Led by Sarah Lisette Chiesa, Somatic Practitioner, and Assistant Professor of Dance

Monday, Sept 21 > Wednesday, Sept 23

9-10:30 somatic practices

10:30-11:30 break

11:30-1:30 movement generation building

Cost $111 per day OR $313 for 3 days

Text (808) 430 -7877 to sign up

Maria's Experience...

I had the beautiful opportunity to experience Sarah Lizette Kiasa’s work in Washington last year, when I first met Sarah and participated in her workshop. The experience stayed with me.

What I remember most is discovering a new center within myself—a different way of being present. Through Sarah’s gentle movement, awareness practices, and deeply attentive facilitation, I began to experience trust in a very embodied way: trust in my own body, trust in my energy, trust in another human being, and trust in the container we were creating together.

One exercise was especially profound for me. We practiced physically leaning into another person and allowing ourselves to trust that they would support us—that we could soften, surrender some of our holding, and still be safe.

My partner for this practice was a man over ninety years old, who was wonderfully alive, joyful, and happy to move. There was something incredibly touching about the two of us, from such different generations, learning through our bodies to lean toward one another, to listen without words, and to discover: I can support you, and I can allow myself to be supported by you.

That simple experience became something much larger for me.

Sarah’s work reminds me in some ways of what Eckhart Tolle describes in The Power of Now: a presence underneath all the thinking and explaining. There is a place where we do not necessarily need words. Presence moves through the physical body. We feel it. We recognize it in ourselves, and sometimes we recognize it in one another.

For those of us who explore the energetic dimensions of being human, there are so many languages through which we can contemplate this mystery—chakras and meridians, the seven primary chakras or expanded chakra systems, Human Design gates, Gene Keys, the electromagnetic field of the body, and the subtle ways our individual fields meet and interact with one another and with the space around us.

Whatever language we choose, the beautiful thing about Sarah’s work is that we do not have to intellectually understand any of it first.

We can simply experience ourselves through movement and presence.

That is why I am especially excited to see this work coming to Hawaiʻi and to our Pāhoa community. There is something extraordinary about exploring embodied presence here, on an island continuously shaped by volcanic creation. Living close to lava and witnessing the continual processes of destruction, creation, transformation, and renewal can invite its own powerful awareness of relationship—to our bodies, to the Earth, to ʻāina, and to one another.

To experience this movement research here, upon volcanic ground, feels very special to me. It feels pioneering, curious, and alive.

Sarah herself is kind, gentle, patient, and deeply tuned in to the people she is working with. My experience was that she created space without forcing the experience. She invited awareness and allowed each person to discover something through their own body.

Our Washington workshop also included a six-year-old girl alongside participants spanning generations, and witnessing that diversity brought another beautiful dimension to the experience. Movement can become a language that crosses age, background, and so many of the boundaries we normally place between one another.

For me, Sarah’s workshop ultimately came back to one simple and profound word:

Trust.

Trust the body.

Trust the movement.

Trust the person beside you.

Trust yourself enough to lean.

Trust yourself enough to receive support.

Trust the moment enough to truly be here.

I am deeply grateful that this work found me in Washington, and I am excited to witness its next expression here on Hawaiʻi Island.

Mahalo, Sarah, for your gentleness, patience, curiosity, and devotion to this exploration.

And mahalo for bringing this offering to the Pāhoa and Big Island community.

May we move together with presence, curiosity, aloha, and trust.

With aloha and gratitude,

Maria