I currently have two ongoing offerings: A small group weekly class, and a larger monthly
Authentic Relating practice group/community gathering. Info for both below.
The Alchemy of Connection
8 week group journey, starting February 25th, 2025. In Person in Shayne’s gorgeous SE Portland studio. An educational practice group to explore the relational arts and the healing and expansion available there. For everyone currently navigating romantic attachment. Dating, swiping, partnered, going through divorce, etc.
Dating as a self awareness practice.
Conscious Love explorers.
Soul expedition into the relational realms.
Real Relating is a revolutionary act—and intentional dating and relating are fast tracks to emotional wellness, personal growth and self-awareness.
In person circle once a week to explore people’s experience of using the material from the week before in real life situations. Potent container for shedding stories, learning together in community, finding the self that is ready for authentic and expanded love.
Each week we'll explore the theme, and then take it out into the world, to practice in our relationships and connections. The following week we will spend the first hour gathering the wisdom of people's experiences with that theme, steeping in the learnings, wanderings and epiphanies, and then move on to learning about the next theme. As someone who has sat in dozens of potent group containers over the past 12 years, I can say that I'm wildy excited to see the different versions of ourselves that we expand into, after these 8 deeply explorative weeks together.
Here's the outline:
Session 1
Setting the container
Intentions
This journey as a Group Collaboration
Unraveling and emptying ..... what beliefs/programs do we not even realize we’re holding about love and ourselves that we can set aside now to step in with fresh allowance. Let it be new.
Session 2
Permission
Starting to allow the full truth of us to lead the way on dates. Setting down the shoulds. Stop trying to be wanted. What’s your ideal relationship at this time? Short term, long term, monogamous, etc. Letting go of assumptions and judgement, (there’s no right way for everyone-they are not “toxic” for wanting something different) learning to honor, name and claim what we DO want.
And ask.
Session 3
Settling into the moment
Body and Nervous system awareness
Polyvagal theory. Pattern awareness.
How history affects a moment. Feeling our feelings fully, tools to do this. Why our neurology needs us to do this. How to be an ally, to another. Giving emotion, safe passage through the vessel of our body Finding our sovereign feeling of self, so that we know when someone adds or subtracts.
Session 4
The alchemy of truth
Sharing feelings/needs
How to communicate our full spectrum experience.
Honoring the fear, gaining the skills.
When we put the truth of our moment out there, and they come closer or move away, good.
This is our lantern path.
Session 5
Exploring the Other
Empathic listening
Staying in curiosity
NVC Feelings/Needs
Attunement Mindset
Physical/Sexual intimacy in Intentional Dating
Energetics, communication, permission to ask for what you want.
No more performative sex.
Meditations on the different energies of giving, receiving, trust, surrender. Presence. Wheel of consent.
Session 6
Freedom
Trusting that each connection has something to show us, if we commit to staying with our experience and leaning into our moment to moment truth.
Not all connections have to be a romantic happily ever after to be a “success”. We are meeting ourselves fully, in practice.
Session 7
Discernment
Eyes on the prize (the prize not being just a healthy relationship, but also stepping into being a fully expressed, self aware, human.) Process vs product. Trust in ourselves to navigate anything, and not settle, not abandon ourselves. Understanding body awareness and intuition.
Understanding biological attachment.
Resonance vs compatibility.
Session 8
Celebration and grief
Once we can move around in the dating/relationship world more fully as our open, free authentic selves, there is often some grief for the time we’ve spent w/o the tools that allow us to feel, experience and love this deeply. Both another, and ourselves. Some grief for the masks we thought we had to wear. Or for parts of us we thought we had to hide. We want to make room for being with both the celebration of this transcendent new way, and any grief for the old.
I'm thrilled to be hosting this, in my cozy and gorgeous studio, in the Tao of Tea building on Belmont. Limited to 10 people, Tuesday evenings, 6-8pm. Starting 2/25.
Cost: $350. Venmo Shayne-berry to sign up.
8 week group journey, starting February 25th, 2025. In Person in Shayne’s gorgeous SE Portland studio. An educational practice group to explore the relational arts and the healing and expansion available there. For everyone currently navigating romantic attachment. Dating, swiping, partnered, going through divorce, etc.
