Name: Underbelly: The Art of Slowing Down
Start: 2025-10-01T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-10-01T21:30:00-04:00
Location: Open Arts Studio, Inc

A non-verbal somatic journeying practice (via rest and embodied movement) where we reclaim our slow in a fast and overwhelming world.
About this Event

*****Underbelly: The Art of Slowing Down® is now expanding to NYC! *****

** Live grand piano with !

Born in the Bay Area in 2018, Underbelly is a non-verbal, somatic journeying practice (via rest and embodied movement) immersed in music for a slower body.

It is a response to the loss of slowness and spaciousness in our dominant culture which survives on speed keeping problematic, oppressive, and destructive systems in place at the cost of our well-being and planetary health. It's time to dismantle the hurry and reclaim our slow in a fast and overwhelming world.

We prioritize and center nervous system (co)regulation, emotional digestion, nourishment, boredom, living in the questions, complexity, rest, subtlety, listening, communion, devotion, and attuned relationship over modernity’s urgency, linearity, transaction, instant gratification, extremes, consumerism, and incessant stimulation. This practice doesn't impose or instruct with authority, but gives space, freedom and safety to rest in our own unstructured being without constant intrusion. We learn to lovingly hold ourselves exactly as we are, soften into feeling, relax into trust, honor our rhythms and needs, and follow our organic unfolding through listening and yielding vs. pushing and controlling.

Here, we open to our innate, and perhaps quieter intelligence without always being told what to do or how to be "right." Instead of overly prescribing and defining, we let space be the teacher as we lean back into the mystery, the essential, the emergent and reconnect with what has been here all along. In the age of empire, division, dissociation, screens and excess may we continue to nurture the connective tissue between us and strengthen the foundational fabric of our humanity and greater ecosystem.

Voyage beneath the surface of our fast culture, and sink into a slow sanctuary for unearthing what is alive, tender, and honest for you in every moment.

***This experience is not performative/postured/appropriated spirituality, nor a workshop, movement method or quintessential ecstatic dance or contact improv jam.It is not a quick fix or the next dopamine hit. It is not guided from certainty or giving solutions. It's a kindred community that values generous collaboration, energetic sensitivity, self and collective inquiry, exploring relational dynamics, nuance, and being in process. Underbelly is a trauma informed space.

***Every Underbelly experience varies depending on what is alive in the group field at that given time:

Movement forms are welcome (authentic/personal/formless/sensory/somatic/intuitive movement, movement with others etc).
Meditative forms are welcome (resting, pausing, stillness, being-ness, witnessing, observing, writing, drawing, doing nothing etc).
Participants may explore being in their own space/solo.
Participants may explore being in proximal space (being near each other, without physical contact). This gives us time to feel what is energetically alive in the spaces between us and listen to subtler notes of interaction without rushing into habits.
Participants may eventually explore consensual, mindful physical contact.
Music: emotional, soulful, slow, spacious, deep, symphonic, film scores,meditative, ambient, experimental, nature sounds, silent, and live.
All are welcome. No prior experience or preconceived notions necessary, you'll absorb and discover as you go.