Pisces Season with Mary Oliver
A watery flow practice exploring three fish poems, via swimming motions and low belly work
A 60-minute guided movement flow, exploring three fish poems by Mary Oliver. Fluid, watery motions evoke an underwater feeling, as we swim through themes of container and contained as it pertains to the life cycle in "The Fish," and the stubborn, resourceful capacity of the hunted to cling to life in "Dogfish." We churn the low belly, the seat of the water element in the yogic map of the body, ultimately to recruit its power in leaping and floating and diving, like the amazing sea creatures described in "Humpbacks."
Includes:
-a 60-minute yoga-based practice guiding you through an embodied exploration 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? I hope you'll join us!
*Available for 48 hours upon registration
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.