Heart Openers: Live Sessions

Embodied writing, audio love letters & gentle movement.
Bimonthly immersive workshops.

Early bird pricing ends January 30th, 2024.

With all that’s happening in the world, is it possible to be a tender-hearted person without burning out or escaping in distraction?

We need a new model of care that understands how to nourish our inner selves in order to keep our hearts open to the world.

Join us for Heart Openers, a bimonthly immersion in lavishing your heart with care that embraces creativity, makes space for celebration and sorrow, and opens portals to inhabiting your body with more ease.

Through live workshops, audio love letters, gentle movement, and invitations to write, we’ll play with not escaping but arriving, finding refuge and connection as an everyday practice.

We’ll work with specific sites in the body - the feet, hips, belly, hands, shoulders, throat and heart - to listen for inner knowing, breathing new life into postures and habits.

True to the theme, this bimonthly live course will be supportive, playful, and easy to access.

Want to join the free introductory Heart Openers: Live Sessions workshop on January 28th from 2 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. EST? Register here.

We cannot make sense of suffering, but we can widen, soften, and fortify our hearts.

Heart Openers supports you to:

  • Reclaim writing as an act of ease & discovery

  • Develop embodied practices for care

  • Discover new portals for listening to your inner knowing

  • Become more familiar with your own rhythms & resources

  • Bring gentleness to your body and health

  • Connect to your own creativity, intuition, & even joy

“If you want to expound on love,
take your intellect out and let it lie down
in the mud. It’s no help.”
— Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
“the heart is a front line and the fight is to feel in a world of distraction. ”
— adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

Heart Openers is for those who:

  • Are weary or tender-hearted and want practices for self-trust and self-expression

  • Seek support for their nervous systems

  • Are interested in inhabiting themselves with more fullness

  • Want to make space for celebration and sorrow

  • Believe in an inclusive, new model of care

  • What folks are saying.

    Heart Openers was exactly the medicine I needed right now. It was gentle, invitational, and full of deep permission. The audio love letters were the highlight of my days these past two weeks! The content was delivered in such a caring, lighthearted way, helping it feel incredibly digestible and supportive for this busy season in my life. This course is the perfect touchstone if you're looking for a light yet grounding way to come home to yourself in the midst of challenging times. - Bridgett

  • What folks are saying.

    “This course brought me back to very basic concepts of aliveness and growth, and unexpectedly catalyzed me to uncover some important revelations…Jones brings extraordinary expertise in embodiment, creativity, spirituality, and daily living in good times and bad to her teaching alongside a loving, generous and humorous spirit. It reminded me what's important, and brought these concepts to life in new ways that opened doors for creation of what works.” — Alexa Miller

  • What folks are saying.

    “Such profound reverence for ‘Reverence’. Each morning I woke early to open this ‘love letter’ in the form of a daily email to bask in its creative beauty, inspiration, and generosity of spirit. It’s essence will resonate long past these 30-days. Feeling the deep infusion of poetry, embodiment practices, sound, and gentle nudge to let my voice spill. Jones is a brilliant healer and humble creative genius. Don’t miss your chance to sip this nectar, it is worth it’s weight in gold.” — Lara, Portland, ME.

  • What folks are saying.

    “There truly are no words that come close to expressing my gratitude for your infinite love, exquisite skill, and generosity in these offerings to all of us… As a group we are swimming in the sweetness of your invitation to come alive together.” - B.E.

  • What folks are saying.

    “A space full of support, permission, courage, and care where we could all show up just as we were in each moment. What an extraordinary gift! … The themes you used to move us through this course feel like guides for moving through life. I want to take the course again right now!” - E.A.

Facilitator

 

I’m Johanna

a biodynamic craniosacral therapist, a teacher, a writer, an audio producer, and someone who knows autoimmune disease from the inside out. I create spaces where we can listen to what our bodies are actually saying in order to inhabit ourselves more fully. I believe in abundant permission, reverence, and the vitality of creativity. Read more.

 

Course Themes

Explored in bimonthly 75-minute workshops, audio meditations and movement/writing prompts.

  • January 28th: Permission. Listening inward, reverence, arrival

  • February 11th: Feet. Ground & gravity, roots

  • February 25th: Hips/pelvis. Creativity & connection

  • March 10th: Belly. Nourishment, digestion, gut feelings

  • March 24th: Shoulders. Habits of bearing, responsibility, support

  • April 7th: Hands. Reaching & releasing

  • April 24th: Throat & neck. Singing, voice, hearing, naming

  • May 5th: Heart. Coherence, bringing it all home

How it works

Heart Openers meets bimonthly from January 28th - May 5th. The course is designed to shepherd you through winter into spring through live workshops and supporting materials. Course includes:

  • Eight live, 75-minute embodied writing workshops to move and write in a supportive group container. Workshops meet every other Sunday from 2pm - 3:15pm: January 28th, February 11th, February 25th, March 10th, March 24th, April 7th, April 24th, and May 5th.

  • Audio love letters (2-5 minutes in length) to deepen your inquiry into each body site and nurture care and awareness

  • Deep somatic inquiries to help you hear your own inner, embodied wisdom

  • Informed by somatic & myofascial work, invitations for gentle exploration that focus on various sites of the body in order to stretch, soften, and amplify inner knowing.

  • All course materials, including writing prompts, video recordings of live workshops and resources to creatively explore your discoveries

Cost

Sign up by January 30th for an early bird price of $385. (Regularly $425)

Two deeply discounted registrations are available, particularly for marginalized folx and those in great financial need. Please be in touch if you’d like to learn about scholarships or donate to make this option more widely available to others.

Questions & Answers

What if I’m not a writer?

Identifying as a writer is no prerequisite! In fact, part of the work in Heart Openers is to repair those old stories around being/not being a writer and instead invite you to follow your own creative call to write through the wisdom of the body.

How long will I have access to this material?

You’ll have access to workshop recordings, audio meditations, and resources on our password-protected web portal through June of 2024.

Can I buy this course as a gift?

Absolutely! There’s an area in the checkout for you to designate Heart Openers as a gift, and to share the email of the gift recipient (you’re also welcome to let us know if you want us to hold off contacting the gift recipient until after a particular date).

I have another question - where can I find the answer?
Please be in touch directly via the contact page.

Many thanks to the Maine Arts Commission, whose Project Grants for Artists supported the creation of Heart Openers.