This is one you won’t want to miss.
Maria and I will be teaching “Tai Chi Alchemy: Get Out of Your Head and Into the Game,” at Kripalu Yoga in Lenox, MA, March 18-20.
Kripalu has been hosting extraordinary programs for the past 40 years, and (the catalog says) is “the largest and most established retreat center for yoga, health, and holistic living in North America.”
This is a rare opportunity to get an adult dose of what we’ve been cooking up for the past 35 years (it’s still simmering on the stove).
Lately, we’ve been refining the process to make it more accessible to both practitioners and non-practitioners. That means, you don’t have to do a lick of taijiquan to get your mind properly blown, but if you do practice qigong and/or internal martial arts, you will feast.
“The Kungfu of Nursing” is a program tailored for those in the front lines of healing, and we just did our second installment a week ago. Nursing is a dangerous, exhausting profession and some “love-based martial art” is an immediate boost. The success we have had in transmitting some high-level gongfu to those who need it most has been really encouraging. While, it is certainly true that gongfu takes time and diligence to cultivate, there are some skills that can be learned and used…FAST. But even if you are not in the business of saving lives on a daily basis, you will find this stuff amazingly valuable in whatever you do.
RB at Nurses seminar
Tai Chi Alchemy is about engaging your life as a participant, not just an observer.
And this seminar will give you the tools to do just that…with a smile on your face and a spring in your step. Our Wednesday night group in Staten Island has been working for years (decades, actually) to bring the esoteric into the bright sunshine of the lived life and a bunch of that stuff is ready for broad distribution.
Yes, it takes time and effort to truly own the cool stuff we will be covering, but even taking it for a test drive opens up new possibilities in your life.
And best of all…it’s FUN!
And the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Pieces have been introduced and workshopped over the past couple decades, but when it all comes together it’s bigger…and better.
Here’s a taste of what we’ll be doing:
- Presence. The ability to occupy space and time is essential to performance of any kind. Some people seem to have “it.” Most don’t. What if you knew a few simple tricks to crank up your ability to be IN THIS PLACE. AT THIS TIME? Not as a result of a lengthy meditation, or as a response to a crisis, but just because you wanted to. (This is a game changer.)
- Effortless Power. Tap into your inner Jedi. Taijiquan insists that we eschew crude muscular strength in favor of jin, “internal energy that is directed by consciousness and manifested by the body. Learn how to amplify your effective power instantly, even under duress. (This is stuff I learned while competing in tournaments. It worked then. It works even better now.)
- Rooting. “Energetically connecting with the earth.” Most of us have been subconsciously pushing against the pull of gravity since we first learned to stand up. The net effect is to reduce the flow of earth qi to a trickle. Without a substantial earth connection we are unable to properly ground our energy, leading to a noisy mind. Rooting plugs you into the BIG QI and the limitless energy of earth and sky. (Note: We’re not just blowing smoke here. This is testable stuff. You are going to FEEL IT.)
Maria demonstrates rooting.
- Transform Fear into Love. We are teaching “Love-based Martial Arts”…not just because it’s a “nice thing to do.” We do it because it is effective. Fear takes us out of the game. Love gets us back in.
- Authentic Soul-to-Soul Connections. This is the message of Finding You in a World of It. Learn how to shift from a primarily “Object-based Consciousness” to “Non-objective Awareness” by Meeting each other reciprocally with our whole being.
Plus other cool stuff that invariably pops up amidst the hugs and the laughter.
