I am excited to be co-facilitating a community grief ritual in Ashland, one time per month through the winter.
See facebook event link here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1452531551565607/
EVENT DETAILS BELOW:
Love and Loss: Community Grief Ritual, dance, and prayer
As the darkness approaches, nights become longer as we fall in to deep surrender to the bitter sweet beauty of fall. It is a time of year of breathe-taking beauty, but it also triggers a range of emotions, particularly deep feelings of despair and loss. Fall can be particularly uncomfortable for those who are living on the margins and are utterly terrified they won't make it through the winter.
With the daily confrontation of the destruction and loss happening on a massive scale on our planet, how do we process this information and come out of numbness and/or overwhelm, and into our inspired action?
Our hearts are breaking wide open with grief as we face the possibility of our very extinction as a human species. It is important that we do this grieving alone, but also in community as it allows people to authentically connect in the heart of loss.
Sometimes the pain can be too much for people to hold on their own, which is why we need to come together as a community and offer our pain to the alter of grief. We need to have our stories witnessed, or, simply receive love in all of our rawness.
We invite each participant brief an offering for the community grief alter, which will be incorporated in to the ritual.
We are all in this together and need to continue to show up for one another, despite our wanting to retract our hearts and isolate. We have all been wounded by capitalism and each of our experiences of grief are valid.
When our grief cannot be spoken, it falls into the shadow and reemerges in us as symptoms in our bodies. So many of us are depressed, anxious, and lonely. We find ourselves moving at a breathless pace, trying to keep up with the mechanistic postmodern culture of insatiable progress at the expense of all life on earth.
At this critical time of transition, it is imperative that we cultivate a deep respect and reverence for the wisdom of death and renewal, for it is through our honoring and releasing of grief that we will ultimately transform and integrate our individual and collective shadow.
We are all experiencing a certain degree of shame and unworthiness regarding the human causes of this mass extinction--some unconscious and conscious.
At times, the shame and deep grief can be completely paralyzing and cause a downward spiral into utter despair and suicidal ideation. However, when you allow the process of emotional release to flow, it will help create movement, catharsis, integration, and new motivation for action and even the cultivation of joy.
In this ritual, we will take you on a profound journey of deep cathartic emotional release, prayer, ritual, poetry, sound healing, and authentic movement. We will pay homage to the archetype of death and pray for Grace to bring renewal to our tattered souls. This is a time for ultimate reverence, surrender, gratitude, and prayer.
So please, come and be transparent with your fragility with us. We will create a loving, safe, nonjudgemental container of cathartic healing, or simply, a release of repressed emotion.
There are many layers to this global dark night and we can't do it all in one sitting. We most likely will be going through stages of grief that will be experienced for years. We envision multiple grief temples in our community.
I will be offering this community grief ritual one time per month through the winter.
Cost of community ritual: The cost is $10-20 sliding scale. No one will be turned away for not having enough money. Bartering and trading is accepted depending on the item.
See Face book for more details, event link here:
About the Facilitators:
Victoria Christian, Sarik Shine, Martin Ball, Blaine Lyndsey, Gwendolyn Terra
Victoria Christian (Christensen), M.A, M.S., is an integral psychotherapist, sociologist, social worker, writer, artist, speaker, and sacred activist. She has helped numerous vulnerable people through the dark night of soul using her own healing gifts, but also incorporating the profound teachings of psychotherapists such as Francis Weller, Tara Brach, Carolyn Baker, and Joanna Macy. She has performed various support groups, which includes grief and loss and environmental grief groups. She received a Masters in Applied Sociology from Northern Arizona University in 2001. She also received her Masters in Social Work from Portland State University in 2015 and has five years of professional experience as a clinical home health social worker and therapist. She also has a private counseling practice calledGuanyin Healing Arts:www.guanyinhealingarts.com
Martin Ball is a southern Oregon Renaissance man with diverse interests and talents: an adjunct professor of Religion at SOU, event organizer, visionary artist, author, public speaker, podcaster, frequent interview subject, nondual integration coach, and multi-instrumentalist musician. In all these areas Martin likes to explore the power of transformative experiences and how they can be embodied and expressed personally and creatively. Musically, Martin is not bound by any particular genre or style, playing a wide variety of electronic and acoustic instruments, creating diverse musical expressions from ambient and abstract soundscapes to richly arranged tapestries of electronic dance tracks. His primary goal is to inspire others to dive deep through sharing his passion and authenticity via education, art, and music. His music can be streamed and downloaded at www.martinball.bandcamp.com or at his personal webpage,www.martinball.net
Gwendolyn Terra is a Mystic Muse, Embodiment and Spiritual Guide, Integration Constellations Facilitator and Sacred Heart Gardener. Gwendolyn is a Master at Heart Openings through Collective Transformation, cultivated over many decades of Conscious Co-Creation practices, Earth Energy Medicine, and Deep Listening as a Sacred Movement Guide and over a decade of working in the Heart “Fields” through Systemic and Integration Constellations. Her background includes over 20 trainings in Conscious Creation, Energy Medicine Shamanic and Embodiment practices she began this journey with a BA in Economics and Psychology leading her on an experiential path of how we can Co-Create a new Heart Led economy and world. Her Divine mission is to cultivate Sacred Spaces designed to Open our Hearts to the Blessings we are and to Nourish the Growth of our Humanity in more IN tuned ways with the Earth, our Spirit, and each other as we learn to live our Divinity in our Humanity. For more info on her go towww.divinemovements.com
Blaine Alexander Lyndsey: Loving friend, passionate human , homestead chef , ecstatic poet. Blaine has been an Rogue Valley resident for 5 years- performing his inspired spoken word at local events, radio, t.v., theatre, competitions, open mics and more! His poetry speaks from the soul with compelling metaphors, emotional connections, societal observations and spiritual underlines. He is currently seeking a publisher and collaborating on new community projects
Sarik Bio Pending
See Face book even link here:https://www.facebook.com/events/1452531551565607/