Vivid Grove

2025 Offerings

Qigong Program Winter-to-Spring 2025. Full Program $425, Individual Pricing Below, ONLINE

“Qigong has no end.” - Dr. Bingkun Hu

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WILD GOOSE QIGONG 2025 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

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FULL WINTER-TO-SPRING PROGRAM 2025
Two weekly series (Feb - May), Spring Workshop, & 1:1 Qigong Private Online, $425 (can pay upfront or contact if installments are needed)

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TUESDAY WEEKLY QIGONG ONE & TWO ~ ONLINE
QIGONG SERIES ONE & TWO ~ ONLINE
Tuesdays, February 11 - March 18, 5-6pm PST / 8-9pm EST
$120 by February 4/ $150 After / $30 single classes

& Tuesdays, April 15 - May 20, 5-6pm PST / 8-9pm EST
$120 by April 8/ $150 After / $30 single classes
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Zoom Link shared with registration
Video Available Weekly After Class for your Practice

Wild Goose Qigong is a Taoist healing movement arts practice that supports health and energetic flow through the body in relation to the elements and the cultivation of life sources. The practice helps access both calming and energizing self-healing. Through qigong exercises, sections from wild goose sets, and qigong meditation, we will focus on support for spring. This six-week series practices with harmonizing movement, breath, and attention, — to nourish life, each from your own place. Movements can be modified for all body types and people, qigong for everyone.

This is meant to take as a series with the Sunday March 23 workshop as well as both online weekly series, but can be taken individually.

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SPRING WEEKEND WORKSHOP ~ ONLINE
Sunday March 23, 10 - 1pm PST / 1 - 4pm EST
$100 - $50 sliding scale
‍This workshop will offer elemental and elementary qigong practices — to cultivate qi, and to develop an ongoing practice that can be supported by the yang rising energy of Spring. We will focus on the Wood Elemental Force: fresh ideas, tender movements. support your capacity to envision through movement and intention, and make the new ideas in your life come into bright being.

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MONDAY MONTHLY QIGONG PRACTICE SESSIONS ~ ONLINE‍

Feb 17, March 17, April 21, May 19, 5-6pm PST / 8-9pm EST
By Donation

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These monthly hour-long sessions will offer an opportunity to practice Wild Goose Qigong together online with a rotating group of facilitators from the vivid grove Mentorship & Peer Support Group. These classes are open to anyone and are available for a drop-in experience of qigong practice. The session will offer a gathering practice space for participants in the vivid grove fall qigong program, and is “by donation” for anyone else to join. The qigong practice and gathering will take place on the third Monday of each month — For Winter-to-Spring 2025, the dates are: Feb 17, March 17, April 21, & May 19.

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PRICING

FULL WINTER-TO-SPRING QIGONG PROGRAM 2025
$425

TUESDAY WEEKLY QIGONG ONE & TWO ONLINE
$120 by February 4/ $150 After / $30 single classes
& $120 by April 8/ $150 After / $30 single classes

SPRING WEEKEND WORKSHOP ONLINE
$100 - $50 sliding scale

MONTHLY MONDAY PRACTICE SESSIONS ONLINE
By Donation, free with Qigong Program

DROP-INS FOR WEEKLY CLASS
$30 (You will receive a video after the class)

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PAYMENT / REGISTRATION

Venmo: @Margit-Galanter / PayPal: http://paypal.me/MargitGalanter / Checks, Zelle, and cash also welcome. Please account for any extra fees with service.

Please note your purchase through email or within the cash app and remember to send me your email address. Your payment counts as your registration. Please fill out the form on Google with your registration for the link and confirmation.

There will be a weekend spring online workshop intensive Sunday, March 23, 10am - 1pm PST / 1pm - 4pm EST. The second Qigong Online Spring Series will take place Tuesdays April 15 - May 20.

Past Events

Qigong class, Dover Park, photo: esco lacqua

margit galanter is a movement educator, dance poet, and visionary cultural instigator living in the unceded, ancestral, sacred and stolen Ohlone land, also known as East Bay, California. Their unique practice helps people access the potency of movement. margit is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, qigong teacher, Taoist healing arts practitioner, and movement artist. Shx teaches workshops, works one-on-one with clients, performs, curates, and collaborates with practitioners from a wide range of media and disciplines, worldwide.

