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It can feel absurd in many ways to focus on play right now - we know - when we have plenty of reasons not to find joy, not to celebrate life, laugh or lean into humor.

In this episode Karine Bell speaks with Dr Leticia Neito about an upcoming program hosted by The Rooted Global Village called Where Do I Belong: An Exploration of Identity and Belonging for Bi/multicultural bodies

"Our journey towards a better world can—and often should—be a nurturing and joyful experience! Find pleasure in the process." — Beautiful Trouble

When we were dreaming into the play incubator being offered right now inside Rooted, the conversation went a little like this: (expanded over the course of several months and many coffee-fuelled play dates!)

This first gathering served as an introduction to the play program arc. We invited in a co-creative process of discovery around our personal and collective relationship to play, the (somatic) edges within it, and the value play holds for our lives, relationships, and our world.

For the next 9 months, we're inviting you into a play incubator the intention of which is to infuse movement, joy and experimentation into what can become sedimented and calicified in our perception and experience — in a digestible format of one Sunday Session a month.

What does Play do? A chance to embody radically new perspectives. An opportunity to embrace failure and experimentation. A vehicle to explore the edges-places of our discomfort and illuminate shadows.

Have you heard the term 'Third Space' before? One of our villagers shared this note with us:“A friend of mine, with whom I was sharing about Rooted, called it a deep third space. I hadn’t heard the term before. She said there weren’t enough of these kinds of spaces—away from work and home—for people to just be.”

Sam Dylan Finch (he/they) is a writer, content creator, and lived experience advocate, leveraging the power of digital media to shift the conversation around mental health, neurodivergence, and queerness. His work has been featured at Alma, the Huffington Post, Teen Vogue, Healthline, Psych Central, and more. Learn more at SamDylanFinch.com.

We offer multiple spaces and moments inside of Rooted to pause, notice, and reflect on the spiritual ecology that you are part of with other bodies.

What does transformation actually mean in the day-to-day of life?

This workshop is from the Embodied Social Justice Summit. The full collection of recordings from this event are available inside Rooted. Learn more at www.rootedglobalvillage.com/membership

Come learn the language of the nervous system and get to know your personal autonomic pathways.

A workshop on Polyvagal Theory with Karine Bell from March 5th 2021 —

In this video exploration, we offer a short body-centric lens on some of the challenges, barriers and possibilities to personal and collective culture change.

Rooted is a virtual space hosting members from around the globe - we are made up of people of various backgrounds, faith traditions and cultural perspectives. Inside Rooted, we gather to reflect, un/learn and re/member, as our perspectives and ideas are shaped and re/shaped through our many encounters.

Art! Art that liberates, art that inspires, art that acts like portals for imagination! Art is one of my favorite gifts to receive and to give.

Deep rest to honor the time of year in the Northern Hemisphere of the longest night. We truly cherish the fallow periods and times like these to go deep within and underground - into the womb of the earth where rebirth begins.

Cliff Berrien has 40-years of experience as a student and teacher of Afro-Diasporic drumming and music traditions. He has combined his music studies, degree in psychology and years of experience as a professional DJ to develop practices that promote collective joy, cultural dexterity and global healing.

Breaking cycles of trauma through trust and what it takes to develop your compass for nurturing relationship is deeply vital work.Our paths are all filled with alchemy, wounds, and boundless capacity for love — hopefully this short reflection offers you something to aid the journey.

In this episode we discuss grief as a metabolizer of experience and its role in our lives and the world to come.An End of Life (EOL) Doula, Oceana specializes in the liminal spaces of active dying and grief.

We have an free offering for you on our Rooted blog. We’ve made public a workshop we hosted in Rooted in January of 2022 inside Rooted, called ‘Edges as a Place of Transformation’.

This podcast was recorded in early September, 2023, in the midst of a wave of grief that felt too big for my body; too big to hold alone. In Rooted, we are dedicated to shifting away from cultural forms that perpetuate separation and isolation.

