Christopher Gladwell is a leading senior yoga teacher trainer from the UK. He has been actively studying yoga in its various forms of physical practice (asana), bodywork, breathwork and pranayama, meditation and mindfulness, vibration and mantra, devotion and bhakti for about 35 years. He is the author of "Engaged Yoga" and runs a busy studio in Bristol, in between running workshops and trainings across Europe.
He teaches Love and it’s nature of clarity and freedom, and we at The Centre are very excited to be hosting him here in September to run one of his popular Shakti workshops.
FRIDAY (Open Class)
18:00 - 20:30
Bio-intelligent asana practice, breath, compassion and mind. Steps to a deeper practice
SATURDAY - SUNDAY
Devine Feminine: 2 day Workshop
€35 Friday Open Class only
€125 Friday - Sunday, Full weekend
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SATURDAY: THE GODDESS AS INTELLIGENCE
10:00 - 17:30 (including breaks)
We will review of the Devi Gita and the Vajrayana, two of the most important texts in Shaktism (goddess worship) and tantric Buddhism; focusing on wisdom, clarity and intelligence as aspects of the divine feminine.
All practices that work with the cultivation, expansion, uncovering and finding of awareness and intelligence are feminine based practices.
MOVEMENT
We will use body-based practice to find more conscious flow and connection in the web of the nervous system.
When we understand stress and its experience as the neuro-glandularmuscular experience of separation, then we can use practice to move through this natural experience of separation into the inseparable matrix of Herself.
We will work with fascial awareness and activation, somatic intelligence as a function of consciousness. Making the flesh conscious is a radical act in an unconscious world where flesh is a commodity.
Making the flesh conscious and recognising its inherent divinity is the first part of returning to the Goddess what is hers.
BREATH
We will use the breath as the field of devotion, the prayer that opens the heart to Her.
We will use the breath and the space between the breath to understand energy and mind, two aspects of Her that we can use as methods of exploration and empowerment that take us in the direction of home.
MIND
When we see mind content for what it is we understand the process of evolution and see its limits. When we touch the nature of mind we find Her.
VIBRATION
She is vibration. She is energy and its condensates of form. We will explore some vibrational practice to feel this dance of energy as form and form as energy.
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DAY 2: THE GODDESS AS BLISS
10:00 - 17:00 (including breaks)
Love is both the source and the fruit of polarity. The Goddess as source divided herself, for the creation of joy and delight into masculine and feminine.
Both attraction and repulsion require polarity.
The human brain functions in polarity and struggles to compute unity.
The Goddess in her infinite wisdom created yogic practice to go beyond polarity, to enable us to know her. Beyond truth we move into method, methods of seeing and of knowing inseparability, Her.
The route is through polarity, through attraction and desire. Desire in its satisfaction brings us temporarily closer to her, whilst desire for her brings us home.
The practices of the yoga of LOVE, like all yogas, require us to open to something way bigger than thought and representation. Evolutionary biology gives us attraction to what appears to give pleasure and aversion to what appears to give pain.
When we experience pleasure we tend to grip. So, first we have to know systemic flow to understand there is no inherence in pleasure or pain. There is no place to get, no bliss independent of who we are. We are Her. She is bliss and wisdom.
When we know that bliss cannot be held, or chased and that there is no meaning to be found in temporary bliss states then we can explore the yoga of love.
MOVEMENT
We will use body based practice to find more appreciation, love and bliss throughout the conscious flow of body-mind,
BREATH
We will use the breath and the bliss inherent in the breath as the field of devotion, the prayer that opens the heart to Her.
MIND
When we live in mind content there is story and its suffering or temporary joys. When we touch the nature of mind we find Her as bliss and resilient joy.
VIBRATION
Vibration is love and bliss in movement. She is energy and its condensates of the elements.
We will explore elemental vibrational practice to feel this dance of energy as bliss and formless consciousness.
OTHER PRACTICES
We will explore the practices of gaze and witnessing each other to find extraordinary levels of empathic appreciation.