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Gender pronouns: they~them / shx~hir / ze~zir / dyke

margit galanter’s fascination with the potency of movement has drawn hir to embodied research throughout hir lifetime. margit was raised in Lenapehoking, the indigenous name for the land now known as New York City, and shx is now based in the Ohlone land Huchiun, - now called the California East Bay. margit has toured in the US and internationally, working extensively in the interdisciplinary arts and in social and racial justice movements. Their unique contribution is in supporting people to experience clarity and vitality — in their individual bodies as well as in community. From 1990 - the present, margit has spent extensive time and has lived in Indonesia, where shx taught at University of Gadjah Madah, community arts centers, and studied and performed martial arts as well as traditional and contemporary dance. margit offers their work in the service of collective embodied liberation: they have established the vivid grove for moving and learning site in 2019 as a resource and interactive gathering place for all who are drawn to participate, exchange ideas, and nourish their practices.

the vivid grove program is a synthesis of movement arts, Taoist / Chinese energetics, collective learning, and creative research. The courses access these different streams to support vitality and exuberance as the basis for artistic development and an engaged, embodied life. The courses are influenced by the brilliance of the elements, seasons, practice, and our unique human signatures, aka human nature culture.

margit's ongoing study bridges healing and cultural scholarship. Shx trained in the late Dennis Leri’s Semiophysics Professional Feldenkrais program, and became a Guild Certified Practitioner in 2000, having completed many advanced trainings and self-organized study projects since that time. Margit has practiced Chinese energetics and qigong since 1999 with hir primary teachers Micheline Bogey and Dr. Bingkun Hu, as well as with the late Liu Ming/Da Yuan Circle, Mantak Chia, Jason Frye, Gilles Marin, Janet Oliver, Aileen Jong and other longterm students of Dr. Hu. Margit has also advanced hir studies through The Universal Healing Tao, Taoist Lunar Nei Gong, Body-Mind Centering, and locally The Acupressure and Chi Nei Tsang Institutes in Berkeley CA, receiving an Acupressure Certificate in 2010. In 2004 Margit earned an MA in Movement Research and Practice from New York University’s Gallatin School, and they earned their undergraduate degree in Movement Studies and Anthropology at Brown University, 1993. Margit has also studied Focusing, Philosophy of the Implicit, and Thinking at the Edge with Eugene Gendlin and others. margit has worked with numerous culture workers and somatic practitioners, especially those geared towards embodied justice, such as Transformative Justice, Generative Somatics, indigenous rematriation, Disability Justice, sacred sexuality and the potency of Eros, cultural survival, ancestral healing, and abolitionist somatic work. Shx has ongoing inquiries in a wide range of subjects, from critical race and queer studies, to neurophenomenology, healing traditions, ancestral and aesthetic lineages, sacred landscapes, and poetics.

margit has been engaged in collective movement practices with colleagues and students for decades. Since 1996, ze has engaged in movement collaboration and study with the artists of Image Lab (Lisa Nelson, Karen Nelson, Scott Smith, and K.J. Holmes); since 1995 ze has studied dance improvisation with U.S. luminaries such as the late Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Daniel Lepkoff, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Julyen Hamilton, Keith Hennessy, Nancy Stark Smith, Stephanie Skura, Barbara Dilley and others. During hir years in Indonesia, Margit studied movement meditations, traditional dances, masked dances, and martial arts with teachers such as I Ketut Kantor (Bali), Pak Heru (Java), the Panca Daya school (throughout Indonesia), and from 2000 - 2019 focused in apprenticeship and collaboration with the late Suprapto Suryodarmo (Java, U.S., and internationally) up until his passing.

