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An experiential online workshop on World Quaker Day exploring body-based early Quaker practices with Katy Hawkins.
This online workshop explores a longing among contemporary Friends to revitalize the radically embodied culture of the early Quaker movement. We will begin with the briefest of historical introductions, describing the body-based practices of First-generation Friends (resources will be shared for further independent study). Then we will get down to the business of experimenting with current forms of Embodied Quakerism that reimagine old practices—like Quaker chanting, prayerful body positioning, and hands-on healing. After being guided through these practices, Friends will gather in small break-out groups to share their own corporeal experiences with Spirit, and/or encounters with other Quakers who might be discovering emergent forms of embodiment that bring something entirely new. Reconvening in the big group, we’ll have some time to exchange ideas and resources for deepening. We will close with a period of worship where together we commit to opening our whole selves to how Spirit might want to move through—not just in familiar ways, but perhaps in radically new/old ones.
Leader Katy Hawkins, PhD, is a lifelong Quaker and a member of Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting, where she teaches weekly classes experimenting with a Quaker approach to mind/body integration (Shiné: Mind/Body/Spirit). Her teaching draws from training in modern dance, yoga, and Social Justice Somatics. She is the author of Thinking Feelingly, a collection of essays and somatic practices for an embodied experience of poetry. In everything she does, Katy explores new ways that ritual, connection, and play might heal our dissociation from feeling.