For women learning to meet life’s darker seasons with an open body, a resourced nervous system and a deeper relationship with the entirety of their womanhood.
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, Mother Nature is entering her descent.
The light is receding.
The leaves are releasing.
The earth is drawing her energy inward.
Fall is carrying us toward winter.
Whether we consciously choose it or not, her darker season opens a corresponding doorway within us.
What we could move around in the brightness may become harder to avoid.
Our grief.
Our shame.
Our holding patterns.
Our unmet longing.
The truths we have not lived.
The parts of our womanhood we have exiled in order to belong.
Mother Nature will make her descent.
The invitation is to learn how to descend with her.
During this live gathering, you will be guided into a fertile relationship with the dark side of the mountain through embodied teaching, intimate connection and three somatic practices.
You will learn how to turn toward what the dark reveals without forcing it, becoming consumed by it or abandoning yourself.
You will leave with:
A deeper understanding of how your nervous system’s default responses can interrupt the full expression of your womanhood
A more resourced way to meet what you have learned to avoid
Two somatic explorations to weave throughout life’s darker seasons
A felt experience of entering the dark in reverent relationship with your female body and other women
THE DARKER SEASON IS NOT ONLY A SEASON OF THE EARTH - it’s a season of the female body.
This gathering is rooted in Mother Nature’s descent into fall and winter here in the Northern Hemisphere—but its teachings are not limited by geography.
Every woman will encounter internal dark seasons:
Grief and loss.
Illness and uncertainty.
The luteal and menstrual phases.
The ending of a relationship, identity or former life.
The fertile space between what has ended and what has not yet formed.
Life will inevitably carry us to the dark side of the mountain.
The question is not whether we will go there.
The question is whether we have enough capacity, support and relationship to remain present when we arrive.
When we can meet the dark intentionally, it can become a place of deep self-inquiry, healing, restoration and homecoming.
When we continually avoid, deny or override the descent, what has not been met does not simply disappear. It surfaces through tension, reactivity, exhaustion, disconnection, stagnation and dis-ease across our bodies, relationships, careers and daily lives.
No living organism can remain well while chronically separated from the conditions that support its vitality.
WE CANNOT REMOVE OURSELVES FROM THE RHYTHMS THAT CREATE AND SUSTAN US.
The female body did not evolve beneath fluorescent lights, performing at the same pace through every hour, hormonal shift and season.
We evolved in intimate relationship with:
Light and darkness
Activity and rest
Expansion and contraction
Fertility, blood and hormonal change
The turning of the seasons
The sensory language of the earth
The bodies and nervous systems around us
Mother Nature is our most powerful co-regulator.
We can do years of trauma healing, shadow work and nervous-system practices—but if we cannot attune to Mother Nature and allow her rhythms to influence ours, something essential remains untouched.
This disconnection can ripple through every layer of our lives:
Our physiology.
Our psyche.
Our relationships.
Our creativity.
Our sexuality.
Our sense of meaning and belonging.
Returning to Mother Nature is not simply a beautiful idea.
It is one of the deepest somatic practices available to us—and a homecoming to our true nature.
PART ONE OPENED A DOOR I HADN’T EXPECTED
When I began creating Part One of The Body in the Dark, I thought I was preparing a class about the female nervous system and our transition into autumn and winter.
But as I followed the material, the teaching took us somewhere deeper.
I realized that women cannot fully understand our relationship with darkness without understanding the history that shaped our bodies.
So much of women’s herstory has remained in the dark:
The loss of women’s healing authority.
The dismissal of female rhythms.
The male body becoming the measure of the human body.
The exclusion of women from medical research.
The conditioning that taught women to mistrust their instincts and remain useful at the expense of their vitality.
Part One became a beginning—bringing some of this herstory into the light so we could understand what the female nervous system has been required to adapt to.
Not so that we remain inside what has happened to women.
But so that we can recognize the extraordinary strength, intelligence and resourcefulness with which women have survived it—and begin choosing what happens next.
We also began restoring our relationship with Mother Nature through circadian and infradian rhythms.
And I introduced a portion of The Somatic Way methodology: learning how to titrate our relationship with what lives on the dark side of the mountain.
We began practising how to turn toward the dark slowly, remain connected to choice and distinguish regenerative contraction from collapse.
Part Two is where we take this inquiry more deeply into the body.
WHAT LIVES ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN?
The dark side of the mountain holds what constant movement cannot reach.
Grief we have not had the support to feel.
Truths we have not been ready to name.
Needs that once felt too dangerous to have.
Desires we learned to suppress.
Anger that threatened our belonging.
The endings we have resisted.
The unlived life still pressing against us from within.
And very often, shame stands at the threshold.
Shame tells us:
we are too much.
our desires are unworthy.
Our bodies are problems to be managed.
Our truth will cost us connection.
Our instincts and inner knowing sit closer to madness than to the essential intelligence that guides and protects our lives, our families, our clients and our communities.
Shame is often a reflection of freeze in the nervous system—an intelligent, adaptive response that helps us shrink, hide or immobilize when being fully seen, expressed or known once threatened our connection and belonging.
But what was once protective can become maladaptive when the body continues responding as though those original conditions are still present.
