Cultivating a capacity for aliveness and resilience by being with nature, ourselves, and each other … with all of our senses.

Being with Nature: Outdoor Sessions

The path of change, growth, and discovery is not always easy, is it?  Often the journey is messy, weedy, and uncertain.  When we recognize that we are in harmony with a larger, co-regulating ecosystem, with its own cycles and patterns, we can gain perspective and understanding around our own patterns and cycles in our movement and bodies.

Life is all around us and within us.  Nature supports us to connect.

Our work together explores being present with what is, without trying to change or fix anything about yourself.  We can draw inspiration from the resilience and adaptability of nature, and gain new perspectives and deeper understanding around how we move through life. The innate wisdom of our bodies is present when we are connecting with nature, allowing us to awaken our aliveness through all of our senses and through gentle, conscious movement.

I believe that we are wired for interconnection and aliveness. When we bring our body work into the outdoors together, we can draw support from our environment for an expanded sense of awareness, interconnection, grounding, and developing the capacity to become curious about what’s going on in our bodies.  Sitting in a natural space together, being with what is and what we can not change, allows us to build capacity and flexibility for being with what is in our selves: including our voices and our bodies.

But hey, Alison, what do these nature sessions have to do with singing and posture?

Being with Nature may seen adjacent to voice and movement work, but it has e v e r y t h i n g to do with expanding fully into our voices and our bodies with connection and aliveness!

What to expect:

Being With Nature: Outdoor Sessions involve either a local in-person meet-up or meeting virtually while we are outdoors together in nature.  

Local in-person meet-ups:

We will meet in person at a pre-determined location in East York, i.e.: a park or local trail.  Below are two examples of locations and terrains; please keep in mind that we can curate session content based on what you’d like to work on and explore together.

Option 1: Withrow Park - a gentle stroll along paved paths, resting on a park bench or a shady patch of grass  - click here for a map

Option 2: Lower Don Parklands - a moderate hike along paved and dirt paths, with varied terrain and environs - click here for a map

These local outdoor in-person sessions could include walking and talking, and/or sitting and mindfully engaging with our surroundings, and/or hands-on Alexander Technique moments.

All options invite us to experience the pleasures of nature, while exploring what you would like to work on in yourself, in our expanded, outdoor movement studio.

Virtual sessions:

We will meet online in our respective comfortable spaces, with access to nature.  This could be your backyard, beside an open window, or sitting near a favourite plant inside your home.

A strong wifi connection is highly recommended to ensure we stay connected throughout our session.  As such, virtual sessions may require us to stick closer to home, but don’t worry!  Nature is all around us - we can still find ways to connect and explore!

These sessions are offered year-round, as a companion to virtual and in-person studio sessions.

If you are a new client, I ask that we meet for at least one virtual or in-studio session before we try an outdoor session together.

Due to the ongoing circulation of COVID-19, we will discuss COVID considerations together in advance of any in-person sessions to co-create a safe-enough environment for us to work together in a way that works for both of us.

The fee for Being with Nature: Outdoor Sessions is $120/60min.

Possibilities for exploration:

Walking with awareness: being aware that you are walking, noticing your impact on your surroundings and on the living beings around you.  Trying on moving and sensing from the perspective of other living beings, i.e.: seeing like the owl sees, listening like the deer listens, touching like the racoon touches.  Notice how you feel.

Spending 10-20 minutes sitting quietly in a natural space and observing/receiving through our senses.  Notice how you feel.

Responding to and engaging with a natural space through creating a soundscape, writing a poem, drawing/creating a visual representation, or creating a movement or gesture in response.  Notice how you feel.

Taking on a particular quality or characteristic from the environment into our bodies to explore the physical supports nature offers us, i.e.: moving with the fluidity of the rushing river vs the solidity of a boulder vs the upward intentionality of a tree’s branches.  Notice how you feel.

Noticing the cycles of expansion and gathering all around us in the new growth and what is dying back to make space for new growth.  Allowing ourselves to be called to different living beings and noticing how we feel in ourselves in response.

How we pay attention makes all the difference to how we feel in our bodies.  Trying on different states of being by awakening our senses: receiving, wonder, curiosity, slowness, quickness, awe, fascination.  Notice how you feel.