The four Jewels of an Enduring Practice: Asana, Pranayama, Insight Meditation, Compassion Meditation

A Workshop with Sarah Powers

In this workshop Sarah will encourage us to develop and/or deepen our commitment to a balanced daily practice that nourishes not only our body and breath, but our hearts and minds as well. Each class will give us the opportunity to highlight these four themes individually, so that we might braid them together inside us as a holistic Mandala (or sanctuary of practice) that we can enter daily for renewed inspiration and insight.

The first hour of each class Sarah will focus on salient features of Mindfulness meditation with both lecture and practice. Through clarifying and highlighting the basic tenets of a skillful practice, Sarah will help make meditation a joyous endeavor, reminding us of its essential place in our lives.

Each day, the meditation practice will be followed by various Yin/Yang asana sequences that encourage stability and mobility, groundedness and ease, enabling us to merge what Taoists call heaven and earth within our own bodies and minds, while cultivating the sensitive energy body simultaneously.

The last hour will be given to compassion practices, often called the 4 Immeasurables in Buddhism as the qualities of loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity have boundless possibilities within each of us. To initiate the proliferation of these values in our personal experience, we simply need to passionately lean our hearts and minds in these directions on a regular basis.

Although each class will be a complete experience, these practices build on each other. For this reason Sarah prefers that you sign up for the whole intensive.

Sarah will be drawing from her book Insight Yoga as well as her new dvds, Insight Yoga: Mingling Heaven and Earth Vol. I and II, so we recommend that you have copies of each of these.