The opening essay
Why we gather
The wellness industry sells solitude — one app, one journal, one perfect morning. Almost every healing tradition we inherited was practiced in a room with other people in it.
Adrienne Cobb · 4 min read
Read the essayContents
Gathering
Why people practice together, and what it takes to hold a room.
- 01Why we gatherThe wellness industry sells solitude — one app, one journal, one perfect morning. Almost every healing tradition we inherited was practiced in a room with other people in it.Adrienne Cobb · 4 minAdrienne Cobb4 min read
- 02The lost art of the healing circleBefore wellness was an industry, it was a room. A short history of people sitting in circles, what happened to the practice, and what has been quietly rebuilding it.Hollis Ward · 4 minHollis Ward4 min read
- 03The room that humsTessa Boothby runs sound sessions for thirty people at a time in a former textile mill in Biddeford. Most of her week is spent on everything that happens before the first note.Adrienne Cobb · 4 minAdrienne Cobb4 min read
- 04Before the breathing startsOwen Kealey has run a weekly breath circle on Munjoy Hill for six years. He will tell you the hardest part is not the time in the room.Hollis Ward · 4 minHollis Ward4 min read
- 05Energy work in groupsReiki shares, group sessions, and distance circles are among the most common communal practices in the region — and the least explained. Here is what actually happens in the room, including the part where you are allowed to be skeptical.Marguerite Kane · 4 minMarguerite Kane4 min read
Personal stories
First-person accounts, printed as they were told.
- 06What my shoulder was doingA first-person account of somatic work — and of finding out that a body can hold a position for eleven years without being asked to.Rosalind Tate · 4 minRosalind Tate4 min read
- 07I do not believe in crystalsA skeptic books a crystal session in Kennebunk, mostly to prove a point, and comes out with a more complicated report than he went in for.Calvin Nunes · 4 minCalvin Nunes4 min read
- 08The Thursday I stopped holding my breathEight months after his father died, a man who had not cried walked into a breath circle on Munjoy Hill with thirty-nine strangers. An account from inside the hour.Dana Fitch · 4 minDana Fitch4 min read
Standalone
One practice, explained plainly.
Kindryd
Two notes on the company that published this.
Every practitioner, studio, and account in this issue is a composite written for the launch issue. Nothing here is reporting on a real person.
Photography for this issue has not been shot. Each article carries the art direction written for it in place of the image.