When I created the Mythosomatic Sanctuary, I wrestled with the duration. To the point that I was bargaining with the offer and myself!
"What if I let people join for only a season at a time?" No. A year.
"Maybe we compress it and make it six months?" A year.
"This work is so efficient, surely we don't need that long." A. YEAR.
So I said okay, a year it is. I will follow the format shown and we'll let this offer exist like it wants to.
Quick refresher: the Mythosomatic Sanctuary is a year-long seasonal offering steeped in community care and regenerative energy work in the Realms of Embodiment. Each season we work with an archetypal guide through two of the Realms. The current Marrow Keeper season is the ecology of our bones and organs, before we move into Kinwoven season with the Muscle and Nervous System Realms.
Well, six weeks in and having "completed" one Realm of work, I'm acquiescing. The Sanctuary was right. We need the full year.
A year provides structure that has space.
The Sanctuary has a rhythm of "off" weeks, where you're integrating, building relationships in the community, hermiting with your journal, etc. and "on" weeks, where we have live calls or call replays to listen to and active investigation, energy work, and integration prompts.
We start in the "off" position.
You have a week or two at the beginning of each season to ease into the space and community. It sets the tone for the Sanctuary: this isn't about doing, it's about who you are and how you live while you do this work.
A year provides the time to build and resource inner safety.
Your guard can come down little bit by little bit, easing into the work and deepening the process and what you can integrate.
Four weeks, six weeks, ten weeks, even three months is a short timeframe to your body. Especially if you're unwinding patterns that your body has spent a lifetime shaping itself to hold.
A longer timeframe gives your body space to build trust with the energy of the container, with the guidance, with the guardian, with me, with other participants, and with you.
Additionally, one of the first things we learn and practice in the Sanctuary is quick body check-ins and active listening. These are practices that build somatic awareness, body trust, and community each time we bring them into our space together.
A year provides a toolkit that is experimented and integrated.
With each Realm we have a Somatic Opening call and an Embodied Integration call. In each of these you work with a somatic tool for embodied exploration or integration. I introduce you to it, you get to try it on, experiment with it, ask questions, receive feedback, and bring it into your personal practice if it worked well for you.
Over the course of the year you'll experiment with at least twelve (but probably more) somatic practices. There's no rush to learn them, no overload at the pace they're introduced, and no emphasis on needing to use a tool just because it was given to you. Everything is invitational.
There's space in a year to determine how your body responds and what it is drawn to as a support and resource.
A year creates a working relationship with four archetypal guides.
When the guides for this space first came forward I wasn't sure how much of a role they would play, only that they wanted to support the space and the people in it. They provided these names:
The Ancient Storyteller
The Elder Weaver
The Oracle
The Voyager
We've spent the last six+ weeks working with the Ancient Storyteller and I'm thrilled to watch each person's relationship grow and change with her. She is the guide for our Organs and Bones, and in many ways she often comes forward in names that we know her as more regionally: Cailleach, La Loba, La Que Sabe. She is them and she is more than them.
I'm excited to move into Kinwoven season and learn the many faces of the Elder Weaver. Who they are and how else we may understand them.
There's space in the Sanctuary to create a relationship with these guides and trust that they'll be there for support and wisdom well beyond the bounds of this space.
As I'm ending this email, not really knowing how to end this email, there's one phrase repeating in my mind. I asked it to my body and was surprised by the answer. So I offer it to you.
"What would you like to do with a year?"
Knowing that the English "to do" is imperfect in this situation. How would you like to be? What would you like a year to provide for you? Find a variation that fits with your body and see what comes back.
Supporting you to move at the pace of your body,
Ash