The Living Room
A place to practice being fully human.
For the ones who can trace the pattern all the way back to childhood… and still watch it show up the moment another person walks into the room.
An intimate community for people who’ve done a lot of inner work and are ready to practice living it, with other humans. Once a month, up to fifteen of us gather live online for two hours to practice the things that are so hard to do alone… saying the true thing, letting yourself be seen, staying when it gets uncomfortable.
Between gatherings, the room stays open.
Come into the roomI’ve been thinking a lot about how much of our inner work happens alone. We journal, we process, we listen to the podcast on our walk, we sit in the therapist’s office for years…
You know your attachment style. You can tell me exactly what your nervous system is doing while it’s doing it. You can probably explain why you do half the shit you do (I see you, I am you).
And then you’re in it. You catch yourself people-pleasing mid-sentence and keep going anyway. You rehearse the hard conversation in the shower eleven times and then say “it’s fine” when it’s finally time to have it. Someone gets close and something in you starts looking for the exit, even though you know exactly where that comes from.
Something I tell my clients often is that we can heal so many things on our own, but attachment heals in relationship. There are parts of us that only show up when another human is sitting across from us and our body starts telling the truth before our mind can catch up… and those parts need other people to practice with.
So that’s what we do here. When life asks something hard of you out there, it won’t be the first time anymore. Your body will have done it once already, wobbly and all, in a room full of people who were rooting for you… and bodies remember.
What it’s like in here
We start by landing. A few minutes to actually arrive in your body and slow things down. Then I’ll ask what’s here, and we listen.
Someone’s relationship is cracking open. Someone is grieving. Someone has been circling a creative leap for months and is kind of scared out of their mind, and a few people nod because they know that one.
Maybe someone says, “I know this man isn’t meeting me, and I can’t let him go.” We stay with that for a while, and somewhere in the middle I can feel that half the room is watching their own version of it. So I pause and ask who else is feeling this. Hands go up… and the rest of the night becomes everyone pairing off to practice saying the thing they haven’t been willing to say.
Some nights I’ll teach into a thread I’m hearing underneath what everyone brings. Some nights we’ll breathe, move into somatic inquiry or partner practice, and sometimes one hot seat becomes the teaching for everybody. There’s structure, and I’m holding it, but there’s no syllabus I’m trying to drag us through. Life gets to bring some of the curriculum.
And nobody is standing at the front with a PowerPoint titled Module Four: Authentic Relating.
Thank Goodness!
What we practice
There are a thousand places online to learn about boundaries and intimacy and your nervous system. There are very few where you can say, “I need to tell someone no and I’m terrified,” and have someone in the room offer to practice it with you, right then.
For some of you, that’s saying no while someone is actually looking at you, or letting someone misunderstand you without scrambling to fix it. For others, it’s crying in front of people without rushing to explain why, or letting someone care for you without immediately trying to even the score.
It might be getting angry and staying connected, or saying “I don’t know” and letting it sit there for a second. It might be telling the whole group, “I notice I’m feeling really insecure tonight,” and then staying in the room. And it might be stepping into your light and your bigness, and letting yourself be witnessed there.
Your relationships, your grief, your questions about God, your desire, your work, the pattern you’ve understood for eight years and somehow keep doing anyway… all of it gets to come in. I’ve stopped thinking of these as separate topics. They’re just the places where we tend to meet ourselves.
The room stays open
Between gatherings, we have a private online space where the conversation keeps going. Bring the messy middle, what you’re practicing, the conversation you finally had, or something you just want other humans to witness. And when someone’s share touches something in you, tell them.
I’ll be in there too, responding at times and dropping in a voice note, reflection, or practice when there’s something alive to share. My prayer is that this becomes a place where we reach toward each other instead of waiting for the person at the front to have the answer. I think of myself as the keeper of the room… I may open the door, but we make the room together.
Why I’m opening the door
If you know me, you know I love a cozy living room. Give me a couch, a blanket, a cup of cacao, and a conversation that somehow goes from laughing about something ridiculous to God and grief twenty minutes later… and I feel most at home.
I’m a somatic therapist, and I’ve spent years on my own healing… therapy, somatic work, grief work, medicine, all the work that happens when no one else is watching. And I think a part of me believed I had graduated (joke’s on me). Then I stepped into deeper relationships, and there they all were again, the same fears and the same edges, like they’d been sitting on the couch the whole time.
I’ve come to believe that the completion of these patterns has a funny way of waiting until another nervous system walks into the room… so I wanted to make a room for it.
Cozy doesn’t mean comfortable all the time. We’ll bump into each other, and things will come up. I just want there to be enough warmth and care in here that we can stay curious about what happens next. You don’t need to be good at vulnerability, or “healed,” to come in. A little willingness and curiosity is more than enough.
What’s inside
- One live two-hour gathering each month, with no more than fifteen of us in the room.
- A private online space between gatherings, with practices, reflections, and voice notes from me when they’re alive.
- Guest teachers a few times a year, joining us for bonus gatherings.
- Replays of the gatherings you were part of, available for 90 days. New members won’t inherit an archive of other people’s vulnerable moments.
- A reduced member rate for private sessions with me.
When we gather
Once the founding circle is together, we’ll choose the exact day and time as a group. If the time we land on genuinely doesn’t work for you, you can step out before your first payment.
Your founding rate stays with you for as long as you’re a member. Later, membership will be $95/month.
Your first three months are a commitment to the room, billed monthly. Mostly because community takes a minute, and three months gives you time to know the room and let the room know you. After that, you continue month to month and can cancel before any upcoming billing date.
There are fifteen seats. Once they’re full, I’ll keep a waitlist and reach out when one opens.
If part of you is nervous right now
I want to say something to the part of you hovering over the button with your heart beating a little faster… that makes SO much sense. You’re thinking about walking into a room where people will actually see you, and your body knows it.
I’m not going to try to convince you. I trust you to feel your own yes (or your own not yet). Maybe take a breath first and see if you can feel the difference between a real no and that particular flutter of wanting something and being scared of it at the same time. Both get to be here.
And for what it’s worth, you can’t mess this up. If you’d like to talk it through first, write to me at info@calliedavid.com and I’ll write back. If you come in nervous, you’ll be in very good company… most of us will be, me included.
A few things you might be wondering
- Do I have to share?
- No. You get to choose how much you share, and witnessing is part of the practice too. I do really encourage you to join in when we pair up, though. That’s often where the stretch happens… in a space that’s here to hold you while you do.
- What if I miss a gathering?
- Come when you can. You’ll have the replay for 90 days.
- Is everything recorded?
- Most of it. Sometimes we’ll pause the recording because what’s happening belongs only to the people who are there. Anything downloadable you receive is yours to keep.
- What about confidentiality?
- We’ll set group agreements together at the start, and confidentiality is one of them. Other people’s stories stay in the room. What you learn about yourself is yours to take anywhere.
- Is this therapy?
- No. Even though I’m a therapist, The Living Room is an experiential community for exploration, embodiment, and relational practice. It isn’t psychotherapy, crisis support, or a replacement for individualized mental health care.
- Is this only for women?
- No. It’s open to people of all genders who feel aligned with the spirit of the room and are willing to participate with care and respect for the humans in it.
- Do you offer refunds?
- Because this is a small, live community with seats held for its members, payments are non-refundable. Please make sure the timing, commitment, and spirit of the room feel right before you join.
No need to tidy up first. Pull up a chair… there’s room.
Come into the room