Welcome. We’d like to introduce you to…
The Rooted Global Village
Slow work.
Un/learning.
Kin-making.
Tending.
We are Moving at the Speed of Relationship
Inside Rooted we…
Embrace practices that promote both personal and collective liberation.
Foster collaborative and curious environments!
Create ecologies of care through which change happens.
Engage thewisdom of our bodies, beyond intellectual understanding.
We are NOT about leaders and followers. This ain’t that.
What is Rooted?
How can you be part of it?
Here, you’ll find ...
...places to deepen awareness, share stories, un/learn “schoolishness” (Akilah Richards), engage in somatic experimentation, world-music exploration, & play through art-making, poetry, and re/imagination. Mingled with spaces of quiet co-being, small group connection, and more.
In a culture marked by hyper-individualism and separation…
We’re forming Constellations of Connection.
We have a number of ways we make space for relationship building and tending in Rooted. We have affinity-based spaces (Contact Zones) wherein we can deepen in our understanding of how culture and history have shaped experience, share stories, and build community. We also have a newer play-space (Kaleidoscope) wherein we can experiment our multiplicity and other constellations of connection beyond the identities we hold.
Rooted is a space of experimentation. We are experimenting with our response to cultures of separation and alienation. Within this disrupted landscape of relationship, we are keen to nurture possibilities for connection and, even that radical act of friendship to ultimately recognize our interconnected nature and shared destinies.
What perpetuates feelings of separation and fragmentation in your life?
- Audre Lorde
Rooted has the task of tending relationship; of experimental kin-making. That is, finding our way out of the fog and trance of separation to re/member our belonging to ourselves, each other, and our world; through the thickets and brambles of harmful philosophies and imposed hierarchies, like that of White body supremacy.
There is nothing more radical, it’s been said, than friendship. This is the slow work of building our capacity to connect, to experience intimacy and build trust. Our approach is slow and continuous so that we do not bypass the ongoing and very real harm that oppression does to keep these hierarchies in place.
''I see love present between
and within the team…''
- Erica Reyes
''ReSounding JOY interrupts my daily monotony and brings me into my body.''
- Elizabeth Woodson
Our villagers find re/minders to re/member themselves as creative, imaginative and multi-dimensional beings.
Doing this requires a break from our habituated ways of being.
Doing this brings us to the edges of what has been known.
Doing this can feel risky, uncertain, and uncomfortable.
And yet we recognize that its at the edges between worlds where diversity is most vibrant and life is at its most creative.
Until we learn to embrace the difference - multiplicity, contradiction and paradox - within ourselves, it will be difficult to embrace it in each other.
This year (2024) in the Village…
We'll focus on PLAY, beginning with EDGE-PLAY
with special guest, Kai Cheng Thom!
She guides us on a transformative journey from February to April 2024, delving into the intricate realm of Edge-Play.
What is EDGE-PLAY?
A re-introduction to the energy of desire as liberatory.
You will be guided into an artistic and poetic process of tapping into and creating from the place of desire, followed by a practice of group creation and harvesting collective wisdom.
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; challenging 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.
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As we travel through the cliffs and valleys of life, it is almost inevitable that we become familiar with both the terror and allure of the edge:
On the one hand, it is often wiser, safer, and more considerate of others to take the route of caution and self-preservation. On the other, there is another kind of wisdom in knowing that it is necessary to embrace risk in order to achieve our full, transformative potential.
We see the polarization of edginess across the many spheres of life and society: For example, in trauma healing (powerful and intense emotional catharsis versus slow-and-sure titration), in politics (compromise and diplomacy versus radical activism and revolution), and in the arts (should art be trauma sensitive and therapeutic or provocative and disturbing?).
How can we explore the edge with integration and caring soulfulness?Join guest teacher and somatic facilitator Kai Cheng Thom, along with members of the Rooted facilitation team, for an exploration of an embodied dialogue process intentionally created to explore individual and collective edges; unearthing tensions, integrating polarization, and crystallizing unconscious wisdom.
In Rooted, we weave the tapestry between personal and communal transformation…
Navigating the complexities of disruptive cultural and somatic narratives, Rooted becomes a container for exploring our edges, fostering encounters that can unfold unpredictably, while building capacity along the way.
This series is a unique opportunity for (un)learning and reorientation, tapping into ancestral resilience and resources. What sets this series apart within Rooted is the core focus on capacity building and engaging with our unique edges. Open to both current members and newcomers, it offers a space for profound, slow exploration.
Kai Cheng Thom, our primary guide, simplifies complex topics, making them accessible for personal reflection, aligning beautifully with our slow curriculum for the totality of 2024 —focused on PLAY.
