An Immersive Evening with Carl Rabke

Live Event Program

Friday, October 6th, 2023

Saturday, October 7th: Don’t miss our companion Depth Workshop: Somatic Foundations for Soul Work

Presenter: Carl Rabke

Carl Rabke is a Somatic Naturalist, writer, and a tender of soul and living culture. He is a Feldenkrais and Structural Integration practitioner, and co-hosts the Embodiment Matters podcast with his beloved wife, Erin Geesaman Rabke.

Learn more about Carl

Live Music: Rocky Velvet

Rocky Velvet is a musical project by Rachelle Christensen (formerly Lavoie), offering sonic love by weaving together acoustic instrumentals with dreamy, electronic looping. Rocky sings for the brave ones: those of us who acknowledge and embrace that the human experience can be both a rocky journey — tough, real, and fortifying us with strength, earth, and stability — as well as a soft, luxurious, rich, and sometimes other-worldly experience. This offering reminds us that we have the amazing power to possess duality within us and that we can hold many different qualities, not with contradiction, but rather with an embodied sense of wholeness. Whether Rocky is performing on a stage, holding musical space for birth and death in her work as a doula, or imbuing tender tones into her yoga classes, you can bet that it will be an authentic and quite unique experience.

Learn more about Rocky Velvet

Featured Artist: Andre Pike

My name is Andre Pike. I’m a Salt Lake City native and Visual Artist.

I collaborated with the former Salt Lake City artist, Ruby Chacon on murals for Neighbors Works Organization and UTA. I had my first solo exhibit at the Salt Lake City Public Library in 2009.

I am currently a boutique artist at Urban Arts Gallery in Salt Lake City and Bizarre Bazaar in Sandy . My piece of Janet Jackson’s “Velvet Rope” album cover was featured on Janet Jackson’s instagram and social media in October of 2021. I almost fainted.

Currently I’m working on art that depicts the beauty and strength of people of all color, ages, and sexualities. I look forward to bringing more representation through my art and life as a gay, black,bi-racial, visual artist.

Learn more about Andre’s work

Opening Poet: Alisa Marie

Alisa Marie is a Los Angeles transplant who moved to Salt Lake City in search of health, healing, and a renewed peace of mind. During her decade of work in Hollywood, Alisa was known as a Talent Agent and Talent Scout for Television, Film, & Broadway. She refers to her Hollywood career as her “stepping stone” and she could not be more grateful to be exactly where she is now – living in the beautiful mountains of Utah, building a career as a mental health professional, and embracing her own creative dreams. Alisa is a conservatory-trained actor / singer (Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts) and has appeared in many professional productions. She is a spoken-word artist and has performed her deeply personal original work on stages in several major US cities. In Utah, Alisa was most recently seen performing with New World Shakespeare playing ‘Feste’ in TWELFTH NIGHT, and as a featured artist at ART FOR THE RECOVERY COMMUNITY in 2021 and 2022. Alisa is the founder of SAFE STAGE, a support group and open mic night for creative artists (of all kinds!) who struggle with substance use and performance anxiety. Her first book – ANOTHER GLASS OF FINE – is set for release in late 2023. In addition to her artistic pursuits, Alisa is currently working toward her graduate degree in Counseling Psychology and she wholeheartedly believes in the powerful role creativity can play in recovery and mental health.

Learn more about Alisa Marie

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Shadow Castle

Ok, I give credence to pirates and to mermaids

and I will certainly say, “I do believe in fairies”

so Tinkerbelle won’t drop down dead, but –

there is one piece of the whole Peter Pan story

that I cannot get into my head

If this Peter found a way to lose his shadow

a way to detach from the darkness, the black –

tell me, why would he climb through the window

just to get the filthy thing back?

My shadow is not my friend

she stares at me and screams

my deepest secrets to defend

she shrieks and shouts about them in my dreams

my whole life I tried to choose what I own

and erase what I thought should not be there

to lock away in some drawer

the things that have shown

I have ever needed any repair

See, I thought I could build a castle of myself

built from the memories I liked best

I thought I could choose the good times, the pretty persona

and casually hide the rest

That is – until the day I met an angel who was not impressed

by the castle I’d build on top of memories I’d suppressed

she assumed by my smile, by my brightly painted wall

that I could never understand how life made her fall –

and she would not talk to me

She said, “you’re too happy. your life is easy, ain’t it?”

I sat down – we sat, together

and I still don’t know why or where it came from

but I began to share a piece of my shadow

I told the truth, without my usual floof

without lies, without contortions

and we cried together as we discovered

we’d both had two abortions

18 years old and afraid

we both went to the welfare office to apply for Medicaid

20 years old and full of shame

we both erased the memory of assault

and relied on loving parents and antidepressants

She continued to open her heart to me

I am struggling with addiction

I drink every day to numb my pain, she cried

I have been there, I replied

I got clean and sober in my thirties

I know the toll trauma takes on the body

I am you and you are me

shame cannot survive empathy

I understand

And so we sat together

and so we cried together

and suddenly, I realized

this angel woman and I may have never connected

if my shadow had not been there

to correct what I thought I’d perfected

I guess no matter how happy or strong I feel

or how much I think I have grown

my shadow will be there to keep me real

my shadow will not come unsewn

my castle will crumble if I build it on joy alone

today, I rebuild my foundation

I include the pain I refused to own

today, I tell the truth

I no longer strive to be a simple ray of sunshine

my story includes darkness

and darkness is not shameful

in fact, in chocolate, it just means ‘much better’

Dear Shadow – I am sorry it took me so long to write this letter.

I accept you as my half

a piece of me I cannot deny

I agree to let you laugh

if you promise to let me cry

I contend to stand and face you

to love you as my twin

I will not try to erase you

but, I will race you –

and I will win

My light will always win

my darkness may tag along

from now on, I keep my shadow safe

in a place we both belong

I am not ashamed now, to have a story

I will embrace every part of mine

I will own my inventory

I will let my shadow shine.