community
“Learning is a socially constructed process
created by and with learners
through their interactions
with their experience and their environment."
Anne Brockbank
About Us
the School of Experiential Learning (or, SOEL) was founded by Rosalyn Maynard MA BMCA to support transformation through personal discovery.
the School of Experiential Learning offers:
one to one lessons in Body-Mind Centering®,
Body-Mind Centering® intensives,
courses in Experiential Anatomy,
study groups, and
creative mentorships.
SOEL's unique approach to learning is based on a somatics movement education. SOEL's education programme focuses on care and compassion for life. Cultivating the knowledge or waie* necessary to comprehend interrelatedness and an attitude of care.
This approach develops self awareness and expands and deepens our ability to care for ourselves, each other and place.
Please explore the School's website and contact us if you would like to join our mailing list or to ask any questions you may have.
"I appreciate that in this practice there is no ideology, technique or way of looking at the world, just an opportunity to (re)-consider things from a different perspective that is person centred and unique to each individual. In this sense it differs from for example, a yoga class or a dance or meditation workshop yet all of the principles of movement quality, mindfulness and well being are apparent."
Dr Tiffany Strawson,
Theatre artist and mother
"Now I am more conscious of discomfort and of how I constrain myself (…) and I understand better how I can move and hold myself in order to ease discomfort, move more freely and feel more free and relaxed. I notice how I react to situations emotionally in my body, and am starting to be able to read this information allowing me to choose how I respond to these situations."
Vivian Winterhoff,
Community Learning Facilitator
Photo copyright Rosalyn Maynard
project "Making it Home" April 2012
*A ‘waie’ is an olde English word for a ‘route’, more commonly spelt, ‘way’ in modern English. It was often given to routes and paths denoting a journey of significance; either one of commerce – a pack horse route, and/or a spiritual journey such as a pilgrim waie. The waie of walking cultivates a waie of knowing. After all, our senses developed to function at foot speeds and at SOEL we often begin our movement explorations returning to this quiet, contemplative pace of perception, giving time to a quality of attention engaged in movement from place to place, moment to moment. We incorporate this definition into all aspects or ‘waies’ of working in SOEL programme.
FEES by DONATION at SOEL
7th May 2022
We invite you to join the experiment
Using money as a token communicating one’s degree of gratitude
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of others.
Albert Einstein
At SOEL we would like to invite you to consider our teaching and learning exchanges as a gift*.
In turn, we invite you to consider your sense of the value of the exchange, and make a donation that feels comfortably within your own means.
We have been exploring gift economy principles for many years offering private lessons in Body-Mind Centering®, BMC® Study Sessions and SOELs Mentoring Partnerships by donation and through gift exchange. During the pandemic and the lockdowns, we were also offering all our workshops via zoom by donation and we continue to do so.
As we develop this practice we have decided to open up our donation exchange to include our in person community workshop programme in Saturday Somatics and Body-Mind Centering® workshops.
This is an ongoing dynamic experiment informed by the experience; experiential learning. The question of course comes: How can we share our gifts in today’s money economy and still make a living?
Because gift mentality is so alien to us today, doing business in the gift sometimes requires a bit of education. I’ve found that if I advertise an event as “by donation,” people sometimes treat it as a throwaway, thinking, “It must not be very valuable or very important if he isn’t charging for it.
Excerpt Charles Eisenstein: “Sacred Economics”
We are trusting gratitude, operating under the simple precept that:
"we give a gift and we trust that a gift will be given in return"
How does it work, making a donation?
Prices or fees as guidelines are available. Some like to discuss their donation before committing to a workshop, a mentoring partnership or booking an appointment for an individual session. We welcome these discussions. Some are comfortable to follow their own guidelines.
* Gift, a definition as the term is used here:
By the term “gift” we do not mean a gift or present given in the commercial sense of the word, perhaps associated with our culture of giving at Christmas for example, but a gift exchange based on one’s experience of giving and receiving from a somatics perspective.
The nature of real human exchanges that occur in somatics do not readily or easily lend themselves to the application of a quantitive monetary value. Furthermore, the nature of each of our personal economic situations are as equally complex and diverse.
So we use the term “gift” in the broadest sense of the meaning of the word giving, and invite you to experience it and notice how you feel from inside … what you discover and how you would like to respond.
I want to inject a note of gentleness and realism into this discussion.
Please do not think I am advocating some saintly standard of altruism or self-sacrifice.
Excerpt Charles Eisenstein: “Sacred Economics”
How much does it cost to be SOEL?
This is a question we are currently considering. What we offer…what we are committed to offer…place, space, resources, training, professional memberships, insurance, rent, heating, washing, cleaning, library, maps, models and music, conversation, research, dialogue…in our endeavour to be SOEL; to be local and small. We will continue to update you as part of our endeavour to share this story and experiment of offering our presence in the world.
As you step into a gift mentality, let your feelings guide you. Let your giving arise from gratitude and not the desire to measure up to some standard of virtue. Perhaps the first steps will be small ones: adding little extras, doing small favors with no agenda of reward. Perhaps if you run a business, you will convert a small part of it to a gift model. Whatever steps you take, know that you are preparing for the economy of the future.
Excerpt Charles Eisenstein: “Sacred Economics”
What are your questions and reflections? What is your experience of giving and receiving a gift?
We would love to hear from you if you have anything to share or propose regarding this experiment; your own experience, your questions, your challenges, your insights.
It is an interesting process, and something we feel is fundamental to the transitional process from our old economic model that is no longer serving us to something more compassionate, contextual and relational to self, community and world.
‘The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.’
Hippocrates
Rosalyn with Longtail, Big Meadow,
August 2020.
Photo copyright: Emma Freeman. Used with permission
Daisy walking with Den, Dartmoor
the Making it Home project September 2012
Photo copyright: Rosalyn Maynard.