Sacred Activism
Join other frontline activists, organizers and systems change makers for nourishment for body, heart, mind and spirit, and spaces of ritual and conversations.
Overview
“The times are urgent; let us slow down.”
– Bayo Akomolafe
This is a time of unprecedented danger, but perhaps also of unprecedented opportunity. How do we respond to accelerating systems failure, climate emergency, mass species extinction, surveillance capitalism etc.? What is ours to do?
With this course, we wish to create a safe space for leaders, activists and organizers to come together in community, hold each other in care, and work on core questions like:
- What are our current edges on the personal, movement and collective levels?
- How can we support each other as we encounter those limitations?
- How can the way we live be more coherent with the world we want to create?
- How are we ourselves perpetuating the very dynamics we seek to interrupt?
- How could we respond to crisis and collapse in ways that increase empathy and connection, rather than fear and control?
- How to act fully without attachment to outcome?
We believe the success of our ambitions for societal transformation rely only on more efficient mobilization and strategy, but on qualitative shifts and leaps of consciousness within ourselves and among one another. As adrienne maree brown suggests, “What we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.” Turning ourselves into laboratories of transformation, we will experiment with inner shifts as seeds of new possibility for the larger contexts we’re part of. This course invites you to reimagine activism as an invocation of healing and an embodiment of the sacred.
Who is the course for?
- Social movement leaders, activists, organizers, members of frontline communities and others active in systems change
What you’ll learn
- Practices to nourish and sustain you, how to build community and learn how to regulate yourself in situations of stress and trauma.
- The inner transformations and shifts of consciousness necessary to help us catalyze political transformation in our struggles and societies at large.
- How our own intimate questions around love, sexuality, spirituality, power and meaning are linked with our politics.
- How to strengthen your imagination of post-domination futures and look into how they could practically come about. What are realistic pathways to concretely build social, economic, political realities post-capitalism?
- Listening to guidance from Earth and letting go of human centrality.
Course content
- Body work & massage
- Practices and tools on trauma awareness, embodied cognition & somatic co-regulation
- Experience of transparency and intimacy in the group through council and Forum
- Seminars (with presentations and Q&A sessions) on love school, re-indigenizing and system change
- Work in small groups
- Ceremonial spaces for expressing grief and gratitude
- Time out in nature
Gift Experiment
This seminar breaks away from traditional pricing models. Instead of a fixed price or sliding scale, it’s part of our gift-economy experiments during the 2024 guest season. Rather than setting a price, we invite you to offer a genuine contribution based on your experience in Tamera.
All we ask is that you cover your room & board upfront, ensuring we meet our essential expenses. Toward the end of this seminar, you’ll be invited to assess your experience and decide on a financial contribution that reflects both your financial capacity and the value you’ve found in this seminar.
This experiment is our next step toward a more relational, trust-based economic paradigm, and we’re looking forward to having you join us in this experiment!
Info
Research area: System change and peace work
Type of learning: Learn skills
Location: In Tamera
Language: English
Pre-requisites
Having participated in an introduction week. Alternatively, you can arrive two days early for the introduction days directly before the retreat.
If you come from privileged backgrounds: Having educated yourself about your power and privilege and are willing to center the experiences of people from marginalized backgrounds.
Application
Please send your application at your nearest convenience. We only have a few seats left. We will get back to you as soon as possible. Please book your travels only after getting confirmation from us. We prioritize organizers, movement leaders and people from marginalized backgrounds, from Portugal and the geopolitical south.
Cost
This seminar is part of our gift-economy experiments.
We ask you to cover your room & board upfront (€30/ night), ensuring we meet our essential expenses. Toward the end of this seminar, you’ll be invited to assess your experience and decide on a financial contribution that reflects both your financial capacity and the value you’ve found in this seminar.
Please note that in order to confirm your registration, you must pay a non-refundable registration fee of €150.
You find the cost too high? Explore our Solidarity Fund.
Willing to support others? Consider contributing to the Solidarity Fund.
Why are we using a sliding scale?
Our invitation to Portuguese nationals.
Accommodation
Shared dormitories/group tents, Guest House at an extra expense, own tent, or own van.
Food
Vegan full board.
Arrival and Departure
Please arrive the day before the program begins and depart the day after the program finishes.
Children
We regret that children cannot be accommodated in this course.
Pets
We regret that pets cannot be accommodated in this course.
Testimonials
“Gathering with activists from so many different places around Mother Earth, with such diverse backgrounds and unique qualities of activism, to regenerate in the loving field that Tamera offered us, brought me a feeling of heartfelt togetherness, of belonging to a global tribe that reinforced me in ‘my piece’ of action and service to Life. Being honored for our work, as I felt received by all the hosting team, brought a lot of healing of days of burnout and overwhelm with our global challenging times. Grieving, laughing, learning, celebrating, resting in the possibility of hope, and again opening reflection on how to bring wider impact was what I needed. Muchas Gracias querid@s!!”
—Anahí, Chile
“The activist retreat was for me an experience of deep learning and of spiritual and political research. Held by Tamera’s unique field, we wove together our stories, our grief, our love, our fears, and our hopes into a tapestry that allowed for questioning, healing, growing, and also challenging our edges of growth and comfort zones as activists (or people who don’t necessarily describe themselves as such). I feel like throughout those 10 days, in the space held by the facilitators, through ceremony and sharing, we encountered many of the same questions, challenges, and beauty that we face in the external world of activism – and we could bring all of those into the water, into the land, and into each other’s bodies and hearts. I left the retreat feeling like a renewed strength and love for defending the sacred has been awakened.“
— Carlota, Portugal