Dating as a self awareness practice.
Conscious Love explorers.
Soul expedition into the relational realms.
Real Relating is a revolutionary act—and intentional dating and relating are fast tracks to emotional wellness, personal growth and self-awareness.
In person circle once a week to explore people’s experience of using the material from the week before in real life situations. Potent container for shedding stories, learning together in community, finding the self that is ready for authentic and expanded love.
Each week we'll explore the theme, and then take it out into the world, to practice in our relationships and connections. The following week we will spend the first hour gathering the wisdom of people's experiences with that theme, steeping in the learnings, wanderings and epiphanies, and then move on to learning about the next theme. As someone who has sat in dozens of potent group containers over the past 12 years, I can say that I'm wildy excited to see the different versions of ourselves that we expand into, after these 8 deeply explorative weeks together.
Here's the outline:
Session 1
Setting the container
Intentions
This journey as a Group Collaboration
Unraveling and emptying ..... what beliefs/programs do we not even realize we’re holding about love and ourselves that we can set aside now to step in with fresh allowance. Let it be new.
Session 2
Permission
Starting to allow the full truth of us to lead the way on dates. Setting down the shoulds. Stop trying to be wanted. What’s your ideal relationship at this time? Short term, long term, monogamous, etc. Letting go of assumptions and judgement, (there’s no right way for everyone-they are not “toxic” for wanting something different) learning to honor, name and claim what we DO want.
And ask.
Session 3
Settling into the moment
Body and Nervous system awareness
Polyvagal theory. Pattern awareness.
How history affects a moment. Feeling our feelings fully, tools to do this. Why our neurology needs us to do this. How to be an ally, to another. Giving emotion, safe passage through the vessel of our body Finding our sovereign feeling of self, so that we know when someone adds or subtracts.
Session 4
The alchemy of truth
Sharing feelings/needs
How to communicate our full spectrum experience.
Honoring the fear, gaining the skills.
When we put the truth of our moment out there, and they come closer or move away, good.
This is our lantern path.
Session 5
Exploring the Other
Empathic listening
Staying in curiosity
NVC Feelings/Needs
Attunement Mindset
Physical/Sexual intimacy in Intentional Dating
Energetics, communication, permission to ask for what you want.
No more performative sex.
Meditations on the different energies of giving, receiving, trust, surrender. Presence. Wheel of consent.
Session 6
Freedom
Trusting that each connection has something to show us, if we commit to staying with our experience and leaning into our moment to moment truth.
Not all connections have to be a romantic happily ever after to be a “success”. We are meeting ourselves fully, in practice.
Session 7
Discernment
Eyes on the prize (the prize not being just a healthy relationship, but also stepping into being a fully expressed, self aware, human.) Process vs product. Trust in ourselves to navigate anything, and not settle, not abandon ourselves. Understanding body awareness and intuition.
Understanding biological attachment.
Resonance vs compatibility.
Session 8
Celebration and grief
Once we can move around in the dating/relationship world more fully as our open, free authentic selves, there is often some grief for the time we’ve spent w/o the tools that allow us to feel, experience and love this deeply. Both another, and ourselves. Some grief for the masks we thought we had to wear. Or for parts of us we thought we had to hide. We want to make room for being with both the celebration of this transcendent new way, and any grief for the old.
I'm thrilled to be hosting this, in my cozy and gorgeous studio, in the Tao of Tea building on Belmont. Limited to 10 people, Tuesday evenings, 6-8pm. Starting 2/25.
Cost: $350. Venmo Shayne-berry to sign up.
Monthly Authentic Relating Group Practice + Community
We’re in our third year of meeting monthly,
join us!
*A monthly place to practice:
SELF AWARENESS
PRESENCE
AUTHENTIC RELATING
BELONGING
TUNING INWARD
EXPRESSING YOUR TRUTH
REAL CONNECTION
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/.../intentional-dating-world...
We are watching the world change, one connected moment at a time.
-Monthly events include a specific relational topic discussion and guided prompts for sharing authentically in breakout rooms or small groups. Mingling, with meaning. It's a beautiful place to practice.
