Compassionate Presence: Yin/Yang Yoga and Buddhist Meditation
The practices of yoga and meditation provide the potential for living with gentleness and insight. In our yoga sessions, we can clear the body and mind of extraneous, depleting elements while enhancing our awareness and vital energy or Qi. Studying and practicing the Buddha Dharma, we can both enhance a recognition of our basic goodness, as well as adopting skillful ways of being with the obstacles to simple presence. In this 2 day intensive Sarah will offer balanced yoga sequences each day with both Yin and Yang yoga methods as well as pranayama. She will also spend time each class encouraging us to develop heart based meditations that the Buddha described as methods that allow us to dwell with the gods called the 4 Brahma Viharas. This focus will include loving-kindness and compassion. Sarah Powers began teaching in 1987. She is the founder and author of Insight Yoga, which interweaves the insights and practices of Yoga, Buddhism, Chinese medicine, and Transpersonal Psychology into an integral practice to enliven the body, heart and mind. Her yoga style blends both a Yin sequence of floor poses to enhance the meridian and organ systems, combined with an alignment-based slow flow or Yang practice, influenced by Viniyoga, Ashtanga, and Iyengar and Qigong teachings. Sarah feels that enlivening the physical and pranic bodies, as well as learning to meet our emotional reactivity is paramount for preparing one to deepen and nourish insights into one's essential nature--a natural state of awareness. She draws from her studies in Transpersonal Psychology, as well as her in-depth training in the Vipassana,Tantric and Dzogchen practices of Buddhism. Her main influences are Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Jennifer Welwood, and Lama Pema Dorje. Sarah and her husband Ty Powers live in the San Francisco bay area and have created the Insight Yoga Institute which offers 500 hour trainings with other renowned teachers blending yoga, buddhism and psychology. To learn more about her see her dvd series Insight Yoga or Yin and Vinyasa and go to www.sarahpowers.com.
