Throughout the summer the next generation of Skinner Releasing teachers were being nurtured in Glasgow. Theresa Moriarty, Kirsty Alexander, Gaby Agis, and Mary-Clare McKenna guided a new cohort of Teacher trainees through their first of two summers to become certified Skinner Releasing Teachers.
Lionel Popkin, Nate Dryden, and I (Rosemary Spencer) decided to gather where the SRT vibes were and take the opportunity to get together and importantly move together for a weekend.
On behalf of the Skinner Releasing Network (SRN) I joined the trainees for an afternoon to introduce them to SRN. It was such a joy to meet the new cohort and feel their passion. They are a wonderfully welcoming bunch and I’m looking forward to them joining SRN and following their journeys into teaching SRT.
Theresa (Seattle), Kirsty (Glasgow), Gaby (London), Mary-Clare (South England), Lionel (LA), Nate (Arizona) and I (Leeds) all ate together, nattered, and nourished each other over two evenings. It is so rare for different generations of SRT from across the world to gather that we all took great pleasure indulging in connecting over our joint passion. Particularly for me as the teacher certified for the least time (11years) it was a joy to hear snippets of stories of times gone by and build a deeper connection with the earlier days of this amazing work. It was the first time most of us had seen each other since Joan Skinner’s and Bob Davidson’s passings. I felt that our coming together acted as an honouring of what had gone and as a beacon for what is to come.
On the Saturday, we took 3 hrs to move together. And what a joyfully embodied 3 hrs they were. We seamlessly moved through images, graphics, and group improvisations without a word of planning. Like a group of synergetically interacting organisms that had always moved as such. But we had never all been in a studio together in this way, some of us had met face to face for the first time just the day before. Our joint knowledge and trust in SRT bound us together. Feeling the strings that connect us in the gigantic web of life, we danced and danced. I’m still feeling the reverberations today.
For me the weekend reinvigorated my passion for the work but also for supporting SRN to build a community space for us to be together, be that remotely or in person. SRT lives through its teachers and students. For it to thrive and survive we need to continue to come together and reinforce those connections and allow those strings to dance us!
Post by Rosemary Spencer 18.09.23
