It is clear that we are living at a time when Earth and the systems it has evolved to sustain life are in decline due to the influence of extractive and accumulative human cultures. At the core of these cultures is the modern view of humanity as separate from and more evolved than Earth and other creatures arising from it. This myth of separation forms the basis for the only world most Western people have known; a world in which human culture has transcended nature, and nature has been demoted to the status of resource, commodity, or property. This relation to Earth is not only cultural, in that our societies are organized around it, but also embodied, in that we live with a somatic sense of separation, rather than connection, with Earth and ‘the environment’ in our everyday lives. In order to live within the web of life on Earth, an embodied sense of connectedness with Earth is needed.

Join physical educator and ecozoic futurist, Dr. Cassandra Wells, in a 4-week exploration of the forces that connect your own human body with the Earth. Using your body’s capacities to sense the inner and outer world (capacities like touch, sound, balance, interoception), participants can develop the ability to “feel” their place in the ecological system of Earth. The sessions will be composed by exercises drawn from Awareness Through the Body (ATB), a physical education system based in the integral yoga. The exercises work by first developing a sensitivity to the many and varied inputs that our bodies are continuously receiving from the inner and outer world. With this enhanced sensitivity, participants can discover and deepen their awareness of their connection to Earth through exercises that bring the attention to some of the forces that connect us: gravity, homeostasis, and emergence. 

While the structures of colonial capitalism will need to be dismantled everywhere to preserve our ecology and the conditions for life, this political and communal work cannot be done without also exchanging the modern embodiment of self-Earth separation with a felt sense of self-Earth connection. Undoing an internalized pillar of modernity is careful and gradual work, but it is a necessary step towards recovering an Earth-centred, rather than human-centred, mode of being in world.

Week 1 - Jan 10, 2023

Awareness of Awareness: Exercises to direct and focus attention, and to build up the capacity for concentration. All exercises rely on the capacity for using the attention.

Week 2 - Jan 17, 2023

HOMEOSTASIS: Exploration of the different planes of being - physical, psychic-emotional-vital, mental – and the experience of inner/outer space. 

Week 3 - Jan 24, 2023

GRAVITY: Exercises to explore the force of attraction between bodies – human and Earth – and the possibilities for movement that emerge from our relationship to Earth through gravity.

Week 4 - Jan 31, 2023

EMERGENCE: Exercises that enhance awareness of the creativity and novelty of living systems.



Cassandra Wells, Ph.D. is a running coach, theorist of the body, and ecozoic futurist, working broadly in the field of physical and ecological education. She currently coaches and teaches at the University of Toronto, and supports the programming efforts at PIEL. Her work centres on the theory and practice of body-based methods for teaching and learning in order to begin dismantling the internalized structures of modernity, and to open a space for a more intimate and integrated experience of the world.

Dates: 4 Tuesdays - January 10, 17, 24 & 31, 2023

Time: 10:00 am – 12:00 pm Pacific

Cost: $60.00 (Please do not let cost deter you from attending - Ask us about our program funding)

Location:  On-line – A Zoom Link will be emailed before the program begins.

CLICK: THE GREEN BUTTON BELOW TO REGISTER