margit's work as an artist, educator, and cultural worker has been supported in the US by many institutions and organizations including Berkeley Art Museum, UC Davis, Naropa University, Stanford University, Mills College, FRESH Festival/SF, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, The Prosodic Body, UCSD, UCSC, UMass-Amherst, Montalvo Arts, and SFMOMA. They perform and practice often outdoors and in environmental settings, both urban and natural. From 2015 - 2020, Margit was the resident artist at Temescal Arts Center, Oakland CA where shx has dedicated hirself in hir performance inquiry, Cave Forms, which uniquely integrates dance, Chinese energetics, community-building, transdisciplinary art practice, and living sculpture.

margit has co-curated and directed events such as the Movement Research Festival (NYC, 2005), The Field-Seattle (1997-99) and SFDI (1997 - 2000). In the Bay Area, Margit co-curated the embodied language festival Words and Deeds (2011), and various events with Abby Crain and Art Workouts with SALTA Collective, Oakland, - including the Disco Room at Omni Commons - since 2012. As Co-Director of Earthdance (an artist-run workshop, residency, and retreat center located in the Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts) from 2006 - 2009, they co-founded cultural projects such as seeds, an arts + ecology festival; Tuning Culture, a collective project to support Tuning Scores throughout community-based and non-dance contexts alike; and the Julius Ford/Harriet Tubman Healthy Living Project, a year-round initiative that creates opportunities for critical thinking, healthy living and co-creating community among intergenerational educators, activists, artists, community builders and underserved youth.

In the native Ohlone territory known as the Bay Area, margit has collaborated with diverse artists such as Tuning4Armageddon team Jubilee July, Amutabi Haines, and Zoe Huey, performers mara poliak and Frances Rosario (cave hags), the magic markers (including Frances, bay laurel, Alma Carmina, Jubilee, & mara), the Oasis collective, Seven Mirrors / Stacey Goodman, pearl ubungen, Julie Tolentino, the tuning traces crew, Keith Hennessy, Maureen Whiting, Cave Coast Collective, SALTA collective, Sherwood Chen, and Violet Ace Harlo; media and interdisciplinary artists Kevin C. Lo and Kadet Kuhne; poets Eleni Stecopoulos and Denise Leto; and teaching and performing with choreographer Abby Crain under the moniker Art Workouts. Margit has also collaborations with diverse international groups such as Dharma Nature Time (Indonesia), FAC (Athens, Greece), Tubaba (Sumatra, Indonesia), Emergent Scores Lab (Troy, NY), Hijack Dance (Minneapolis), PAN (Seattle), The Prosodic Body (NY), Teja Amerta (Bali), MAM (Amerta gathering, international), and BodyCartography Project.

margit has written and edited various articles and creative writing projects, including most recently an article on their experience performing at SFMOMA and teaching at the Oakland Summer School/Oakland Free University. In 2017, hir interview with dance artist Sherwood Chen was published in Contact Quarterly, where they have written several articles over the years, as well as been a member of their Advisory Board. Margit co-edited the book Embodied Lives: Reflections on the Influence of Suprapto Suryodarmo and Amerta Movement (Triarchy Press, 2014); her chapter “The Presencing Dial,” describes how the modulation of presence is a valuable tool in performance, teaching, and the practice of movement.

Most Recent CV

margit uses the gender pronouns shx/hir, they/them and ze/zir, which are used throughout the site.

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‍For the late Dr. Bingkun Hu
‍As a teacher, Dr. Hu continued to grow and shift, and his dedication to the practice of Wild Goose Qigong and its pedagogy is in turn an inspiration to my own learning, facilitating, and practicing. Through him, I learned rich facets of an open-system for sharing about the nature of life force, or qi. Dr. Hu spent hours with me generously offering subtle details on the qualities of qi movement, of intention, of the nuances of the Wild Goose sets and meditations. I thank Dr. Hu for his unique contribution to the movements of the geese.

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‍For the late Dennis Leri
‍Dennis' clarity, precision, depth, and research has been the foundation with which I understand the Feldenkrais Method, learning, and embodied research altogether. Through Dennis I was exposed to thinking and perspectives that brought movement and learning into the contexts of awareness, neurophenomenology, sense perceptions, Buddhist thought, hands-on practice, mathematics, and the mysterious and vast possibilities of connection through self organization. All of these threads and more formed the basis of his unique understanding of Feldenkrais via his unique synthesis, Semiophysics. This potency extends beyond his life through all of us who he reached. May he rest in revery.