In three transformative sessions from
February to April, we embark on a journey with:
February 2024: The Collective Edge With Deep Democracy
March 2024: Expanding our Window of Transformation
April 2024: The Edge of Desire + Imagination
''I love the intentionality of
how love is held here...''
- Heather Meeks
''It’s been vital for my capacity
to remain hopeful in this world…'
- Antonella Russo-Ball
In addition, there are regular events in Rooted that anchor us.
When you register you’ll have access to: Month(s) long thematic journeys that shake up entrenched ways of knowing, expanding our sense of belonging and widening our capacity for change. We have many offerings each month that you can drop-in to as time and space allows. Our anchor workshops are always recorded.
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You can be as involved as you want to be in Rooted.
Each person who enters the space matters on this journey of culture creation, and we each bring our own gifts and contributions that help foster the soil in which new and reclaimed knowledges/ experiences/ imaginings can take root.
Like ripples on water, we trust that even small moments of encounter can have seen and unseen impacts on our relationships and worlds that are impossible to measure. This space has impacted so many of us in it - is it for you?
Inside Rooted, we accompany each other.
Practically speaking, this means we…
impact of supremacies
We contend with the ways relationship has been distorted, wherein human peoples are regarded as superior to more-than-human life. White-bodied humans are regarded as superior to brown and black-bodied and other Bodies of Culture. Science is supreme, and Spirit is often forgotten.
People occupying different social locations are inside of Rooted. We host people from around the globe, young and old, with the ability to find each other in local geographies in small groups we call Care Pods. We aspire to exceed the limitations placed on relationship, while not bypassing difficult realities we all contend with.
In Rooted, the body is the locus for transformation. We offer space to metabolize experience through body-based practices and grief circles. We offer somatic tools, study guides called Home explorations, and small groups called Care Pods to support your own questioning.
Un/schooling is an orientation and philosophy that embraces multiple forms of learning and knowledge as valid. We support each other to discover the wisdom we each hold and have access to. We do not believe in a model of learning that divides the space into "experts" and "students". We are in this together.
We house an extensive and growing un/learning library of inspirational teachers, wisdom keepers and scholar-activist teachings, workshops, and live experiences. The library is an ongoing resource to our villagers.
The thread that runs through all the Rooted offerings and events, is an engagement with art-making, play, creativity and imagination. Your creative voice matters here! And the ways that we individual learn through PLAY are delightful to witness.
Nothing that touches our lives is solely ours. The trauma and the joy.
The difficult, even traumatic, moments of life can be a crucible out of which desire is born. These moments can become the openings to sites of longing for an otherwise way of being and experiencing ourselves and our relationships.
Rooted continually asks the question:
What exists within us and through us that is more ancient, more durable, than the crises of our personal and collective timelines?
In Rooted, Experiment with what Unflattens Us.
In Rooted, we re/connect with what is indestructible within us: our inherent wisdom and birthright connection to creativity and imagination.We are an assemblage of people actively questioning and experimenting with what makes an experience of relationship and belonging possible inside everyday life. And how this experimentation might serve to transform us into active co-creators of the worlds we inhabit.
Rooted recognizes ‘repetition & returning’ as key ingredients of new culture creation.We’re re/worlding together. And to create the world anew we need to “tie our roots to other roots” (Sophie Strand) and play with the technologies of LIBERATION available to us.
What is the gift? What wants to come through? That is yours to discover in Rooted.
The essence of how we move, we...
- Plant seeds that embody a commitment to the world(s) to come while embracing the nourishment of what we have inherited - resilience, creativity, imagination.
- Move away from a disposability culture that replicates systems of harm through alienation.
- Embrace an ‘unschooling’ orientation that seeks to reclaim other intelligences we hold, other ways of knowing and ways of being in the world as valid.
- Make room for the new, the not-yet-known and the mystery through play, movement, art-making and self-expression.
- Move beyond individually-focused ‘fixes’ to embracing the uncertainty that comes from choosing new directions and new experiences.
- Replace cycles of hope and despair with ‘the way things are’ - with a curiosity for what could be and our creative potential to shape futures.
- Slow down the cycles of urgency and distraction that keep us locked in unhelpful cycles of harm, and cultivate choice within an attention economy.
''Rooted supports emergent structure
and allows access to so much more of us. ''
- Akilah Richards
''This work is groundbreaking,
heart-opening, and I love it...''
- Heidi Junkersfeld
When you register you’ll be able to access:
Come travel with us on month(s) long thematic journeys that shake up entrenched ways of knowing, expand our sense of belonging and widen our capacity for change. We have many offerings each month that you can drop-in to as time allows.
Each month, you can enter a space of music, dance, and cultural dexterity through song with our resident DJ, Cliff Berrien.
