After giving so much to so many, after crossing the threshold with those in your care, come catch your breath and reconnect with yourself with the bounty of your own energy that is very much alive in you and in need of your care.

Breathwork is an active meditation that helps bring attention to the cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and somatic experiences and intelligences living in our bodies. It connects us to the outdated stories we carry while reconnecting us to joy, clarity, creativity, okayness, and aliveness. The practice reminds us we all, each of us, hold the power within ourselves to shift and heal parts of ourselves. It reminds us that we are each deserving of our own care. It’s you and your breath; the breath is the medicine and our bodies are wise. It’s a psychedelic and transcendent experience.

Come clear the energetic and emotional cobwebs and build up. Come breath even bigger and more deeply than you may have ever before. Come breathe in community while connecting to yourself. Come dig up the pockets of grief and offer them your witness. Come find the parts of you that are deeply in love with every part of you begging to feel that love returned. Come give yourself permission to let go of whatever is not serving you, to invite in expansion and growth. There’s a very good chance you will leave feeling more at ease, more rested, and in love with yourself.

This workshop is lovingly open to all types of doulas including birth, death, postpartum, abortion, and those supporting people who are transgender and gender nonconforming. Bring your wise body (of course!), your curiosity, a pen and notebook, wear comfortable clothing and, if you would like to, bring an eye pillow or cover.

Please note: Breathwork stirs up deep emotional experiences with the intention of lightening your load but it can also be a lot to navigate. It is my deep desire to create a space that feels nurturing, supportive, and restorative.

Jennifer Patterson is a grief worker who uses plants, breath, words to explore survivorhood, body(ies) and healing. A queer and trans affirming, trauma-experienced herbalist and breathwork facilitator, Jennifer offers sliding scale care as a practitioner through her private practice Corpus Ritual and is a member of The Breathe Network and Breathwork for Recovery. She facilitates writing and breathwork workshops at healing centers, LGBTQ centers, a needle exchange and harm reduction clinic, veterans hospitals, online with the Transformative Language Arts Network, sexual violence resource centers, at colleges and universities, and in the past, the collective What Would an HIV Doula Do? and a Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish healing center. She is the editor of Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti- Violence Movement (2016), speaks across the country, and has had writing published in places like VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, 580 Split, OCHO: A Journal of Queer Arts, Nat. Brut, The Establishment, HandJob, and The Feminist Wire. She is also the creative nonfiction editor of Hematopoiesis Press. A graduate of Goddard College’s MA program, Jennifer is finishing a book project focused on translating embodied traumatic experience through somatic practices and critical and creative nonfiction. You can find more at corpusritual.com.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/breathwork-for-doulas-july-tickets-64329823233