Welcome to the winter cave hibernation collective!
You are here because you want a serious and intentional slow down. You want to listen to your body and you want to do it in alignment with nature.
Between December and January is a natural time where our society slows down. While many people get off work for a few weeks, that time is full of holiday parties and the stresses of family. And the reality is that many of use continue to grind all the way through the winter.
Do you believe that a new way is possible? I do! and I think the answers are in observing nature. If it is freezing cold outside, 8 feet of snow, cars sliding off roads, 50 layers of clothes just to walk to the corner, shoveling snow for 45 minutes just to get to work than maybe we should consider that we should be doing less. We should be staying inside and staying warm. Stoking inner fires with practices and companionship. Eating nourishing foods to warm our bodies and support our nervous system, connecting with the energy of dark stillness.
Here we are committed to slowing down in the winter season for the purposes of:
- deep nourishment of our bodies
-internal reflection
-refinment of our values
-tending our relationship with spirit
-spell work and root work
Join me for 8 weeks of intentional winter nourishment.
Winter Cave Testimonies
“Sojourner creates a very warm and inviting container to practice reflections and connect with ones spirit. Wherever you are on your journey Sojourner meets you. I also loved the sense of belonging and extended community. ”
“I tried many new things in the Winter Cave. I created altars and engaged in grief rituals. I created and cast spells, which are now part of my morning ritual. On some days I spent more time drawing than I did writing. Look, I don’t really draw. But I was supported to drop into whatever felt good in those moments. While I have sought to define my spiritual practice for a long time, Winter Cave allowed me to see there is a lot of expansiveness in how I define this, if I end up defining it at all. For example I realized that witnessing, as a part of my creative practice, is also integral to my spiritual practice. I hadn’t considered that before. I felt that this space offered me permission to rest and I just followed that to wherever it went. I was able to do that while being with community, it was exactly what I needed. ”
“In the midst of freezing temperatures and winter depression, I found winter cave to be like a warm sun, illuminating all the things that keep me whole. The meditation sessions, the rituals and the spiritual activities we did with the group were incredibly healing and made some of the hardest winter month feel more like spring (a new beginning) The cave gave me a space for me to cultivate important spiritual practices that I had put off for too long or just simply forgot. Chicago winters are brutal. So it was EVERYTHING to engage with others and embark on a spiritual journey together when everything else feels so isolating. It helped my S.A.D. ease up and got me to cusp of spring! ”
Sojourner Zenobia
Led Ritual Facilitator
Sojourner Zenobia (She/They), is an embodied sacred space facilitator, multidisciplinary performance artist, abolitionist, womanist earth wisdom- dream walker.
Sojourner is completely moved by being on this planet we call earth and is specifically interested in inviting BIPOC queer folks into somatic spiritual space to explore, strengthen and practice collective wisdoms that we receive from the earth.
Sojourner has been facilitating a ritual and meditation practice space called "Stillness," for over a decade. Through Stillness hundreds of BIPOC femmes and non-binary folk have deepened in connecting with ancestors, nature and their personal gifts.
Sojourner has created youth centered mindfulness curriculums for the Chicago Park District, Family Matters and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art’s Teen Creative Agency. They have curated rituals and retreats for countless midwest organizations including Haji Healing Salon, John Kolher Arts Museum, Cards Against Humanities and Enrich Chicago.
As a performer they use meditation, ritual, storytelling and somatic healing practices as, “now portals,” to reach across time and connect with ancestors, listen to the earth and follow the wisdom of the body. Through deep presence and listening Sojourner collects movement, song, characters and poetic narratives to create participatory, alternate worlds that can be experienced within our current reality as gateways to explore truths, express feelings, and play.
Peregrine Bermas
Herbalist for Winter Caver Tonics
I’m a queer pinxy artist and capricornucopia living in so-called chicago; descended from mountains, ocean and raspberries, and humans whose creative inclinations led them to be teachers, entrepreneurs, caregivers, land tenders, excellent cooks and medicine makers.
I am a graduate of University of Illinois at Chicago, Moksha Yoga Center (200 CYT), Street Yoga, Heart-Stone Center for Earth Essentials, Violet Heart Wellness (Reiki) and Sacred Vibes Apothecary. I have over a decade of experience as a yoga practitioner that greatly informs how I approach facilitation, and I continue self-study and guided learning in liberatory somatics and plant medicine.
