Immersion
Monthly city ritual
upcoming booking past
At Immersion you learn how to rely on the power held within your mind, body and spirit. The movement practice is tender, invigorating and versatile, emphasising an expansive range with your nervous system, which is essential when it comes to reclaiming agency and dismanteliing old versions of self which is inherently distabilising and confrontational and therefore requires a slow pace and a dynamic system. The space is deliberately offered to you as an embodied ritual whereby you develop the ability to listen to and to trust in the internal compass of your whole system. It’s a pathway of self enquiry, within community and held in loving, compassionate permission.
Winter Solstice Ritual
Saturday 20th December 10.30-12:30
This will be a sweet descent into the peak of darkness as we approach the Winter Solstice and the longest night of the year. We will be beautifully ceremonial and practice adornment, receptivity, gratitude and real embodied connection to the source of life that's pumping through it all. I will teach the subtle powers of ritual, particularly to reframe it into something accessible and personal that feels real instead of externalised, coopted or simply performed. Mostly we will participate together in opening and descending into a space full of permission.
These moments always feel important within this community, because it really asks you to practice with integrity and open yourself up to it. It’s different than learning something for the first time, it’s the repetition, the familiarity and the intention that make this become something real. And it’s especially going to be nice for you heady control freaks (you know I love ya) and the parts of you that yearn to loosen the grip and be touched by the kind of mystery that feels nourishing, connecting and so full of love. We’ll be holding ourselves in the invitation to release and surrender into the softest of softenings.
three faces of the victim
DROP IN HERE
or sign up to IMMERSED for 3 months
Saturday 22nd November 18th 10.30-12:30 [plus integration till 13.15]
Part of the practice of knowing yourself, really, is having the presence and insight that allows you to recognise yourself in the reflection of your relationships, be they personal or professional, romantic, plantonic or otherwise. When it comes to conditioning and the secret patterns or mechanisms that we develop to navigate the essential need to belong, relationships are the perfect mirror through which to see yourself, if you are willing. This remains private work, done in the background, but you can see it in action in relation to others.
Without clarifying a clear state of mind, you cannot be conscious of the learned tactics you’ve come to rely on. And not only the clear mind, but also the developed range and flexibility within your nervous system, so that you can access the discomfort of old patterns in order to decide how you proceed. If you don’t have this range, or begin to work on developing it, then the theory will feel out of reach and very frustrating.
When you don’t know how or don’t want to see yourself beyond your behaviour/habits, then it is very likely that most relationships will be to some degree limited to power play, projections and manipulation, instead of genuine intimacy. That sounds judgemental and shameful, but it is neither of those things, it’s just the way it goes depending on how we learn to socialise.
Not wanting to see it, or not yet knowing how, leads to an awful lot of drama, that many of us take on as a part of who we are, without realising that it could actually be a totally different experience, if we are courageous enough to be vulnerable and release the grip we have around who we think other people need us to be in order to love us.
I'll be teaching an embodied approach to psychiatrist Stephen Karpman's Drama Triangle and the three faces of the victim. Which is essentially a theory about why and how we end up stuck in roles instead of actual relationships. The knowledge contained within this theory is extremely relatable and illuminating, and as always it means nothing if you simply want to wield it against your partner/mother/sister/boss etc. The full service of this theory is in applying it privately to yourself by letting it be a lense to see yourself through, and understanding how your entire system has organised itself around certain limited beliefs that are very difficult to spot.
I’ve wanted to teach to this for a very long time, and it’s finally found it’s place in the cycle. This will be particularly helpful for anyone who leans heavily on the ‘I just want to help’ care giver turned martyr, or to clarify the typical push/pull dynamics of romantic relationships, or why feasting on guilt towards your family of origin is so alluring (and how to, eventually get out of that).
I’ll present the theory and we’ll investigate what it feels like, before we descend into an embodied ritual and somatic integration.
Saturday 18th October 10.30-12:30 [plus integration till 13.15]
There’s been a lot of talk of ‘calming down’ lately as everybody reacts to the season changing and desperately grapples with what balance might actually feel like. It’s easy to name it, elaborate with metaphors, maybe even mark time in your calendar for it and look forward to it happening on one mythical day in the future. But what does it actually take to calm down and receive, instead of micro manage and control, and why do you seem to be disrupting every opportunity to go there in spite of yourself?
