Dear friends and lovers of the more-than-human earth –

 Greetings from me, David Abram, on a crystalline blue afternoon here in the high desert foothills, cool and invigorating. I hope things are similarly lustrous where you are! Even as multiple geopolitical storms buffet the human realm, it remains an incalculable wonder to feel our animal bodies leaping and strolling within a world as strangely beautiful as this breathing planet…

I’m writing to alert you to an alluring workshop I’ll be teaching in late April. While I have often led extended retreats entwining ecology and magic in North America, and many times have taught extended courses in Britain and northern Europe, this next spring I will lead an intensive for the first time in Italy. The workshop will be held at the splendid La Loggia farm – an old peasant village lovingly restored to a working farm nestled among olive groves and thriving vineyards in the heart of Tuscany, between Florence and San Gimignano.

Entitled “Between the Body and the Breathing Earth,” this workshop/retreat will run from April 24th  to April 29th.

Can we replenish our capacity for joy, while renewing our solidarity with the living land? It’s hardly a simple question, for our world is rapidly becoming more dangerous. Once-hopeful democracies slide toward dictatorship, wars spread (and their attendant cruelties metastasize), the climate veers toward catastrophe. Humankind seems ever more distracted, hypnotized by our digital screens even as our fellow species tumble into extinction. At such a difficult moment in the world’s unfolding, how shall we nourish a soulful commitment to what matters?

In the course of our time together, we’ll explore the wild ecology of perception, stirring our animal senses awake. We’ll enter into felt relation with other beings – with creatures, plants, and the elemental, earthly surroundings. Weaving contemplative encounters with nature along with rich conversation, entwining bodily gesture and movement with the arts of poetry and storytelling, the retreat will empower each of us to bring our expressive lives into a fresh and ever-evolving alignment with the more-than-human Earth. 

The creative interplay between our animal body and the animate Earth has been a central thread running through all my work as a cultural ecologist and geophilosopher. In the last year I unexpectedly met and became friends with a gifted teacher of somatic experience and movement, named Bruce Fertman. A warm and gentle presence, Bruce – who has many students of his own around the world – attended a weeklong workshop that I taught in Canada last summer. Recognizing that the magic of creaturely embodiment resides at the mysterious heart of both our practices, I’ve invited Bruce to be my assistant in this workshop, in hopes that his corporeal wisdom will help nourish our collective time together. In the week prior to my workshop, he’ll also be leading his own retreat, for somatic educators and therapists, there at La Loggia farm.

Here are the practical matters:

– David Abram’s workshop/retreat, for all who are interested in deepening their relation with the more-than-human natural world, is titled “Between the Body and the Breathing Earth” and will run from April 24 th – 29 th in Tuscany.

– The tuition for David’s retreat will be €1,250 (which will include tuition and a meal each evening).

– The cost of lodging at Fattoria La Loggia will be €90 per day (which includes bed and breakfast in a shared – double occupancy – room with a private kitchen).

– Bruce Fertman’s retreat for somatic educators and therapists, “Touching Being Through the Body” will take place April 17 th – 22 nd (the week before my retreat) and will have the same cost. For any who wish to enroll for both workshops, the combined tuition will be €2,250 (a savings of €250).  

– On the day between our two workshops, April 23 rd , Bruce and I will lead an excursion to Florence to ponder the work of Michelangelo in relation to the expressive body, free of charge for participants in either workshop who might wish to join us.

If you would like to secure a place in the retreat, as space is quite limited, please write to Ruth Davis at: ruth.a.davis@me.com 

You can also email Ruth with any questions you might have.

And should the spirit move you to join us, I much look forward to greeting you there in Tuscany!  

In wildness and shadowed wonder,
David Abram
Dr. David Abram
Director, Alliance for Wild Ethics (AWE)
www.davidabram.org