Everything is relationship. 

The road ahead will require us all to be in better relationship.

In our current world, there are many ways in which we are not in healthy relationship with ourselves, our partners, friends, community, and the planet.Using partner dance as our vehicle, we’ll explore coming into better relationship with ourselves, others and our environment. Through somatic inquiry into our embodied cultural contexts, we’ll take a coregulatory journey of the heart, soul and psyche that aims for healing, resilience and reconciliation. Alchemize the density and uncertainty of the last two years, and the turbulence of the present global cultural climate, through dance, community and rediscovering our belonging with the Earth.

Led by American vernacular dance-informed somatic permissionary Wren LaFeet and trauma-informed embodied social justice educator Odessa Avianna Perez, we’ll explore and deepen the following vital attributes of being human:

• Learn to attune to self and other for more dialed-in connections 
• Improve your consent practices – your ability to invite, be specific, allow space, give and receive yes and no.
• Deepen your self-awareness through an embodied sense of your emotional landscape 
• Practice non-violence towards self, other and environment
• Explore power dynamics: unpack unhealthy power-over dynamics as they live in your body and your life, and learn how to embody more power-among and power-within in your experience.
• Welcome the totality of your experience and stay in connection with others while doing so.
• Explore embodied, sensuous relationship with land
• Celebrate the radical act of embodied joy through dance and community.

Weekend Activities:

• Nature movement scores
• Contact Improv
• Cocréa
• Energetic attunement and Mindfulness technique
• Somatic Resourcing for a Resilient Nervous System (Resilient Body)
• Free Time for Reflection, Rest and Nature Connection
• Dance practices for Reconciliation 
• Vocal activations for liberating stagnant energy

COVID

In case you have not heard… there is a pandemic going on. Still. If you are sick or have been around someone who has recently been sick (fever, nausea, loss of smell, headache, sore throat, cough) please stay home and take care of yourself and your loved ones. We respect everyone’s choices in regards to their health, safety, and comfort, and also want to honor our own values around what caring for our community looks like. To this end we will be requiring a negative Covid test upon arrival. At home tests are acceptable. No masks required, but welcome. We expect everyone to make the best choices for themselves in consideration of the health of others.

VENUE LOGISTICS

ARRVIAL: Friday, July 22nd at 5pm

DEPARTURE: Sunday July 24th at 5pm

All meals included and followed by a group meal clean with Earthdance staff. Please make sure to stick around after you finish eating to support in clean-up!

All paticipants are required to help do a FINAL CLEAN of the facility before departure.

FACILITATORS

Odessa Avianna Perez  

Odessa is a trauma-informed somatic psychotherapist, embodiment and social justice educator who helps individuals and groups heal from fragmentation and remember agency, magic, and belonging.

Odessa is a cis gender, able-bodied, biracial white-presenting latina currently residing in Kumeyaay territory – what is now known as San Diego, CA. She holds an MA in Somatic Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies and triple bachelor degrees in Dance, Theater Arts, and Sociology from Rutgers University. She is a ThetaHealing practitioner and instructor, and has a background in massage and bodywork. She has over 2 decades of movement and dance performance experience, and has been practicing and teaching Contact Improvisation as a form of self inquiry and relationship alchemy for over ten years.

Odessa is deeply curious about the intersection of personal and collective trauma, collective nervous system states and expression, and how we can use somatics to integrate our trauma for better relationship, community and planet.  She has facilitated workshops at dozens of retreats and festivals up and down the west coast using somatics, movement, and contact improvisation as the platform through which to explore safety, relationship, building capacity for discomfort, interdependence and inclusion.

In her psychotherapeutic private practice, she weaves somatics, movement, interpersonal neurobiology, polyvagal theory, attachment work, and social and racial justice frameworks.With spiritual lineage in western Sufism and a background in ThetaHealing, she invites the mystical and metaphysical perspective, while remaining grounded in the reality of this planet and the structures and power dynamics we find ourselves in.

Odyssey Healing interweaves trauma-informed psychology with embodiment, somatics and social justice frameworks to facilitate whole-body healing. 

Relying on principles of non-violence, resilience-building, and inclusion, and informed by polyvagal theory, critical race theory, attachment theory and neurobiology, we explore how cultural, developmental and intergenerational forces have shaped us, and how we can recruit our bodies and our relationships to heal, grow, and thrive in our humanness.

Wren LaFeet 

Wren celebrates dancing in partnership for 23 years and loves serving humanity as a somatic permissionary. Teaching partner dance internationally as a practice for mindful, authentic living, and enlivening communities by facilitating his signature modality, Cocréa, has been his joy for nearly a decade. Wren guides somatically curious humans towards right relationship by exploring the realms of Self, Earth, Music, Sacred Other, Community and Whole through listening and responding, and inviting, allowing and embracing change. He is a celebrated TEDx speaker, featured author in “ReInhabiting the Village” and ardent proponent of pioneering a new renaissance through authentic connection and consensual touch. 

Wren is a cis-gendered, able bodied white male residing in Cherokee territory (Asheville, NC). As a psychonaut, consensual non-monogamy practicing, non-binary identified, 11th generation American descended most recently from artist and blue collar working class parents, Wren is in a deep reckoning with the numerous and nuanced aspects of self that influence how we navigate interpersonal relationships and cultural identity on the journey into right relationship.

As a Danyasa trained facilitator, former Awake at Work program facilitator, certified Attunement Therapy practitioner, Do Good Things with Power program graduate, and holder of a BA in Drama and Dance from the University of Washington, Wren promotes dance as an embodied approach to spirituality and medicinal salve for our modern ailments of disconnection and dislocation.

Believing in life as a dance, Cocréa is a continually evolving holistic movement modality intended to bring individuals into strong, empowered, expressive relationships with their bodies and their communities.

At its core Cocréa is a somatic methodology for working with life’s changes and adapting with them for a more regenerative, nurturing and harmonious world. We build resilience by holding an attitude of curiosity and interest, pausing with depth of breath, listening into what’s needed and true when offering new ideas, and before saying yes or no to invitations.