SOMATIC COACHING + BODYWORK
Our movements need leaders who are present, open, connected and intentional in how they move and sustain. Leaders with more capacity to inspire through love; leading from a place of soft strength that is contagious to those around them. Leaders with capacity to bridge across difference and invite comrades into a practice together.
Somatics is a practice-able theory of change that works through the body, engaging leaders in their own thinking, emotions, commitments, vision and action. Transforming their habitual patterns that get in the way so that they can find more alignment with who they want to be in the world. Through coaching or hands on bodywork, clients build a felt sense of the ways their histories and narratives live in their tissues. Building somatic awareness of what is real and in the way of their longings. They learn strategies to reclaim power and increase capacity to find more choice under familiar pressures. They gain tangible practices to support them in coming into more contact with themselves and others to create more possibilities within complex circumstances.
Promises:
More access to a wider range of feelings
Connection to an embodied imagination and presence
Understanding of habitual patterns that get in the way
Practices that build somatic awareness and returning to center under life pressures
New embodied competencies such as setting boundaries and making centered requests
Increased capacity to navigate ambiguity and hold complexity
Image description: A photo of René outdoors gesturing with their hands and leading a somatic practice. They are wearing a pair of glasses and a white shirt with multi colored embroidery along the shirts cuffs.
GROUP PRACTICE + collective embodiment
Tending to personal healing is vital, but it’s not enough. The charge of what we hold in our bodies is often bigger than us. We need a collective body of allies to process and transform together. Group practice is a great opportunity to practice mutual connection, allyship, and how to navigate conflict. Group practice is a pathway towards collective resilience that can sustain us through opposing pressures.
Our movements often breakdown because of the every day ways we are together. Small conflicts, misunderstandings, or not knowing how to support each other. Reliance on doing things alone and getting burned out. Our capacity to maintain connections on the small scale, directly reflects our capacity at large. Collective embodiment work involves tending to the ways we relate to one another and asking: What are we practicing? Because we are always practicing something.
Promises:
Learn strategies to maintain collective vision under pressure
Understand collective shape and habits as a group / team
Practice new skills as a group / team such as making requests, offering grounded feedback, navigating contradictions, and how to be in supportive allyship
Image description: A photo of three people in the foreground standing shoulder to shoulder. The person in the middle is seated with their eyes closed. Behind them is another group of three people seated shoulder to shoulder. The participants pictured are in an allyship practice together and sharing affirmations of support.
experiential DESIGN
Our movements are filled with complex and gnarly problems that are calling on us to find alternative ways of problem solving that disrupt leadership habits and power imbalances for the people most impacted. To find bold and creative ways to resist and sustain. Design justice rethinks design processes, centers people who are normally marginalized by design, and uses collaborative, creative practices to address the deepest challenges our communities face.
In a scope of work determined together, convene a design team to practice leading a different way. Move through an experiential process to re-awaken your inner innovator, practice listening, dreaming, and doing differently. Practice activating design mindsets such as generativity and abundance in the face of scarcity. Engage in leadership practices to improve capacity for more radical collaboration. Create low to high resolution prototypes to bring to community partners towards real life application. Develop strategic plans that are responsive to your learnings that are nimble and sustainable.
Possibilities:
Partial day design jam
Multi-day design sprint
Multi-month / multi-year design arc
Image description: A photo of René smiling and reaching across a circular table while coaching a team of experienced leaders and organizers in a collective design process at an in person retreat in 2024. Some participants are smiling as another group member points to them.
ANCHORING + ACCOMPANIMENT
Whether we are moving through a design process together or whether you have already moved through a strategic planning process already, there is often a gap between aspirations and what it takes to sustain momentum. This service is intended for groups or organizations that need support anchoring the work that they have set out for themselves.
Receive design tools to stay organized, practices to embody your values, and leadership support to keep your initiatives moving forward.
Possibilities:
Process coaching for individual leaders or teams
Project anchoring
Facilitation and co-design support - strategic plan implementation
Image description: A photo and milestone map of a multi-year design process starting in June 2024 at a Virtual Retreat and ending in May 2026 at an in person retreat. This photo is part of an arc of work done in partnership with the New School’s Tishman Environment and Design Center and co-LAB Collctive