We believe that personal and collective transformation are inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing.
Our offer
We are committed to embodied transformation as a tool to build formidable and strategic movements for justice. We offer Root Down Somatics in service of those movements. We are building a community of practice rooted in our local Twin Cities community and connected to our larger movement ecosystem.
What is politicized somatics?
Somatics is a politicized healing and transformation methodology that offers a road map for changing at the root. In somatics we work through the body to connect to our deeply felt longings, build awareness of our current habits and behaviors, and practice new embodied skills in order to have more of the lives we want and are called to create. We are trained in the lineage of generative somatics, which was formed in service of social movements, and is an approach to change work that holds societal conditions and systems of oppression as integral to how we are shaped by the world and what we seek to transform.
To learn more about politicized somatics, check out this article: Why Somatics for Social Justice and a Transformative Movement?
Lineage
Somatics is a broad field of psychology and has grown in popularity over the past decades. We are practitioners of a somatic methodology called generative somatics or Strozzi Somatics. It was first developed by Richard Strozzi and the Strozzi Institute. Richard Strozzi studied with teachers like Moshe Feldenkrais, Ida Rolf, Wilhelm Reich, Aikido master Morihei Ueshiba, meditation teachers including Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and many others. generative somatics is an organization started by Staci Haines and Spenta Kandawalla, who, along with many others, continued to develop that methodology and brought it to social movements with a politicized lens. This is a living lineage and organizations like BOLD, Prentis Hemphill’s The Embodiment Institute, and many others continue to develop it. Here locally, we want to acknowledge and honor other lineages of somatics that are being practiced and forwarded by people like Resmaa Menakem and Susan Raffo, to name a few.
Root Down Somatics is…
Becka Tilsen (she/her)
Hello! I was raised in the Powderhorn neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota in the 80s & 90s by a wily community and three generations of Midwest working-class radicals who knew how to organize and how to laugh.
For nearly 30 years, I’ve worked in movements as an organizer, director, facilitator, and political educator. For over a decade, I’ve been contributing to movements as a somatic practitioner certified through generative somatics as well as a coach, mediator, strategist, and creative media maker. The anti-violence movement has been one of my political homes, and I am passionate about bringing its lessons into broader struggles: building relationship skills as violence prevention and cultural work, integrating transformative justice, and rooting movements in practices that sustain us.
Supporting Indigenous sovereignty is one of my core life commitments, which I see as both an honor, an inheritance and accountability to my family and my lineage. My work is dedicated to building movements that are strategic, deeply relational, and alive with humor, creativity, and play.
Some of my contributions include:
I produced and directed the viral video Vote Like A Radical with the NDN Collective, April Rosenblum and many other collaborators. (2024)
I wrote this messaging guide for kid-centered ceasefire rallies (2023)
I was a principal writer on the widely reproduced Standing Rock ally welcome packet and one of the ally/accomplice trainers at the Standing Rock camp (2016)
I co-authored a curriculum on relationship skills for queer community published by the Northwest Network of Bi, Trans, Lesbian and Gay survivors of abuse (2012).
Root Down Somatics is…
Sarah Abbott (she/her)
Hi! I am a certified somatic coach trained through generative somatics and the Strozzi Institute. I grew up in southeastern MN, and currently live in South Minneapolis on Wahpekute Dakota land. The methodology of somatics has been a powerful source of healing and growth in my life and in my development as a leader within social and environmental justice movements, and I love using this methodology in support of others. I was first introduced to somatics by Susan Raffo in 2011, through her workshops on dismantling white supremacy. I have participated in generative somatics courses since 2013, and am a graduate of the Strozzi Institute Somatic Coaching Program. I am bringing these experiences to my work as a coach, as well as 15 years in movements for racial, economic, climate, and gender justice as an organizer and as an organizational leader. My work is in service of people participating in social and environmental movements. For me, the work of organizing for a just world has been profoundly fulfilling and profoundly challenging, and my coaching supports movement participants and leaders to become more resourced and to fulfill their longings for transformation in themselves and in their work.