When the seasons change and we return towards the darker, colder months, our modern post-everything societies dig their heels in deeper and force on with 24/7 culture as if nothing is happening. That is not the rhythm of an embodied life. But it is a very convincing part of the programming that has subconsciously taken up residency within us and now has huge amounts of power over who we think we are and how we think we need to behave. Even though intellectually we know something’s off, the deeper sense of safety is dependent on trying to fit in with the very way of life we want to transcend.
You need to know that your idea of who you are is constructed in your mind and is rarely a true reflection. Closer to the truth of who you really are is held within your body and the non-verbal communication we are relearning how to listen to it, but even that isn’t the full picture. True knowledge of the self takes you below the mind and body identity, below all the subconscious stories and preferences, to something much deeper and consistent than the ever changing landscape of thought and sensation. It’s from this place that you can observe both mind and body with clear sight, regardless of if you like it or if it fits the ideas you have about who you are. It is not even about transcending the ego, it is simply about the power to recognise it without obscurity and be humble and kind with it.
Developing the skill to have that sort of self-knowledge without feeling victimised by what you learn or smothering it all in judgement, is an essential part of this work and it is also the only way you’ll ever be able to find a steadiness amongst the ever changing, challenging nature of being alive.
Ultimately, none of us really know who we are because we don’t want to know, because it’s disruptive and uncomfortable to see where you’re hooked into the very drama you say you want to get away from. But see yourself you must, if you really want to get back in your embodied wisdom and stop feeling victimised or frustrated by the way life unfolds.
It’s a great time of year to take this work on because it is this respectful knowledge of the self that will give you back the wisdom and ability to actually rest and fall back into a rhythm with the lifeforce that’s moving through you, rather than attempt to control it.
So this is the pathway for the next 3 Immersions City Rituals until the end of the year.
KNOWING YOURSELF, REALLY
DROP IN HERE
or sign up to IMMERSED for 3 months
CALLING IN THE SUMMER | RITUAL + CEREMONY IN COMMUNITY
Saturday 7th June 10.30-12:30
The importance of ritual and ceremony should be becoming ever clearer within our community. The time taken to connect, devote, give thanks and listen to the deep hum of your heart, surrounded by community is an ancient practice of humanity. And it’s really such a gift, that we have cultivated this space together in our urban dwellings, and to know that it is of great service to us all. Every time we do it I feel the value and appreciatation more and more.
In June, Immersion will be entirely a celebratory ritual to call in the approaching longer days of light. It will be a moment to give thanks to the richness of the cycle so far, to offer ourselves to the opening of life that stretches before us now, as we anticipate the start of Summer. We will tend to the flame of aliveness, in so many beautiful, empowering ways.
This is a deeply personal affair, and it's important that each and everyone of us finds our own way into it, so that it eventually feels natural and not forced or performative. This is the guidance I will offer, an invitation of permission to exist in ritual, to personalise ceremony in all the ways that make it feel true and connecting, so that you can take it with you as a supportive practice into the wilderness of your summer.
So, we will create a ceremony of light and passion to support, protect and guide us through the high summer season, before returning to Immersion City Rituals again in September. I hope to see as many of you there as possible and I am already really looking forward to it!
YOUR NO IS ALIVE | PROTECTING AND PRESERVING THE FLAME
Saturday 17th May 10.30-12:30 | Integration: 12:30-13:15
The season of expansion began with seeking out the YES of your aliveness, through pleasure and desire, and now the teaching is turning towards your NO, as a practice of sustainability and not abandoning yourself. We will venture to two important places in this workshop:
1. Recognising your attachments to feeling good, to wanting to stay up in the sweet spot and the subsequent ways you misuse your energy to try and get that.
2. Accepting your responsibility as the protector of your own life force. Having clear energetic boundaries, so that you can continue to express fullness without leaking energy or becoming vulnerable. This is more about understanding the subconscious patters around self-sabotage and abandonment, than it is about a rigid regime of restriction and suppression (surprise!)
