Fortify Your Vessel
Fortify Your Vessel: Somatic Embodiment for Practitioners is a group facilitated by Lee Robin, LMBT SEP (ze/zir) for care workers who are finding it challenging to be embodied in proximity to those you support and want to grow in a relationship to your own anchoring to self that will support you to be sustained in your work. Each month there will be focus on both your individual practice as well as relational dynamics within the group. For many care workers there becomes a point at which the ratio of demands to recovery become imbalanced and then burnout is soon to follow. The work we do already asks a lot of us, and we bring a lot of passion and care for the communities we serve. Without a practice of fortification we become porous, we overextend, our relational wounds become active, and we can get flooded by the suffering we are there to lend support to. What we need is a protective barrier so that our survival strategies and stress patterns don’t take over. Instead we are able to be responsive in the moment, can recover more quickly, and don’t have to compromise our own needs in service of others. By developing your own somatic rituals to clarify to your system what is yours and what is not, and by practice engaged in a flexibility of your system, you become a vessel that is designed with intention to hold a space and then returns to its original form. Rituals are sacred, and often emerge from lineage and life experience. No one can really tell you what rituals will be a fit for you. In our practice together we will be inviting your own wisdom to lead and from there your practices will start to emerge.
Lee is a Somatic Bodyworker and Coach with 15 years of experience in the field. Combining Somatic Experiencing and Biodynamic CranioSacral Therapy along with influences from Politicized Somatics, Parts Work, Jungian Somatics, Somatic Abolitionism, disability justice, pleasure activism, and more, Lee has a dynamic approach to zir work that is liberatory at its core and is born from a lifetime of fighting for the rights of marginalized folks to thrive. Lee also brings lived experience as a queer, trans, and neurodivergent person who has continued to hold space for zir community despite facing challenges to survival and is passionate about supporting other care workers to be sustained in their work too.
Applications are open for enrollment! Apply by May 15th.
Participation.
Participation in the group will include:
- Biweekly virtual sessions with experiential somatic practice both individually and within a group;
- Readings and Journal prompts to explore the work between sessions;
- Access to a Signal group chat to connect with your cohort outside of sessions;
- A supportive community of other care workers to be in relationship with during this exploration.
Schedule.
- This is a closed group with 12 total live sessions from June 4th until November 5th.
- Session dates: 6/4, 6/18, 7/2, 7/16, 7/30, 8/13, 8/27, 9/10, 9/24, 10/8, 10/22, 11/5.
- Virtual meetings on Zoom, biweekly on Thursdays at 4:00p - 5:30p EST / 1:00p-2:30p.
PST
- Additional time in between sessions for:
Individual practice
Readings
Journaling
- Opportunity to engage with cohort members on Signal chat
Finances.
The following payment structure is inspired by and borrowed from the model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks and Skin and Spine with Joanna Hedva at Corporeal Writing. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.
As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (retirement, savings, investments, expectation of an inheritance; how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and world); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.
Payments will include a 4% administrative fee and will be invoiced via PayPal.
Tier 1 Solidarity
$125 / session
$1500 / total
Tier 2 True Value
$100 / session
$1200 / total
Tier 3 Community Care
$50 / session
$600 / total
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Please note:
This group is not clinical supervision or group therapy.
Somatic work intentionally engages with your body knowledge and when we do that it might bring up intense sensations, memories, or past experiences. This group is not meant to be a container to ‘process’ your trauma or open up your deepest personal work, but it will invite you to notice what you might be holding, and to be in relationship to it. It is helpful for this work to already be in practice with modulating your experience and to have a support network that is helping you work through your own process.
If you need more individualized support in navigating the somatic work we are exploring in this group, Lee is available for 1:1 somatic coaching.
This is not a replacement for psychotherapy or any other medical support that might be recommended for treatment of psychiatric conditions.