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‍For Joan Hanna
‍Joan, her vast and spacious relationship with environment and its pattern language is highly influential in my life. It offers a kind of loving generosity that has grown in my awareness over the decades. Health, the elegance of simplicity and space, that we are never-ever finished, the unfolding of process of life, wellness, pleasure, generosity, sharing, humor, connection, honesty, real talks, resonance, intergenerational friendship, dancing from where we are at. It was with Joan that I first learned I could eat a flower: borage. It was on Joan and Jon's land that I most likely first accessed / understood a love of the Tao. Gentle heart connection, radical through s l o w.

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‍For Karen Nelson
‍Karen’s wild brilliant discovery being that uncovers new ground, that seems creative in every pore, every cell, her honesty, her capacity for courageous life actions, our formative collaborations over time. Karen disrupts and inverts the roles of friend & teacher. It is through her that I was exposed to Tuning, that I deepened in my connection to awareness practice, to the radical power of gravity as a partner for dance and for Contact Improvisation. It is through her that a door opened into creative bohemian artistic life practices that was part of my inheritance. With karen I experience a tremendous resonance that at once creates new ideas and sometimes vibrates at a frequency that reflects the challenges and frictions I experience in my own doing. I continue to find inspiration in the elements of her art and life.

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‍For Lisa Nelson
‍Instantaneous affinity. A mosaic of scores embedded in life, environment, inquiry, sensation, patterning, labor of love of the multitudes. How a person could bring Tuning into the world is hard to image, and imagine we do. A life-long learning practice that has so many applications and streams into how one sees, how one enacts, that it has become an implicit layer, like the wallpaper or lens; and then at the same time, so many ways to explicate. To spend time with her for hours talking, ideas taking form, letting the minds meld, through to infinity. Being as land as perception as touch as atunement.

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‍For Micheline Bogey
‍The experience of coming into Wild Goose qigong with Micheline was immediately accessing something that felt simultaneously cosmic and home at the same time. I am forever grateful for the early experiences with the form, which I now understand to be filtered through her own unique signature, as the lineage has integrated through her body-being-in-practice. Micheline has a positive outlook and generosity that is forever a teacher, and I have learned so much from her over the decades. I thank Micheline for all that she have offered, and for how much she has shared with me in terms of the bounty of her life. Micheline is a huge influence, and I continue to learn from her through our studies, practice, and friendship.

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‍For the late Steve Paxton
‍It’s remarkable how sometimes a person has a huge influence, but the nature of the material and the quality of that person is such that their influence becomes second nature. Coming into Contact Improvisation as a younger adult and then later to Material for the Spine has been foundational for my movement imprint, and to the capacities I have for intentional action, length, and technique, sensorially-based movement, and understanding of form. More recently, I have been amazed at how these tools have propelled me into language, that the elements of dance as instigated by Steve aligns with the act and practice of making theory, forming text, and their meanings. Steve is a part of Madbrook and the land is in the movement and the movement is of the land, inextricably enmeshed, and a direct inspiration for the possibilities of a life well-lived. It is such a joy, really, to tend to the sensing of the center as means to propel oneself into dancing. With much appreciation, here to honor Steve. What fortune I have been able to be around and with him over these years.

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‍For the late Suprapto Suryodarmo (Prapto)
‍The vivid grove is inspired most intimately with the work of (joged) Amerta Movement and the land and center, Padepokan Lemah Putih. The way that Prapto has made a learning environment, - Lemah Putih, and the practice Joged Amerta - ones that are organic, multiplicitous, collectively understood, mobile and rooted, based in the garden and a village sense, these have been essential to how I understand the capacities of movement and the role of humans in nature-culture. How movement is connected to art, life, atmosphere and dialogue has expanded and shaped my artistry and teaching to a wildly expansive view. With Prapto, I learned to access an empty axis, to sense many levels of communication, and to experience movement dialogue with others. With Amerta Movement, I have had the blessing of moving with others in regions and places I never imagined, with lessons along the way that have helped me grow in my own creative evolutions as part of a living breathing world.

