Bernadette Pleasant – Somatic Movement to Envision & Birth Your Inspired New Life

In this opening module, Bernadette will lay the foundation for the course. Of utmost importance, she’ll establish the safety of the container, in which all are welcomed and supported — not only all participants… but all parts of all participants. Each person’s perspective and experience will be honored.

As the program begins, you’ll explore the recent storm-like challenges and stressors that have had the most impact on you. Bernadette will invite you to identify what issues have arisen for you — due to the global health crisis, social unrest, job loss, healthcare struggles, race relations, financial challenges, politics, family crises, personal loss, the isolation of quarantine, wearing masks, and more.

You’ll then examine where and how the impact of those difficulties — the frenzy, sense of danger, anger, panic, confusion, and upheaval — may still be present in your mind and body.

At the close of this first class, Bernadette will guide you to release any emotional disturbances that may arise during the session, so you feel complete at its end.

In this module, you’ll:

• Move your body to sacred drumming as an easy and free form of self-expression
• Be grounded in a safe, accepting, and welcoming container… free of judgment
• Identify how troubling and traumatic experiences get stuck in the body
• Be guided in self-love exercises to break patterns of separation, isolation, and emotional disconnection

As our world has recently been in a collective state of emergency, your body and mind may have experienced shock and overwhelm… possibly with nowhere to escape and no reliance on “normal” coping mechanisms.

In this second session, Bernadette will take a deep dive into what happens to the body when we encounter harsh stimuli. You’ll explore the impact on your mind and body when norms are disrupted or fractured.

You’ll examine the feelings associated with a dearth of safety, and with uncertainty, misinformation, lack, restrictions, obstruction of rights, and more. You’ll see how you’ve either coped or checked out, or both… looking at emotional responses such as fight, flight, or freeze, chaos, isolation, and apathy.

Bernadette will guide you in a body scan — to identify where those emotions may have settled in your body — and lead you through movement, sound, and other exercises to help you release, expand, and bathe your entire body in self-care.

During this session, you’ll:

• Receive guided movement instruction, with drumming accompaniment, to explore and release painful emotions
• Discover common ways the body responds to shock, fear, anxiety, anger, and trauma
• Be safely and gently guided to scan your body for stuck places of withholding, pain, and stress
• Be invited into breakout sessions where you’ll have the opportunity, if you wish, to share about your own experiences of fight, flight or freeze… or others

In this module, you’ll explore the experience of grief, endings, and loss… with a focus on nurturing and self-care.

Death, in this context, doesn’t only apply to the death of a person. Death and grieving can apply to all aspects of ending and loss — the end of an era, the loss of norms, of freedom, of health, employment, lifestyle, ideologies — and you’ll work with your disappointment over unfulfilled expectations.

Grief is a sacred gateway to a renewal of life, and it’s best managed when we acknowledge and honor it. This module will focus entirely on the Grief Ritual and the path to embrace the personal pain loss has caused you.

With Bernadette as your guide, you’ll be invited to voice what you’re missing. You’ll come to understand the importance of making space for grief, rather than ignoring it or trying to power through it.

She’ll bring in a remarkable guest teacher, Elana Bell, who’ll lead you through an exercise of sacred song and sound healing — to help you vocalize unexpressed disappointments.

Throughout, Bernadette will hold a safe container for the collective experience of grief that unites us and creates empathy.

And she’ll close the session with a beautiful celebration of life.

In this class, you’ll experience:

• Nurturing movement exercises that include the experience of “Cradling” as a pathway to self-love and healthy healing touch
• The value of healthy grief as an important process to honor life and cultivate new vitality
• A sacred sound-bath ritual for healing unresolved areas of loss, hurt, and disappointment
• How the gateways of grief can be honored and transfigured into lively and sacred rituals of celebration

Out of the loss of an old reality comes the beginning of growth. This can be an awkward and clumsy stage of navigating something that’s yet to be defined.

In this module, Bernadette will guide you through an inner journey of adjusting to this new, inspired life. This can feel like an “embryonic” experience of being suspended in a new, incomplete, unfamiliar, and curious state of being.

You’ll release the myth of “getting it right,” and creatively open the gate to new ways of approaching unfamiliar situations, with a focus on empathy, curiosity, compassion, and humanity.