It's beautiful to awaken the lifeforce within you, to feel that burning flame in your belly. It's beautiful to feel a yes again inside of yourself and the vibration of potential. It's beautiful to feel good - isn't it? Isn't that what we all want, just to feel good, please and thank you very much? So what is that bitter after-taste?
You must take care not to mistake awakening power with a constant state of feeling good. Eternal happiness is escapism, avoidance and denial and there is no power in it, not a drop. It is not the path of embodied power.
I've felt a resistance in me when I sit down to meditate lately, and it stems from this temptation to want too strongly for the good stuff. A little voice in my head is begging for just one more day up here, please - it just feels so damn good. It's like I got one little whiff of the glory of my power and now I want to be high all the time. You know? That's when the extraction and the bypassing comes in and it's a fast route to burning the flame out all together.
Most of us leak energy all the time, in so many ways that we are not at all aware of. But why do we 'give away our power'? Even when we know, and I know most of you know. It's because this stuff runs deep and most of it happens out of the range of what we can see. So we head to the altar, and we get practicing.
Just as much as the yes inside of you is potent, the no is hot as hell. The yes might show you where you want to go, but the no will show you how to get there. It actually comes straight back to desire, what is it you want really and what part of you is trying to sabotage that?
BOOK HERE
E X P A N S I O N | PLEASURE, PLAY, POWER, PERMISSION
Saturday 12th April 10.30-12:30
Often, when I ask someone to tell me what they want in a certain situation, they start immediately by telling me what they don't want, whether we're talking about relationships or work or politics or anything really. It is scary to name what you want; what if you don’t get the thing you said you wanted? What if it turns out you thought you wanted it but actually you don’t anymore? and what will everyone else think? No to mention the responsibility required in tending to materialising desire into reality and tending to the flame.
Desire is demanding. So often we dance around it in ways that ultimately feel unempowering or not quite right. But landing on true desire is extremely expansive, and therefore it stretches us ALOT. To arrive at really knowing what you desire for yourself and your life, requires a passage through the realm of the subconscious (body), home to shame, fear and even repulsion. To know desire, you must also know the shadows it lies within. So we go slow, and learn about it with the whole body. In this session we will begin to pose the question ‘what turns me on?’ and gentle pull on the thread towards pleasure as a practice of wakening power and purpose.
I'll be teaching to energetics behind Expansion, the skill of knowing and holding things in your body, not just driving forward with your mind and why attuning to pleasure is powerful.
There is so much here to work with and it feels important to note that when we shfit towards expansion we really ask alot of ourselves, because we move beyond the comfort zones and hiding places that have helped us feel a sense of ease for so long. It may not be for everyone, but for the bravehearted, we will go steady and with a great respect for what you uncover.
BOOK HERE
EMBODIED PATH TO NOWHERE | CAREFUL ASCENSION
Saturday 15th March 10.30
The season is shifting and we are edging towards potential, expansion, creative expression. What does it feel like to read that? Are you excited or resistant? Take note.
To be able to move into this phase without force requires proper understanding and also importantly, permission It's a delicate time, that can be easily misunderstood and therefore either avoided or resented, or misused and exploited. If we can tap into it from an embodied place and attune to the energetics of it then we can go beyond the heady limitations and temptations.
For this teaching, we are not going straight into the centre of Expansion, not yet. Instead I will be teaching to the art of living cyclically in accordance with this phase, and how to understand what is held in the body, what it feels like to sense creative potential and purpose and why there is so much temptation to rush or to disconnect from the idea that you are a creative being and that something wants to come through you. It's a practice of not abandoning yourself and what you are here for.
You can join as a drop in, or you can take a step into IMMERSED for the next 3 months.
A M I R E S T E D?
| physically | mentally | energetically
Understanding & practising Energetics
It doesn’t matter how many intelligent ways you might come up with to rest, if you are not practised in the art of receiving, then you will not feel rested, no matter what you do. The pathway to embodied living is one of understanding the relationship between the ideas and beliefs you hold in your mind and body, and your ability to lean into something beyond your own default programming.
