Multiracial
Beginner/ Intermediate Locations: Leyden, MA
In-person somatic retreat especially for organizers and movement workers to build resilience to fuel your ongoing work
Four-day course typically focus on:
Deepening your ability to feel what is happening in your body, build your toolbox of somatic practices, and growing your capacity to learn from the body up
Bringing your body into action in your work and life
Creating a community of practice that will support you to keep exploring, letting your body reveal more depth, and unearthing your longings
Building your commitment to racial justice and your capacity to confront racial capitalism
Four-day courses are typically taught by a three-person teaching team, including a song leader. The teachers are experienced in teaching politicized somatics, in community building and organizing efforts, and in the ongoing fight to end racial capitalism.
No prior somatics experience is needed. However, participants do need to be ready to deepen their connection to their body in a group, explore their feeling selves, and move toward their longings and visions for the future. The typical course size is 12-25 people.
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Dara Silverman is an embodiment teacher and social change consultant whose work is based on their 25 plus years of community experience in environmental, social, and racial justice movements, 35 years of facilitation practice, and embodiment training at the Strozzi Institute and generative somatics.
Bhav Nancherla mostly moves in this world as a somatic practitioner, facilitator, and parent - held and shaped especially by generative somatics and Training for Change.
They've moved in a range of roles and spaces over the last 2 decades: non-profit operations, anti-violence & sexuality rights movements, radical childcare collective organizing, full-spectrum doula support, and peer sex health education, to name a few.
These days, they feel very lucky to be deepening relationship with spirit for both the day-to-day and collective scale, and as parent - humbled and moved by the practice of unconditional love. Bhav longs to be of service in ways that reestablish the dignity and resourced flow of care, and especially for revitalizing channels for our grief.
Bhav lives on unceded Lenape land, also known as Brooklyn, NYC, and have relentless gratitude for the generous beauty offered by the waterways and life of nearby Prospect Park.
Rachel Berliner Plattus is a somatic practitioner, organizer, and popular educator living in intergenerational community on Massachusett and Pawtucket land. Rachel has worked for decades at the intersection of social movements, community learning, and democratic change. She is co-creator of Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation, a global storytelling project highlighting community-led approaches to building just and sustainable systems. Rachel comes from people who gather people, who know that no problem is too big for a kitchen table, who find meaning in wild places and wild times and shape change on the side of life in the face of cultures of death. She is a founding member of the Bent Birch retreat center stewardship team.
Misty Perez (she/her) is an organizational leader, somatic coach and bodyworker, with over 25 years of organizing and advocacy experience with organizations dedicated to social, racial and gender justice. She has worked with youth in residential and school based programs, survivors of domestic and sexual violence, organizers, policy advocates, executive leaders, caregivers and change makers. She partners with organizational leaders to work on organizational change and leadership development initiatives grounded in equity. She’s a skilled organizational leader with a focus on building up the people, operations and organizational culture needed to ensure a just future with a thriving multiracial democracy.
Misty has been studying Somatics with the Strozzi Institute since 2018. She became a Somatic Coach and Bodyworker in 2023 and is currently training as a Somatics teacher with Dara Silverman. Misty is a Somatic Coach and Bodyworker with a practice on Nipmuc land in central Massachusetts. Misty works with people to develop greater awareness and presence, reveal their purpose and live into the life they long for. She’s guided by love and lives a life grounded in authenticity and purpose.
Misty has a Master’s Degree in Community Development and Planning from Clark University. She also has a Bachelors of Science in Human Services and Counseling and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. She understands that for many organizers and changemakers who dedicate their lives to policy and social change work we are also engaged in the politics of trauma, which requires resilience, presence, openness, connection and a deep grounding in purpose.
She offers healing and transformation through coaching and bodywork for individuals and groups as we collectively move towards the futures we long for. Her joy and resilience practices include spending time with her Loves, gardening, walks in the woods, meditating and managing a small farm.
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This course is offered on a sliding scale.
Organizational: $2,500-$4,000: for those who have an organization paying for their registration, we invite you to a registration tier based on your organization’s annual budget.
$4,000+ per registrant if the budget is above $20 million
$3,500 per registrant if the budget is between $10 - $20 million
$3,000 per registrant if the budget is between $5 - $10 million
$2,500 per registrant if the budget is below $5 million
Individual: for those who are registering as an individual, we invite you to base your registration based on your income and wealth.
Sustainer $3,500-$4,500+: for those who have generational or inherited wealth
Supporter $2,500-$3,499: for those who have a regular income and are comfortably paying their rent or mortgage
Grounded $1,500-$2,499: for those who are paying their mortgage or rent
Equity $1,000- 1,499: for those who are challenged to make ends meet
This infographic includes more about the sliding scale tiers for consideration.
All of this only works if everyone pays at the level they are able - not at a level lower than what they can pay. Together we can create financial balance when we each pay in alignment with our abilities.
Your registration fee pays facilitators a living wage, allows us to redistribute funds to local Black and Indigenous groups as well as Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, and includes paying the ERJ Practice Manager for organizing and administrative fees associated with the course.
Donations and sponsorships to offset the course cost for other registrants are always welcome.
