ABOUT
Enter into intimate relationship with your life
This is a project born out of the edges of the imaginal. Out of a dream of a tree filled with tiny birds. A tree that was magical, mystical, bright, and deeply alive. A tree that told a message of hope in the middle of thick darkness. An image that wove itself through time, patient, knowing. Over the years this beautiful tree filled with birds became a symbol of struggle, joy, and the enduring power of our own life force.
It is our hope that the Land of Tiny Birds can be a space where you come to remember the magic, to remember that you matter, that you are not alone, and that there is always room for hope. Somewhere you come to remember the full depth of your sensing, feeling self, the wild sprawling nature of your erotic self and the full reach of your creative powers. It is our hope that you will leave this space feeling connected, alive, and with an appetite for your life.
Approach
Our approach is rooted in the understanding that to feel is to know. That your own sensuality is your greatest power. We believe that when our bodies, minds and souls are in active relationship we become untameable.
Our intelligence is located throughout the entirety of our being. It lives in our hands, our hearts, our bellies, in the shapes and symbols that inhabit our movements, our distant past, our unknown futures, and the silences we came from and will one day return to. Everything we offer here is designed to guide you into relationship with this intelligence.
It is our firm belief that each and every one of us has the wisdom and resources that we need to thrive. However as a product of recent history we have collectively lost the tools to be able to access this knowledge, namely self-knowledge, loving community, and relationship with the animate world. Everything you will find here has been designed with the explicit intention to help you access this depth intelligence.
Our offerings are rooted in the traditions of tantra, embodiment, animism, consciousness and psychology, and weave together a blend of modalities to guide you into deeper conversation with yourself. We share knowledge, practices and resources on somatic movement, meditation, creative self-expression, sensual awareness, psychological inquiry, dialogue and touch. These practices are portals into your inner knowing, ways to better understand the patterns that direct your life and the possibility of shaping new patterns. And the best part is that once learned they are yours, free, forever accessible, and shareable.
Founder
My name is Philomena, I am a tantra and embodiment practitioner, educator and writer. My work weaves together tantra, somatics, process-oriented psychology and creativity to support people into more intimate relationship with their bodies and their lives.
I worked for over a decade in mental health and inclusion where I witnessed the corrosive effect of humiliation, judgement and shame on a person’s ability to form a secure sense of self. In this time I developed an approach to teaching and facilitation that centres compassion, trauma awareness, reflection, creativity, love, and embodiment. I taught this approach in universities, designing conferences, and facilitating seminars for educators around the world.
I now work to guide individuals and small groups into intimate relationship with their bodies and their depth processes so that they can feel more at home in themselves, show up more honestly in their relationships, and experience more freedom, pleasure and joy.
You can find out more about my practice, and how to work 1:1 with me via the button below.
On tantra
Tantra offers us a path back into devotional relationship with our creative energy. It is a field shaped by practices that support us to meet the world with love, vitality and reverence. Tantric traditions understand the body, the senses and sexuality not as obstacles on the path to wisdom, but as its most fundamental expression. By engaging with these ideas and practices we are able to learn how to become more fully alive to ourselves, each other and the world.
It is important to recognise that ancient tantric texts sit within a specific cultural, historical and political context, originating in India in the 6th century CE. All modern tantra falls under the umbrella of ‘neo-tantra’ and is a fusion of various interpretations of ancient texts and threads of lineage traditions by practitioners and scholars who moved between Europe, the US and Asia (mainly India, Tibet and China) over the past 60 years, combined with western psychology, and a whole set of cultural and esoteric philosophies and practices that live at this intersection.
Tantra offers a panoply of transformative and liberatory practices and understandings that support us to express ourselves freely, release shame, transmute trauma and sit at the edge of taboo. It offers a framework, inside a western world lacking in such education, of how to love, live and feel more fully. However, as a reformed practice in a world that has experienced a huge amount of violence, neo-tantra also has its shadows. It contains many of the blindnesses and exclusions of western culture, as well as its home culture, as a result of selective re-readings and applications of ancient texts. This is particularly notable in relation to questions of race, gender, and class.
We feel it is important to name these exclusions, as we are not curators of perfection, but we are seeking out a more beautiful world. Our perspectives are not absolute, and we understand that magic lives in many places. As a collective it is our hope that we can support the cultivation of trauma-informed, responsible, inclusive, culturally respectful, gender fluid, and accountable cultures of tantric practice. It is also our hope that this is just a beginning, and that collectively we can build on this rich foundation a vivid and dynamic landscape of liberated sexual, sensual, erotic, and creative energy that can inform our expression and pursuits in all areas of life.
Because sexually liberated energy, when held properly, is the most alive, potent and creative force in the world. No matter where it is channelled, no matter your intimate practices, your life becomes infinitely more colourful, bright and alive.
Awaken wonder, curiosity and awe
Listen deeply
Do the wild thing, slow down. Take your time. Be leisurely. Give yourself space to be present. Let your body rest. Listen.
Feel deeply
Open yourself to the words, ideas and shapes that live inside your body and your movements. Connect to your senses. Touch yourself, literally and metaphorically.
Open yourself to life
Reconnect with curiosity, desire and imagination. Remember what it feels like to feel alive, excited, inspired. Open the door to eros and the unknown.