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The Embroidery / Felt / Constellations

‍For the folks and places around whom I have been surrounded and practiced over the last several decades These people, places, and worlds have vibrated the inquiries of the vivid grove. They are an integral part of its many facets. Some I have met in person, others through reading. The influences range from cultural, energetic, bodily, ancestral, movement-wise, spatial, erotic, aesthetic, kin, and on, anon. So much so, they are the context and a part of how to understand this whole garden. If I omitted you, you are still felt. Thanks for time and presence; without which it would not be this: A Hud. Abby Crain. adrienne maree brown. Agung Gunawan. Alia Swersky. Alice Tierstein. Amerta circulation. J. Amutabi Haines. The ancestors. Angelina Baldoz. Arawana Hayashi. Aristotle’s Lyceum (grove). Asia Wong. bae laurel. Beth Ahlstrand. Beth Murray. Bhanu Kapil. Bill Basquin. Bill Seto. Dr. Bingkun Hu. The BodyCartography Project ~ Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad. Brigitte Morot. Bunny Roberts. Calvin Rocchio. Cara Judea Alhadeff and Zazu. Cathy Weis. Cave Coast Collective Continuum ~ Alex Cruse, AW, Chani Bockwinkel, crystal jiko sasaki, FR, Geana Sieburger, Isa Leal, JJ, Kevin CK Lo, Lara Durback, MP, Mollie Moorhead. Cave Hags. Chris Marker. d.k. pan. Daniel Lepkoff. David Scalzo. dd dorvilier. Denise Leto. Dennis Leri. DJ E-Race. DJ Kamikaze. Diana Cage. Dorothy Allison. Dos Rios Residency folk ~ Brianna, Chani, Elizabeth, Jacob, Jose, Layton, Lukaza, MP, Tati, SP, Tyler, Yetunde, Zulfi. E.E. Miller. Emelia Martinez Brumbaugh aka Jubilee July. Eleni Stecopoulos. Ellen Webb. Emily Nahmanson. Dr. Enoch Page. Erica Newton. Erika Mijlin. esco lacqua. Flavia Cymbalista. Florence Roberts. Frances Rosario. Francois Jullien. Francois Rabelais. Galanter-Rosenfeld family people, Gilles Marin. Gloria Azaldua. Gretchen Till. Gopi Krishna Sheldon and his beautiful family, Bi-Sek and Paloma. The Grove in Central Park. The Grove in Marina. Grand Central Studios and Jon Dixon. Gregory Bateson. Hana van der Kolk. Hanna Barn. HIJACK Dance ~ Arwen Wilder and Kristin Van Loon. Huey sisters ~ Rose and Zoe. Huichin, the Ohlone land where I sit right now. Ishmael Houston Jones. Jack Magai. James Kidd. Jennifer Monson. Jerald Walden. Jess Dorrance. Jessica Kenney. Joan and John Hanna. Joe Mejia and Revolu. Josiah Hincks. Julie Nathanielsz. Julie Tolentino. The Late Julius Ford and his dear family with Deborah and their kids. Justin Desmangles. Karen Nelson. Karen Schaffman. K. J. Holmes. Kadet Kuhne. Kathe Izzo. Katya Bloom. Keith Hennessy. Kirsten Funke. Kriti Sharma. Laura Sedlock. Lila Hurwitz. Great Aunt Lily. Lin Lucas. Linda P. Austin. Lisa Nelson. The Late Liu Ming and Da Yuan Circle. Luciana Achugar. Mara Poliak. marbles marbles jumbo radio. Marc Galanter. Marcia Scott. Margot Lystra. Marissa Perel. Mary Peterson. Matthew Shyka. Matthew Sperry. Maureen Whiting. mayfield brooks. Maxe Crandall. Meg Wolfe. Melinda Buckwalter. Micah Silver. Micheline Bogey. Miguel Gutierrez. Morgan Thorson. Motor ~ Elisabeth Reed and Song Nelson. Neil Marcus. Niki Ford. Oakland Summer School. the Oasis. Padepokan Lemah Putih. Pak Heru. Panca Daya and all the teachers, of course, especially Rully. Patti Roberts. Paul Hoskin. Pearl Ubungen. Philip Huang. Prosodic Body ~ Daria Fain and Robert Kocik. Ralph Lemon. Randy Reyes. Ray Chung. Ryder Cooley. Sakura Shimada. SALTA Dance. Sabuk Janur. Saida Desilets. Samuel Ace. Sandra Reeve. Sara Ahmed. Scott Smith. Seth Eisen. Sheri Cohen. Sherwood Chen. Simone Forti. Stacey Goodman, SLMJ ~ Sally Dea, Lily Kiara, JN. Stephanie Skura. Steve Paxton. Suprapto Suryodarmo (Prapto) Temescal Arts Center ~ Dance Elixir, and Leyya Tawil. Tanya Stiller. Tessa Wills. Tony. Trees, stone, ocean and waters. Tuners far and wide. Una Nicholson. Valley Space in Oakland, Huichin. Violet Ace Harlo. My gentle mother, Wynne Galanter. and so many more…..