-Practice your authenticity, practice self awareness, practice the idea that no one is perfect and we’re all worthy journeyers on this path of learning about, and in, conscious connection.
-You can later connect with the people from that monthly event, and all the previous events, in the private Facebook group. For friendship, for love, for collaboration, who knows! It's an epic community to be a part of, whether you make it to one event or join us every time.
This is grassroots change through connection, on a worldwide scale.
Our community is made up of a full spectrum of ages, relationship styles and sexualities. We have also have a zero creepiness policy.
video about the community (when it more focused on romantic relational topics) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsRGNNwDzuk
website: www.intentionaldating.love
Your host is a wild devotee of personal growth through authentic connection. Learning it, living it, teaching it.
You can expect a safe, cozy container that may include things like: meditations, movement, eye gazing, group games, playfulness, depth and an always emerging
curriculum of tending to the ecology of community, by BEing with oursleves and others authentically.
We’re in our third year of meeting monthly,
join us!
*A monthly place to practice:
SELF AWARENESS
PRESENCE
AUTHENTIC RELATING
BELONGING
TUNING INWARD
EXPRESSING YOUR TRUTH
REAL CONNECTION
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/.../intentional-dating-world...
We are watching the world change, one connected moment at a time.
-Monthly events include a specific relational topic discussion and guided prompts for sharing authentically in breakout rooms or small groups. Mingling, with meaning. It's a beautiful place to practice.
-Practice your authenticity, practice self awareness, practice the idea that no one is perfect and we’re all worthy journeyers on this path of learning about, and in, conscious connection.
-You can later connect with the people from that monthly event, and all the previous events, in the private Facebook group. For friendship, for love, for collaboration, who knows! It's an epic community to be a part of, whether you make it to one event or join us every time.
This is grassroots change through connection, on a worldwide scale.
Our community is made up of a full spectrum of ages, relationship styles and sexualities. We have also have a zero creepiness policy.
video about the community (when it more focused on romantic relational topics) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsRGNNwDzuk
website: www.intentionaldating.love
Your host is a wild devotee of personal growth through authentic connection. Learning it, living it, teaching it.
You can expect a safe, cozy container that may include things like: meditations, movement, eye gazing, group games, playfulness, depth and an always emerging
curriculum of tending to the ecology of community, by BEing with oursleves and others authentically.
Past Events + Writings
Writings:
To the mystery-workers, the depth-walkers, the heart-tenders, the plant-listeners, the threshold-whisperers:
You’re right on time.
As you’ve been walking and working for years in the in-between worlds, making mystery your vocation, you’ve been preparing yourself to be the needed leaders of these in between times.
Your labor is valued, your mastery is graduate level worthy. Thank you for holding the string of the old ways to be woven into the unfolding new.
Thank you for courageously steering your ship away from the known, to be able to walk others through the unknown.
10/2/2022
You’re right on time.
As you’ve been walking and working for years in the in-between worlds, making mystery your vocation, you’ve been preparing yourself to be the needed leaders of these in between times.
Your labor is valued, your mastery is graduate level worthy. Thank you for holding the string of the old ways to be woven into the unfolding new.
Thank you for courageously steering your ship away from the known, to be able to walk others through the unknown.
10/2/2022
————————————--
“How do we date during a societal collapse?”
It’s a great question, to which I would ask: Are you dating to secure/get something or to learn/heal/create something?
We are in a wild time in the history of romantic relationships. The old reasons to marry for security, don’t exist anymore. My belief is that our relationships can bring us closer to our essential, whole, sacred selves.
Most of us who are doing personal growth work have come across the works of Gabor Mate, Nicole LePera, Stephen Porges and more, illuminating the fact that our relating styles and patterns are based on every moment that led us to the current one, specifically the way we connected to our attachment figures in our childhood and teen years. This means, that our protective, constructive, affective and not so affective ways of being and with and seeing OURSELF while we’re relating with others, are systems that we get to choose how much we want to have agency with. If we’re not honoring the natural responses of our nervous system to our own unique triggers, we can’t learn to have a new experience through them. Dating/Bonding becomes a place to *practice new ways of experiencing ourselves with an adult attachment/connection figure.