Afrorhyzymatic Dance is an opportunity for your somatic self to explore music from all over the the African Diasporic time-space continuum. Be ready to DANCE! It is inspired by the VUNJA gatherings put on by Bayo Akomolafe and Geci Karuri Sebina.
ReSounding Joy is a playful celebration, transformative somatic education andcultural dexterity practice that explores the world’s diversity through music. The question this practice presents is “can we increase love by promoting an embrace of the worlds diversity so all beings can thrive.”
SE+AM happens monthly. This space is truly unique. It is about reverence for impulse… and Impulse’s intelligence in keeping us alive, and its creative force for becoming more than just living. SE+AM stitches together the principles and physiological frames of Somatic Experiencing with the movement practice of Authentic Movement.
Each session is 90 minutes, and exploring the crossovers and distinctions between Somatic Experiencing and Authentic Movement. All bodies and all movement is welcome. Moving your finger or sliding your eyelid over your eyeball is just as valuable as standing on your head. This is in an experiential workshop.
Each month, you can enter a space of music, dance, and cultural dexterity through song with our resident DJ, Cliff Berrien.
Afrorhyzymatic Dance is an opportunity for your somatic self to explore music from all over the the African Diasporic time-space continuum. Be ready to DANCE! It is inspired by the VUNJA gatherings put on by Bayo Akomolafe and Geci Karuri Sebina.
ReSounding Joy is a playful celebration, transformative somatic education andcultural dexterity practice that explores the world’s diversity through music. The question this practice presents is “can we increase love by promoting an embrace of the worlds diversity so all beings can thrive.”
On the 2nd Sunday of every month, from 1-3pm EST we host an anchoring workshop space. Sometime this is hosted by a special guest, and other times by villagers themselves. It happens monthly Live (and is also recorded).
The purpose of the monthly workshops is to bring us into conversation with different perspectives and ideas that can challenge us, and lovingly agitate and disrupt entrenched ways of thinking and being; opening us up for new experiences. This is playful exploration. We intentionally move slowly through each theme, sometimes spending several months on just one focus.
Each month, you can enter a space of music, dance, and cultural dexterity through song with our resident DJ, Cliff Berrien.
Afrorhyzymatic Dance is an opportunity for your somatic self to explore music from all over the the African Diasporic time-space continuum. Be ready to DANCE! It is inspired by the VUNJA gatherings put on by Bayo Akomolafe and Geci Karuri Sebina.
ReSounding Joy is a playful celebration, transformative somatic education andcultural dexterity practice that explores the world’s diversity through music. The question this practice presents is “can we increase love by promoting an embrace of the worlds diversity so all beings can thrive.”
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Each month, on the first or second Friday of the month, there is the opportunity to attend an offering or space held by a Rooted Villager. You are more than welcome to submit a workshop idea and offer to hold space is this manner too if you join us!
Each month, you can enter a space of music, dance, and cultural dexterity through song with our resident DJ, Cliff Berrien.
Afrorhyzymatic Dance is an opportunity for your somatic self to explore music from all over the the African Diasporic time-space continuum. Be ready to DANCE! It is inspired by the VUNJA gatherings put on by Bayo Akomolafe and Geci Karuri Sebina.
ReSounding Joy is a playful celebration, transformative somatic education andcultural dexterity practice that explores the world’s diversity through music. The question this practice presents is “can we increase love by promoting an embrace of the worlds diversity so all beings can thrive.”
Each month, you can enter a space of music, dance, and cultural dexterity through song with our resident DJ, Cliff Berrien.
Afrorhyzymatic Dance is an opportunity for your somatic self to explore music from all over the the African Diasporic time-space continuum. Be ready to DANCE! It is inspired by the VUNJA gatherings put on by Bayo Akomolafe and Geci Karuri Sebina.
ReSounding Joy is a playful celebration, transformative somatic education andcultural dexterity practice that explores the world’s diversity through music. The question this practice presents is “can we increase love by promoting an embrace of the worlds diversity so all beings can thrive.”
Within the Rooted Global Village, a very intentional space has been made for people of the African diaspora. Out here in the Borderlands is a blazing fire just a bit further on from the main camp. We’ve been tending it for over a year now, and we’ve space for you. Come join us in the Diasporic Hush (H)arbor.
During antebellum years, enslaved Africans gathered in acts of courage and agency, in hollows and wooded places called Hush Harbors (or arbors), where they could create community and worship the Divine in their own way.
These liminal spaces encouraged those gathered to seek unmediated and intentional interaction with the sacred with practices that included: divination, ring shout, interaction with nature, healing and cleansing rituals, rituals of transition, interpretation of signs, sacred dance, and communication with elders/ancestors.
Each month, you can enter a space of music, dance, and cultural dexterity through song with our resident DJ, Cliff Berrien.
