One Day Experience / Workshop, 10am - 4pm

Winter practice is a time for hibernation, to look back with inner reflection but to also look forward to what is to come, and recognising that rebirth is part of an essential cycle, with increased activity to follow.

“The bear goes into its cave in winter, teaching us to go within, in order to digest our experiences and to become a spiritual warrior by integrating intuition and inner wisdom with strength and purpose” - Glennie Kindred

Everything has a season. Our bodies, our relationships with people and our habitat, our challenges and phases in life. Life isn't static it contains patterns, cycles and rhythm and with it an opportunity for awareness, adaption and harmony. 

Move with Seasons is an event to rediscover joyful and play driven universal movement practices, from climbing, running, jumping dancing and fighting, to the practice of stillness, reflection, insight and self-care. All in the context of nature and the season with a supportive group.

Along the way we explore the relationship, connection and interactions between body, tribe and habitat - your self, group and locomotive practice - and how they sculpt one another. Does our practice explore qualities and relationships that can be carried over into life? How do we adapt to change if we don't expose ourselves to variety, adversity? Is it useful to recognise parallels between your life and the changing seasons?

We move with each other
We move with the environment
We move with the seasons

Come and rediscover what moves you

How much - £95 for the first 5 tickets and £120 for the remaining.

Places are limited to 10.

You will experience:

• Rediscover playful and natural movement in the context of nature and the season.

• Explore the blurred lines between effectiveness (utility) and expression when moving solo or interacting with the environment or another human(s) and how creativity is cultivated in both.

• Ecological movement - Ideas around the co-creation of movement between body, tribe and habitat and a solo, group and environmental practice.

• Tree Dancing to Tree Running - learn how to flow in trees via the lenses of different forms of arboreal locomotion, tree climbing and dance. Play on the continuum of Treerunning and Treedancing. What techniques in Parkour work well in trees. How can we take ideas from our solo and group dance and movement situation practice and apply them to dancing with the trees

• Flow - learn to flow in context on the ground and over various obstacles, whether grass, bark or leafy terrain,

• Ground interaction - ground flow and break falling, rebuild your relationship, confidence and vocabulary moving on and getting to and from the ground.

• Partner/group interaction - rapport/connection building games, with roughhousing / rough and tumble play and contact improvisation

• Manipulative skills / cooperative building - Unique building and crafting tasks putting lifting carrying and tool use into context and exploring creative expression in finding harmony in adding to one's environment with the "sculpting of space"

• Mobility development tools - joint health and longevity, building flexibility with strength and control, resilience and the sensitivity to react to the unknown.

• An introduction to strength training with practical application to natural movement and dealing with chaotic situations in mind.

Replenish your connection with our woodlands within the beautiful Hampstead Heath

What is moving seasonally?

Adaption. Awareness of rhythm, change and ‘spirit of place’. Relationships.

Most can relate and observe how they might eat differently according to the season; the temperature, emotional connection, how they feel and what 'should' be most relevant - what is actually available to eat at that time of year. I believe the seasons also affect how we move (amongst many other things), whether we are aware of it or not - from one’s body language (shivering with self-embrace from the cold or open and confident from the warm sun), to energy levels and awareness of how we want to train and move, which if done predominately outside will influence what is practical and perhaps relevant. The conditions from a utility perspective, but also with awareness, can feed our emotions to impulses that feed our movement.

We move to fit the environment (adaptability) and the environment MOVES us (impulse or emotionally).

Winter practice is a time for hibernation and symbolic death and rebirth. A time to look back with inner reflection but to also look forward to what is to come, and recognising that rebirth is part of an essential cycle, with increased activity to follow. “The bear goes into its cave in winter, teaching us to go within, in order to digest our experiences and to become a spiritual warrior by integrating intuition and inner wisdom with strength and purpose” - Gleannie Kindred. Winter brings short days, cold and often hardship. It is necessary to slow down and conserve much-needed energy. naturally, we withdraw and focus more within whilst we wait for the energy to change and the warmth to return. This is a great opportunity for reflection and self-care and to use the looking inward to create a sanctuary. Seed, ideas and plans can be given time to incubate as all cycles of life require. After emerging from our sanctuary of being inside more in winter, this event comes at the time of transition between seasons - not yet spring but we can feel the energy rising and we feel ready to bring the inner wisdom cultivated with our inner journey and share them with the world and each other to grow with the increasing light from the sun.

This connection to our seasonal environment is what makes us human. “Move With The Seasons” is my invitation to explore our relationships; with our bodies, habitat and tribe (community). Our primal sense of rhythm and change when moving in our habitat is best experienced when in nature, not in a year-round controlled environment such as a gym. A movement practice can benefit from this oscillation rather than flat-lining in a uni-season of disconnection. Static, for me, feels like stagnation. No change lessens the opportunities for awareness and adaptation - which lessens my engagement. I do my best to remain open to change through exposure to the dynamism of our seasons. Change to my habitat. My community. My family. My children. My aging body. Open to the adaptability required and the opportunity for creativity that never ceases to get old.

Being outside is the best expression of our humanness, with contextual and playful movement giving us the best foundation of movement we can. What better way to explore natural movement than in the context of habitat and actually being outside. Our skin grows strong only when exposed to a diversity of surfaces, and that diversity of nature is nourishing. We cannot appreciate wrapping up in the warm without experiencing the contrast of nature's powerful change in season from summer.

This connection to our seasonal environment and our challenges and triumphs is part of what makes us human.