Three month course-space
with Kai Cheng Thom
The Alchemy
in Edge-Play
Navigating Uncertainty, Desire, and the Risk Inherent in Liberation Work
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What lies beyond the edge of catastrophe?
What makes something scary or uncomfortable worth the risk?
What happens when we release the need to always control and always know?
Who might we become if we learned how to celebrate failure?
What can we learn from playfulness and improvisation over reactionary response?
How can the archetype of the clown help us navigate all that’s gone wrong?
What is EDGE-PLAY?
- A chance to embody multiple perspectives.
- An opportunity to embrace failure and unearth the shadow within.
- A re-introduction to the energy of desire as liberatory.
This isn't just a course; it's a journey to unlearn, reorient, and tap into your body’s capacity for expansion. Engage with somatic movement, dramatic play, and profound imaginative futuring.
Our World is calling to us, beckoning us out of our comforting fear, our womb-like worry, our one-right-way rhetoric… and edging us toward the imaginal realm of desire, risk, & liberation.
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If you’re curious to confront our societal compulsion with getting something absolutely right…
and spend 3 months looking for invitations into that wildly open space of play and the ‘imaginative other’ — This space will allow us to see all the ways we subconsciously try to adhere to someone else’s (family, culture, media etc) expectations for what we should do, say, be like, or feel.
All the the imposed restrictions and rules we apply to ourselves without knowing we're doing it - especially when it comes to social engagement - will be ours for the dismantling.
We're interested in how we conform to whatever expectation we think exists in the space: how we're supposed to show up, how we're supposed to speak. What are the words we're supposed to use? What are the things we're supposed to avoid?
We’re curious about ways of gathering and shifting beyond things like disposability and cancel culture, and reactionary approaches to address harm.
Culturally, we exist within a rhetoric that values…
- Crisis addiction (in our media, in our bodies, and our politics)
- The known or ‘proven’ over the experiential and nuanced dimensions of our lived experiences.
- Avoidance and shaming over exploration and curiosity.
- Polarization over genuine dialogue…
This course is a unique opportunity to (un)learn and reorient by tapping into embodied resilience and resource.
- We will engage with our unique edges, personally and collectively.
- Focus on capacity building through the arts, play, and communal practice and ritual.
- Use somatic movement and the dramatic arts as portals to what is repressed and (un)desirable.
- Actively practice failing & confronting fear for expanded creativity.
- Create space for profound, slow imaginative exploration.
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Kai Cheng Thom, our primary guide
Whenever we disrupt what is habitual it can lead to our disorientation,which we might intellectually understand is necessary for personal and social change, and yet it can feel uncomfortable, edgy, or downright terrifying.
It can challenge the very foundations on which we know ourselves and our world; affronting those aspects of ourselves that seek to shore up our sense of identity; our sense of footing; and our sense of control in the world.
“What I suspect makes desire safe enough, what makes it possible to be in desire and it’s shadow in a safe enough way, is relationship.
Right relationship with ourselves, with other human beings, with the non-human world, and with spirit. If we’re attending to that right relationship, then desire can be held with beauty.”
— Kai Cheng Thom
In this 3 month course, we weave the tapestry between personal and communal transformation……
Shift away from cultural formations that perpetuate separation and isolation — and into the alchemy of more than one right way of being and feeling.
This is an embodied dialogue process intentionally created to explore individual and collective edges, unearth tensions, integrate polarization, and crystalize unconscious wisdom.
Choice is inherent in this program.
You can get on and off the escalator, as it were. Your autonomy is welcomed into every part of the play process. We are encouraging an environment of empowered choice, where any activity can be experimented with, declined, started and stopped at any time.
What’s in each course module:
We meet on One Sunday a month from Feb - April.
The Collective Edge With Deep Democracy
As we travel through life's cliffs and valleys, we intimately feel the terror and allure of the edge—the simultaneous pull towards the risky, forbidden, and overwhelming. While caution and self-preservation offer wisdom, there's another knowing that embracing risk is vital for transformative potential.
Polarization echoes in life's edginess: from trauma healing to politics, to social justice, to the arts and beyond. How can we explore the edges of experience with integration and caring soulfulness, bridging the divide between caution and the transformative power of risk?
Are you ready to waltz with the wisdom hidden within life's most daring edges?
Expanding our Window of Transformation
Playing at the Edge of Soma, Self & Shadow.
What hidden treasures gleam at the edge of our embodied comfort zones? Discover strengths, talents, and wisdom by dancing with your shadow self. In this second workshop of the Edge Play Series, we'll use somatic movement and dramatic play as portals to explore personal edges. Join us in cultivating a loving environment where imperfection and failure become friends on the journey toward growth he care-filled expansion of our somatic “Window of Transformation”.
Embrace playful exercises in a supportive space where your ability to exercise choice empowers your journey.
The Edge of Desire + Your Imagination
Unleashing the Power in Desire and Imagination.
When we make space to bring our desires together, who knows what we might create?
In the grand finale of the Edge Play Series, we dive into the realm of desire, pleasure, longing, and liberation. Through simple yet potent creative and ritual practices, participants will be guided to tap into and create from the profound well of desire.
Stay grounded in a framework of empowered choice, voice, and embodied consent as we navigate this tender and evocative terrain. Come prepared to explore your desires and hear about the desires of others, encompassing discussions of intimacy, sexuality, and various aspects of desire.
Ready to make space for desires to converge, creating possibilities beyond imagination?
If everything around seems dark, look again, you may be the light. — Rumi
How can we expand our window of transformation — in ways that invites in a fuller picture of life in all it’s nuance? This course embraces the Slow Philosophy Inherent in Deep Earth Activism…as we acknowledge our individual and collective bodies as potent portals for alchemy and transformation of not just our personal lives, but of the worlds we inhabit and help shape.
About Us - The Space Holders
Pricing & Enrollment
This program is offered in 3 once-monthly sessions, to allow us to really slow-down our exploration.
You will have access to monthly resources for in between each session, as well as a private chat space for furthering your connections with one another.
Pay In Full
Payment Plan
Your commitment:
“True love is born from understanding.” — Buddha
We ask that each person who joins this program brings with them a spirit of understanding, or wanting to understand, beyond the first impulse or response that comes. We are embracing what makes us uncomfortable and wants to be transformed, and for that to happen, we need love present in the room with us.
“We can become disruptors and border-crossers...
Join The Waitlist
FAQ
All purchases for this course are final. As recordings of the sessions will be available to each participant, no refunds will be issued for cancellation requests. We appreciate your understanding and commitment to the transformative journey this course offers.
The recordings will be made available to you, in both video and audio format, so no worries if you can’t attend live. That said, the magic of this program will be in the coming together - so we recommend trying to make each of the once-monthly sessions.
