Origin Stories-Birth

How Did We Get Here? Embodied Learning and Re-Writing Our Origin Story

This workshop focuses on your own emergence into the world. Participants will leave with a written story of their own entry to earth, as well as any others they have brought through in childbirth. You do not need to have ever (or plan to) given birth to in order to participate.

We will begin with an hour long embodied practice of yoga asanas to bring ourselves into the present moment. We will share ancestral stories of emergence. What follows is a series of guided meditations and writing prompts to facilitate a contemplation of your entry into the world and its implications on how you live your life. You need not know your whole birth story to do this work! Knowing you are here now is enough. Our time together will end with a restorative yoga practice to close the container.

We each get to live inside this precious human body, and we are here for a short time. How we came, and the way we think about it (or don’t), can have subtle yet significant impacts on how we choose to live. This workshop is a container to consider your own birth, and any births you have experienced since, and their implications on the way we move through the world.

This is part 1 of 3 workshops about origins. The next will be how we got here in this community, and understanding the context with which we live. Part 3 is visioning the world you want to create, and how you are contributing efforts toward that vision.

Exchange: $75 for 3 hours of yoga, writing prompts, snacks and tea if signed up by February 10 / $100 after

This workshop is available to an intimate group of in person participants (12 max). There is a live online option as well for those who prefer to participate from home. There is some scholarship available.

Please note: The Abode, the studio in which the class is held, is on the 3rd floor of a building. Students with limited mobility may benefit from the online option.

My Context:

Kendra Mylnechuk Potter (enrolled citizen of Lummi Nation) is a theatre and film artist, birth+death doula, yoga educator, partner and mother. Most of her work centers on the mother/child relationship and embodied storytelling, with an awareness that this precious human form is a sacred gift we get to keep learning through again and again. She is co founder of MT+NYC Collaborative, and runs writing retreats in support of the creative process. Since 2021, Kendra has delivered keynotes and Q&As at festivals and conferences around the world with "Daughter of a Lost Bird", a documentary she co-produced and in which she is protagonist, about being adopted out and reuniting with her birth mother and Lummi community. She is currently directing a new documentary series of contemporary Indigenous storytelling throughout Indian Country called "The Aunties," as well as writing "Can't Drink Salt Water," a play commissioned by the Montana Rep about MMIP, human trafficking, and mother grief. Through her company Sister Moon Wellness, she shares yoga and doula support, and runs a yoga teacher training and birth doula training.