Afrorhyzymatic Dance is an opportunity for your somatic self to explore music from all over the the African Diasporic time-space continuum. Be ready to DANCE! It is inspired by the VUNJA gatherings put on by Bayo Akomolafe and Geci Karuri Sebina.
ReSounding Joy is a playful celebration, transformative somatic education andcultural dexterity practice that explores the world’s diversity through music. The question this practice presents is “can we increase love by promoting an embrace of the worlds diversity so all beings can thrive.”
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You can join a small group of others who are in the same geographic location as you are or who share common interests! One of the dreams we’ve had in Rooted since the beginning is the formation of small groups composed of members of our global village who can meet in virtual or physical space to support each other and explore ways in which the un/learnings and themes we explore might be translated into everyday life and local practice. We’ve had anecdotal reports from many Rooted members of ways they have brought what they experienced within Rooted to local groups or community support projects.
Given that Rooted began during a pandemic, it created a place wherein people from disparate backgrounds in various global locations could come together in communal space with others, some of whom had been cut off from local connection opportunities. We’re excited now to nourish local connection opportunities, where possible. This is deeply meaningful to us and is currently in development.
This is a monthly space held for gathering and conversation and connection It’s focused on embodied anti-racism, decolonial work and culture building, we’re presented with the challenge of understanding the impact of racialization on experience and relationship, and un/learning the ways we’ve embodied coloniality in its many forms.
The Contact Zones offer spaces based on affinity (racialized experience) and other experiences that feel important to our lived experience, while also offering opportunities for other constellations of coming together around a variety of juicy topics. This space is in continual development.
We’re curious about the portals and the openings of possibility into new ways of experiencing ourselves and each other and our world.
This is our primary hub for online discussion. This is a place to go deeper, sideways. To be silly, laugh, and share resources. You can direct message with other villagers, communicate and post images, projects, ideas, and converse!
We offer a bi-monthly grief space. These are open-hearted spaces intended to be intimate and of the moment, and as such cannot be viewed, only experienced.
In this space we will be tending grief as many of our ancestors have done before us: around a fire with music, movement, memory excavation, vocalization and as much or as little wailing required to be with our losses well enough that there is a bit of space to dream some new dreams.
We’ve curated an extensive learning library that you can dip into in your own time, and at your own pace. It’s a beautifully designed and searchable library. We are also in the process of creating learning bundles based on the areas you’re curious to explore. You can share this information with us when you join Rooted to help in this process.
Our learning library also includes our previous virtual events, the Embodied Trauma Conference, Tending the Roots 2021, and the Embodied Social Justice Summit (2021). Please note: the Tending the Roots event collection from 2022 will (over the next few months) become available to view as a member of the Rooted Global Village.
Meet the Rooted Co-Dreamers
Our platform acts as a bridge between the thinkers, wisdom keepers, and modern day explorers of our time, and the grounded experience of seeing what those big ideas can bring forth inside our everyday lived experience, both individually and as a collective body.
Some of our past anchor workshop guests include:
Join the waitlist
''It’s been food for my body and my soul and my mind.''
- Leny Strobel
Rooted goes deep and reaches high into the heart…
- Curtis Robertson Jr.
''There are many invitations to connect with all of life…'
- Sherry Paris
FAQ
If you sign up for the monthly plans, you can cancel at any point. Your subscription will last until the end of that month at which point you will no longer be billed. For the quarterly plans, your subscription will last until the end of that quarter and will renew until you choose to cancel. You can cancel anytime easily on your own, but enrolment only happens at specific times each year.
Absolutely. We’ll send you details for where to access the members dashboard and include information there you need to know to get ready for the next workshop. We send weekly emails providing an overview of what's coming up, too, so you won't miss anything.
Your pace is perfect and there is no "behind” here. This is not a course you have to work through from beginning to end. You’ll be able to revisit previous workshops while your membership is current, so there’s no rush to take in the materials. You also don’t need to attend “live” to benefit from this experience. Each month will have a dedicated space where you’ll find the workshop recordings and other relevant information/materials/links. This is exploratory space for you to consume at your pace.
No, Rooted is a communal experience. No individual coaching/therapy sessions are offered. However, we have opportunities to connect in smaller groups in various spaces within Rooted.
At this particular point in time, no, but we are looking into it, so it could well be possible in the near future.
The core of Rooted are the monthly workshops, which will take place on the second Sunday each month. Most workshops are held at 1pm EST. The workshop recordings will also be available within 24/48 hours after the workshop. Our other workshops are held at various times throughout the month. All event information is housed on the Circle platform, where you can add events to your calendar so you won't miss them.
You are NOT required to do it all. In fact, we highly discourage it. The point here is to feel into what you most need and desire from this space, and then use your autonomy and personal curiosity to carve out the path that works for you.
