BONES X DRÖM
Originally featured in bonesthrown’s newsletter in July 2024.
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Kate of Dröm: I dream of collaborative futures. Generous futures. Futures full of curiosity and softness and deep listening. Futures where we feel held by many hands through cycles and shifts, and have access to the conditions we need for personal and collective well-being. I dream of futures where people can share their gifts, are rested, can find relief and take pleasure in their bodies. Futures where people delight in being alive. I dream of futures where people do not have their time and energy stolen, and where abundance is shared.
As a Massage Therapist, I want to see futures where more people have access to the care they dream of. I dream of futures where bodyworkers of all kinds are resourced and safe to do the work we do. Massage is undervalued and diminished for many reasons. I really want to see Registered Massage Therapists dreaming more about solidarity, more about interconnectedness, and more about what we can do to advance healing justice now.
Kate of Dröm: I've always sought out plants to soothe myself. Their sounds, their feel, their movement. I find my way back to breath by watching branches sway. I find my way back to stasis under their generous branches on a hot day. My way home on a snow-covered path by noticing the familiarity of their outstretched arms. My way to love reaching with mulberry-stained fingers.
A few years ago, I had a dream where I was instructed to study community deathcare. This avenue would be my first encounter with bodywork. Being washed, wrapped in linens, having many care-full hands and flowers placed on me. It felt so loving, and I wanted to experience more of this in life.
While studying to become an RMT, I was imagining what it would be like to collaborate with plants in the treatment space. I had experienced so much healing in relationship with them. And in truth, so little of what I was experiencing in the classroom and clinical environment felt therapeutic to me. Among my greatest teachers during that time was a pine tree by the school parking lot, whom I visited before clinic hours. What I felt each day with that tree I offered to my patients alongside my other skills.
I had learned that there is nothing actually Swedish about Swedish Massage Therapy, and I was reflecting on what it might be like to practice the culturally-rooted bodywork of my lineage. I began to dream again. Flashes of bundled plants. Water on rocks and skin. Qualities of light. With much research and longing and trust I found my way to the sauna benches and herbal mats of Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Sweden between school terms. It was in these places I met other teachers, practitioners who were working in ways that I had been reaching for my whole life. I felt their generosity like many care-full hands. I had dreamed of them. I learned from them. And now I work with plants in my practice and as they do.
Kristen of bonesthrown is a story-weaver/collagist + community archivist, leaning into the embodyment of new-ancient futures. She currently lives by a creek surrounded by cedar elders, on the traditional territory of the Sinixt people, in a little mountain town. She has been assisting other artists and healers with the creation of aligned websites that reflect their sacred work. You can learn more about these collaborations and connect with Kristen here.
