Join us in engaging the practice of restoring relationship.

“Relationality is something that you can only learn from the land. The first relation is between land and people, and the second relation is between people and people. The second is contingent on the first.”

— Tyson Yunkaporta

The Elemental Vessel Immersion is a yearlong investigation in wayfinding and shapeshifting with Dana Iova-Koga and Frieda Kipar Bay. In this offering we will take you through a multi-layered inquiry of what it means to be a shapeshifter and how to wayfind with grace and clarity. Using the pathways of movement, plant medicine, and cognitive/creative tracking, we will hone our awareness of ourselves, others, and the environment.  We have come to call these interlacement practices. We will be looking at how we can turn these inherent abilities into artistry, and how doing so supports our health, creativity, problem solving, communication, and fulfillment of Life.  These practices make us better humans, and effect all of our relations.

bow, listen, rejoice, imagine, create, discern, grieve, integrate

This yearlong immersion meets on the 8 significant points on the wheel of time (from the Daoist, Baltic, Celtic traditions, among many others), and uses the relevant cultural wisdom at each point as our guide.  We meet every 6 weeks, convening from around the globe to practice a different orientation to time.  It is circular, we are spinning...

We will investigate:

• Modeling our self-cultivation practices upon universal principles of biological life

• How tinkering with our human movement is a relational and political act

• Taoist practices/ indigenous wisdom of cycling, systems, and the circularity of our experience

• Qigong/Dao Yin practices

• Reading a landscape and tracking its inhabitants

• The meaning and metaphor of dance in its broadest definition

• Engaging with the plants and their medicine of your bio region

Is this for you?

This course is for anyone who is at a crossroads - in location, livelihood, family, or personal health -
interested in cultivating robust creativity in the face of change.

In this time on the planet, much is in a state of extreme evolution.  We are not excluded in this volatile weather - what occurs externally is also occurring internally.  Learning to adapt, creatively and with joy, is the work of this time, both individually and collectively.  In order to align with the bigger planetary transformations, our capacity to transform must be deep and wide.  Bring your uncertainty, vulnerable questions, and creativity to investigate the practices of navigating change for self-cultivation and collective well-being.

We are not self-contained individuals confronting a world out there, but developing organisms in an environment, enmeshed in tangled relationships. As we move through space, our knowledge under-goes continuous formulation.

— m.r. o’connor