As an artist, my creative practice takes many forms; all stimulating the intersections of land-based relationships and collective care. In 2023-2024 I am illustrating the second in a series of educational coloring zines about “weeds”.
As a community herbalist, I am passionate about sharing local and kitchen-accessible plant medicine, and uplifting queer, trans and Indigenous and Melanated soil stewards and wisdom teachers.
I am founder and co-steward of Freedom Fighter Herbs, a care network and food sovereignty project, which emerged to serve chicago amidst pandemic uprising in 2020.
Yoli Maya Yeh
Yoga Nidra
Yoli Maya Yeh is a Yoga & Shiatsu Therapist (AOBTA, VYASA, Yoga for the Special Child) and an Educator in Comparative Religions and Global Studies (MA Comparative Religious Ethics). Yoli works at the intersection of Indigenous Preservation, Healing Arts and Social Justice and is co-founder of DEIcipher Group. Raised in her family's Native American spiritual teachings, Yoli spent twelve years of her young adulthood studying language, yoga, tantra, healing arts and meditation in India and continues to travel and teach around the globe.
Yoli holds transformative healing space for especially hard to treat, autoimmune, chronic conditions, unexplainable, undiagnosable, compound situations. She is devoted to healing for women and birthing bodies and offers supportive space for grief, loss, birth loss, traumatic birth expereinces and the spiritual dimension.
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Contributing
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Healers
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Storytellers
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Herbalists
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Ritual Facilitators
〰️ Contributing 〰️ Healers 〰️ Storytellers 〰️ Herbalists 〰️ Ritual Facilitators
Asia Dorsey
Root Worker: Bones and Blood Class
Asia Dorsey is a bioregional, rootworker raised by a collective of aunties and grandmothers in Historic Five Points Community in Denver. She has apprenticed with elders in, India, Ghana, New Zealand, New York and more to discern a practice of a People’s Medicine, grounded in the movement for reparations , healing justice, and her ancestral earth-based practices. Asia is the owner of Bones Bugs and Botany an organization committed to creating pathways towards embodied liberation though food and herbal medicine education. She teaches ecological design with the Regenerative Education Collective of Denver and uses her talent of pattern recognition to decipher and reintegrate the sacred instructions of plants and ecosystems into people systems with Regenerate Change. Find her on the Petty Herbalist Podcast helping her people to rise together in the power that is their birthright and at www.bonesbugsandbotany.com.
Charmain Bee
Dream Work
Charmaine uses mediums such as video, movement, sculpture, writing, sound and textile and makes work about Gullah heritage and the histories and manifestations of African diaspora spirituality. Charmaine works with materials harvested in the Sea Islands of the United States during the era of slavery, such as rice and indigo. Charmaine also makes work about medical bias as well as healing and wellness through plant medicine and how these histories are activated through portals of geographic sites, time and spaces we can’t see but can feel.
Before receiving an mfa Charmaine formally studied herbalism and makes herbal medicine and teaches workshops on herbs for dreaming.
Register for Winter Cave Hibernation
Ritual Dates Dates:
December 17th, 31st
Jan 14th, 18th
Feb 11th
Deep listening sessions happen every Wednesday throughout the cave.
Where: ONlLINE Zoom
COST:
Sliding Scale is available for different financial entry points.
Rose $497- with this entry point I am able to sustain the basic administration that is needed to produce and curate retreats.
Butterfly $997- supports the prep time and facilitation of each retreat
Wolf Pack VIP $1497- Supports the outsourcing of administrative help and ability for Sojourner Zenobia Retreats to sustain into the future.
Included in VIP pricing is a year in The MOTHERSHIP, Sojourner Zenobia’s membership collective. In The MOTHERSHIP there are biweekly meditation and ritual sessions, new and full moon rituals, guest speakers sharing wisdom on creating embodied personal spiritual practice that aligns with the earth and discounts on virtual and in person retreats.
There are limited spots for scholarships. Applications for scholarships will open in October.
Group rates available for friends or businesses. For groups rate email me at sojourner.zenobia.is@gmail.com