I run this course 2x a year.
The fall course is full and running.
Next up?
Spring 2024
6 weeks long!
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Healing Yourself and The Planet Through Narrative + Nervous System
A 6-week online course
STORY MAMMAL
You likely aren’t new to self inquiry.
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You’re familiar with your patterns, habits, and even those pesky blind spots. You make changes, but are the shifts hard to make sustainable or long-term?
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Do you sense a missing piece?
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I hear you.
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You aren't the only one!
There is nothing wrong. There is nothing to strive for or fix. There is nothing to perform or even become. There is only deeper listening to what is already there waiting for you to discover.
You, yes you, are made for this.
You are a wise animal of language. You also live in a magnificent physical body. Did you know the connection between story and nervous system is your innate human medicine? You actually have the blueprint (it’s ancient) to integrate them for a robust and expansive you. It’s a top down + bottom up process. But modern life has stripped most of us of this know-how and we often get STUCK. Imagine what happens when you remember….
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Coming home to yourself in this way transforms you, your world and our collective culture.
Does your expression sometimes turn into the long and winding and repetitive road?
Or maybe your voice feels stunted.
Have you been called “intense” or “sensitive” or “too much?”
Do you dig (and crave) ritual and earth principles?
Are you body-curious?
Does living in this era both energize and exhaust you?
Do you believe in the time-proven efficacy of group work?
Do you often wonder, Who am I beyond the constructs society and others (even I) have placed on myself?
Humanity is in a huge transition. You are too. Are you here for it?
LISTEN. Listen, listen. No, not to me, but to that voice inside you. You are what I call a story mammal. A what?! Well, it’s actually your homo sapiens nature. Your story (self-talk, mindset, beliefs) and your body affect and shape each other—and your life. Without body, we stay stuck in our heads and addicted to reframes that can’t hold. Without story, we lose our language art and the powerful meaning-making of our heroine’s journey. Story and body are here to help you.
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During our 6 weeks together, we explore the potent story of “who I am” because it influences every inch of your life and is/has been influenced by everything/one around you. It is your energetic signature. We use narrative and nervous system practices to land, over and over again, in a lush place where you experience, at long last, your own fluidity. Yes, you can maintain a vitality that doesn’t burn out no matter the externals. No, that doesn’t mean constant happiness. It means access to your inborn resilience during the expansion and contraction that is life. It’s no small revolution.
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You begin to hear your deep self and feel the ground beneath you. It’s highly personal and high communal. We do it together through connection because no one evolves in a vacuum. We create a culture of witnessing and being witnessed. It is real-deal, playful and full of heart.
Who is this workshop for?
I always trust the orchestration beyond me that brings an individual to a group and a group into being. My workshops are always a nourishing multigenerational experience. Many women and non-binary folks who take my workshops are consciousness-raisers who hold space for others—as therapists, educators, bodyworkers, parents. Some consider themselves artists of some kind. Not necessarily professionally but as creators in life. Important side note: You DO NOT have to have written anything in your life to be here; story is your birthright. Most have hit rock bottom at least once in life. All are seekers. All are truth-tellers. All live with an existential wonder. Most aren’t devoted to being status quo. I can also 100% say that each person I’ve worked with has an adventurous heart.
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Shannon Klohr
It’s been months and I’m still using the tools I learned from Molly. I’m still feeling the love of the community she wove together with us. I can’t say enough about the warmth she exudes and I never expected a Zoom class to be so intimate and wonderful. I would give this gift to myself again and again. It exceeded all of my expectations. And took me to unknown places. The material is gold.
Rebecca Thering
In Molly's spaces, I feel seen, heard, welcomed, a sense of belonging, and an admiration and tenderness towards my fellow Story Mammals. Her content and the way she shares it are top-notch. Articulate. Nuanced. Human. Encouraging. A full mind/body/spirit experience. Her structure and pacing allow for true integration. Ten out of ten recommend!
Charlie Rigg
I have never spent that amount of money on a course before, but I’m so pleased I did. Story Mammal opened a channel of creativity that has been blocked, or perhaps even hammered shut with planks and nails. A kind of dislodging happened. One day towards the end of the course, I ‘woke up’ and realised that I’d been creating, busily, passionately, scribbling and drawing, writing, dreaming up things that are now coming to fruition. Thank you, Molly.
Gursharn Rait
I want to give you a massive tight hug to thank you for this new world you've helped open up! It wasn’t just self-care; I was learning new concepts. Healing is what your course did. I came out of it feeling empowered and proud. It was essential for me. I love the element of play and freedom in your workshops. Your style is so clear and simple, no bells and whistles and it came straight from the heart. Mille merci."
