SGT Monthly Events

You are warmly invited to join any of our monthly events. As we go forth together in study and action, beauty-making and community connection, we would love to invite you into our community of Earth-tenders. We offer these events to feed body, mind, and soul.

Work that Reconnects Community of Practice

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Somatic Practice and Support Group

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Music As Medicine Community Sing

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One-on-One

Thought Partnership Session with
Lydia Violet Harutoonian

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Membership

Join our Community Platform for access to ALL of these events, every month!

$49 Per Month

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Work that Reconnects Practice Circle

With
Lydia Violet

Wed, Jan 21
5:00 PM - 6:15 PM PDT

ONLINE

$25

  • The "Work That Reconnects" (WTR) is a framework and set of practices developed by Joanna Macy, a scholar, environmental activist, and Buddhist practitioner. It is a holistic approach to personal and collective transformation that aims to address the ecological and social challenges facing humanity.

    The Work That Reconnects is rooted in the belief that in order to create meaningful change in the world, we must first acknowledge and confront the pain and despair that arise from our current environmental and social crises. It provides a safe and supportive space for individuals to explore and express their emotions about the state of the world, while also fostering a sense of connection and empowerment.

  • Elder and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy for the past 12 years, learning how we can metabolize climate despair, eco-anxiety, and community traumas into energy for resilience, action, and community healing. She founded and runs School for The Great Turning, in dedication to the work of Joanna Macy, and to create access to an education that supports the societal shift from an Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Society. For 4 years Lydia has also run the Music As Medicine Project, combining traditions of community singing with Macy's "Work That Reconnects." Lydia has lead hundreds of groups in this work internationally, as well as conducted facilitator trainings and offered keynote addresses at conferences and festivals. Lydia is also an accomplished Iranian-Armenian-American multi-instrumentalist weaving together American roots and Iranian folk music traditions. With her live band she combines fiddle, banjo, and luscious harmonies to offer a soul-folk revival experience, bringing in a fresh wave of protest music. In the past year she has collaborated with world-renowned artists Climbing PoeTree, Rising Appalachia, and Lyla June. ♬

Somatic Practice and Support Group

With
Leilani Wong Navar

Wed, Dec 10
5:00 PM - 6:15 PM PDT

ONLINE

$25

  • Movement and awareness practices for emotional wellness, drawn from traditional qigong and meditation as well as modern somatics.

    These practices are helpful for moving stuck energy related to the emotions happening in our personal lives as well as our pain for the world, and helpful for cultivating more capacity and resilience.

    While most of this session time will be dedicated to somatic practice, we will also have time for optional sharing about a current grief, anger, or other pain each of us experiencing. With those in our awareness, we can bring them into the movement practices for release and resourcing. We'll reflect together after the practices as well.

    For this session, you will need space to stand in, and a comfortable place to sit. If you need to practice lying down, sitting, or in stillness and using only visualization, all these practices are adaptable to those needs.

  • This space is open to anyone who would like to gather with the community to learn and engage in somatic (body-based) practices for soothing and release.

    In these sessions, we explore a range of somatic (body-based) practices designed to cultivate a profound sense of safety, grounding, and empowerment. These include guided meditations, breathing exercises, gentle movement, body awareness explorations, and heartfelt group sharing, you'll tap into the depths of your own bodily sensations, emotions, and inner wisdom. Our circle is led by an incredible group of experienced facilitators, ensuring you receive the guidance and support you need along the way.

  • Our Assistant Director at School for the Great Turning and host of Turning Season Podcast, Leilani is also a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine. She has been practicing qigong, martial arts and meditation for over 20 years. These somatic practices are essential to her well-being and full participation in the Great Turning. In her clinical practice, Leilani supports people dealing with pain, disease, infertility, and stress, using acupuncture, herbal medicine, modern functional medicine, CranioSacral Therapy, and dreamwork. With groups, she facilitates the Work that Reconnects and teaches courses on practical wisdom from Chinese Medicine.

