embodied quakerism

COME experiment with reviving the radical, embodied practices of early friends 
There are a growing number of Friends and Quaker-adjacent spiritual seekers longing to rediscover and reinvigorate the embodied spiritual practices of first generation Friends. If you're one of us, you are hungry to explore the somatic forms of worship that opened early Friends to a direct, unmediated encounter with the Divine, grounded in the body. The forms of worship, collective mystical practice, and social resistance were so radical – and threatening to Empire – to have been erased from the tradition. Join in an experiment with reviving them. 
Recent historical findings have uncovered  a picture  of how the embodied practices with which First-generation Friends shook  the world. These lost expressions of movement (practices of physical quaking, havening, and prayerful postures), vocalization (like chanting and messages conveyed through sounds), and shared mystical practices (for example, hands-on healing, dream interpretation, and whole-self listening). In recovering an experiential sense of the perceptual pathways available to our ancestors but mostly lost to us, we can taste the bold, countercultural spirit that once defined the Quaker movement. How might reclaiming the embodied roots of our tradition strengthen our Quaker witness in today's world? 
We must come together to consider how reclaiming the embodied roots of our tradition might strengthen our Quaker witness in today’s world. ​

Reach out to learn more about upcoming offerings that weave together history, embodiment, and collective inquiry, to explore how continuing revelation might lead us at this critical moment towards a more embodied Quakerism. 

CONVENER:
​KATY HAWKINS, Ph.D

about me:
Katy is a lifelong Quaker and a member of Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting in Northwest Philly, where she teaches weekly classes experimenting with a Quaker approach to whole-self integration.  Her teaching draws from training in modern dance, yoga, Comparative Literature, and Social Justice Somatics. She is the author of Thinking Feelingly,  a collection of essays and somatic practices for an embodied experience of poetry. In everything she does, Katy explores new ways that ritual, connection, and play might heal our dissociation from feeling.