Shame can close the throat. Restrict the breath. Lower the eyes. Collapse the posture. Still the pelvis. Interrupt our movement toward expression, pleasure and relationship.
Over time, it can narrow our range and leave us with less choice around when we speak, move, reach, desire, protect or reveal ourselves
Shame reaches into the tissues of our womanhood.
It requires skill and intention—not more self-management—to meet the protective intelligence within it while creating the conditions for a different response to become possible.
It begins to transform through warmth, attunement, movement, safety and relationship—so we no longer have to disappear from ourselves in order to remain connected to others.
WE WILL ENTER THE DARK TOGETHER
The female nervous system is profoundly shaped and resourced through safe relationship.
Women need experiences of being witnessed without performing, supported without being hurried and accompanied without having to become more palatable.
There will be space during our gathering for more intimate connection with the women present.
Together, we will practise turning toward the dark side of the mountain inside a safe, fertile and relational space.
You will never be asked to expose yourself or tell the details of your story.
You will remain in choice.
The invitation is to experience what becomes possible when we enter the dark without entering it alone.
TWO SOMATIC PRACTICES FOR ENTERING THE DARK
During this gathering, I will guide you through two distinct somatic explorations.
Think of them as a tasting menu rather than a rigid prescription.
You will have an opportunity to dabble, sense and discover what your body is drawn toward in this particular season.
One practice may deeply move you.
Another may awaken curiosity.
There is nothing to master and nowhere specific you need to arrive.
2. ENTERING INTO RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ORGAN BODY
We will turn our attention toward the living intelligence of the organs, with particular care for the womb, ovaries and pelvic space.
Rather than approaching the body as a collection of parts to manage, we will practise relating to the organ body as a living inner landscape—one that communicates through sensation, movement, image, emotion and knowing.
This exploration may include gentle movement, fascial unwinding and listening for the places that want greater space, circulation, mobility or expression.
The womb and ovaries are physical organs, but they can also become portals into a woman’s relationship with creation, instinct, sexuality, grief, lineage and the life asking to move through her.
3. PLAYING WITH DARKER FEMININE ARCHETYPES
We will experiment with darker feminine archetypes—not as fixed identities or goddesses we must choose between, but as mirrors of capacities that belong within the full range of womanhood.
The fierce protector.
The passionate woman.
The boundary holder.
The destroyer of illusion.
The wild woman.
The woman who refuses.
The woman who knows when something must end.
These archetypal energies can help us recover qualities women have often been taught to suppress:
Ferocity.
Discernment.
Erotic vitality.
Protective aggression.
Clear boundaries.
An embodied no.
They remind us that the feminine is not only soft, receptive and nurturing.
She is also fierce, discerning, passionate and profoundly protective of life.
Our work is not to become one archetype.
It is to restore access to the natural and essential range that already belongs to us.
TAKE WHAT YOUR BODY IS READY FOR
These practices are invitations, not instructions to push deeper than your body wants to go.
You may discover one practice that feels especially alive for you now. You may want to weave between them as the season changes.
Their purpose is to deepen your self-inquiry, support your healing and guide your homecoming into the entirety of your womanhood.
A way to remain open as life carries you inward.
A way to meet the dark without disappearing inside it.
A way to recover more of the woman you already are.
THIS IS AN EMBODIED HOMECOMING
This gathering is not about learning how to perform regulation more successfully.
It is not another attempt to control your body through the darker season.
It is an invitation to embrace the entirety of your womanhood:
The woman who creates.
The woman who bleeds—or once bled.
The woman who desires.
The woman who grieves.
The woman who protects.
The woman who needs.
The woman who descends.
The woman who returns.
No part of her is outside the circle.
No season of her is without intelligence.
Your darkness is not separate from your vitality.
It belongs to the whole ecology of being a woman.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO HAVE ATTENDED PART ONE
Part Two is a complete live experience.
I will weave in the essential foundations from our first gathering so everyone has enough context to enter the practices.
If you joined us for Part One, this will deepen what we opened together.
If you did not, you are deeply welcome to begin here.
COME MEET US IN THE DARK
The dark side of the mountain holds the keys to your truth, power, creativity, pleasure and the unlived life you have been longing to reclaim.
Come and meet her.
Come and embrace the entirety of your womanhood with other women.
My somatic relationship with darkness has profoundly changed my life over the past 15 years.
I look forward to welcoming you into this slow, deep process of inquiry—and perhaps reigniting something ancient within you that remembers how to receive the dark.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25
11:00 AM PACIFIC TIME
LIVE ON ZOOM
This gathering will include approximately two hours of teaching, embodied practice and intimate connection, followed by space for questions and conversation.
With Q&A, we may continue for up to two and a half hours. You are welcome to stay for as much of the gathering as your life allows.
I know it can be difficult for women to step away from their lives for that length of time.
You do not need to create perfect conditions in order to join us.
Come with your earbuds in while you tend to what your life is asking of you. Leave your camera off if that is what your body, family or circumstances need. Participate fully, listen quietly or move between the two.
There is no perfect way to be here.
Come for as long—and in whatever way—you can.
Part One is not a prerequisite. You are deeply welcome to begin here.
There will be no complimentary replay. The recording will be available to purchase afterward.