John Vervaeke
Schuyler Brown
Tom Morley
Course Structure
This course is designed primarily as a process that will teach you tools you can bring into your own life straight away. We’ve designed it to include a rich variety of practices, exercises and ways to connect so that no two people will have the same experience on the course.
The live sessions will take place on Thursday evenings UK time, and last for 1 hour and 45 minutes. They’ll act as experiential introductions to different embodiment practices. All sessions will be recorded and uploaded the next day so you can access them at any time, even if you can’t attend them live.
Throughout the course you’ll have the option to develop your own unique embodiment and flow practices. Through our course environment hosted on Mighty Networks, you’ll be able to find other participants on a similar embodiment journey to your own and connect for support, accountability and inquiry.
You’ll also have access to a workbook, a curated library of Rebel Wisdom films with top embodiment and connection teachers like Bessel van der Kolk, Gabor Mate, Diane Musho Hamilton, and Peter Levine.
The Process
We’ll begin the course by establishing a theoretical scaffolding to help us deepen our experience and refer back to over the five weeks. Professor John Vervaeke will explain embodiment in terms of ‘4E’ cognitive science, which theorises that our experience of the world isn’t just processed in our heads, but is also embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. He’ll also explain how we can create the conditions for flow states in our day to day lives. Rafe Kelley, parkour pioneer and founder of Evolve Move Play, will build off Vervaeke’s framing to provide a series of exercises you can do day to day, including a ‘movement diet’ you can choose to develop throughout the course. Similarly, Dr. Shama Rahman will provide a series of resources and exercises on the neuroscience of flow and creativity you can use throughout the five weeks.
In the following week, Somatic Experiencing therapist and bodyworker Roger Jackson will guide you through techniques to help you start to listen deeply to the inner wisdom of your body. In the next session, renowned breathwork teacher Nicola Price will guide you through a breathwork session and share how to create your own breath practice.
In week four, embodiment coach Schuyler Brown will host a session on ‘Cultural Embodiment’ – taking a live cultural conversation and teaching you how to make sense of it through an embodied lens as a group. Finally, we’ll bring it all together in our final session, Rhythm, with drummer and workshop leader Tom Morley showing you how to come into flow as a group, and why it’s such a wonderful tool for cohesion and collaboration.
Click on each session below to find out more about it.
Schedule
Session 1 – Introduction with John Vervaeke & Rafe Kelley
June 9th at 8pm London / 12pm San Francisco, 5am Melbourne
Many embodiment practitioners credit John Vervaeke’s work with revoulutionising their understanding of what they teach. A cognitive science professor at the university of Toronto, Vervaeke’s research provides a framework on how to create what he calls an ‘ecology of practices’ to make the most of different types of embodiment technique. In this opening session, Alexander Beiner will introduce the course and Vervaeke will explain embodiment in terms of ‘4E’ cognitive science, which theorises that our experience of the world isn’t just processed in our heads, but is also embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. He’ll also explain how we can create the conditions for flow states in our day to day lives.
Parkour pioneer and movement expert Rafe Kelley will then introduce a series of practices you can explore between sessions, including a movement diary that helps people to find creative new ways to engage physically with their environment.
Session 2 – Your Body’s Inner Wisdom with Roger Jackson
June 16th at 8pm London / 12pm San Francisco, 5am Melbourne
In this session you’ll experience what it means to connect with and listen to your body’s innate wisdom. Roger Jackson will explain the foundations of Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges, and how we can use it to regulate our own nervous system. You’ll learn how to become intimately familiar with what your body is telling you in any moment, how to activate your nervous system and how to calm it down.
Session 3 – Breathwork with Nicola Price
June 23rd at 8pm London / 12pm San Francisco, 5am Melbourne
In this session, Nicola Price will guide you through a breathwork session and teach you how the breath can become a doorway into the deepest aspects of your awareness. You’ll explore your own breath pattern and learn a technique that fully opens up the respiratory system — sometimes for the first time ever — and floods the body with life affirming energy and life force. You’ll also learn how to set up your own personal breathwork practice.
Session 4 – Cultural Embodiment with Schuyler Brown
June 30th at 8pm London / 12pm San Francisco, 5am Melbourne
In this session, Schuyler Brown will guide you through an embodied group discussion about a piece of current media or culture. You’ll learn how to apply the embodiment tools you’ve experienced so far to really meeting the world head-on, making sense and dropping into a more authentic level of conversation around what’s going on in the world. You’ll practice working with somatic awareness and emotional intelligence and as a group we will unpack how everyone’s really feeling about what’s going on right now.
Session 5 – Rhythm with Tom Morley
July 7th at 8pm London / 12pm San Francisco, 5am Melbourne
Nobody can get people moving in rhythm quite like Tom Morley. He was the original drummer and a founder member of Scritti Politti, the 80s band who were pioneers of DIY music before appearing successfully on the dance scene. He’s also recorded with David Bowie and Madness. In this session, he’ll share what he learned as a pioneer in improvisational music, and as an in-demand workshop leader and keynote speaker.
We’ll draw the course to a close by coming into a place of rhythm and harmony together, having a lived experience of what group coherence and flow can feel.