Horsham/ UK Workshop with Gregor Maehle & Monica Gauci

• When:
  • 3rd and 4th of August, Saturday and Sunday.
  • From 8am to ~3pm.
• Where:
  • At Iriness Yoga Horsham, Victoria house, Victoria street, RH13 5DZ.
• Themes & timeline for both days:
  • 8am – 10:30am. Monica Gauci:  Led Ashtanga Asana & Creating postural harmony.
  • 11:30am  – 3pm. Gregor Maehle: Through yogic meditation to the pinnacle of yoga, samadhi.
• Students profile:
  • Yoga teachers and students of all traditions and levels (except complete novices).

Guided / led asana class with Monica Gauci

Monica will guide you through a modified version of the Primary series of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, which is accessible to an able-bodied student of any level.

Her focus is on inner alignment and core support that students can build strength, stability and resilience whilst enhancing joint mobility and tissue flexibility.

Monica’s style is explorative and educational. She uses techniques that encourage students to be fully present, to develop an astute awareness, working from the inside out to be a diligent student of their body and breath and, in this way, become their own greatest teacher.

Performing postures with precision and awareness makes them safe and efficient, enabling students to deeply explore the various asanas effectively and without unnecessary energy expenditure. This method also allows conditioning and emotions lodged within our tissues to be released, bringing ease, quietude and peace of mind.

Creating postural harmony with Monica Gauci
‘Good’ posture, from the inside out

What is good posture? Perhaps it is not what we imagine…

Good posture is that, which allows us to breath freely, where our relationship to gravity is easeful, gracious and harmonious.

Just as our breath changes with our feelings, thoughts and beliefs, so our posture adapts to reflect these. Problems arise when we become stuck in one pattern and unconsciously carry it around as our ‘signature’ posture.

This workshop aims to reveal our unconscious patterns and offers corrective and therapeutic exercises to keep us nimble and adaptive to the rainbow of changes that life presents, that we are better informed and equipped to change what we think and how we feel to heal ourselves.

A digital copy of the PowerPoint slides will be provided.

Yogic meditation with Gregor Maehle
Through mantra, chakras, Kundalini to spiritual freedom 

Different to Vedantic or Buddhist meditation, yogic meditation contains the same structural elements as yogic postures and breathing, and was designed to form together with those an integrated whole.

Meditation is the method of bringing your mind into a receptive state, so that you can receive higher knowledge that is already there. Yogic meditation is a collection of scientific methods to bring about such awareness.

To accelerate spiritual evolution yogic meditation employs many means, amongst which the prime ones are mantra, mudra, bandha, chakra-visualisation and Kundalini-raising techniques.

The yogic chakras are representations of evolutionary brain circuitry with the lower three chakras representing our reptilian, mammalian and primate ancestry respectively. By understanding the chakras and skillfully meditating on them yoga offers the opportunity to activate higher brain centres and propel the evolution not only of the individual but of society as a whole.

Kundalini-raising techniques consist of a combination of all other yogic means to raise the life force (prana) to a level where meditation is easy and spiritual insight becomes spontaneous.

Samadhi with Gregor Maehle
Understanding and accessing different type of samadhis

How to bring about the pinnacle of yogic practices, the state of samadhi? – During this event Gregor will lead us from the yogic philosophy to the practical experiences of multi-leveled samadhi. Thankfully, there are eight levels of it, so we’ll all be able to access and experience at least one😊.

Preparing the ground for samadhi, Gregor will cover the teachings of Raja yoga, the final tier of Ashtanga yoga, and Vyasa’s five states of mind. We’ll better understand what samadhi is and what it is not, and how Yoga Sutra and Bhagavad Gita see samadhi.

In this session Gregor will also talk about expansion of the sense-of-self, the conditioning of the mind and karma; the connection of samadhi, breathless states and chakra. We’ll also learn about the Divine from the viewpoint of Yoga Sutra and Bhagavad Gita along with the role of acceptance and consecration in the readiness for the states of samadhi.

The apogee of the two days of preparation for samadhi  will be our practice accessing and experiencing samadhi (one of eight or, who knows, maybe more? 😊).

For more info and bookings please go to https://iriness.com/events/gregor-maehle-monica-gauci/