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Meet Us
Dr. Emma Coddington Brown, PhD
FOUNDER of SENSE8
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In this life-time, I have followed her call, Earth Mother/Papatūānuku, to know and understand being human in this beautiful and cruel world. The question that called me in as a child, continues to guide me today: How do the forces of Stress and Love organize our bodies, relationships and institutions? To grapple with this core question, I spent a large part of my adult life navigating the paths of Science - Zoology, Ecology, Eco-physiology and Neuroscience. Becoming skilled in answering my questions using biophysics, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and neuroethology. All so that I can better and better understand the biology of unconscious behaviors - expressed and experienced under duress and connected in love, lived and inherited, hidden and (by necessity) forgotten. Forgotten until we locate ways to rebuild a sense of home in our own bodies and our core-self. After 30+ years co-learning with animals & students as a teacher-scholar in universities and 15+ years of learning and healing myself using creativity, somatic therapies, emotional literacies, and nature - I realized I needed to move beyond the highly oppressive structures of universities and science - to weave all of who I am becoming - to share what I have learned. And so, SENSE8 was born - a container for all that I and we do together. SENSE8 is a song and a place for We, of Liminal Spaces, displaced by the courageous call to adventure, inherited and experienced traumas, and seeking home & joy within and in com-unity. I am here to support your efforts to venture inside so that you can be in right relationship with self and others. To re-member who you really are. I come sharing gifts: Certified as a facilitator of Liberatory Somatic practices (Resilience Toolkit®), Somatosensory Art Therapy practices, and using art and journaling to facilitate personal transformation (Intentional Creativity). I weave the AND - knowledge and practices in science & art, colonial & indigenous, physiology & archetypes, stress & love, known & unknown, individual & interpersonal, personal & collective, social morays & structures. A skilled shadow journeyer and edge dweller. Work with me centers re-connecting and re-membering your specific ancestral lineages and cultural imprints. We might track and re-member fragmented parts of yourself. We will spend time reconnecting, recalibrating and regenerating your capacity to sense into the worlds (inner and outer), track your motor patterns (behaviors/practices) and learn the languages of your emotions. I bring knowledge, skills and practices to support you on your journey. My inner compass is grounded in clear principles & values, and I am committed to my practice becoming ever more socially responsible. As a dynamically dis/abled former scientific researcher and professor, now artist and realistic mystic - I weave indigenous and western science with intentional creativity, somatosensory art therapy, somatic resilience building, decolonized ways of being, Dis/CRT and liberatory frameworks, and culturally competent trauma-informed somatic healing approaches. I am an Ocean Nomad. A proud misfit and immigrant. A settler & of Aotearoa with a fluid and dis/abled body. Born and raised, and responsible to people of the Pacific Ocean and Islands of Aotearoa - and, currently dwells in and am responsible to the people of Kalapuya and Willamette Valley, Oregon, USA.
COLLABORATORS & CO-MENTORS
Denise Christopher
A Love Coach & Facilitator I come ready to assist you to reconnect with yourself and others with love, generosity, and grace. I have been a love coach for 15+ years, a social worker for 10+ years, and now weave in intentional creativity and guided drawing practices to support you. My roots are in St Vincent. Born in the UK, now living in Calgary Canada, I am of the Caribbean.
Chatelle Jeram
A Wellness Consultant & Coach After spending over a decade working in the corporate, not-for-profit and education sectors, in New Zealand, Nepal, India, Thailand and the United Kingdom, my path has led me to supporting others in being proactive in supporting their state of wellness. I support individual clients in breaking through their fears and limitations so they can move forward with more freedom and clarity. I am passionate about empowering individuals and teams to transform their potential into results. I help corporate teams and companies develop and implement well-being strategies with a focus on accountability, self-care, accessibility and being proactive. I am qualified to use the following modalities: - Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT or 'tapping') - Talk-therapy and coaching - Intentional Creativity processes - Meditation and mindfulness practices I am based in Wales and work with clients via video and phone calls.
Alison Haitana
I am a Shamanic Practitioner, Intuitive Guide & Intentional Creativity Teacher. For the past 10 years, I have studied in depth on all manner of esoteric knowledge. The Entrepreneurial journey fuses my wisdom & love of creativity, shamanism, magick & alchemy. My business is built on a solid & sustainable values-based foundation that originates from my cultural cosmology as a New Zealand Indigenous woman. Passionate about embodying & feeling through our human experience to merge with our Divinity. Bridging the worlds of the practical & magical, as a Tech Mystic, I weave energetic intention & archetypal patterns into website design & course creation. As a Story Alchemist, I uses her skills alchemy, creativity & faery tales to re-weave a new story for yourself via a canvas. You can contact me on; Website www.alisonhaitana.com Email admin@alisonhaitana.com Instagram @alisonhaitana Facebook @ahaitana
Dr. Carla Parker-Athill, PhD
A socially responsible researcher & teacher of neuroscience. Currently, a Professor of neuroscience at Connecticut College (MA), my research investigates how the social forces of racism are experienced as stress and explore the physiological impacts. I am committed to shifting how medicine and medical education is offered. Emma and I collaborate through our shared research questions. Home for me is here in the USA and St Kits - Emma calls it Caribbean Country.
