Embers we carry in our center + collective fanning of that inspiration into flame
We are living in a time for change - a time of rupture, the faultline, when the deep pain of humanity is ripe.
“I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days. To allow my living to open me. To make me less afraid, more accessible: To loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance, to live, so that which came to me as seed goes on to the next and blossom, and that which came to me goes on as fruit””
I spent some time learning with Rev angel Kyodo williams, a Zen Buddhist priest and creator of Radical Dharma for inclusive, generative social change. She/they made the point that we each come from very different perspectives rooted in our own social locations - that what we can see and know is partial, because it will always be rooted in our experiences (personal and ancestral) - so resting together in our biodiversity, with curiosity about what we do not know/can't perceive, with curiosity about our own subjectivity and curiosity about the divergent views of one another, can help us move wisely together as diverse collectives. They offer this wisdom as a map for recognizing that wisdom is in the multiplicity of perspectives and that sharing our views in a diverse gathering is supported well when we work to disarm our reactivity in our own embodiment. They also points out that it's valuable to be curious about voices that are centered and those that are marginalized, who speaks and who holds silence, who feels safe to speak and who feels afraid to speak. She ponders conditions that create the possibility for divergent views to be spoken and heard, and encourages us to grow our capacity in our collectives to sit with our reactivity and metabolize it together.
The Lively Center for Relational Ecology is a hub for movement-based somatic expressive arts practice in therapy, in life, in leadership, in groups, with Earth, for Earth, for our collective, for Life.
We offer classes, groups, workshops, retreats, and training programs that center Relational Ecology. How we warm our hearts. Rooted in unforgetting our inherent kinship with all beings. Remembering our moving bodies, our embodied livingness. Unlearning domination culture. Evoking alternatives rooted in curiosity, transformational process, kindness, interbeing, and our fundamental Earthiness. Decolonizing our ways of being, with kindness to one and all. Humanity is in a tangle, carrying harmful practices that need unravelling. And we carry and participate in much beauty magic that we can remember, strengthen, and share.
The lively center offers Embodied Storytelling. Improvisation through art, movement, play, song, physicality. Gatherings and workshops that accompany and dance with complexity, truths, ancient wisdom, and ferment a groundswell of engaged embodied consciousness, relational intelligence, and creative response.
Being with the truths of Climate Complexity and the urgency of the times we are in. Ancient Earth-Loving Wisdoms, mysticism, creative Witchery, animism, and the arts, as sustaining currents in the midst of turbulence.
How we become gentle in perception to find nuanced ways of unfolding what wants to emerge. How we support the groundswell of emerging life force. Creative conjuring of life force that rests into the knowing of magic, dignity, interwoven collaborative and generative Life - inextinquishable.
We are but a small part of this magic of Life. Participants.
Dear human, together, we are living into times of amplifying climate intensity and unpredictability. Our modern human way of life has created harm to Earth’s living systems and we are in the midst of a 6th Mass Extinction. At the same time, we are collectively experiencing and witnessing mass violence, rising fascism, dictators and billionaires hoarding power and money while millions are hungry and unhoused. Capitalism would have us believe that we simply need to buy the next something new to feel great, to strive for fame or individual financial success and everything will be good. Yet climate complexity upends all things. Traditional psychology would have us believe that our anxiety, depression, trauma, and malaise is either individual or familial in origins. Yet, it is clear, that our human community is suffering. It is clear that the human overculture is deeply disturbed. It is clear that Earth is suffering. Our values have been twisted and our relations with all beings have been harmed.
Many of us feel profound grief. Indeed, these dangerous times evoke all kinds of experiences: loss and grief, as well as anger, numbness, fear, and anxiety. Many of us humans are carrying on our lives as though things were fine - perhaps because climate change is such a massive danger that we feel overwhelmed and individually powerless to stop the current of unravelling. Alternately, many of us feel pulled into the undertow of despair, depression, anxiety, or addictions in response to the collective suffering and the sense of balancing on a knife’s edge. Climate change has been called a superordinate collective trauma, calling into question the very survival of our species and of many life forms of Earth.
And, here we are, in the midst, also carrying lineages of beauty through creative expression. Lineages of courage of the heart. Lineages of interbeing. Lineages of care for Earth as Mother, as Relative, as Home, as Wise Living Being.
We can diverge from the path we have been traveling in this capitalist colonial harm cycle, explore and evoke what else may be possible. Joanna Macy refers to this possiblity as the Great Turning - a time to be both death doula and midwife.
The Lively Center is a hub, a Gathering Ground, offering relational ecology and embodied arts for cultural shapeshifting, for loving, for kindness, for kinship, for curiosity rather than assumption, for playfulness, for joy, for weaving belonging that celebrates the magic of differences, of biodiversity, of interwovenenss.
in the present we can begin again. here. now. our lives in our hands…
— Katriona Ilsedóttir Curry, founder, the center for relational ecology
Purpose
Support the unforgetting of playful kinship magic, weave arts into daily life and professional practices because then life and professional practice is more joyous, also somatic movement based expressive arts and ecological rootedness support relational and personal health and resilience. When we are in close kinship with our creativity, our sense of belonging, our suppleness of heart and soul, our sense of efficacy and agency and aliveness, we can do what we are here to do with gusto and in solidarity with what matters deeply to us.
Images on this website are of the Traditional Ancestral unceded (meaning never willingly surrendered) Territories of the Nuu-chah-nulth, Comox, Qualicum, Quw’utsun, Snaw’naw’as, Snuneymuxw, Lek’wungen Speaking Peoples, Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations, & the Nisenan of Turtle Island. Deep respect and gratitude to The Ancestors, The People, and the Land. All photographs by Katriona Ilsedóttir Curry in conversation with the land.