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Site Support

‍the vivid grove website was created through the support of many hands. Calvin Rocchio, designer, and one part of Companion-Platform; Mara Poliak, letter drawings and vivid grove mer-troll extraordinaire; Emelia Martinez Brumbaugh aka Jubilee July overview and vivid grove consulting; Amy Walsh - Bureau of Tactical Imagination, visual narrative consulting; Allison Wyper - Rhizomatic Arts, early design consultation; Emily Nahmanson, technical support; and Asimina Chremos, explicator. It truly takes a village.Honoring this place today, here on golden land, Huichin, as a settler-guest on stolen Indigenous land. Feeling the wind, sun, the bay, stones, and trees, the bay trees, the oaks, the root and roof, earth and sky.

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Treegoose Image, 2011. Drawing by Mara Poliak

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Our physicality can give us the tools to be engaged cultural agents in the world.

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The embodied experience is a social and cultural one, and the vivid grove is dedicated to collective liberation and cultural justice as is possible.

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An embodied and engaged life is the foundation and source of collective liberation. Each person deserves to live with safety, dignity, pleasure, and access resources for their health, well-being, and creative unfolding. Collective liberation, as praxis, holds our own freedom accountable alongside all people’s freedom.

‍The vivid grove is committed to creating equitable contexts for all its programs, participants, and potential partakers. Margit’s personal and shared vision through the vivid grove is in dedication to models of inquiry that empower and give agency to all participants, and Margit is dedicated to continue growing in their role as facilitator. Shx is committed to refusing, addressing, disrupting, and dismantling colonial heteropatriarchal ableist supremacies however possible. Living on Unceded Ancestral Ohlone Land, margit offers all workshops in so-called East Bay at no cost for Ohlone people and all people native to the Amerikas who would like to practice.

This project works with the full acknowledgement as uninvited guest and settler on these lands. All of this practice is possible due to centuries and generations of extraction and unforgiveable violence. I practice and pray through the vivid grove to build strong relations across difference and with the connections of all life. This work is inextricably interwoven in the intention and commitments to upend oppressive systems. As I benefit from and fail within these very systems I realize that we all do together. I humbly offer vivid grove in service to right relationality and collective liberation for all.

The following are some of the commitments of equality, inclusion, and racial justice in the vivid grove:

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To offer equitable opportunities and access through programs such as the Racial Justice Fellowship

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To commit to right relationship with place and the land, in alignment with decolonizing practices, beginning with acknowledging the indigenous land and peoples wherever possible in vivid grove activities

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To provide financial arrangements that include sliding scale, low-cost workshops, fellowship, scholarship, and work-trade options whenever possible

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To facilitate and share facilitation in ways that offers agency to participant

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To provide accessibility at all events where possible

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To experiment with leadership methods and collectivity

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To commit to racial justice, investigating institutionalized oppression, the invisible facets of whiteness/ supremacy, how privileged people take up space, and to address and shift the power dynamics with fairness and care

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To develop processes for systematic change - bodily, ecologically, structurally - rather than attending to how things appear.

