E L E M E N T A L V E S S E L
Wayfinding + Shapeshifting Immersion
November 2024 - September 2025
It's not too late to join!
come for the Dec 21-22 weekend
or join the full immersion (prorated price)
Join us in the practice of restoring relationship.
““Relationality is something that you can only learn from the land. The first relation is between land and people, and the second relation is between people and people. The second is contingent on the first.””
The Elemental Vessel Immersion is a yearlong investigation in wayfinding and shapeshifting with Dana Iova-Koga and Frieda Kipar Bay. In this offering we will take you through a multi-layered inquiry of what it means to be a shapeshifter and how to wayfind with grace and clarity. Using the pathways of movement, plant medicine, and cognitive/creative tracking, we will hone our awareness of ourselves, others, and the environment. We have come to call these interlacement practices. We will be looking at how we can turn these inherent abilities into artistry, and how doing so supports our health, creativity, problem solving, communication, and fulfillment of Life. These practices make us better humans, and effect all of our relations.
the wheel of interlacement:
bow, listen, rejoice, imagine, create, discern, grieve, integrate.
This yearlong immersion meets on the 8 significant points on the wheel of time (from the Daoist, Baltic, Celtic traditions, among many others), and uses the elemental wisdom at each point as our compass. (Each word above corresponds to a spoke on this wheel.) We meet every 6 weeks, convening from around the globe to practice a different orientation to time. It is circular, we are spinning, but we can know where we are as we go.
We will investigate:
How tinkering with our human movement is a relational and political act
Taoist practices/ indigenous wisdom of cycling, systems, and the circularity of our experience
Qigong/Dao Yin practices
Reading a landscape and tracking its inhabitants
The meaning and metaphor of dance in its broadest definition
Modeling our self-cultivation practices upon universal principles of biological life
Engaging with the plants and their medicine of your bioregion
Is this for you?
This course is for anyone who is at a crossroads - in location, livelihood, family, or personal health -
interested in cultivating robust creativity in the face of change.
In this time on the planet, much is in a state of extreme evolution. We are not excluded in this volatile weather - what occurs externally is also occurring internally. Learning to adapt, creatively and with joy, is the work of this time, both individually and collectively. In order to align with the bigger planetary transformations, our capacity to transform must be deep and wide. Bring your uncertainty, vulnerable questions, and creativity to investigate the practices of navigating change for self-cultivation and collective well-being.
“We are not self-contained individuals confronting a world out there, but developing organisms in an environment, enmeshed in tangled relationships. As we move through space, our knowledge under-goes continuous formulation.
”
What to expect:
8 weekend intensives with 3 hour sessions on Saturday and Sunday, live via Zoom. Join the full program or select weekends.
Sessions will include guided, experiential movement practices, presentations by Frieda and Dana, solo investigative exercises, facilitated group discussions and sharing of creative makings.
Participants of the full program will receive an hour session for personal guidance with both Dana and Frieda, to be booked upon registration (a $250 value).
In between sessions, you’ll receive reading material, online resources, movement puzzles, and creative tasks for each intensive, along with recorded practice material in guided movement, qigong, and/or meditations.
You will deepen creatively, be tracked by a wide yet intimate community, find inspiration to arrive where you belong fully, and expand your resourcefulness to respond to the changing weather of your life.
Dates + Times:
8 weekends, Saturday + Sunday via Zoom
9am-12pm PST / 12-3pm EST / 6-9pm CET
Nov 2-3, 2024 ~ Integrate.
Samhain/Celtic new year/end of agricultural year. Navigating from a dynamic center.
Dec. 21-22, 2024 ~ Bow.
Solstice/birth of the Sun. Navigating through wandering, getting lost, intuition.
Feb. 1-2, 2025 ~ Listen.
Imbolc/beginning of Spring. Navigating through change; we are all shapeshifters.
Mar. 22-23, 2025 ~ Rejoice.
Spring Equinox/mid-spring festival. Navigating through shifting perspectives, from human to non-human.
May 3-4, 2025 ~ Imagine.
Beltane/high flower festival/beginning of summer. Navigating through observation and the under-appreciated art of imitation.
June 21-22, 2025 ~ Create.
Summer Solstice/solar festival. Navigating through story and narrative.
August 2-3, 2025 ~ Discern.
Lammas/beginning of Fall. Navigating through rhythm, timing and cycles.
Sept. 20-21, 2025 ~ Grieve.
Mabon/Fall Equinox. Navigating through extended self; we are woven bodies.
Cost + Registration:
This program is available on a sliding scale gift economy model, based on self-assessment of your income and ability to offer your resources in a way that supports others with lesser resources to attend. Please support us in using this model by engaging sincerely with the process and offering the highest level you can.
Scholarships and payment plans are available as well, with priority given to BIPOC community members. Please email for availability.
Full immersion (prorated): $1200 - $1400
Individual weekend: $225
*for individual weekends, please note which date during check out
~
If you are able, please consider contributing any amount that would support another participant. This too is an opportunity to practice generosity, and feel the growth and gifts that come from giving.
About Frieda Kipar Bay
Frieda is a weaver of knowledge, overlapping different threads to better understand the whole. Some of the threads she weaves with: Daoist medicine, qigong, five element theory and diagnostic practices, gardening and native plant restoration, tracking, writing, CI and improvisational dance, The Work That Reconnects facilitation and grief processing, making ritual and equity practice. She finds that beautiful things get made when she weaves with many perspectives. Find her full bio here.
Frieda sees clients as a clinical herbalist, unschools her 2 children, and teaches qigong and herbal medicine in Western Mass.
About Dana Iova-Koga
Dana has been a polymorph since an early age. Her formative training in movement was with Japanese dancer Min Tanaka. She lived and worked for several years with him on his farm- dancing, farming and studying nature of all kinds. Since that time Dana has continued to explore and discover the connections between body and landscape. She has been a member of dance/theater company inkBoat and has been teaching “Dance on Land” with husband Shinichi since 2006.
Dana is forever inspired by the complexity and diversity of life in all its forms, is fascinated by the phenomenon of creativity, and above all enjoys playing in the space occupied by the questions. Full bio here.
““You are a part of me I do not yet know. ”