We will meet live on Zoom Sunday evenings at 5pm. We will do the practice which includes chanting to set intention and clear our energy channels, pranayama to regulate and alter our consciousness in preparation for, Yoga Nidra style guided meditations that will take us on inner adventures to clear out and connect with the Divine Feminine Principles of receptivity and creativity! It will be epic.
The Access Consciousness BARS Class
Saturday February 2nd, 2020
11 - 6 pm
@ Mariposa Yoga
Learn this series of 32 acupressure points on the head that release tension and trauma from the body and mind! In this class each participant will give and receive the Bars twice! You will leave feeling lighter and more spacious and certified as a practitioner to offer this clearing and healing modality to friends, family and clients! Investment: $350. Space is limited so please contact me immediately to pay and reserve a space! Here’s some more information about the technique. There are so many possibilities for what can change and shift through the experience.
I thought this was super interesting it's from Destiny Toro, a massage therapist that took a past bars class!
"I'm still working on the specifics of the Bars/meridians overlapping, but this is what I've found so far, and it's amazing. A majority of the points are on the gallbladder meridian. The gallbladder is considered a yang, wood element organ and of all the organs, it represents the ego. It accepts all "overflow", in all senses of the word. The body's first reaction to receiving bad news, witnessing an accident, experiencing trauma is often to contract the gallbladder. It reacts to unexpressed anger and can be a dumping ground for things not processed by the liver (literally or energetically). So by working with those bars, you're going back to the source of trauma and eliminating those first impressions of it and loosening the burdens the body has been carrying."
Another Bars Story: A friend came to see me for Migraines. She figured they were stress induced. She’s a very busy lady. So she wanted to do something relaxing for herself. We had a typical session. She experienced some intense tingling at the crown of her head at one point. She left feeling refreshed.
I reached out a few weeks later to check in about the migraines. She didn’t get back to me right away so I started to worry. A few more weeks passed and we finally saw each other face to face. I asked her how she was feeling. And she had some very interesting information to report.
She wanted to give it at least a month before she told me about it. She didn’t want to jinx the results. But the day after she left our BARS session, she got the first normal period she’d had in years. (Since being on and then getting off the Nuvaring six months prior.)
She also hadn’t had a migraine since! It hadn’t occurred to her that these two seemingly separate ailments at opposite ends of the body were related. But this work reminds us, that everything is connected and all of our symptoms are actually a result of energy getting stuck in the body. If we can shift that energy, we can often shift our experience of our bodies and lives.
Teaching to Transform
We will meet on Monday from 6-9:30pm January - August.
*** We have July off from class meetings to work on integrating all the information, practicing, teaching and working on the final project. We will reconvene in August to share our work, teach our final classes to each other, and keep the discussion going.
You are required to take 3 classes a week for the duration of the training.
You will be expected to spend 4 hrs/wk reading, writing or practice teaching.
You must spend at least 1hr/wk volunteering with your partnership organization for the last 6 months.
You will also receive 4 one on one sessions with me to check in throughout the training.
Space is limited. Sliding Scale $200 - $400 Deposit to hold your space
Tuition: Sliding Scale $200 - $400/ month for 8 months.
I am also open to creating other payment plans.
There will be two scholarship provided for a Black or Indigenous Person of Color.
Manifesto: I believe in the radical potential of our yoga practice to expand our awareness to be in many places at once and honor our true complexity. I believe that mindfulness creates space within us to discover our agency and choose to do things differently. I believe that as we change ourselves we have the power to effect and transform the world.
I also see the many ways in which our yoga practices (within the white supremacist capitalist hetero-normative patriarchy) are falling short. Access is often limited to folks with expendable income. The majority of these folks are white. And even though we are mostly (self-identified) women, we've internalized and therefore reproduce so many problematic and oppressive characteristics (gender as a binary, for example) of the cultural, socio-political and economic system that we exist within.
There is a history of white-washing (Yoga is an indigenous practice!), sexual misconduct and abuse of power within all of the major (western) yogic lineages (Ashtanga, Iyengar, Anusara, Jivamukti, Bikrim just to name a few.) And there is an even more disturbing wall of silence and defensiveness (characteristics of white supremacy) built up around these incidents. Yoga, the practice of exploring our bodies and consciousness, has become a big business, so anything that isn't pretty, shiny, white light, and feel good will not be tolerated.
This teacher training is emerging in response to these issues of injustice being reproduced through our yoga practices and communities. I don't claim to be enlightened or to have all the answers. But I am called to hold space while we, as white folks, dig deep to unpack issues of power, privilege and how they have been expressed through our bodies and our yoga practices. If People of Color would like to join us, I would be honored and appreciate the perspective. But I don't claim to be in any position to teach you about resisting oppression. Although I can teach you about yogic principles and alignment….
We will use the structure and journey through the Chakra system to explore the relationship between these topics both within ourselves and in the world around us. This training will push us to "walk our talk" off the mat, to make adjustments to bring who we say we'd like to be, in line with who we actually are, and how we walk through the world. There will be a community project aspect to this training. I am currently working with a white accountability and ally-ship coach to further develop this aspect of the curriculum. So I'll keep you updated.
In the end, the graduating teachers will be trained to teach a safe and empowering yoga practice, that offers many options and honors the wisdom of each students' unique body and experience of this reality. They will also be well versed in current social justice issues and the practice of utilizing dharma talks to address these issues, engage their students and push them beyond their comfort zone to make changes within themselves and the world around us.
Basically I'm building an army. Would you care to join me?