Our uncomfortable stuff comes up with closeness, and in my opinion, closeness with another is an ultimate curriculum in personal understanding/awakening. During this wild time in history, when folks are more certain of crop failure and climate crisis than they are of the institution of marriage, what even is dating right now?
My belief is that we are all journeying together. I believe that our ultimate aliveness comes from remembering that we are MORE than this human experience, BY honoring this human experience.
I believe a nourishing dating partner is one in which you feel the emotional safety to explore your own patterns in relationship, be curious about them, and see what you’d like to make different. Sometimes old ideas about ourselves just need a loving witness or two, to turn into a new awareness, an open awareness, a free awareness.
This takes a non-judgmental exploratory container, curiosity, and emotional transparency. In these type of relationships, we can have corrective experiences whether the relationship lasts three months or 30 years.
We are currently unlearning so much, about gender roles, patriarchy, societal pressures, capitalism. This is reflected in the dating world. (It’s messy, because everyone is in flux!) And I believe any positive dating relationship will hold these awarenesses. We are in the midst of wild change. Authentic connection is the vital thread we can follow, but we have to learn what that looks and feels like, and how to create it in our lives.
We created our monthly community three years ago, not for folks to find dating partners, (though it often happens) but to remind folks how worthy we all are, to practice presence with Self and Other and how to be dating as Allies to our own becoming. How to discern who can walk that path with us, and who can’t.
I believe that the only way to thrive through anything, is to be able to be in the truth of the moment. To welcome ourselves to be. With whatever is. To do that together, is dating for the revolution. Self Awareness + Presence + Curiosity = an epic opportunity for pathfinding and potency and change.
“How do we date during a societal collapse?”
It’s a great question, to which I would ask: Are you dating to secure/get something or to learn/heal/create something?
We are in a wild time in the history of romantic relationships. The old reasons to marry for security, don’t exist anymore. My belief is that our relationships can bring us closer to our essential, whole, sacred selves.
Most of us who are doing personal growth work have come across the works of Gabor Mate, Nicole LePera, Stephen Porges and more, illuminating the fact that our relating styles and patterns are based on every moment that led us to the current one, specifically the way we connected to our attachment figures in our childhood and teen years. This means, that our protective, constructive, affective and not so affective ways of being and with and seeing OURSELF while we’re relating with others, are systems that we get to choose how much we want to have agency with. If we’re not honoring the natural responses of our nervous system to our own unique triggers, we can’t learn to have a new experience through them. Dating/Bonding becomes a place to *practice new ways of experiencing ourselves with an adult attachment/connection figure.
Our uncomfortable stuff comes up with closeness, and in my opinion, closeness with another is an ultimate curriculum in personal understanding/awakening. During this wild time in history, when folks are more certain of crop failure and climate crisis than they are of the institution of marriage, what even is dating right now?
My belief is that we are all journeying together. I believe that our ultimate aliveness comes from remembering that we are MORE than this human experience, BY honoring this human experience.
I believe a nourishing dating partner is one in which you feel the emotional safety to explore your own patterns in relationship, be curious about them, and see what you’d like to make different. Sometimes old ideas about ourselves just need a loving witness or two, to turn into a new awareness, an open awareness, a free awareness.
This takes a non-judgmental exploratory container, curiosity, and emotional transparency. In these type of relationships, we can have corrective experiences whether the relationship lasts three months or 30 years.
We are currently unlearning so much, about gender roles, patriarchy, societal pressures, capitalism. This is reflected in the dating world. (It’s messy, because everyone is in flux!) And I believe any positive dating relationship will hold these awarenesses. We are in the midst of wild change. Authentic connection is the vital thread we can follow, but we have to learn what that looks and feels like, and how to create it in our lives.
We created our monthly community three years ago, not for folks to find dating partners, (though it often happens) but to remind folks how worthy we all are, to practice presence with Self and Other and how to be dating as Allies to our own becoming. How to discern who can walk that path with us, and who can’t.
