Are you feeling despair, overwhelm, shock, fear, rage, numbness in the face of rising f@scism in the U.S. and beyond? 

Are you seeking more earth and body-based tools and practices in the face of this escalating pressure, trauma, violence, and chaos? 

Are you longing for community in which to practice building an embodied sense of safety and solidarity that resists the authoritarian playbook and makes militarized nation state borders obsolete? 

In this six-week online practice group, we’ll be in a rigorous practice of relational somatics and collective healing, following the arc of Eliana Rubin’s recently published book, Taking the State Out of the Body: A Guide To Embodied Resistance to Zionism.

As we approach the two year anniversary of Oct. 7th, the most recent and extreme wave of genocidal violence against Palestinian people and land, many of us are feeling worn down by our rage and our organizing efforts, all while witnessing engineered starvation and conditions continuing to worsen in Gaza and the West Bank. It can feel as if nothing has worked, that nothing is working.

Meanwhile, countless other expressions of violence and repression roll out all around us, from mass deportation and detention of immigrants, denying lifesaving healthcare to trans youth, to denial of intensifying climate chaos. 

As we approach the two year anniversary of Oct. 7th, the most recent and extreme wave of genocidal violence against Palestinian people and land, many of us are feeling worn down by our rage and our organizing efforts, all while witnessing engineered starvation and conditions continuing to worsen in Gaza and the West Bank. It can feel as if nothing has worked, that nothing is working.

Meanwhile, countless other expressions of violence and repression roll out all around us, from mass deportation and detention of immigrants, denying lifesaving healthcare to trans youth, to denial of intensifying climate chaos. 

We need a multitude of roles and actions to resist f@scism, especially in this moment of polycrises as we see the ongoing collapse of empire, modernity and late-stage capitalism feeding f@scism’s growth. 

And we need to collectively counter and transform the very ways we have internalized these systems of domination within the very tissues of our bodies. We need to come home to ourselves and each other – to reclaim reciprocity and right relationship with all of life.

Eliana Rubin’s book offers us anti-colonial/imperialist political theory, alongside a wealth of body-based practices to support us in collectively doing just what the title suggests: Taking the State Out of the Body.

Participants in this somatic practice group will be expected to read each chapter of the book ahead of each corresponding session. You can purchase the book or ebook here.

During each session, we will be in somatic practice toward building our individual and collective capacity to be deeply and courageously present to this moment and what it’s requiring of us. This is not a traditional book group in that we won’t be discussing content together so much as engaging with the practices that support embodied transformation toward a greater felt sense of our shared dignity, belonging, and relationality. 

Each session will include grounding in the themes and frameworks from the chapter of the week, as well as full and small group (via breakouts) somatic practices related to these themes and space for participant sharing and connection. Participants will also be encouraged to continue practicing between sessions. Video participation is strongly encouraged as is possible/accessible for the sake of deepening embodiment and connection.

Participants will leave the series feeling… 

• Increased ability to ground and center in the face of overwhelm and panic;

• Strengthened felt sense of connection despite f@scism’s attempts to divide and isolate us;

• Greater courage while presencing our valid fear;

• Increased agency and choice as we work with our body’s paralysis/freeze response;

• Expanded capacity to respond in service of what we care about instead of reacting out of old patterns when under pressure; 

• More access to the relational field with both human and more-than-human beings; and

• Deepened connection to our dignity and lessened sense of embodied shame.

Sliding Scale Exchange

Please reference this sliding scale discernment guide from Alexis J. Cunningfolk of Worts & Cunning Apothecary for support with this and reach out if you have questions.

Reduced Cost (Scholarship rate): $40/session / $240 total   

The Scholarship option is reserved for people experiencing financial hardship with priority going to people who identify as BIPOC, queer, trans, and/or living with disabilities and/or chronic illness. We have limited availability of these spots, so please only choose this option if you need this discount in order to be able to afford the course. If you're not sure, please reach out.

True cost: $60/session / $360 total    

True cost of the course. If you are able to pay this amount and still meet your basic needs, then this is the price for you to choose.

Sustainer cost: $80/session / $480 total    

If you have financial assets, or identify as upper-middle or owning class, then this is the rate for you. Paying at this rate supports the scholarship fund, making this course possible and accessible to more people.

Investor cost: $120 / $720 total

If you have inherited wealth and feel called to invest in future offerings from Simon and Nicole of this nature, including a scholarship fund to make future offerings economically accessible to more people who don't have financial resources to pay for this type of group. 

We will be redistributing 5% of money received to MECA (Middle East Children’s Alliance).

Dates and Times

12:30pm-2:00pm PST // 3:30pm-5:00pm EST

Six Thursdays Online, October 2nd through Thursday, November 6th, 2025

Zoom link will be sent upon registration. 