With
Alexandre Jodun

Sun, Apr 12
10:00 AM - 11:15 AM PDT

ONLINE

$25

  • About this month's “Somatic Animacy" Practice:

    There’s a proverb in Mauritian creole that says, “en langaz pa asè”, which translates as: “one language is not enough.” In modern dominant ways of relating - to our multitudes and to others - many of us have been entrained to prioritise verbal expression over other ways of communicating and knowing. In this way, the wild intelligence of what Joanna Macy refers to as our “co-extensive self,” has been diminished to a dislocated sense of personhood that struggles to comprehend the non-verbal dialects of embodied and relational aliveness

    When tasked with meaningfully engaging with the Great Turning, it begs the questions: What about the animate language of the earth, and our ancestors, that speak through our bodies? Who do we become when we allow the “soft animal of our bodies,” to move the way they want to move, to sing the way they long to sing, to articulate their signature(s)?

    In this Somatic Resourcing and Practice, we will make room for these somatic animacies to express. This will be a space for you to reverently explore your innate aliveness through spontaneous movement and non-verbal wanderings, with the support of music, sound, and creative embodied practice. 

    Let us be nourished and enlivened by the somatic-poetry that wants to move through us (and perhaps, into the world).  

    This practice is open to all body types, shapes, sizes, ages, and abilities. 

    Please wear loose comfortable clothes and be in a space where you can move freely whilst standing (or sitting), and where it’s also possible to lie down. Feel free to bring blankets, pillows, cushions and anything else that might bring you more comfort and pleasure. 

  • Alexandre Jodun is an integrative psychotherapist, group facilitator, and ritualist devoted to the art of soul and ancestral remembrance. As a multidisciplinary and eclectic practitioner, his work is in service to the remembering of the essential wisdoms, practices, and initiatory processes for ripening into mature adulthood, such that living culture may emerge to carry future generations.

    With over a decade of immersion and apprenticeship in animist and mysticism traditions, as well as transpersonal psychotherapies, he walks the fertile edges where ancestral wisdom, psycho-spritiual maturation, and initiatory transformation converge. Carrying a Mauritian-creole, Afro-Asian-European diasporic ancestral heritage, Alexandre’s sacred activism involves being a bridge - between worlds, traditions, and ways of knowing. He has worked with hundreds of people from around the world - including individuals, couples, and groups - through the containers of soul-work, grief-rituals, men’s work, and ceremonial journeys with sacred medicines.

    He is grateful to call the Sacred Valley of Cusco, Peru, home - where he lives alongside his beloved wife, cocker-spaniel, and cat, surrounded by the sacred Apus of Pitusiray and Sawasiray.

    You can find out more about Alexandre at www.ahealingbridge.com.

Music as Medicine Community Sing

With
KJ Song

Sun, Jan 4
10:00 AM - 11:15 AM PDT

ONLINE

$25

  • The Music As Medicine Sunday Community Sing is a morning of song & sanctuary, this time with honey-voiced special guest KJ Song!

    For many millennia, music, and specifically music made together in community, has been a crucial way we bolster ourselves in hard times. Music can mend our bones and pour in the grace. It can transform our exhaustion and help us feel more held as a part of the choir. 

    Just as it feels good to act in the companionship of others on behalf of life, so too is the homecoming of singing together. 

    All are welcome! No music experience necessary.

  • KJ Song (they/them) is the queer, kinky queen of a cappella body-Gospel. A seasoned songcatcher and Voice Doula, KJ deeply understands the eroticism of singing and the harmonics of a life of devotion.

    Defying stereotypes and belting through dogmatic Christian norms, KJ is at the forefront of inclusive Praise and Worship music. KJ is a proud member of the City of Refuge UCC Praise Ensemble, founder of the Queer Praise Choir and former co-director of WildChoir in Oakland. CA.


    Let's get one thing queer... KJ is here to pray. 

    www.kjsong.com

One-on-One

Thought Partnership Session with Lydia Violet

In these sessions, you can meet one-on-one with school founder Lydia Violet Harutoonian.

Feel free to bring in any questions you have about the "Work That Reconnects," projects you are working on, or anything else that feels relevant to seek thought partnership from Lydia about.

Book

Want to attend multiple events?

Join our Community Platform for access to ALL of these events, every month!

Membership is $49 per month.

Learn more