Autumn Praxis Residency (Oct-Dec 2024)
Come and feel the warmth and nourishment of collective practice and community at this year’s Autumn Residency at the Life Itself Praxis Hub in Bergerac (south-west France) 🍂 🔥 💛
Key Info
💛 What: An opportunity to experience the joy and nourishment of living in community with a light frame of collective practices, while devoting time to your own (or shared) projects and explorations.
🌳 Where: Life Itself Praxis Hub, Bergerac, France (near Bordeaux)
🤸 Who: Open to anyone interested in conscious community living, contemplative activism, regenerative food systems, inner development, ecological and cultural transformation, living the “more beautiful world our hearts know is possible”, dancing with complexity, and more…
🍂 When: 1st October - 15th December. You can stay for 1 week up to the full 2.5 months.
💌 Cost: From €350-850/month, depending on the room, + €10/day for food & amenities.
There will also be a special Creative Writing residency taking place within the frame of the Autumn residency, 23rd October to 7th November — more detail below.
There is also the possibility to organise a one day presentation of the Awami Praxis Food design system and in general the Praxis design that Valerie developed at the Bergerac Life itself upon request.( on donation) .
About the Autumn Praxis Residency
The Autumn Praxis Residency is an opportunity to experience and contribute to the spirit of the Hub – which is to explore the practices that support community, both on an individual and a collective level. The practices we engage in intend to cultivate a compassionate lifestyle, ecological balance, and a shift from individual isolation to supportive community.
Instead of following a specific training program or content, this residency creates space to listen to what the collective wants to emerge. Together, we feel the rhythm of a community, observe how our collective body responds to what unfolds — light or shadow — and create our time together.
During this long Autumn residency, we have the opportunity to digest our Summer experiences and inspirations into seeds of change to take with us into Winter and Spring. You might be concentrating on your daily work, writing a book, designing a passion project, experimenting with group workshops, or something else… Whatever it is, the residency offers a place in which we can support each other in our unfolding.
To give you a sense of how this Autumn could be, here is a flavour of what last year’s Autumn residency was like …
🎶 Reading, singing, or playing board games together by the fire
🎨 Self-organised activities such as: Systemic Constellations, Authentic Relating, Circling, Men’s/Women’s Circles, Improv Theatre Games, Ecstatic Dance, film nights…
🥗 Delicious local and organic meals
🌊 Long walks along the river
🤓 Sharing mini-presentations on our projects and passions
❤️ Joy and cosiness and deep connection
And much more!
Schedule and Collective Frame
This residency focuses on conscious co-living, or living well together, according to a framework of practice developed here over the past three years.
Schedule (indicative and may change with the needs of the participants):
7-8am: Sitting meditation
8-9am: Breakfast (some of us also do yoga)
9-10am: Collective care (cooking, cleaning, or gardening)
10am-1pm: Own time
1-2pm: Self-service lunch and dishes
2-6:30pm: Own time
6:30-7:30 pm: Table dinner and dishes
8pm: Optional evening activity
There is also a community sharing circle one evening a week where we can engage in deeper check-ins.
In addition, participants may offer their own sessions to other residents, usually on evenings or weekends. It’s a great opportunity to share practices you love with the group, or experiment with facilitating something, or try something new!
Weekends don't have any frame. During that time, residents self-organise meals. Residents often use this time to discover nearby places of interest such as Plum Village, prehistoric caves, or local markets.
Rooms
For more information on rooms and prices, please see this document.
For this residency, we are offering only non-shared rooms to preserve the privacy and comfort of each participant, with some exceptions if you are coming with a friend or partner.
Creative Writing Residency : 23rd October - 7th November
During the Autumn Praxis residency, we will have a special Creative Writing residency, hosted by John Newton.
This short residency is an invitation to drop into the pace of Autumn and create space for emergent nourishment through creative practices. We will use the forms of evening dialogues, sharing circles around the fire, and collective reading & writing jams to explore presence and poetic truth in a spirit of playfulness. The day will be spacious, with regular opportunities for mindfulness practice and exploring imaginal meditation practices. There will also be select screenings of rare or forgotten films that support metamodernist insights.
Application is via the same form as for the general Autumn Praxis Residency.
Hosts
Valérie Duvauchelle (Tenzo, guardian of the dynamic food system)
Valerie is the designer of the Life Itself Hub Praxis frame, inspired by Zen temples where she studied the role of the Tenzo for several years. Her passion is to bridge this Buddhist technology to a secular frame for conscious communities. She is currently working on two books related to Zen food practice and how to make sense of our food today. She is also the author of Le goût silencieux (The Silent Taste), published by Actes Sud in 2018. She onboards chefs at the Hub and shares the Praxis design to support organizations or community spaces.
Catherine Tran (Autumn Residency Host)
Catherine is a researcher at Life Itself and has spent roughly half her time over the past few years living in intentional community at the Life Itself Hubs in Bergerac and Berlin. In her life and work, she grapples with the question of what it means to be an ecologically response-able being on Earth. Some of her current big inspirations are: Hospicing Modernity and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective, Tara Brach, and Systemic Constellations.
Bihter Kartheuser (Steward)
Bihter (MA, ICF, USABP) is a Mindfulness & Nervous System Coach and nomadic world citizen with a multidisciplinary background and a passion for exploring the complexities of being human. With over a decade of experience teaching yoga and mindfulness, her innate curiosity about the human body and psyche led her to specialize in trauma therapy. Drawn to the transformative power of the NeuroSystemics approach, Bihter completed a three-year training and is now engaged in clinical training with the NeuroSystemics. She envisions helping more people to cultivate nervous system resiliency, empowerment, and the agency for contributing to create a healthier and happier society.
John Newton (Creative Writing Residency Host)
John is a facilitator, artistic researcher, dharma bum and resident bard. When not subsumed by worldly concerns, he pursues the imaginal through a variety of transdisciplinary approaches, including meditation practice, music, cinema, philosophy and cultural exegesis. Some of his music can be found here: https://chupwallah.bandcamp.com. His upcoming Substack, entitled Fever Dreaming, is a “cultural exegesis of contemporary psychedelia, new age spirituality, cinema, and philosophy”.
Wish I could come to this one! If there will be another in Summer 2025, I will definitely apply :)