with Sebastian Merrill 

Join queer and trans yoga instructor Sebastian for a 6-week series designed especially for LGBTQIA+ identified students. In anticipation of Sebastian’s forthcoming debut poetry collection, GHOST :: SEEDS, each class will feature an exploration of a poem from the book, an all-levels themed physical asana practice, and time for community and connection. Sebastian’s teaching is gender-affirming, body-positive, and consent-oriented. All bodies, sizes, and abilities are welcome and celebrated. This is a space for queer and trans folks to (re)connect with ourselves and bodies through poetry and movement.

About the book: Set on a remote island on the Maine coast, GHOST :: SEEDS incorporates elements of magical realism and myth to explore and trouble conceptions of gender and identity. The central tension is a dialogue between a transmasculine speaker and a figure that he conceptualizes as his ghost, the girl-ghost of the self that he left behind to become the person he is today. Putting a queer spin on the myth of Persephone, the girl-ghost speaks from an underworld lit by glowworms, cut through by dark rivers, and connected to the world above through a sea cave. The ocean serves as a throughline connecting the speaker and his lost self, providing a setting in which everything is continually in flux: the cycle of the tides, the pounding surf against the rocky coast, and the ever-present threat of pollution and climate change. Kayaking through a coastline studded with islands, alongside seals, porpoises, and herons, amid swirls of floating plastic, we are invited into a world in which the only constant is change.