I’m excited to have Weena on the podcast today. She happens to be a dear friend of mine and also one of our rooted team members. In rooted, Weena is probably the person who more than anyone else, brings us back to the body, to the impulse of bodily knowing, and how we can engage with the themes we’re working with in a space like rooted.

Welcome to the Rooted global village. This podcast episode is an introduction of sorts, to what The Rooted Global Village exists because of, and for.Rooted is an organism made up of the many souls who are a part of it. And like any organism, it has a birth story.

You may be new to us in Rooted, or you may have been skirting the edges of our global village for a while, curious but cautious. In any case, welcome. We have opened the doors to Rooted NOW for our coming year of play and bodily exploration, and in a series of upcoming posts, we'll be sharing more about this space and why we value it so highly.

Kai Cheng Thom is an author, community worker, somatic healer, lasagna lover, and wicked witch based in Toronto. She has spoken and published widely on the topics of trauma, transformative justice, and mental health...

In May of 2023, Weena led us into a somatic experiencing + authentic movement exploration of witnessing, seeing and being seen by an organic being; an other than human being.

Yvette Murrell is a coach, healer, consultant, co-founder, and Connector of the former Playback Milwaukee Theatre Company, has multifaceted, cross-sector national career accomplishments in expressive arts, business, and education. A powerfully-gifted facilitator and shaman with over 30 years of practice, Yvette weaves a deeply embodied approach to social, racial, and restorative justice into the lives of individuals, organizations, and institutions seeking transformative change. By her presence alone, Yvette grounds love into action by awakening body wisdom, ancestral guides, and creative play through compassionate inquiry and somatic listening. She can deftly hear the soul’s calling toward collective liberation, alchemizing conflict, and challenge to compassion, strategy, and vision. You’ll find Yvette, where innovation, cultural arts, and transformative justice meets beloved community.

Grief isn’t even a necessary part of life. It IS life. A rich full life includes grief. ‍Earlier, I used the word “fortunately” to describe the circumstance of my life this month where people were cracking open all around me, as was I. Never one to miss a good party, this was indeed, one for the ages. There were plenty of tears and even more righteous laughter, a fair bit of rage, lots of shaking and pleading and many moments of delicious emptiness when all there was breath and truth, insight, and joy. The best part was newfound intimacy and lush pockets of fresh resource. The good stuff, the stuff that no amount of spa days and expensive wine or sometimes even therapy can get you. Dropping down through the cracks of your current persona into the layers of shit becoming compost, hard rock becoming crystals, magma becoming energy that can fuel a planet for billions of years, that is the stuff that is available at the core of a grief journey. The stuff that can fuel a life can not be bought, is widely available, and can be yours abundantly for the simple price of your attention.

The brink of Autumn is a potent time of year. I don’t know about you, but for me, Fall (in the Northern Hemisphere) is a time of slowing down (where I can), taking stock, reflection and deepening discernment about where I place my energy. It’s also the time of year in which we recognize the changing cycles of light and dark. It’s the time of year when many traditions acknowledge the spirits of the dead, our ancestors, and even have elaborate rituals and ceremonies honoring the ways in which we continue to be entangled with them, such as Dia de Los Muertos. What are those cyclical traditions of light and dark for you, or around you?

We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body. - Mary OliverLast June, inside Rooted (virtual global village and un/learning gathering space) we invited our friend, Kai Cheng Thom, Somatic Sex Educator to explore the theme of reclaiming pleasure and through it, ourselves. It was a tender inquiry into how we access, receive, give, or “take” pleasure.

We spend a lot of time embracing the idea that we “don’t know” when it comes to so many areas of our human lives, but other times we might have the experience that we do know something, in our bones. But, if you’re like me, you often question the validity of that knowing. What happens in such moments of knowing that is worth paying closer attention to? And can you recall a time from childhood when you knew something, but you were told you were wrong?