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Meet Us
Dr. Emma Coddington Brown, PhD
FOUNDER of SENSE8
Hi! I am raised by whanau and whenua (family and land) of Aotearoa (New Zealand), and am currently a settler on the lands of Kalapuya peoples (colonially known as the Willamette Valley, OR, USA). A core question has organized my life: How do stress & love organize our bodies, relationships, organizations, and institutions? If I distill my personal practice to five core commitments they are: Becoming a better relative | Your medicine and wisdom reside within your body, and your body is connected to all (literally) | Inquiry through Art and nature | Emotion is our bridge between spirit and form | Devotions, ceremony, and painting as medicine. Academic Disciplines: PhD & Assoc. Professor of Behavioral Neuroendocrinology & Ethology (includes - Endocrinology | Physiology | Neuroscience | Sociology & Indigenous Praxis). Certified and practiced for 8 years: Somatosensory Art® Therapist (Cornelia Elbrecht - Australia), Resilience Toolkit® Facilitator (Lumos Transforms), and Art as an Intentional Creativity praxis - facilitator and practitioner (iMusea). A Brief Story of Me: I journeyed to the USA to study neuroethology, and along the way I met my honey, made so many wonderful friends and teachers, and eventually became faculty in a small liberal arts college for a time (became an Assoc. Professor in the Sciences). Within academia, I was blessed to meet and work with so many generous and deeply knowledgeable folks (community members, students, staff and faculty from all over the world) who patiently taught me to understand social structures and forces, invited me to become more and more responsible. And to return to my own lineages of practices, Mātauranga Māori, and wisdom of Celtic traditions. Eventually - my own learning translated into many changes in the way I was called to teach and do research. I was so lucky that for a while I had much latitude to design and offer classes in physiology & biology that wove with social analysis and art, western and indigenous science methods and frameworks. Examples of my most delicious courses: Biology of Creativity, Biology of Decision-Making, Reckoning with Racism and Ableism in the Sciences and Health Systems, Biology of Lactation, Cool as a Window into Being Human, and Physiology of Animals and Plants. And while I love to create learning spaces for others, I had to leave academia for so many reasons. One was an irresistible pull towards creative practices ...... So now, 6 years later, I am willing to call myself an Artist and Therapeutic Facilitator. I weave somatosensory art + sciences + Resilience Toolkit® (A liberatory somatic approach to tending NS) + social analysis and decolonizing methods + much more. I tend my own ongoing inquiries into Emotions and Social Scripts through my creative practice now. AND I tend to individuals/relatives (clients) called to work with me. In all relationships, I offer ways to come home through your body AND accompany the journey to identifying and re-writing the stories and scripts imbedded in our body-minds (through many generations of oppressive social structures and dominant social norms). I join all of us who are committed to reckoning with and re-imagining better ways to be relatives and be in community. There is so much room for all to shine - for together we are part of the constellations of this universe (this is not a metaphor). I am an Ocean Nomad. A proud Queer misfit and Pacifika 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. 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.
COLLABORATORS & CO-MENTORS
Denise Christopher
A Love Coach, Intentional Creativity Teacher & 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.
Alison Haitana
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
Chatelle Jeram
I support clients with transforming fears and limitations so they can move ahead with more clarity and confidence. I help corporate teams and companies develop and implement well-being strategies with a focus on accountability, proactive self-care, equity and developing a growth mindset. Discover practical experiences to explore and restore diminished self-efficacy and self-agency. Shifting limiting beliefs and thought patterns means you have more energy to take action on what you want and show up as You! Best of all you feel the aliveness and adventure of living life as you choose. I offer the following modalities for transformation: Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT or 'tapping') Talk-therapy and coaching Intentional Creativity ® drawing, painting and writing processes Meditation and mindfulness practices I am based in North Wales and work with clients via video calls. My ancestry is Indian and my motherland is New Zealand. I have lived experiences of being a migrant and immigrant in several countries across Asia and Europe.
Dr. Carla Parker-Athill
A Teacher-Scholar. 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.
Anchors of SENSE8
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.
Our Dream
We envision practices of repair and healing of transgenerational and current violences enacted by individals and institutions entrained by 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 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 very specific lineages, 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. How to be true to Kaitiaki - responsible relational stewardship of land and people. 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
Creative practices are the technologies we, at sense8, lean on to restore the body-containers, and facilitate Mauri (life force) within to flourish clear. 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, new-to-us instructions for life, and renewed ways of being. It takes skills, practice and knowledge to cultivate the conditions that support sustained creative states. And everyone can do it.
We, at sense8, are committed to cultivating these conditions: developing practices of personal and culturally specific practices of devotion, locating and living with life-giving rhythms, 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 beauty, 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. And shining is a reflection of our inner Mauri (life-force) fueled and unrestrained by inner conflicts with colonial and capitalist scripts. 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
We are commited to 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.