Workshops from mid-year 2019
Monthly Saturday workshops with a focus on the Elements and Brahama Viharas:
Loving Kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity
Series One: A program of discussion and exploration into our kind heart and spaceous body.
Coming home to the body is the first step of healing.
Through Movement, Meditation, Creative Visualisation and Drawing we will uncover and gently dissolve patterned behaviours and fixed views that get in the way of freedom and vitality.
We begin each workshop with Somatic exercises to help release the body from restrictive movement patterns. When the body moves naturally and powerful our mind feels free and empowered.
We work with the breath and visualisation to release the mind from fixed, restrictive emotions. When the mind is free the qualities of Loving Kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity naturally manifest.
Elements connect us to our experience.
Through the elements we know the world we live in. We will explore the elements through movement and meditation.
Earth (session 1) is considered a manifestation of loving kindness. Our core meditations will be to connect through the Earth to this loving energy and to work directly with the quality of loving kindness for ourselves and then for others.
Water (session 2) embodies feeling, cohesion – qualities that connect us to ourselves and other people. Feeling is the foundation of compassion. First we must find the courage to stay present to our own feelings – in particular painful feelings – with compassion.
Fire (session 3) shows us intensity, power and passion, warmth and vitality. Fire connects us to our own experience of joy and allows us to experience sympathetic joy for others. Through fire we know the world we live in.
In Air (session 4) we find equanimity – freedom from preferences, our likes, dislikes and indifferences. With equanimity we see other people clearly, without judgement, just as they are.
Space (session 5) allows us bring all elements together and provides an opportunity to deal with difficult emotions.
Movement
Through movement we will embody the element we are studying and see how it shapes our expression.
Creative Visualisations – each session allows us to investigate any difficult feelings that arise, leading to a sense of appreciation of joy in our lives and those around us.
Meditation – we support the mind to become clear and focused so we can explore the contents of mind, cultivate the immeasurable qualities, and finally rest in our spacious natural mind.
Power and vitality naturally arise when we fully inhabit our sensing, moving body. You may experience a fine sense of coming home, of freedom and creativity during these sessions. This is the natural movement of the mind when it stops holding on.
