this image is by cedar mccloud

MOONWORK SOMATICS

as of august 2023, moonwork is on hiatus while i am on parental leave. returning participants will be prioritized when the group reopens, but you can keep an eye out here or on instagram to find out when we will receive new people!

 

what is moonwork?

moonwork is a somatic practice space for crazy, chronically ill, & neurodivergent queers that began at the fall 2018 equinox & was (as far as we know) the first ongoing online somatic practice space to exist. we gather most tuesdays 5-7pm ET for group practice that orbits triad themes of desire/consent/power, self/others/culture, dignity/interdependence/time, i/we/all, 1/2/∞. in addition to my somatics lineages, this space is explicitly rooted in lineages of leather, mad pride, femme poetics*, animism & queer ancestral lineages. we practice together for the shared purpose of reweaving an embodied & generative cultural fabric that resists the collective fragmentation of queerphobia & empire. our group engagement is guided by an explicit collective protocol that outlines facilitator & participant roles & responsibilities.

once per season near a full moon, somatic storyteller & erotic ritualist m’kali-hashiki guides us in MOON MANNA: a lunar embodiment ritual for the erotic & sexual life that is all of our birthright. BIPOC moonworkers are also invited to attend m’kali-hashiki’s monthly new moon solo sex magic rituals. once per season, poet & translator alisha mascarenhas guides us in a SOMATIC WRITING workshop, using prompts & techniques that draw from the resources of participants’ own felt sense and intuitive knowledge. seasonal facilitators have an open invitation to all group practices, and their roles are shaped around their desires & capacities in relationship to moonwork.

our togetherness in practice supports each of our unique purposes for engaging this work in this space. as a young & generative practice space, moonwork will continue to change shape around its steady core. 

we have maximum 21 spaces in total & aim to prioritize BIPOC for at least 1/3, though transparently the group tends to be mostly people who are white or who have white family, since my work tends to resonate with other settlers uprooting whiteness & since there are many excellent BIPOC-only & BIPOC-led practice spaces that are a better fit for many! (if that’s your preference, check out m’kali-hashiki’s moonkin group & black breath matters community sessions, the embodiment institute, bodies that matter, and the centred accountability course.) BIPOC, trans women, sex workers, and frontline overdose prevention workers are invited to access a reduced rate at $103/month+tax. regular rate is $203/month+tax, and 5-10%/month is directed to reparations, as with all my income.

participants are invited to show up to practice exactly as they are & to engage exactly as best serves their desires & capacities that day, with ample support to find suitable adaptations or adjustments as needed. video can be on or off at any time; we fluidly use both voice & text to communicate with each other; auto-captions are always available; & ASL interpretation is high on our priority list (to become higher priority faster as soon as anyone indicates an interest to join & a need for it). please don’t hesitate to inquire about any other access needs!

*femme poetics comes from hard femme poetics, coined by my teacher leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha for writing workshops they began teaching in 2015.

But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.”

––Ursula K. Le Guin, the Farthest Shore

why the moon?

because every human ever to exist has lived under this same moon & marked time by it

because the moon belongs to everyone & all our ancestors have their own specific sacred ways to honour ki*

because the moon is queer

because madness too is sacred

because the moon is always changing & always kiself

because sometimes you have to go to space to learn how to grow roots, especially in toxic soil

because so many of our liberation ancestors taught us to practice the impossible vision in our flesh

because the moon is a circle & we human animals work better when we surrender the perfectionism of colonial & linear time to the repetitive & generative cycles of time in nature

because the moon is y/ours & practicing both sides of the slash is a perverse & skillfull oscillation

because there is sacred work for us to do, together

 

*ki is robin wall kimmerer’s proposed singular animate pronoun in english, as an alternative to “it”; plural: kin. i learned about it in her keynote talk, “what does the earth ask of us?” hosted by nocturne halifax on 20 october 2020.