5-month online Tantric Hatha Yoga course
You'll find all material, recordings and resources here.
"All things exist in relation to the foundation they sit upon" - Joshua Schrei
The Ground of Being is the backdrop to cultivating steadiness and clarity in the way that we navigate life. It's a place of inherent ease, that exists beyond the mind's fondness and tendency for extreme; a place where this Ease is the modus operandi - the gauge by which we measure and decide how we wish to move forwards in the world, safe in the knowing that access to the Ground of our own Being is within reach at all times.
Touching on this part of ourselves might be something we have accessed momentarily through meditation, through yoga, movement, breath, or other spiritual practices, and yet Life continues to cast us into the waves of uncertainty
and extremes perpetuated by modern life's ceaseless striving and busyness.
Yoga's promise is not that we will never feel or experience imbalance. Life is pretty great at ensuring that will be a constant.
The goal with any practice, so, and the main thing yoga helps us to master, is to become skilful at allowing the waves of inner/outer turbulence to arise and pass through, whilst maintaining a firm grasp on the steady ground of our being that resides unchanging beneath.
As teachers, practitioners and spaceholders, one of the most important things we can do is to maintain our own practice of inner personal reflection & excavation. If this is done continuously as the basis of our spiritual practice, we will continue to be able to hold others as they traverse through their own inner worlds in the classes and spaces we hold. This will be a key area of focus for this embodied, experiential training - your own personal sadhana, and developing a relationship with the steady ground of your own being, through the lens of traditional tantra, yoga & meditation.
Bio section
The foundational philosophy of Srī Vidya Tantra is one that holds that everything is Srī; everything in the known universe is an expression of Her, of Shakti, of the beauty, resplendence and pure light of awareness. 'The waves of bliss that set the world in motion', as Lorin Roche puts it (referring to the Saundaryalahari), are the underlying waves of energy that pulse beneath every seemingly irrelevant surface level interaction, thought & emotion we have on a daily basis, and that underly each particle and atom that make up the bulding blocks of our bodies and energy systems. Traditionally, tantra is understood as the science of energy management, or more specifically, the process of becoming more sensitized to the prana (lifeforce energy) that lives above, below, beside and within each and every living thing. With practice, we learn to sensitize to and access more of this innate impulse of intelligence & grace, ensuring that our actions, words and thoughts are aligned and infused with the Light of Srī - the beauty, resplendence and urge towards growth & learning that caused us to take form in these bodies in the first place.
Bio section
This training is more than just a set of techniques and practices for you to pass on to students. It's an opportunity to become deeply acquainted with the ground of YOUR own being, from where you can develop an understanding of, observe and learn to process through the areas of personal work that might be keeping you stuck or stagnant on the path towards expansion.
One of the things we'll explore in this training is the cultivation of a relationship between you and your daily sadhana (practice); in all the ways that it can take form. How to begin seeing your practice as being in relationship with all the various parts of you that combine to create each and every fluctuating moment, as they change and arise, and with the fluctuating nature of Life as it unfolds. As with any relationship, this is one which requires tending to with understanding, grace, truth-seeking and consistent self-inquiry.
We'll use asana, we'll use meditation, we'll use pranayama & mantra. But what we'll really do through all these things, is build a connection to the innate and steady ground of your being.
Some of the things you can expect:
Explore the intersection between tantric philosophy and classical yoga philosophy
Yoga sutra study
Weaving subtle body awareness with asana, pranayama & meditation practice
How to teach, practice and facilitate using the model of the Koshas
Create and commit to daily sadhana (practice)
Basics of Sanskrit lecture and introduction to working with mantra
Energetics of Asana, & weaving tantric philosophy into practice
'The Three Rivers' - Introduction to Ayurveda lecture
Ongoing discussions on how to weave these teachings into your practice, life and offerings
Connect to a web of other humans also sharing and developing relationship to their own practice and ground of being
Ongoing self-inquiry and opportunities to refine your own practice
This training will be theory & practice-oriented, with an emphasis on helping participants find a steady connection to and rhythm with self-practice in between live sessions (self-practice in between sessions will be required).
Morning sessions of the live weekends will consist of group practice & circle.
Afternoon sessions will expand on/explore yogic and tantric philosophy, yoga sutra, meditation and somatic enquiry, again with an emphasis on cultivating a relationship with the ever-present, unchanging force that lives beyond, behind and within all things - the ground of our being.