There is a link between being receptive to all of life, not just the sunshine, and the true and flowing state of rest, because ultimately it comes down to cultivating the skill of staying open, even if you’re in contraction. Most of us are so used to being compressed into shut down, that we don’t know how to trust in the feeling of rest. There’s a constant and very exhausting state of vigilance that is difficult to put down because it presses on the sense of belonging and safety that we as humans depend upon. Learning how to find rest, even when tension is present is an embodied skill, meaning it requires alignment of the mind, body and energy. It asks you to interrogate the beliefs you hold about yourself and where you find meaning in your life, beyond productivity, functionality and extraction.
Rest is not entirely passive, it is a skill that requires devotion and boundaries around how much you give and why, who or what holds power over you and how you reconnect to your own sense of inner-power.
This months Immersion is an interactive space with exercises to guide you in investigating your relationship to rest and to living. You will learn about receptivity as well as different energy deficits and different forms of rest, beyond the obvious.
Saturday 23rd November | 10:30-13:00 | Audre-Lorde-Str. 40
Immersion is the monthly community ritual, we gather to receive and embody, to honour your devotion to the work of reunifying mind, body and spirit. Booking closes 22:00 the night before.
Trying to evolve beyond the perfectionist? Recover from a lifetime of inner critic dictatorship? Develop your ability to listen to the consciousness of your body? Regulate your nervous system, reach your potential, tend to your grief? ET-CET-ERA !
Whatever it is you are on your way towards, much of the work you do with me is Energetics. Meaning it works beyond your rational mind (and all of its conditioning), beyond your surface level perception of who you are and what you're doing.
Energy work is powerful because it connects you to the universal, to that which is greater than you. We access the source of our creativity and power when we work at this level. We start playing in an entirely different field. The mind and body are mostly landscapes where you can witness your energy, both in motion and stagnation.
The more you can understand and honour the nature of working energetically, the more you will be able to develop a practice that serves you way beyond the time you spend doing it.
This is when, rather than a place to escape to and feel momentarily ‘better’ in, the work becomes an expansive holding, pulsing through everything you do.
And that is important - cultivating a practice that holds and guides you through life, be it in relation to yourself or to others. One that cannot be bent to your personal agenda or the ideas of other people, because it is aligned to the highest source and will therefore always reveal the truth eventually, no matter how much we resist or try to opt for more convenient options.
We are always working in this place in the Immersions, so for this session I will be demystifying much of what runs through it, pointing out misunderstandings or misuses and empowering the decision to trust the wisdom that lies beyond rationality.
July 27th 10.30-12.30 | Audre-Lorde-Str, Kreuzberg
R I T U A L
I N V I T A T I O N
A Summer Solstice Somatic Ritual to empower the Brightness inside of you, in community alongside each other.
These are the times we live in - waiting for things to get easier before you prioritise your spark and creativity is not the way.
There is a constant state of vigilance required not to slip under, not to give in to a very tempting sense of hopelessness and fear, or succumb to the confusion that we're being seduced by.
In our hearts we know, and it's through the body and practices of love, joy and brightness that we can resource, strengthen and encourage this knowing.
These are the times that we live in and that asks for us to be resilient, to be as resourced as we can be, to be in connection with an inner state of power. It's a constant dance to keep seeing yourself and the world around you with clear sight and we can't give up on that now.
Yes - I am daring you to celebrate yourselves with me. Daring you to stand in your beauty, your pleasure, your power - even now. Especially now.
I am offering this ritual as a community gathering, to come back to each other, to hold a space to remember joy, love, gratitude and devotion to all of life. This is how you maintain the strength of your spirit. This is how you learn to stay open and sensitive. That sensitivity must not be crushed - so let's give some space to frolic, to feel love and everything that accompanies the fullness of what it means to love.
This is a ritual of Brightness and Light, which as ever recognises that we don't exist as polarities, we are at all times both this and that, and so in order to celebrate The Brightness, we must allow room for the darkness.
Book here Saturday 22nd June 2024 10.30-12.30, Audre Lorde Strasse 40, Kreuzberg, Berlin