Workshops

You deserve to feel ease and joy in your body as you age.  Movement, time in nature, breath, quiet contemplation, and “Aha!” moments all contribute to expanding happiness and delight in life. Though this is true, you may face challenges. Changes to our bodies — aches and pains, joint replacements, osteoporosis, heart issues, and other conditions — may challenge us to find new ways to understand ourselves and maintain grace of movement and attitude.

During this workshop, you’ll discover therapeutic yoga techniques that increase awareness, empower exploration of your unique body now, and increase your ability to take good care of yourself. Learn to feel yoga poses from the inside out, aligning them well to tune into the energy flowing through your body, and find qigong movements and yoga postures that best serve you.

We have a week together to listen to our inner wisdom and the quiet intelligence of the body. We have the space to share our ideas, fears, limiting scripts, and dreams for our futures.

Together, we will find:

• Fluid and effortless movement in qigong.
• Core strength and healthy alignment in yoga.
• “Effortless effort” techniques for healthy posture and movement.
• Gratitude, appreciative joy, loving kindness, compassion and equanimity in meditation.
• Ways to practice all eight limbs of yoga.
• Deeply revitalizing rest during restorative yoga accompanied by singing bowls.
• Clearer understanding of our bodies, our joints, and our lymph, endocrine, and nervous systems.
• Ways to honor our unique bodies, minds, and hearts with these practices at home.

This workshop is suited for anyone with a basic understanding of yoga.  No prior experience of qigong needed. People working with injuries or body challenges are welcome if they can still participate in practice and have permission, if needed, from their medical provider. Modifications will be given for various ability levels. Participants need to be able to get up and down off the floor on their own. If you are not sure if this workshop is suited for you, please contact Tracy.

“To live in accord with love is to set your heart on fire. In the crucible of such an inferno all convention burns away. What’s left is an entirely new kind of existence, one full of passion, presence and infinite possibility.” — Setting Your Heart on Fire

What if you could fall absolutely in love with every moment? What if you could use love’s radiance to heal your deepest wounds and break through any personal challenges — career, relationships, family, weight, self-esteem, addiction, anything?

All of this happens naturally when you stop trying to change your life and instead learn to relax into it. This workshop is designed to meet you where you are and then call forth your very best.  You’ll discover the simple, practical steps necessary to feel all emotions with willingness and compassion, uncover and transform your limiting beliefs; and create a life of greater ease, joy, and exquisite connection.

This weekend is primarily experiential. It’s designed with the recognition that your heart is already on fire – our job is to remove what’s dampening the flame. The key explorations and practices of the gathering:

• Take place solo, in dyads and triads
• Focus on the use of precise attention
• Are mainly centered in the body
• Feature  movement and active imagination
• Culminate in an “inner surfing” modality that combines vipassana, metta, and tantric approaches

Special note: On Saturday night our group will host a Freestyle Dance Jam, with Raphael as DJ, as a gift for ourselves and everyone at Esalen that night. Remember to pack some loose fitting attire and get ready to rock and roll and shake and swing and let it all go!

Recommended reading: Cushnir, Setting Your Heart on Fire, and The One Thing Holding You Back.

Nature heals. Water is life. The motion of our bodies is a tool to map our inner and outer landscapes as we navigate our life’s journey on Mother Earth.

People have always come to water and nature to receive guidance, clarity, and healing. Our weekend experience weaves the philosophy of the 5Rhythms® with sacred natural teachings inspired by the waters at Esalen Institute. We will journey together on a deep dive into the infinite source of creativity that resides within us all to balance the mind, body, and spirit. We will use the plant medicine of cacao in ceremony with the 5Rhythms movement practice to reconnect us to the flow and sacredness of water.

Together, we will:

• Explore how to work with the ancient plant medicine of cacao to heal our hearts and move stuck emotions.
• Share a water offering ritual to connect with the sacred waters of Esalen.
• Experience the 5Rhythms movement practice as a catalyst and tool for integration.

Utilizing the power of the elements, we’ll practice fluidity and call upon ourselves to turn inwards, with clarity to express our outer nature, with courage to surrender to those forces bigger than ourselves, with ease to be effortless, and in the spirit of stillness to integrate our instinct and intuition.

Recommended Reading: Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth

This workshop has an additional $60 of faculty tuition.