Relational Ecology,

Verdant Collaboration School:

Alchemy for Cultural Shapeshifting

Creative, EcoSomatic, Liberatory, Relational Methods

“We need stories of belonging that move us towards each other, not from each other…ways of navigating that deepen our curiosity, that deepen our friendship…”

— Padraig O’ Tuama

The Center for Relational Ecology is a verdant collaborations school

contributing to the proliferation of practices and microcultures that center the wisdoms of biodiversity, co-sparking creative innovation for cultural change & collective health.

We offer playful, creative alchemy for cultural shapeshifting & nourishment for supple responsive collaborative presence in the midst of Turbulence.

Methods rooted in the arts, somatics, and relations with Earth, decolonizing, Queer, feminist, liberatory praxis, neuroscience, and wisdom traditions. Methods rooted in collaboration and improvisation.

Alchemize pain into potency. Grow supple flexibility in nervous system responses with one another. Learn how to pause and disarm our reactivity. Soak in the arts of listening, conflict tending, repair, accountability, and co-creative possibility. Deepen your skillfulness and creative wisdom for verdant collaboration.

Relational Ecology is personal and collective eco-relational liberatory praxis.

Upcoming Workshop/Trainings

Body As Earth Song Annual Retreat in August

Multimodal Relational Ecology Creative Group Retreat and Facilitation Leadership Training, at Stowel Lake Farm Retreat Center, Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada, August 18-23, 2026, with Katriona Ilsedóttir Curry and guests

Body Songs, Movement For Therapists in May

Somatic Movement Collective Care Retreat and Training Program, at Hollyhock Retreat Center, Cortes Island, BC, May 27-31, 2026, with Katriona Ilsedóttir Curry

Developing Collaborations

  • Gathering Ground Conversations for Change, listen in and participate, podcast, Katriona and visiting guests

  • Preparing the Resilient Heart, Embodied Leadership Training, with The Heart-Mind Institute with Patricia Escorihuela & Katriona Ilsedóttir Curry

  • Modulation & Mysticism: The Sacred Arts of Slowing Down, with Dev Bry & Katriona Ilsedóttir Curry

  • Vessels for the Alchemy - “Conversations for The Great Calling: The Heart is What will Get us Through” - a collaboration with Laia Jorba, Raymond Rodriguez, Jacquie Compton, and Katriona Ilsedóttir Curry

Relational Ecology, Verdant Collaboration School is an emerging project conjured by Katriona Ilsedóttir, in collaboration with dear, wise friends and colleagues.

Katriona and the The Center for Relational Ecology reside in the Lekwungen Traditional, Ancestral Unceded Territory - Lands of the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations, known also as Victoria, BC, Canada/Kanata.

dear collaborating colleagues

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dear collaborating colleagues *

Wisdom teachers from many cultures remind us that Live of Earth is interwoven. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us generously of interbeing. The Cree share their wisdom tradition of Whakotowin, Kinship teachings. Ancient Southern African Bantu culture speaks of Ubuntu - I am because we are. Joanna Macy speaks of the Great Reciprocity at the Heart of the Universe.

We are living in a time of rupture, a time of the faultline. We are living in a time of homespun uprising. We are living in a time where collaborations is of fundamental importance. The times are too urgent for timidity (David Abram). Do you feel the current? Do you feel the call?

The center for Relational Ecology is a gathering ground for practice that centers the heart, the arts, supple sturdy embodied presence, collaboration. Honouring Earth, honouring the dignity of Life. Relational, Ecological, Liberatory, Improvisational Arts Praxis. Transformative practices for the heart mind. Consciousness arts.

This gathering ground is a place for generative dialogues, co-creations, events, conversations through time, learning, facilitation, & training.

Are you gathering and tending seeds, caring for new shoots? Listening to a call that you feel is resonating here as well?

Come weave. Come tend wisdoms into fibres that vibrate with the collective longing for health.

We need to share methodologies for cultural shapeshifting that begin in our relationships with Life, with our own being, with one another, our relations with our wider collective of Earth. We need alchemical microcultures of relational health rooted in collective curiosity, an ethos of care, and interpersonal suppleness. Microcultures of kindness.

We can draw forward the wisdom teachings that our species have tended and carried through time - the wisdoms of call and response, of interbeing, of nervous system tending through somatics, song, dance, art making, music, festival, ceremony.

What is praxis?

Paulo Freire, (1972), defined praxis as ‘reflection and action with the world in order to transform it.’ He viewed praxis as “a central defining feature of human life and a necessary condition of freedom.”

Praxis is an interweaving of reflecting on our living, cocreating knowledge, practicing, and then reflecting again.

All knowledge is subjective, and partial; so it is wise to gather in our biodiversity, with a willingness to practice listening together, to grow a widely rooted base of wise understanding for our movements in the world that stir and shape.

the sacred arts of modulation: grow flexible and supple in our nervous system responses with one another. This suppleness supports repair and transformation of ruptures, hurts, and harms. Learn to practice accountability, forgiveness, co-creative possibility. Learn how to pause, disarm, listen, and collaborate. Alchemize pain into potency.

Relational Ecology is personal and collective eco-relational liberatory praxis.

Friendship. Listening. Withness. We are.