Kinship Tending Skills: How Can You Contribute to a Culture of Belonging? (Festivals & Gatherings Edition)

Kinship: A rooted feeling of closeness, of being ‘family,’ a shared sense of responsibility for well-being. Tending is the deliberate choice to grow and strengthen these bonds to the whole community.

Why? Individualism is a myth that’s doing us all harm, and we’ve forgotten that we’re in this together. We are not only kin with our biological family, but all humans – in fact, All Beings!

Our nervous systems are interwoven – all beings, everywhere. Ways to help others regulate: staying regulated yourself, sharing skills, teaching songs, checking in, listening, consent, etc.

Get to know people and make meaningful introductions to others, so that each of us can be known and bring our gifts to community.

“Human connection is a primary disruptor of oppressive systems.”

Aaron Johnson is a facilitator, public speaker, and touch activist who practices closeness as a way to break down barriers between people. As co-founder of both Holistic Resistance and Grief to Action, Aaron takes the time to hold the stories of Black people around homophobia, transphobia, internalized racism, and those that are Chronically UnderTouched.

Grief to Action is a semi-mobile camp with a land-based community in the Mojave Desert. The community holds space on the land and with the land for deep grief and rage that gives birth to the creative solutions we need to resist and end oppressive systems. The land and sanctuary are Black-owned and Black-led, centering the needed grief support for African-heritage folks and all People of the Global Majority.

Interrupting four hundred years of the Black Brute archetype. Tender, caring, platonic touch between Black men, the Chronically UnderTouched (CUT) Project’s short film, Dark and Tender, drops Fall 2024.

Because oppression is a part of historical and present American culture, the long term impact of those trauma stories should be acknowledged and held as a map for our collective healing.

Aaron Johnson practices and invites various methods of moving through these stories, such as the communal listening ear, sound healing, meditation, and closeness to the earth.

Alyx Somas is a 2S Native Northern American sharing indigenous lineage teachings to help humanity re-member our sacred nature of deep beauty and collaboration. Their work, The Collectivity Project, is an indigenous response to the pain of our world—to empire, ecocide, genocide, and separation—anchored in the truth that we all come from ancient people who gathered around fires storytelling, dancing, and grieving together in medicinal ways.

Personally healing multiple chronic illnesses, their work is rooted in holistic nervous system care and trauma-informed somatic practice that revitalizes pan-indigenous life-ways, restores relations to our lineages and to the land, and tends to the generational wounding of colonialism. De-individualizing all that is truly systemic, they strengthen the capacity for collective liberation through catalyzing our shared grief into sustainable action and empowering with practical tools for healing and belonging-based justice. All of their work holds heart in the belief in all people’s wise ancestry, innate ability to heal, and inherent worth.

On a journey of Initiation to be a Good Elder, they carry a prayer of regenerative culture shifting, enlivening this new era of multi-cultural weaving that calls for the healing of our shared history, the reimagining of our village interdependence, and the remembering our ancestral ways of reverence for all that lives.

Trained in group facilitation and somatic healing, they hold community circles, ceremonies, and workshops, consultations for organizations, and personal rituals and mentorships in Ancestral Reclamation, Collective Liberation Practices, Decolonial Leadership and Relationships Life-ways, Grief and Initiatory Rites, and Spirit Healings. This work is a prayer for the world coming, where we gather over the flames that birth remembrance from the ashes of collapse, united in our Praise and Grief.

Learn more at AlyxSomas.com The Collectivity Project’s Instagram. Reach them at thecollectivityproject@gmail.com.

Grisha is a collaborative dog trainer, author, international presenter, singer-songwriter, and keynote speaker of European ancestry (best guess based on DNA and some genealogy is Scotland, “England & Northwestern Europe,” Wales, “Germanic Europe,” Ireland, and Norway). She’s been helping people and dogs full time since 2003. Her passion projects are community weaving, grief tending, community singing, and woodturning.

Grisha’s fascinated by animal behavior, somatic awareness, spirituality, and psychology. Her work is directed at wholehearted living for all beings, including dogs with a history of aggression, frustration, or fear as well as empowerment and trauma prevention in puppies and her other favorite animal species: humans.

Her Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT book and BAT webinar) is used worldwide to help dogs gain confidence and social skills. Well over 200,000 people have learned about BAT to help dogs so far.

As an outgoing introvert, Grisha refreshes her batteries by singing, expressing grief in community, and savoring life with her husband (Tom), Labrador (Joey), cat (Garbanzo aka “Adventure Kitty” and “Baby Panther”), Little Brown Dog (Zuki), and Australian Cattle Dog x Chihuahua puppy, (Mesquite, aka Keeti). Grisha identifies as a queer (pansexual), neurodiverse, middle age, European ancestry, raised in poverty and now of middle class, and US citizen, spiritual non-Christian leaning toward neo-Druid (but raised in Christian culture). She is slowly learning to live in reciprocity on the stolen river watershed of the Siuslaw people, who are part of the CTCLUSI. Grisha is a kinship tending coordinator at the Cascadia Song Rise song gathering.

For more information about Grisha, visit GrishaStewart.com.

Sabrina is a world traveler, singer, and a Creatrix and contributor towards a new embodied culture. She uses embodiment practices, ritual, song, yoga, breathwork and Thai yoga massage in a beautifully woven form of facilitating emotional release. She values the processes of emotional release through cathartic expressions along with bringing support and safety to the nervous system.

Sabrina was initiated into her grief work by the loss of her son, Jude, during preterm labor in 2022. Since then, she has made her grief her ally and greatest teacher. She aims to bring the conscious tending of grief to her communities and especially to underserved populations.

Sabrina has completed 700 hours of Yoga Teacher Training through School Yoga Institute and the Paramanand Institute of Yoga Sciences and Research; she learned Thai Yoga Massage through Hadadi Thai Massage in Lisbon, Portugal; she studied sacred space holding through the Kula Collective in Guatemala; she is currently completing a year-long Grief Facilitation Training with Through The Dark Woods based in B.C. and she has learned to use her gift of song through many ceremonies over the world.

Connect to Sabrina at ssimonseeker@gmail.com.

Sheniqua is an activist, singer-songwriter, community leader, mother, and vocal empowerment coach based in Brooklyn, New York. She’s also the host of online community singing with songleaders at Stellar Village.

Sheniqua’s sessions go beyond simply singing together; she creates a holistic journey of self-discovery and connection. Through intentional breath work, gentle stretching, and guided meditation, she helps participants release tension, center their minds, and open themselves up to the full potential of their voices.

Sheniqua creates sessions that culminate in the joyous expression of collective harmony, where seasoned vocalists and complete beginners alike come together in a non-judgmental space to share their voices and connect with others.

Whether you’re seeking vocal empowerment, community connection, or simply the joy of singing, Sheniqua welcomes you to join the transformative experience at ElevatedExpression.net.