The Art of
Aging & Ailing Awake 

Living More Fully in Bodies That Change

A 12-week personal development program that honestly explores living in bodies that age, experience illness, and undergo change. You’ll learn to meet it all with compassion, honor loss, and find meaning, joy, and possibility in whatever body and life you have now and in the future.

What if living more fully and joyfully doesn’t require everything in our bodies to be a certain way?

Bodies change; along with our abilities, roles, relationships, limitations, and capacities. The natural aging process, chronic health conditions, and unexpected events can alter how we move through the world and understand ourselves and what is possible. These changes bring real loss- and invite us into deeper relationship with ourselves, others, and what brings pleasure and matters most. 

This compassionate and reflective program is about living meaningfully in bodies and lives that may not look or feel as they once did. It offers a place to recognize and dignify what is different without allowing it to define us. 

You do not have to feel grateful for all that has happened, call illness a gift, or pretend that loss or life is easy. You are invited to answer the call to bring the truth of your experience as well as to get curious about what is possible and worth being present to.

This course is for you if:

  • Are living with health conditions or pain (chronic or acute) 

  • Experiencing shifts in ability, fatigue, or capacity

  • Grieving a former or future version of your body or life

  • Long for a new vision of life in a body that wants things slower and sweeter

  • Navigating a new phase of aging or health shifts

  • Seeking deeper joy and meaning as you let go of the past

  • Craving connection with others who understand

  • Suspect there is wisdom your body has to share with you

You may identify with aging, illness, both, or neither. No diagnosis, experience, or stage of life is required. Our bodies are not problems to be resolved or resigned to-they are teachers, companions, and sacred ground for living, loving, and becoming. 

What this course is (and isn’t)

What this course is:

  • honest, hopeful, and down-to-earth 

  • both practical and reflective

  • inclusive of many lived experiences

  • a blend of teaching, discussion, practices, and sharing

    rooted in neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality

What this course isn’t:

  • a place to bypass grief or hard truths

  • medical treatment, therapy, or medical education 

  • about curing, fixing, or getting back to normal 

  • forced positivity, minimizing pain, seeing everything as a gift

  • a place of venting and negativity

In this program we will explore:

  • Relating skillfully to bodies that change, tire, hurt, and behave unpredictably

  • What we can do when it seems we can no longer do anything

  • Making room for grief without letting it define us

  • Re-imagining our lives and discovering what is possible 

  • Habits of mind, body, belief, and emotion

  • Practices that boost immunity, regulate nervous systems, and dignify spirit

  • Roles, goals, plans, identities, and self-concepts

In this course, we develop your ability to:

  • Recognize and work with unhelpful thought patterns

  • Stay present with grief, overwhelm, and uncertainty 

  • Distinguish acceptance from resignation 

  • Sort out what to influence and what to accept

  • Clarify your values, needs, and sources of meaning and purpose

  • Gently work with physical and emotional discomfort and pain

  • De-armor trauma stored in your body

  • Ask for, receive, and offer support

  • Offer yourself curiosity and compassion 

  • Savor beauty, connection, simple pleasures, and find joy

Our bodies are not problems to be solved or resigned to - they are teachers, companions, and sacred ground for living, loving and becoming. 

Two Class Formats

  • (12) live weekly 90-minute group sessions. In-person course is offered in (2) modules of 6 sessions that can be taken together for $300, or separately for $170). The online course is only offered in the full 12-week format. 

  • Small Group Peer Connection 

  • Weekly handouts with frameworks, key take-aways, journal or reflection prompts, and practices

  • Option for supportive 1:1 coaching or bodywork at a 10% discount

In-Person

(Divided into two sections by 6-week modules. Can attend 1, or both.)

  • Time: Wednesdays • 3:30-5:00 pm

  • Location:The Charbonneau District, Wilsonville, Oregon (exact location shared upon registration)

  • Dates: Section 1 (6 weeks) 9/30, 10/7, 10/14, 10/21, 10/28, 11/4 Section 2 (6 weeks)11/11, 11/18, 12/2, 12/9, 12/16, 12/30

  • Cost: $170 each 6-week module | $300 for the full 12 weeks 

register for in-person

Online Only:Full 12-week series

Live and recorded

  • Time: Wednesdays • 10:30 am-noon Pacific | 1:30-3:00 pm Eastern

  • Dates: 10/7, 10/14, 10/21, 10/28, 11/4, 11/11, 11/18, 11/25, 12/2, 12/9, 12/16, 12/30

  • Cost: $300

register for online
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This program is designed for those 55 and over, or who experience chronic conditions or illnesses. Drawing from books like The Grace in Aging, How to Be Sick, and The Body is Not an Apology, and The Wild Edge of Sorrow, we incorporate new models for thinking about and seeing things, journaling, dialogue, practices, life planning and more. 

Teacher Dana Brenner has her AARP card, has been living with her own fluctuating chronic illness for 30 plus years. Buddhist principles and practices, along with somatics and psycho-spiritual frameworks have made all the difference. 

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Meet Your Facilitator

Dana Brenner

Somatic practitioner, coach, meditation teacher, group facilitator, and former therapist; Dana brings compassion, depth, and significant skills to this work. She has decades of lived experience navigating chronic and rare illnesses, has her official AARP card, and is on her own journey of aging and adapting to an ever-changing body. 

What SomaSolidarity participants say…

  • “This experience has been better than any therapy, spiritual service, class, or group I have ever been a part of. I’m in my seventies, and I’m finally awakening to things I never really understood or appreciated.” 

  • “Dana is a superb guide and teacher. This was more than a program; this was a deep dive into myself and my life. I found greater purpose and peace which not only affects my life, but affects my family and community as well.”

  • “I felt so shallow to be grieving my looks and stamina and I honestly thought I was the only one. It felt freeing to acknowledge the sour taste in my mouth about it all and letting it out made it less sour. I went thinking it would be painful to talk about these things, but it let me get them out so that they were not cooped up inside of me”

  • “I came in feeling like my body had become the enemy. I didn’t leave magically loving everything about my situation, but I stopped fighting myself quite so much. That has changed my daily life more than I expected”

  • “My sense of worth was deeply tied to what I could accomplish and do. As my energy and abilities changed, I felt I was disappearing. I have a much bigger understanding of what makes a life meaningful”. 

Ready to sign up?

register now