Hi folks its Deirdre here, 
I just wanted to keep you updated on my continued studies, training and assisting on trainings.. for those of you that continue to come to our retreats, have been with us before or who are thinking about it I hope it gives you a little insight as to where I am coming from as a teacher..my lineage and the importance of passing this knowledge from teacher to teacher ...

In London a few weeks ago I did a 2 day workshop on Sacroiliac Stability with Donna Fahri in the beautiful TriYoga building which really helped me to integrate her book. Pathways to a Centred Body. I had also previously done a 3 day workshop 3 years ago with Lelia Stuart who co wrote the book with Donna. So this is something I have been studying and working personally with for a long time and which has allowed me to find ease and stability within my own body, accepting my limitations and working within my own range of movement. It has also helped me understand the need for each student to learn to listen and identity themselves any habits that may be causing joint pain issues and to consolidate a practice that is kind and suitable to their own changing needs.
 
I am also at present assisting Lisa Peterson on her advanced teacher training progamme, I am very grateful for this opportunity and learning again what you have already learnt in detail gives the work an even deeper meaning.
 
Yoga is an embodied practice. Embodiment is a big word for a simple concept. In practice it means that we bring our attention back into our bodies in order to fully experience our selves. In the words of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, embodiment is ‘the act of awakening and enlivening the consciousness of our whole being’. In this philosophy, development is not a linear process but a series of waves, each one planting the seed for the next to take root and flourish. We offer you an extensive, accessible and embodied tool-kit for transformation that will sustain you for a life-time of learning. Lisa Peterson
 
And last year I assisted on her Somatic Education Coach training
 
Somatic Movement Education (SME) offers a safe, fast and profound way to release and recalibrate tight muscles by retraining the nervous system and re-patterning the soma
(body-mind). This training unites modern neuroscience and ancient yogic wisdom within the
practice of somatics. Learn how to make the unconscious conscious and feel how everything becomes easier and pain free from your head to your toes. For many movement teachers and students, it is quite simply love at first sight!



Later this month, June'19 I will be assisting on the following workshop which I am really excited about.. It is such an honour to be assisting a teacher that I have admired from the very beginning of my yogic journey..
I look forward to sharing what I learn with you all on our retreats..see you in October '19..!!!

Beyond Methods: Yoga as Self-Inquiry.Donna Fahri
 
In 2018, I launched a new intensive: “Coming to Our Senses” intended to deepen people’s connection to their own inner perception. People come to my intensives with backgrounds in a multiplicity of traditions, methods, and styles of Yoga practice.  In the context of this work, we allow these teachings to become latent resources that can rise to serve the moment when needed, or retreat into the background when not.  For many people, the set structures and constraints of idealized forms impedes the process of listening to the “breaking news” of the body.  This breaking news tells us what is happening at all levels of embodiment, that is, physically, energetically, emotionally, mentally and even spiritually and what might be necessary for restoring balance.  Over the course of several days, I try to provide inquiries and practices that increase kinesthetic and interoceptive awareness, moving from structured offerings to where the practice is guided from within.  ​
 

There is somewhere in between, the pause in between an inhalation and an exhalation, in-between finding and adjusting yourself in a pose and its full expression. the gap in between a sentence where the words resonate with a listener. The time between when an artist lifts a pencil and the second it marks the paper where intention is in full focus. The pause, the blank space. The liminal space, in Japanese aesthetic, the Ma.

This liminal space is something which has caught my own interest as an artist for a long time now, a little like the opposite of typical irish chattiness and fussiness where we revere the silence, marvel at the overlooked spaces in our landscape, rural or urban. It is reflected in architecture, particularly modernist architecture, which is why we choose the venue Bothar Bui for our Yoga and Drawing retreat. Clean, uninterrupted lines, like a meditation or a simple repetitive mantra that allow us the peace to admire nature simply, as it is. We pause and reflect and we honour the transitional space instead of being daunted by it in not knowing what to do or hurrying through it to the next thing or the next chapter of our lives.

We are teetering away from Bealtaine now towards midsummer, before it is spent, the month of May i wanted to mark its essence somehow, in words. I reflect back on the weekend we had in Lough Ine as the fire of Uisneach blazed in the belly of Ireland in Co.Westmeath we practiced, breathed, mediated and spent time in silence, built heat in dynamic practices,  and the warmth of the Bosca Beatha Mobile sauna, ignited by its own fire by the lake. We burnt off static energy and unwanted thoughts by the simple act of mindful doing, 'tapas'.

 In pagan tradition which continues through to today at Bealtaine in Ireland two fires are lit. Cattle are led between the two fires to bless and purify their fertility as well as the local revellers that would come out on this special eve and make merry, dancing between the two fires in celebration of natures bounty, transformation from growth into abundance, and again, fertility. Bealtaine was spiritually a time when the ‘veil was thin’, there was potential for magic as the curtain between the earth and the underworld was thin, the faeries danced.
Bealtaine marked the transitional time between spring and summer, the transformation, the silent journey itself. what goes on in-between the two cogs... somewhere in-between the opening buds and summers full expression..

When we mark this time it allows us to more mindfully embrace the fertile and expressive summer months, coming from a place of calm. We take summer into our arms with habitual layers shed and this way we are less inclined to become burnt out with the flamboyant season, we remain stable yet strong to grow and flow as we have spent time in transition and not rushed through it, its been nice resting in this...

      the space in-between.

 …….where truth, peace, and love reside, and bring you to a place of wholeness where you can re-assimilate in the world, it brought us to a place of being, just being...

Namaste

Reflecting on reflections
Its taken some time since the last retreat to actually sit down and put pen to paper..But despite the intense business of life and the catch up that comes with being away for a weekend, everything still resonates as strongly as it did the day we left Glengarriff..  In fact i think the second week after the retreat was a little more powerful in terms of everything just landing with me..

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The places we teach and hold our retreats are such an important element for us, each have special qualities for different reasons. For our recent retreat at Linden House, Glengarriff....as i look back at all the photographs, i notice reflections everywhere..in the still water outside as we looked out of the practice room, reflecting in the many huge windows, in the black marble table placed at the window.. It makes me think about how important it is to take time out of our busy lives..to reflect. To reflect on what we are doing with our body in this very moment, how we are walking or what we hear when we are in noble silence, what we are eating, how it tastes, where it may have come from, how it softens in the mouth and mixes with other flavours. How the mind feels when we are brought into the present without needy distractions of daily life and how we may bring this feeling back with us to be present in our daily life..

As i observe the reflections i am also reminded of the balance that yoga brings to the mind and body, how we work both the left and right side in asana practice, the balance that brings and how it further facilitates the freer movement of prana throughout the body, how the breath feels smoother and how it feels like it moves deeper into every cell of the body, what is known as Ida and Pingala, left and right come into balance. As we looked out over the sea we saw a small island with a tree, perfectly mirrored in the stillness of the bay, how beautiful it was to watch and made us strive to find our own stillness and balance as we held each pose. But in life, as in the weather, as in the postures we hold, the clouds come by, the reflection disappears, the sea wobbles and so does the body and mind..  nothing is perfect, everything is in flux, always..but as we have had a glimpse of this stillness and balance we know we can find this deep within so long as we don't strive for perfection and continue to practice, gently observing the thoughts as they come and go like clouds moving over a blue sky, in the words of the late and learned Patabis Jois "Practice and it will come"..
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