Creativity, Sexuality and the Cycles of our Lives -
Women Yoga Workshop, Amsterdam
What is the relationship between creativity, sexuality and the cycles of our lives? How does energy move, as creative and sexual expression, and how does she get blocked? What is the relationship between rest and activity in relation to our creative and sexual cycles? What is the nature of Shakti and how has she been constrained? How can we understand the movements of Shakti? How can the Great Wisdom Goddesses Kamalatmika (the lotus goddess of delight) and Matangi (the wild outcaste poet) support our understanding of creative and sexual energies?
This experiential day-long workshop is open to all women and yoga teachers, yoga therapists and health care practitioners who are seeking to support positive experiences of creativity and sexuality in women’s lives, either for themselves personally, or for their students and clients.
The day counts as continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers who have completed prior training(s) with Uma, and can also count towards CPD points for general yoga teachers and therapists, depending upon the requirements of their professional associations. Health care practitioners, psychotherapists, sexological body-workers and coaches with an interest in yoga, sexuality and creativity are also welcome to attend, provided they have a living interest in and practice of yoga.
The intention of this day is to provide practical experience of breath (pranayama), rhythmic and restorative yoga postures (asana), gestures (mudra), heart-based meditations (Yoga Nidra) and deep, joyful heart songs (kirtan) that promote healthy creative and sexual energies. Supportive sequences of integrated yoga postures will be taught, and there will be time for discussion. An overview of common creative and sexual challenges and opportunities will be discussed in relation to appropriate yogic responses. By the end of the day, participants will have an understanding of the key practical and theoretical yoga-tantra responses that are helpful to support the expression of women’s creativity and sexuality.
There will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussions. The programme is open to responsive, intuitive attunements and adjustments to meet the specific needs of those attending.
REGISTRATION DETAILS
The DATES: 25 January 2019
TEACHERS: Uma Dinsmore Tuli & Sivani Mata Francis
LOCATION:
Vondelkerk
Vondelstraat 120a
1053 GS Amsterdam
The Netherlands
SCHEDULE:
Friday: 10:00 - 17:00 hrs
Please download the information document below for the detailed class schedule.
PACKAGE INCLUDES:
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teaching hours
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Pre-course listening material
INVESTMENT :
Early bird: €85
Available for the first 20 bookings, paid in full.
Regular rate: €95
PRE-COURSE LISTENING & READING
The Wild Garden Total Yoga Nidra track is freely downloadable from www.yonishakti.co and www.yoganidranetwork.org
This session is informed by extensive research into the history and politics of yoga, and it reclaims for women’s bodies, the practices that nourish our source and heal the disconnections that we often experience as women living in a man’s world. The cycles of energy and the rhythms of sexual and creative pleasures that the session explores are rooted in menstruality consciousness, an awareness of the cycles of creativity and sexual patterns of arousal, desire, satiation, and disinterest.
Optional suggested course reading (during and after the day workshop): Yoni Shakti is the key text for reference during this day workshop
THE TEACHERS
UMA DINSMORE TULI
Uma was first introduced to yoga at the age of four by her mother and began meditating at nine on a pilgrimage with her maternal grandmother. Yoga and meditation have been part of her daily life ever since. As a naturally curious and enquiring yogini, she has engaged passionately and critically with a variety of quite different schools of yoga, most especially Satyananda Yoga and Iyengar Yoga.
After completing the Yoga Biomedical Trust Diploma in Yoga Therapy in 1999, Uma has continued to find the fully integrated approach of yoga therapy to be the most practical route to the healing power of yoga. She further trained in Structural Yoga Therapy and Ayurvedic Yoga Therapy with Mukunda Stiles, and works as a yoga therapist with special expertise in women’s health. Uma has a PhD in Communications and is a recognised teacher of the British Wheel of Yoga. She has been a training tutor in Yoga Therapy since 2001 and also teaches British Wheel of Yoga In-service training days. As a mother of three, she has been both personally and professionally engaged with the development of pregnancy yoga, yoga for birth and postnatal recovery, and family yoga, and has been training teachers in this field since 2002, when she first tutored for the Birthlight Trust. Since then she has delighted in creating her own courses to promote excellence of teaching in this field, including Well Woman Yoga and a uniquely responsive Integrated Mother and Baby yoga teacher training. With the intention of widening access to pregnancy and postnatal yoga, she founded Sitaram Yoga with her husband in 1998, and it continues to offer pregnancy and postantal yoga classes in London, including at King’s College and St Thomas’s hopsitals.