You’ll experience how these internal embryonic states feel in your body… and begin to create new neural pathways of understanding.

You’ll acknowledge the rapid adaptation to new norms — such as social distancing, masks, Zoom, and other new digital platforms for business and personal communication — while also determining what activities are now safe to do in person again.

You’ll also learn how to manage complicated conversations about race and social conflicts.

And, you’ll honor sacred silence… the importance of stillness amidst the noise.

Join this session to:

• Experience sound- and movement-based exercises that explore the awkward juxtaposition of curiosity and uncertainty
• Explore sacred silence and the value of inner-focused and meditative contemplation, to quiet the noise of the external world
• Affirm the value of being in a fluid and gentle “right-brained” state of experimental adaptation without the “left-brained” constructs of “getting it right”
• Learn how the body can develop new neural pathways — allowing the mind to open to new ways of being, through sound and movement

In this module, you’ll explore this crucial moment of reckoning. We’re no longer unaware. We’re in the space of undeniable truth, with nowhere to go but forward.

Like an infant coming rapidly through the birth canal, this is an intense but necessary stage… and there’s no turning back. You’ll begin to see this time of crisis as a catalytic opportunity to shift the human family and find growth and peace within it.

In this process, you’re both the one giving birth and the one being birthed. You’re likely to experience twisting, turning, primal feelings of discomfort… and you may feel quite exhilarated. It’s a thrust forward, a moment of great realization, as you step into new possibilities with faith.

You’ll look to ancestral-wisdom streams — calling on valuable cultural beliefs and practices to break free of falsehoods that no longer serve. You’ll examine diverse cultural values and norms, and ask big life questions… about your place, position, identity, and impact in the world.

Within this session, you’ll:

• Experience symbolic “birthing” of the self through sound and movement
• Explore the shadow side — the fiery, energetic part of the self that holds courage and passion
• Discover the exploration of axiology, a valuable understanding of diverse cultural wisdoms
• Find passionate release and self-expression with dynamic, energetic movement practices

With the social shifts arising from the new vaccines — the reopenings after a long period of separation — you’ll examine the body and mind’s responses to reintegration in a new version of society.

There’s a momentum forward into new and uncharted territory. Bernadette will guide you to feel that shift in your body. She’ll share wisdom on continuing to move ahead — with self-care and management of your and others’ vulnerabilities.

She’ll lead you through a deep awakening process… to gain access to new perspectives and a fresh understanding of yourself and the world.

You’ll affirm a sense of safety in your body and start to express your authentic sense of self… making space for others to do the same.

At the end of this class, Bernadette will give you homework for the final module happening the following week. She’ll ask (and inspire!) you to create a mantra, a love letter, a mission statement, or a declaration of intention — a vision of awakening for yourself and humanity — that you can present as an offering to the course community and the world.

You’ll dream into new possibilities and poetically dance and move that experience.

In this module, Bernadette will guide you to:

• Experience a symbolic awakening through sound and movement
• Explore newness and experiential awakenings through journaling and sharing your innovative and creative way to design and live a new life
• Discover your ability to redefine safety and honor your body’s wisdom
• Prepare to create a transformative vision for yourself and the community

This module is a celebration of your journey of healing… an integration of your experiences throughout the course… and an opportunity to move forward in the world in a new and illuminated way.

Thus far, you’ve been discovering a new land, planting fresh seeds in fertile ground, and arriving at a place to celebrate the harvest.

In this final session, you’ll share your new, visionary, heart-centered intentions for yourself and humanity. You’ll embody the mantra “Be the change you want to see in the world,” generating a new passion for transformation and healing.

Taking in all the lessons that these tumultuous times have brought, you can now reimagine life with a vibrant future.

You’ll be invited to share your intentions, digest what your co-participants have offered, receive final words from Bernadette, and joyously celebrate — closing the sacred container with dance and the life-affirming chant “Joy Is My Birthright!”

In this final session, you’ll:

• Discuss and integrate the earlier modules… honoring your sacred journey from awareness to empowerment
• Digest lessons and insights and share about this time of learning, healing, and growing
• Share the collective vision statements of the group for yourselves, the community, and the world
• Honor the experience of this course with a joy-filled closing celebration and the invitation to take the compassion, wisdom, and commitment you’ve gained out into the new world