain the sensory awareness and skill necessary to traverse your internal terrain, recognizing with greater precision how tension patterns are affecting organ physiology, what parts have become disconnected, and how to restore integration to your system.

This work is based on a paradigm in which nothing about the body needs to fixed. If you have a diagnosed medical or mental health condition, I highly recommend that you maintain outside professional support while in the cohort. This program of study is not intended to replace medical care, but to aid your self-understand and personal capacity for healing.

Our focus will be restoring movement at the deepest levels of the body and facilitating the circulation of Qi and fluid through all layers of tissue. This approach transforms the terrain of the body and allows our innate vitality to re-emerge. Practice will be held indoors and out, sometimes involving travel to local parks and public lands.

Application and pricing information coming soon!