The heart of Uma’s daily personal and therapeutic practice is yoga nidra, which she believes to be the most powerfully transformative of all yoga techniques. She first encountered the technique at the Satyananda Yoga Centre in 1995, and has been exploring all aspects of it with fascination ever since. She has studied a variety of different approaches to the practice both in India and the UK, with nationally renowned exponents including Swami Muktidharma (Satyananda Acharya, New Zealand), Mukunda Stiles, and Richard Miller. She has refined a range of particularly feminine therapeutic applications of yoga nidra, including its use for the promotion of fertility, positive birthing, postnatal recovery and conscious menstrual health a source of spiritual empowerment. She has taught yoga nidra to hundreds of people, in every conceivable environment, from nursery schools, hospitals and airports, to giant geodesic domes filled with yogis sheltering from wild storms at yoga festivals and gatherings. She has been sharing the technique with teachers from all lineages on Yoga Therapy training courses and retreats since 1999.
Uma leads retreats and courses worldwide, sharing the approach to yoga therapy set out in her CDs, DVDs and books: Mother’s Breath, Teach Yourself Yoga for Pregnancy and Birth, and Feel Confident: Yoga for Living. Her new book Yoni Shakti is about the evolution of feminine spiritual authority through yoga and tantra. Uma is currently refining Womb Yoga through a series of international workshops and retreats.
SIVANI MATA FRANCIS
Sivani Mata has been using Yoga Nidra, the sublime practice of “yogic sleep” as a daily practice for many years now, and in April 2013 she completed the Total Yoga Nidra teacher training with Nirlipta Tuli and Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, and is now able to share this invaluable practice which has aided her healing process over the years.
Sivani Mata is also a student of Bhakti Yoga (the yoga of love and devotion) and began her journey with this practice through attending various Kirtan (chanting) evenings in London and on her travels. Particularly with family band GOMA, who inspired her to live in trust and bhakti spirit in all aspects of life. She began to lead Kirtan after spending New Year 2009 with Jai Uttal on his Kirtan camp, followed by a Yoga Teacher Training in Mexico at the Yandara Yoga Institute, where an incredible resident kirtan band, Jaya made chanting a key element. Since then Sivani has been running chanting circles and gatherings in the UK and has released three kirtan albums produced by bhakti musical magician Tabla Tom: I AM (2012), Shakti Live (2015) and Surrender (2016). As well as her most recent release Jasmine Garden (2017) produced by the amazing Turkantam which blends Kirtan with mystic poetry. Having fallen in love with the path of Bhakti Yoga, Sivani organized the UK’s first ever Bhakti Music Festival (in August 2011), which brought devotional musical practices from various traditions together as one, in the spirit of universal love and devotion. Following on from this she now organizes BE LOVE ~ 11hour Bhakti Immersions in London. Inspired by her Bhakti Practice, Sivani also shares Yoga Nidra, Women's Yoga, Restorative Yoga and Shakti Dance with bhakti spirit, centering these practices in the heart to unveil one's true nature.
Inspired by her Bhakti Practice, Sivani shares Yoga Nidra with bhakti spirit, centering the practice in the heart to unveil one's true nature, and often including mantra as part of the practice.
Sivani Mata feels incredibly blessed to have found this divine practice and be able to share it with others
LOCATION
We will gather in the stunning Vondel church, located right at the entrance of the famous Vondelpark. Located in a beautiful part of town the Vondelchurch, designed by Cuypers, is easy to get to with public transportation.
The church offers unique gothic architecture, colorful wall and ceiling paintings and a cozy atmosphere.
Combined with a group of yogis and an amazing teaching magic happens here!