Freeing the Fireflies
Uncapturing memory to recapture states of childhood being, with Marilyn Kallet
Fireflies are the very definition of ephemera, and Marilyn Kallet's poem "Fireflies" is the very definition of free. This class is an invitation to return to a childlike frame of mind, by cultivating a spirit of the play on the mat. The practice asks how releasing the weight of the past said to linger in the hips might yield a feeling of lightness. We move through hip releases towards free-floating poses that express release and a lightness of being. The sequence closes with an invitation to drop in and down, with seated forward folds and a quieting, heart-opening breath practice, to re-member the actual childhood being - who we were, and who we still are when we feel safe and surrounded by beauty.
Includes:
-a 60-minute accessible practice guiding you through movement, breath work, and visualizations that give an embodied experience of poetic language
-a music playlist lovingly chosen to capture the poem's ambiance (crafted to match the arc of the physical practice, so you can choose to practice with music)
-a link to the poetry, and a short reflection capturing the most striking phrases, themes, and imagery.
-a distilled skeleton of the sequence (poses, breath exercises, and visualizations) for your reference
In an embodied approach to language, the goal is to generate a spontaneous, authentic experience of a poem that you can hold on to (or, if you're a teacher, one you can share)! When we linger with poems not with our rational "thinky" brain, but with a more primal gut layer of our being, we can absorb their truth and beauty deeper into the psyche. When poems live there, they pop up more regularly in our everyday lives, suffusing our days with new meaning and presence. And isn't this the goal behind any practice?
*available for 48 hours upon registration, should you choose to practice more than once!
Your Instructor
Katy Hawkins, PhD, is a somatics teacher based in Philadelphia. This course is an experiment she undertook during the pandemic, a romp through what she calls "Moving Poetics," exploring poems somatically. In her teaching, Katy uses poems as spells, whose magic holds change-making capacity to alter our reality. In bypassing the rational brain, poetic language drops deeper into our beings, where more subtle transformation can happen. These classes provided fodder for her recent book, called Thinking Feelingly: Somatic Approaches to Poetry. For more on Katy, check out katyhawkins.com and movingpoetics.com.