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American culture lacks practices and places that allow us to move through the complexities of grief and anger with dignity and support.

Fire + Water is a space to connect with these experiences that are alive in your bones, to honor and bow to their wisdom and rightness, and to allow them to gently move through your body.

This is not a sharing circle.

Fire + Water is a somatic (body-based) practice for releasing emotions, offered within the context of professional support and empathetic community.

You will be invited to freely move your body and encouraged to express your feelings through yelling, crying, shaking, stomping, etc. Given the intensities of these expressions, the entire group will be grounded into periods of rest and quiet so as to not overwhelm the individual or collective nervous system.

Fire + Water is an all-inclusive, non-judgmental, trauma-informed space for every kind of grief and anger. We hold space for the grievous experiences that are typically acknowledged or supported in our society as well as for the ones that are shamed, shunned, neglected, denied, dismissed, or forgotten.

Your grief matters. Your anger matters.

Event Details

This event date has passed, but may be offered again in the future.

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Schedule

4:45 – Arrive for paperwork and settling in
5:00 – Welcome and orientation
5:30 – Grounding meditation and hysteria call
5:50 – Somatic experience: wave 1*
6:10 – Rest, silence
6:20 – Somatic experience: wave 2*
6:40 – Rest, silence
6:50 – Gratitude meditation
7:00 – Slow departure

What to bring:

• Water bottle
• A mug (tea will be provided)
• Journal and pen
• Comfort items: blanket, pillow, etc.
• Clothes that are easy to move in
• Layers of clothing for adjusting to hot and cold internal states
• Meaningful items to contribute to the alter (symbolic representations)

*What is a Somatic Experience?

Simply put, it’s an experience that arises in your body in response to a specific stimulus (e.g. intentionally tuning into your grief or anger).

Here are some examples of somatic experiences you might have:

• Fluctuations in: body temperature (sweating or shivering), heart beat (speeding up or slowing down), breathing rate (rapid, shallow, slow, irregular, or holding your breath without realizing it)
• Visceral reactions such as crying, yawning, nausea, stomach cramping, feeling like there is a lump in your throat, trembling, twitching, shivering, shaking, tingling, throbbing, feeling jittery, numb, dizzy, frozen, tired, achy, goosebumps, shivers, unexpected sharp or shooting pain
• The desire to move your body somehow (you’ll know in the moment), feeling an urgency to run (flee), fidgeting, becoming stiff and tense (freeze, bracing for impact), clenching parts of the body (jaw, hands, pelvic floor), becoming limp (collapsing), feeling hunching over or head down, feeling heavy or weightless

When these experiences arise, we can greet them with an offer of expression and comfort. This allows the energy of grief or anger to move through and, ultimately, release from our body via:

• Noticing
• Moving or Expressing
• Soothing

Because this isn’t a sharing circle, there is space for you to turn your attention inward for this process without having to explain yourself or put your experience into words.

Click this image or link to read a research article about how our emotions show up in the body.

For your emotional safety, Fire + Water upholds principles of somatic experiencing:

• Pendulation: moving back and forth between discomfort and comfort
• Titration: only working with small amounts of discomfort at one time so as to not overwhelm the nervous system
• Discharge: using physical movement to connect with and/or release emotions
• Rest and regulate: taking breaks, finding ease and reprieve, accessing joy when possible, integrating and re-orienting, applying soothing and resourcing

The goal of this practice is to slowly and safely move through intense emotions and to allow ourselves to access the wisdom offered by grief and anger.

About Your Facilitators

Bevin Clapper of Moon and Stone Healing Arts is a meditation teacher, healer, life coach, and circlekeeper located in Corvallis, Oregon. She will lead her favorite ritual, the hysteria call, as well as provide Reiki to those participants that feel called to receive.   

Anna Burnett of Burnett Bodywork will guide several somatic practices for embodied emotional processing, as well as offer physical touch for those who desire hands-on support. Anna is a trauma-informed therapist and is passionate about providing safe spaces for people have human experiences.