Embodiment in Action Series
A workshop series focusing on personal discovery, embodied presence, and heart/mind growth. In these small and supportive groups, you will learn specific practices that will facilitate presence and foster spontaneity and kindness.
All workshops are held on the third Sunday of the month from 1:30-3:30 PM, ET (via Zoom, unless announced). Suggested fee, $50, but no one will be turned away.
Embodiment and Presence in Action | September 17th
What is the significance of “Embodiment”? asks Buddhist teacher, Susan Morgan:
“Embodiment is the felt experience happening in our bodies, because of our bodies. Wisdom arises out of practice, not by thinking or reason alone. Full wisdom comes through “experiential knowing”, through felt experience that verifies what has been cognized intellectually.”
Mindful Awareness is an embodied practice. We can define it as “non-self-referential, non-judgmental, moment-to-moment awareness, infused with kindness.”
Introduction of “The Holding Environment” Embodied awareness meditations for developing more ease, openness, and wisdom in the body will be offered and guided. Sociometric exploration of where presence has been inhibited and needs to be fostered as well as where it is nurturing and alive!
“Handshake” | November 19th
The “Handshake” practice, as taught by Tsoknyi Rinpoche, a renowned Tibetan teacher, is a lovely and valuable resource brought to us in the West. In this practice we use Compassion and Mindful Awareness to relate to difficult emotions/feeling states. TR refers to them as our “Beautiful Monsters”. [Read More] Monstrous because they cause us lots of trouble – beautiful because they are seeds to wisdom if we can learn to listen to them and hold them with compassion and kindness.
We have a lifetime of turning away from the difficult. The difficult feelings, the difficult parts of ourselves, (our shadows), offer the gateways to our greatest growth. The “Handshake” practice is a practice of befriending.
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Benefactor and Natural Tree of Refuge | October 15th
In this Sunday afternoon, you will learn and experience two transformational ‘heart training’ practices that come from the East and have been beautifully adapted for us in the West.
The “Benefactor” and “Natural Tree of Refuge” practices help us to slowly build our capacity to hold our feelings with care and kindness. They lead us in the direction of vulnerability and train us in allowing and sensing an internal “spaciousness”, help us to deepen our receptive capacity, to feel loved and cared for. We will turn toward the parts of ourselves that need to be held in the gaze of kindness and acceptance.
All Broken, Beautiful | December 17
Kintsugi, which roughly translates to “golden joinery”, is the Japanese philosophy that the value of an object is not in its beauty, but in its imperfections, and that these imperfections are something to display, not hide.
Can we see the cracks of our vulnerability and imperfections through eyes of kindness and compassion? Can we see the cracks of our vulnerability and imperfection through the eyes of the kintsugi craftsman and deepen our capacity to turn toward and view the difficult with an open heart.
Format of workshops: While they will vary in content, the basic structure and supports include:
1. Short warm-up and introduction
2. Guided practice
3. Dyad sharing for deepening and integration
4 Short contemplative reflections
5. Experiential investigation, utilizing doubling, role reversal and sociometry
Register for the Embodiment in Action Series below. Thank You.