Curriculum
Tai chi gong
embodied Yoga
“Life is usually a closing experience.” Modern life, especially, can be too draining and exhausting. Aging, Stress, and injuries make our bodies constricted. Our postures lose uprightness and breathing becomes shallow. We lose our energy and zest for experience. We become more and more bound to the patterns of our body-mind conditioning.
Through a unique system of Tai Chi (Taiji Gong), optimized for character, health and contemplative development, we train to ingrain presence and energy in both stillness and movement.
By correcting our structure, opening, releasing and connecting the soft tissue throughout the entire body, and unifying the attention with this process, our experience gradually moves towards an embodied, integrated absorption practice in stillness and movement.
Training in Tai Chi also teaches us to tread the fine line between opposing forces, Yin and Yang, expansion and contraction, without getting caught up in either.
The embodied nature of the practice ensures that the effects your effort are of not limited to just thoughts and emotions but becomes deeply ingrained the nervous system.
As a result, practice will also genuinely stress test and build your equanimity, which is usually very difficult to transfer off-the-cushion.
With continued practice, you will be able to:
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Heal Injuries
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Open your body and release stuck or constricted areas
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Cultivate deep body awareness and train your Attention
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Discover, sink and build your life-force
Sessions include:
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Body Assessment
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Warm-Up and Opening
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Full-Body Stretching
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Dynamic Standing
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Body-Mind Unification
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Movement Forms
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Partner Exercises
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Quiet Sitting
The core of Tai Chi and body/movement practices are based the HME System. Developed by Adam Mizner, a leading expert in the field Internal Arts, Heaven Man Earth Internal Arts is a systematic methodology of authentic gong fu, capable of radically transforming the body, emotions and mind.
With an Eight-Year and developing curriculum of Yang Style Tai Chi as its centerpiece, the system offers practices that have enough depth for a life-time of cultivation.
The body-mind complex re-engineered through the training becomes vibrant with health, making possible high levels of functionality and opening the door to more advanced meditative states by refining our mind/heart qualities.
Mindfulness instruction is primarily influenced by two main sources. The Unified Mindfulness system developed by Shinzen Young which offers a rigorous conceptual and practical framework with authentic milestones for a life-time of meditation.
Sustained practice leads to "sensory literacy", transcendence and stability in positive moods and traits.
Other influences include Erik Pema Kunsang's Dzogchen teachings and academic study in Buddhist and Daoist Traditions.
Mindfulness
meditation practices
When we lack clarity we are caught up in thoughts and emotions. we lack vision and purpose. The light of our awareness gets dim.
Through practices in stillness, movement and daily life, we tune in and revitalize our attention. Over time we develop an intimate knowledge of our experience, as we investigate what make up our experience, what causes suffering and how to find lasting relief, fulfillment and joy despite ever-changing conditions.
With a rigorous framework for attentional training, we learn to soak in or withdraw from the senses and find stability in basic presence, our doorway into more sustained layers of stillness and clarity.
With continued practice, you will be able to:
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Stabilize attention
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Clear your mind when there is no need for thinking
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Identify and hold space for emotions, instead of compulsively act out of them
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Develop insight into your experience
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Free yourself from unserving patterns
Sessions include:
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Practice Assessment
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mindfulness meditation training in four postures (seated, standing, walking, lying down)
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Postural Correction
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Seated Opening and Streching
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Seated qigong
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Guided meditations
life skills practices
Facilitation
Our core sustaining habit patterns should help us be calm, clear, and functional. But limiting beliefs, identifications, misperceptions, emotional hang-ups, and non-serving character traits prevent us from realizing this potential.
Drawing on a comprehensive framework of Personal Management and Monitoring developed over eight years, as well as psychological frameworks, our sessions will help you optimize your personality, habits and increase your chances of creating the conditions for your psychological and behavioral well-being.
With continued practice, you will be able to:
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Develop clarity about your views, commitments, and lifestyle
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Sculpt your vision
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Better understand your personality, triggers, and stress responses
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Develop your go-to Regulating Strategies
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Build and sustain your Core Routine
Sessions include:
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Lifestyle and Personality Assessment
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Support and Accountability Calls
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Habit Care Protocols