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To continue a rigorous study and analysis of critical approaches and studies, methods for refusal, and to investigate my own personal biases

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To bring awareness to cultural concerns in content and structure, in relation to lineage, cultural appropriation, and invisible power structures

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To be in dialogue, to practice vulnerability and connectedness, to be open to exchange and to change

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To create environments where people can practice and grow in not-knowing together

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‍Through engaged, embodied practice, we can catalyze the world we seek to experience.

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Some Additional Notes

As the instigator of the vivid grove, Margit supports the creation of vibrant and exuberant spaces that enrich understanding of the self as a member of our nature-culture, in a village sense and is committed to sharing conscious practices that shift systems of oppression; facilitating life-affirming movement; inviting creative prefigurations, aka new worlds based on what we seek to create; working out what it means to be living under this regime in a supremacist society with creative alternative structures; acknowledging how racial and other cultural privileges effect these intentions; and explicitly furthering these understandings as the basis for the studies in the vivid grove.

There are some curious paradoxes of embodiment. Our body-being has tremendous potential as the site for growth and awareness through movement, and yet our body-beings are simultaneously the place and processes through which we filter and experience systemic oppression, where invisible privileges rule access, and where a sense of freedom can sometimes divert people from actual cultural transformation. Embodiment is a birthright, yet many somatic practices are accessible only to entitled populations, carry implicit biases, and recapitulate cultural trauma, even in their attempts to shift the nature of action in the world. Unconsciousness racist beliefs can cloud the possibility for sane, multiracial contexts, even in attempts at inclusive space.

How can we utilize our sensations and movements as an attuning source for conversation between what we experience within and the richness of contexts where we are? How can embodied art practice have a role in dismantling systems of oppression? How can we access our vibratory, transformational potentials without the limitations that judging these kind of terms enacts? How do we grow together? ‍

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‍Please Note: this statement is informed by many, many sources. The intent to make this statement came directly out of the conversations on Dance Around Race in the Bay Area, organized by Gerald Casel 2018 - 2019, and I first was introduced to the term “collective liberation” through Catalyst Project.

Carmina & Bay, previous Racial Justice Fellowship participants and life art collaborators, photo: mg

Testimonals

Mentorship and Sessions

I have been lucky enough to be in an on-going mentor relationship with margit for several years. It has been life changing for me personally and professionally and I look forward to many more years of study with her. Put simply, margit is able hold the space for you as a whole person. Whether or not you are in an FI session, an ATM class, a chi gong class environment, or a more intimate mentoring situation, margit's open-hearted nature and compassionate teaching allows for a deeply profound exploration of ourselves, our whole selves, our complete bodymind. The amount of information she is able to communicate with her hands sets her apart as one of the most gifted teachers I've come across. If you have the chance, please give yourself the gift of taking sessions with margit. The knowledge acquired, whether conscious or unconscious, will last you a lifetime.

—Jen, Client and Movement Pilates Instructor

The Vivid Grove for moving and learning

Few words can describe how grateful I am for my time in the vivid grove, a forested realm of movement practice that stirred creative growth throughout my being. Guided by margit’s deep sensitivity and understanding, I found new ways of being through the grounding foundations of Wild Goose qigong, the expansive attunement of workshops, and the connective explorations of the Guild. The vivid grove series allowed me to honor the movement of my soul’s play. It helped me cultivate new practices + recognize the creation that I am, in the forest I live.

—bay laurel, vivid grove participant and Racial Justice Fellow

Private Sessions in Feldenkrais and Acupressure

Working with margit has been one of the richest experiences of my life. Their sessions have provided me with life-long tools for being more deeply in my creative and physical self. Shx works in an intuitive and multi-faceted way, offering a wealth of resources and experience, while remaining attuned to the individual interests and needs of the person they’re working with. I can't recommend them highly enough!

—mara, movement practitioner and herbal apprentice