What happens as a result?
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You meet your own dimensionality.
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You get energy back! Stuck narratives and bound physiology drain us.
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You emerge with a nervous system + story understanding of The Human Mammal and of your particular self (tendencies, resources, impulses, fluencies, language, song) along with solid tools to meet your deep needs.
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Cognition is no longer the #1 go-to or familiar move.
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You tap into the renewable resource of creativity and its profound soothing effects.
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You broaden your capacity to feel and not get taken down by feeling
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Your relationships to self and others and planet heal in new ways.
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You will fall in love with your body for how it has kept you alive.
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When​
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Next: Spring 2024 (April-May)
Format
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*Video recordings will be sent to those who cannot attend live
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6 live Zoom workshops with Molly on each Tuesdays (1.5 hours), @ 10am MT
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6 live Q&As with Molly (1 hour).
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Guest Teacher(s)
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Real Time sharing and feedback
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3 10-minute pre-recorded videos of me orienting us to nervous system and story
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Private Online Community Forum (NOT Facebook)
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Set of weekly prompts and exercises
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PDFs to outline the process
Guest Artist Fall 2023
Jen Bloomer of Radici Studios
Jen will be joining us for 3-4 weeks to guide everyone through dynamic, visual art prompts to accompany the Story Mammal exploration. Another access point. So cool!
Jen is an artist, educator, and activist with a deep belief in the power of human connection. She is the founder of Radici Studios, an arts organization building thriving communities through the arts. Along with a multi-racial team of expressive arts therapists and educators Jen also co-founded Co-Create to Liberate which brings the spark of creativity to diversity, equity, and inclusion work in a variety of settings. Jen’s own art can be seen in local murals, has been shown internationally by Amplifier Art, and is included in the Library of Congress archive in Washington D.C. Jen holds a masters in expressive art therapy and believes in the profound healing power of the arts. Though she's worked, painted and facilitated all over the world, Jen now resides in Berkeley, CA with her husband and two kids.
Content
I want you to absorb what is useful for you. When too much information comes at us, we can’t take it in; sometimes we short out, collapse and then do nothing at all. That’s not what you or I want for you. This workshop material is curated mindfully—the what, when and pace.
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Before: I will ask you to watch three under 10-minute videos of me setting our groundwork: 1) History of Story and Humans, 2) Nervous System and Self-Regulation 101, 3) My Spiral Process Connection of Story + Mammal
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Week 1: Identify the story of “who I am.” We explore the ecology (familial, social, systemic) that has shaped your story and your nervous system and we initiate your capability to be slow, observe and sense the environment beyond you and within your own cells.
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Week 2: Broaden the scope of what you see and feel. We bring curiosity to your attention-placing, examine thick and thin narratives, name and gather resources in story and body, expand your personal latitude while clarifying boundaries, as we develop a fullness from which to thrive.
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Week 3: Organize what you’ve unearthed. Not with filing cabinets! This organization unfolds like a dance—organic and rhythmic. We experiment with how the movement between trauma and resources creates resolution, lovingly name your impulses, and widen what and how you hold.
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Week 4: Play with fresh meaning-making that both naturally surfaces from your body and comes from your conscious re-languaging. We use the power of embodied imagination and story and you learn to inhabit the evolving song of you—your pace, silence, proportion, voice, and weaving.
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Week 5: Express your essential self to your people. It’s an out loud frequency request of our community. We bust the myth of independence, align with our social animal nature and socialize our growth so others can hold it for us too. It’s a practice of discernment and tending.
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Week 6: Stand on the ground you have created. We find stability in the fluidity. We integrate (even more) your dynamic relationship between story and body and your continued attunement to your survival physiology. You leave aligned with your story mammal, one and the same.
About Molly
Molly Caro May is an author, teacher and story coach. Her most recent book, Body Full of Stars: Female Rage and My Passage Into Motherhood, was named a “searingly eloquent memoir” by Kirkus and excerpted in TIME. She has facilitated personal narrative workshops across the country for a decade and gave a TEDx talk about rage and the female body in 2018. She is trained in Somatic Experiencing, a trauma resolution and nervous system resilience modality. You can read more about what brought her to it personally here. Her mission is to democratize expression and explore, in good company, the healing alchemy between story and nervous system. Molly grew up in five countries and now lives in Montana with her husband and two children who are somehow already 10 and 6 years old.