Our Intention
The intention of sense8 is to support people who are wanting to grow more nourishing ways of being, and build better relationships with self and others. We are committed to contributing to the global currents of change, disrupting oppressive systems and colonial ways of being. We are for radically transformed societies. We do this by bringing creative and science-informed somatic practices to individuals, organizations, and institutions. Our offerings and programs engage the body-mind-spirit (emotions, sensations, physiology, story, and energy - individual and collective), in order to enable repair, transformation, and regeneration.
We believe that all of us, when we are not stressed out of our gourds, are organically creative, curious, and connected. We share a dream of radically transformed societies in which social rules and structures actually provide containers and occasions for all to be creative, curious, and connected in their own fluid ways. And like the wild and wide diversity of life in this planet, we imagine there will be many different ways in which communities and people become alive and function. In our dream, we imagine a society in which folks iteratively build more and more decolonized ways of bring and doing - developing food sovereignty, Maternal Gift Economy (Miki Kashtan), and methods of process that support all - Convergent Facilitation (M. Kashtan) as opposed to binary voting which favors dominant and flattened outcomes.
We envision practices of repair and healing of transgenerational and current violences enacted by indivudals and institutions enacting oppressive social structures. We envision, an end to the very structures and practices reifying oppressive practices of settler-colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and rapacious corporate capitalism. AND. We also envision, radically new ways of being together - many different ways of feeding, sheltering, creating, loving and connecting - many different ways of being responsible to the interconnected nature of life and societies. And enjoying the abundant harvests that are possible when we live in right-relationship with all people - human and non-human alike.
Our Dream
Our Principles
If our Intentions and Dreams form part of our coherent center (motivation and energy source), then the Principles (and values within) function as the directions of a compass. Principles hold us accountable and responsible , guiding every action, workshop, decision-making process, and interaction. This approach does not require uniformity of thought or action, rather it provides a framework for each unique person to show up fully themselves while also being accountable to community.
Life is a
Journey
In this way, life invites us into learning. We are invited to re-member forgotten fragments of ourselves and our lineage, regenerate after storms, reframe stories that animate or subconsciously control our lives, relationships and bodies, and re-imagine who we are becoming.
Relational
We are all part of the whole - literally composed of stardust and the droppings of earthworms, interconnected through the water and minerals of life, and animated by the air we share and breathe. None of us are alone - yet socially constructed stories absorbed unconsciously through family and institutional dynamics would teach us that we are on our own.
- And Yet - there's a part of you that knows this is a fallacy.
We are entering an age where we all are invited to learn how to be a good relation while also being true to ourselves. Embedded within this value are the practices of community of care and kindness, agency and sovereignty, cooperation and co-creation with transparency, tending to trauma and transgressions with grace and generosity while holding ourselves accountable and responsible. And. Importantly remembering how to reclaim the gifts of being our unique and sometimes dissonant selves while being together, working together, singing together, and creating together.
Creativity
We believe that the natural state of all beings is one of creativity and play - these are states where our innate curiosity and joy can lead us into the unknown and emerge with new-to-us creations. It takes skills, practice and knowledge to cultivate the conditions that support sustained creative states. We, at SENSE8, are committed to cultivating these conditions: radical rest, tending each other in mutual care and aid, learning to practice witness, learning to practice repair and regeneration, responsible to interfering with the social "lies with teeth" (Resma Menakeem), practice in ritual and ceremony, and learning to experience joy and pleasure together.
Shining
All of us shine in our own way - when we are anchored in who we belong to, the land and waters that raised us, and stories that animate us. Shining is a state of being when we are connected to our roots and anchored to spirit through our practices. In this state, we can receive undistorted information about the world around us and from within. In this state, our gifts flow forth, we relate from a grounded place, and we can create and co-create with clarity and joy. We cultivate this state through our own practices.
Finding
the AND
If there is one principle that most consistently guides us it is this one - always finding the AND. For example: I can be sad AND joyful, excited AND nervous, fearful AND committed, accomplished AND exhausted, in conflict AND loving. There are always multiple truths and experiences of one event AND these are occurring within the framework of the dominant social matrix. Here we are always learning to be in the jazz of it all - attuning to the collective rhythms and orient to the cycles of life/nature, amplifying the middle tones of anchors and nourishment, and listening for the top notes of bursts & flourishes by co-creatives. We are ready to witness, dance with, and offer our own riff in this melody of life.
Apply Today
Apply to work with Emma:
Private sessions
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Creativity Workshops
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Classes
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Consulting &/or Coaching
for social & structural liberation