One Bright and Real Caress: A Playshop in Being Here

Can we be here now?
Really be here?

A playshop in staying with what is.

There are a thousand ways we leave our life. You know them: Staying busy. Staying numb. Staying distracted. Staying elsewhere.

Every so often, something interrupts the habit—a yellow-tailed bird lands so near you it takes your breath away. A butterfly lands on your hat on the first warm day. A word a stranger speaks penetrates your absentmindedness. A grief refuses to be paved over any longer. A persistent Yes! bubbling up you can no longer ignore.

These are moments that opens wider than expected—time dilates, past and future fall away, and you feel it: the possibility of really being here. Not conceptually or spiritually bypassed. But here-now, as sensation and participation.

This playshop is for that.

One Bright and Real Caress is a 5-week experiential journey into presence, where nature connection and creative permeability become doorways into direct contact with the moment and the more-than-human world.

Together we explore the subtle ways we escape, practice meeting life without agenda, deepen intimacy with impermanence, and expand our capacity to say YES! to the full spectrum of being alive.

Through embodied practices, wild writing/expressive arts, and nature-connection invitations in relationship with place, we practice inhabiting our lives.

This is not about becoming better—but about becoming more here and staying with what already is alive. Not perfect presence, but real participation in the messy, fleeting, astonishing ceremony already underway.

In part emerging from the field of the poetry collection One Bright and Real Caress (all participants will receive a copy as a part of the course), this journey invites us back into the simple, radical practice of being here. We will work with poetry, yes. Not to interpret, but as doorways and spells of attention. As invitations to step more fully into the astonishing aliveness of the world.

DATES: Friday Mornings, June 19 – July 24
TIME: 9:00AM- 11:00AM Pacific Time | 11:00-1:00PM EST
Online | Sliding scale $125- 200

(Note: Limited to 8 to ensure intimate and empowering space)

Register here, or VENMO: RyanVanLenning with the note “One Bright” and a good email for zoom link.