Registration and Payment

Please complete and submit this registration form by Monday, September 26th at 5pm PST / 8pm EST. Once you submit payment via Venmo (@simonwolff) and receive a confirmation email, your spot in the group is secured. 

Facilitator Bios

Simon Wolff (they/he) is a politicized healer, ritualist, and artist stewarding one-to-one and group somatic and ancestral healing for the sake of personal and collective liberation. They identify as a white, antiracist, antizionist, queer, trans, disabled, neuroqueer person of the Ashkenazi Jewish diaspora living on Nipmuc and Pocomtuc land colonially known as Northampton, MA. Simon’s people are from Lithuania, France, Germany, and Eastern and Northwestern Europe.  After 20+ years of justice work and embodied spiritual practice, Simon has cultivated a keen understanding of the physical, psychological, and spiritual impact of the trauma of oppression, as well as what it takes to both resist, heal, and nurture the world to come. Simon has trained in Hatha Yoga, Somatic Experiencing, generative somatics, and Ancestral Medicine. Simon can be found tending joy and awe while in their garden of culinary and medicinal herbs, veggies, and flowers, making herbal medicine for their mutual aide Beshert Apothecary, walking with human and dog friends in the woods, printmaking, dancing, singing, and cooking with beloveds.

Nicole Bauman (they/them) is a midwest-based queer parent steeped in the sacred work of facilitation, transformative justice, somatics and Nonviolent Communication. They see building conflict resiliency as an essential part of living into the world to come, and are passionate about creating space where personal and collective liberation feel possible. As the descendant of White Western European peasant farmers who carried their trauma with them to the Americas, Nicole is committed to centering racial justice and ancestral healing in their work. 

Nicole’s background in farming, intentional community, yoga, doula work and natural building grounds their work in connection to the earth and the body. Nicole is a Certified Professional Healing-Centered Coach and a student of Somatics with the Strozzi Institute and in the lineage of generative somatics. Nicole finds rootedness in growing food, daily walks to the river, weaving willow baskets, and tending and being tended by community in the Rust Belt city of Elkhart, Indiana (occupied Potawatomi territory).  

Simon and Nicole’s relationship goes back to 2010, when they met in yoga teacher training in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Their yoga practices were one thread of their embodiment journeys, and they reconnected in 2023 (?? is that right?) as these journeys independently led them to embodied racial justice work and politicized somatic practice and training. It’s been a delight to find each other again after all these years, through a midwest politicized somatics collective, and now to get to collaborate in this way!

FAQ’s

Who is this course for? 

This course is for all identities and abilities and requires no previous experience with somatics or embodiment, while also welcoming those with some or lots of previous experience. We all practice, learn and deepen together! All bodies welcome. Come as you are. 

Simon and Nicole are both white-bodied antiracist somatic practitioners committed to holding multiracial space with care, humility, and awareness of the limits of their own lived experiences and socialization. Feel free to reach out to us if you aren't sure if this offering would meet you in a good way.

What is somatics? 

The word “Somatics” comes from the Greek root “soma,” which means “the living organism in its wholeness.” If we collectively still all had intact earth, spirit, and body-centered cultural ways of living, we may not need or have developed this word, but/and, here we are. Many of us have inherited and internalized a colonial worldview that values the rational mind over the wise body.  

Though Simon and Nicole have both been shaped by various lineages of earth and body-based practice, this offering is rooted in the lineage of politicized somatics known as generative somatics, which is also connected to the Strozzi Institute. From the perspective of this lineage, somatics is a practice that builds power and facilitates individual and collective transformation at the level of the body for the sake of large-scale change. This embodied transformation allows our actions, ways of being, relating, and perceiving to align with our values, commitments, and vision for our lives and the world. Somatics allows us to cultivate the ability to feel ourselves – our dignity, our truth, or longings – while also feeling for that of those around us, both human and more-than-human (ie: plants, trees, animals, the earth). Somatics increases our ability to assess safety and threat in order to move with care and intentionality, rather than our conditional tendencies or habituated survival strategies, which may now be outdated and mis-attuned. 

Relational somatics is being used more and more in this field and on the one hand, it is a bit redundant because somatics is inherently about how we are shaped and how we can relate to ourselves and the world around us with greater relational care, attunement, and honoring. That said, somatics has become a buzz word and can be interpreted as simply noticing sensations in the body. While this is an important aspect of building somatic awareness, being explicit about when we are practicing relational somatics, we are committing to expanding our awareness beyond our own body and relating to other bodies (other human bodies, tree bodies, animal bodies, the earth bodies, etc.) in a way that honors their innate dignity as well as our own.