what are these courses about?
awe
: a feeling of reverential respect mixed with surprise and wonder, often followed by subtle but persistent waves of excitement.
: associated with a fear of something big happening; requires courage.
: available to you right now.
Through live zoom or self-paced video courses, explore awe through somatic, sexual and spiritual practices. Awe helps us unwire trauma in the body and create new pathways to aliveness.
AoA Live course
Academy of Awe Live is a 5- week zoom course facilitated by Nik Zaleski and Kim Crutcher to support you in finding more awe in your body, your art, your work, and your life. Each session will help you develop an intimacy with all that turns you on- not just sexually, but professionally, creatively, and in relationships of all kinds. Excitement points to purpose, and this course will take you closer to both in wholehearted community with other mystery-seekers.
aoa video course
The Academy of Awe Video Course is a 5-part self-paced video series of somatics, sexual and spiritual practices to cultivate the awe more deeply within you. Through guided meditations, embodiment and pleasure practices, you will discover more awe in your body, your art, your work, and your life. The course will help you deepen your relationship to the natural world, the people in it, your senses, your body, and your spirit- all at your own pace.
WHO are these courses FOR?
Anyone experiencing somatic flatness, sexual “meh-ness,” or general body blues
Anyone longing for more reverence, mystery and spiritual intimacy in their life
Anyone hungry to rediscover their creative fire
Anyone who trusts that greater fulfillment of their purpose is possible but doesn’t know how to get there
Anyone seeking renewed connection to their body and pleasure
WHAT DO THese COURSEs INCLUDE?
AOA LIVE COURSE
Five 90 minute live sessions, recorded for later access up to a year
Intuitive guidance and mystery teachings with Kim Crutcher
Accompanying practice recordings and worksheets to support your learning
Aoa video course
Seven 25-minute core content videos (5 core videos + 1 videos for vulva-owners + 1 video for penis-owners)
Five accompanying audio practices with musical compositions by Patrick Budde
Worksheets, journaling prompts and other materials to support your learning
live and video session content
One: Greeting Awe - Build the foundations to understand and begin cultivating awe.
Two: Setting the Table for Awe - Create sacred rituals + spaces to invite awe forward.
Three: Letting Awe In - Learn four pelvic floor exercises to begin letting awe into deeper places of the body.
Four: Seducing Awe - Support deeper states of pleasure through orgasm, polyvagal theory, and nervous system regulation - with pleasure principles and practices for vulva-owners and penis-owners.
Five: Committing to Awe - Get unstuck when falling in love (with a person or set of practices) and commit to a lifetime of awe.
on somatics
You don’t have to be “embodied” to take this course. Capitalism and white supremacy give us lots of reasons to disassociate. Let’s dignify wherever you are at in your relationship to your body. You do have to want to listen to the voice of your body, even when it has some confronting information for you.
on sexuality
Sexuality is an amplified playground to practice for how we want to show up to our lives! It’s also a powerful site of healing and harm for many, which I take seriously. There is no nudity or genital contact during live or video sessions— I demo all practices on anatomical models. I come with abundant experience in trauma informed practice, coaching and cultural work with survivors, and my own sexual assault history. Have your own complex sexuality story? I got you.
on spirituality
You don’t have to be a witch to take this course. I happen to be one, but the spiritual work included is entry-level and boundaried AF. Think working with the elements, altars, and intention. I’m a Christian mystic (minus all the homophobia and patriarchy of the church), but our work will center around your personal relationship to spirit.
what lineages do these courses pull from?
Some of the practices I share in the live and video courses are my adaptations of content I learned over years of study from the following sites of learning:
Devi Ward Erickson and the Institute of Authentic Tantra Education provided teaching for many of the sexual practices offered
The Strozzi Institute of Embodied Transformation provided teachings for many of the somatic practices offered
Kim Crutcher, the woman I call my minister and core spiritual teacher, has been a vital part of my spiritual lineage and influences the video content as well as co-teaches the live course with me
If you’d like to learn more about the ways that I attempt to disrupt colonizing, co-opting, and appropriating somatic and spiritual practices, you can read more about my values.
next live academy of awe:
february 2024
A 5-part self-paced video series of somatic, sexual, and spiritual practices to cultivate the awe more deeply within you. Through guided meditations, embodiment and pleasure practices, you will discover more awe in your body, your art, your work, and your life. The course will help you deepen your relationship to the natural world, the people in it, your senses, your body, and your spirit - all at your own pace.
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