I believe that the only way to thrive through anything, is to be able to be in the truth of the moment. To welcome ourselves to be. With whatever is. To do that together, is dating for the revolution. Self Awareness + Presence + Curiosity = an epic opportunity for pathfinding and potency and change.
Here's the thing: you are 100% worthy of unconditional celebration, infinite love, being known, and deep reverence for who you are and where you are, right *now*. Not when you get more fit, tackle your core wounds to the ground, "figure out" what you're doing wrong or what you want, reach a certain status, or number in your bank account. Not when you manifest the list. Not when you get "there". Now. I know, I know! Our culture doesn't teach us this. That we are continuously worthy journeyers. But today when you walk outside and the light from a floating bonfire in the sky travels 93 million miles to land on your skin, you won't even question if you're worthy of that magic. We don't have programs in our inner systems to cause us to question that...The reality is, that each of us is carrying around outrageous gifts to offer others just by being us. Unique gifts that have formed not in spite of our darkness, our shadows, our challenges, but *because* of them. It's that whole ecosystem within us that gives rise to our own truth and our own light. So you are not only worthy of unconditional belonging, being known, loved and celebrated for where you are right now, you are also worthy of letting that whole messy fireball of your unique ecosystem shine so brightly that its glow can land on someone else's skin. So it can illuminate for them their own version, their own innate worthiness and we can all walk tall together, releasing the blocks to receiving the real love-truth-reverence, that we are so very worthy of.
5/7/2019
5/7/2019
Authentic Intimacy As Spiritual Practice - Answering A Lifetime Of Our Own Prayers
What if the key held in relationship never had anything to do with happily ever after? What if it's about unlocking our own power to be vulnerable and raw in each moment to heal wounded aspects of ourselves and bring us closer to the Divine? Nothing triggers our humanness more than our relationships. They are our golden windows in which we get to witness our shame, insecurities, fear, unworthiness. And in this, they are direct connection to the Divine. Because when we choose to be vulnerable, raw and open about the these feelings with another, we are telling ourselves and the feeling that it's ok for it to exist. We are providing safe passage for it to travel through us instead of getting stuck in our bodies. Gifting our bodies with the spaciousness and resonance to connect with the openness of the Divine that is always here.
When we bring to the table the parts of us that we've been taught should be hidden in the closet, we are answering a lifetime of our own prayers. Even though we've been told that what we most want is happy romantic love, our deepest selves have always been praying to be seen, to be held, to be witnessed, to be celebrated for our essence. And we can't be seen unless we show up, raw. In full technicolor glory. The dancing, joyful, expansive parts AND the lost, ashamed, clinging, shaky parts. It's all glory. Because it's all real. And what we truly long to be seen and accepted for is our beautiful REAL. When we find our power to do that- to hold it all out in our hands to be seen by another, we know we've got this- no matter what happens next. We see our divinity, and our divinity sees us.
6/23/2018
What if the key held in relationship never had anything to do with happily ever after? What if it's about unlocking our own power to be vulnerable and raw in each moment to heal wounded aspects of ourselves and bring us closer to the Divine? Nothing triggers our humanness more than our relationships. They are our golden windows in which we get to witness our shame, insecurities, fear, unworthiness. And in this, they are direct connection to the Divine. Because when we choose to be vulnerable, raw and open about the these feelings with another, we are telling ourselves and the feeling that it's ok for it to exist. We are providing safe passage for it to travel through us instead of getting stuck in our bodies. Gifting our bodies with the spaciousness and resonance to connect with the openness of the Divine that is always here.
When we bring to the table the parts of us that we've been taught should be hidden in the closet, we are answering a lifetime of our own prayers. Even though we've been told that what we most want is happy romantic love, our deepest selves have always been praying to be seen, to be held, to be witnessed, to be celebrated for our essence. And we can't be seen unless we show up, raw. In full technicolor glory. The dancing, joyful, expansive parts AND the lost, ashamed, clinging, shaky parts. It's all glory. Because it's all real. And what we truly long to be seen and accepted for is our beautiful REAL. When we find our power to do that- to hold it all out in our hands to be seen by another, we know we've got this- no matter what happens next. We see our divinity, and our divinity sees us.
6/23/2018