Introducing the Mars Bodywork camp
When’s the last time you got to give and receive massages while living in the desert for 3 months straight?
Exactly
So lets talk a bit about Mars Bodywork Camp. A place to give and receive loving touch to and from your homies.
After about 10 years of learning and sharing bodywork, I had the inspiration to create a little Mars Bodywork Collective during Mars College 2023, and we had a joke that the classes should be renamed “homies touching homies”. Ultimately, in a very simple sense, that’s what its about. How can we bring intimate, loving and platonic touch to the people we love the most?
Zenthai Shiatsu, Thaivedic and the sunshine house (some of the schools that inspired our curriculum) answered this question for me. These schools, were sharing, not only a therapeutic practice, but also as a frame through which to live our lives.
Some of these principles are:
Listen, like we’re listening to the rain
Move like a hollow bamboo, open and receptive
Can I give in a way where I am also receiving?
So as I alluded to earlier, loving touch in our society seems to be generally reserved for our romantic partners and maybe our families when we were kids (if we were lucky). This is just not enough. As beings who crave intimacy and physical contact, I believe that we need more opportunities’ to find each other in physical touch, with clear intentions, without the confusion of “is this going further?” or “do you want something more?”.
This is the practice of Bodywork for me. The theraputic context creates a safe space to give and receive unconditional love through touch. It’s a form to be present in my body and offer that presence to another person. It’s a place for nervous system regulation. I’ve found that receiving touch from someone, who doesn’t “expect” or “want” anything from me, is crazy nourishing.
So what are we gonna do at the Mars Bodywork Camp?
Practice “a lot” of thai and shiatsu based bodywork (I am confident that everyone leaving the residency will feel proficient and able to give deeply nourishing sessions to others)
Dive into some theory around Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine as a supportive lens into how we approach and interact with the bodies we’ll be offering to
Community Build (we’ll be living and camping together in the desert, and we’ll learn what it means to connect to each other, both through communication practices and relationally, but also logistically, through maintaining our homes together and cooking for each other etc.)
Meditate! (for those who apply early enough, there will be the option to join a 10 day vipassana meditation retreat, half way through our time together, and we’ll use the tool of meditation to connect deeply to ourselves, and through this connection, find ourselves in connection with others)
Share our own interests and passions! There will be plenty of open workshop space, for you to hold things and bring your magic to our little camp and also the greater mars community
Play! We’ll laugh and play a lot
Sing! We’ll sing and play music a bunch
Touch, hang, cuddle, breath, dance, watch movies, read books, rest, go on desert walks, and more and more and more
This residency combines all of the things that I most love in life, plus a ton more mystery, waiting to be revealed as our unique group of 6-12 humans co create a once and a life time experience.
What’s it gonna look like?
We’ll have 8, 10 day cycles.
Starting January 14th
Ending April 4th
(our semester is just a bit shorter than the rest of mars, so that internationals can participate fully, but you can totally stay until the end of the official mars semester, we’ll just have to find you another place to stay for those weeks, which shouldn’t be an issue)
You gotta be there for the whole thing! We’re building community from beginning to end, and our learning builds upon itself week by week!
These 10 day cycles are split into TWO categories
5 Days Training
5 Days Residency
During training days, we’ll be in “retreat” learning mode. We’ll be learning at least 6-8 hours a day, diving into sequences, philosophy, theory, practice and active community building with each other, than I (bodhi) will guide.
During Residency days, your only responsibilities are your cooking, cleaning, shopping, or garbage shifts (whichever you have that cycle); and giving one or two bodywork sessions on your own to practice. Other than that, we’re free to participate in what the other camps are offering, or in creating workshops and offerings for our own camp and other camps. Maybe some of the other camps wanna learn some bodywork, and maybe some of our camp members wanna share a workshop of what we learned this past cycle to practice and integrate. The sky is the limit on what we can offer.
The first half of the “semester” we’ll be learning and practicing a bunch.
The second half of the “semester” we’ll see what it’s like to host a little student clinic in the nearby town of Bombay Beach!
If you are wishing to dive into a powerful and beautiful bodywork method, cultivate loving (most probably life long) friendships, and explore the world of meditation, this camp is for you.
We’ll dive deep and journey far together and we’d love to have you as part of our collective.
So if you’re already leaned in, check out some more info here and apply here