Meditation Workshop: Working with the Body

Meditation is a simple practice, which is not to say it is easy. In meditating we are noticing that we have been caught in a habitual way of relating to our mind and body for most of our lifetime, and deciding that we’d quite like to try something different. That something has been practised over thousands of years and has many benefits.

These workshops are designed to help you gain a better understanding of the intricacies and subtleties of meditation. Taking this simple but difficult practice and exploring it in more detail.

This Workshop: Working with the Body

“The most important point is to own your own personal body.”
“To take this posture itself is the purpose of our practice. When you have this posture, you have the right state of mind, so there is no need to try to attain some special state.” - Suzuki Roshi, Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind

Our relationship with our bodies tends to be ambiguous. Most of us live in a state of near constant distress about its shape and fitness, it’s proneness to accident, the fact of it being subject to pain, aging and illness and at any moment, and without due warning, to its dying. In failing to inhabit our body, we react to it from a state of near total ignorance. We fight it, fear it, ignore it and tend to view it as lesser than, inferior to our intellect, our minds. Yet it is this very same body that capable of experiencing great pleasure, calm, joy, and can bring about a sense of well-being, of peace of mind, even of enlightenment.

Shamatha Meditation is the discipline of creating a healthy relationship between body and mind. The mind cannot calm itself. It is the body which calms the mind. The breathing body calms, tames and trains our anxious minds. During this morning practice session, we will get a taste of what, in the words of Suzuki Roshi, it feels like to own our personal bodies.

About the Teachers

James O’Neill, is a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Buddhist teacher and author of Undressing, chosen as book of the week by the Guardian/Observer and Book of the Month by the Bookseller.

Jonathan Lewis, is a health coach specializing in movement and breathing practices for health, wellbeing and resilience. Jonathan is from Roots Movement and a Director at Balance Performance Physiotherapy in Clapham.

Timings

Arrival 9.30am, Start 10am, Finish 12.30pm

Full Price: £10
Concession: £7 (for those earning below £20,000 per annum)
                    £5 (for those earning below £15,000 per annum)

Please contact [email protected] to request a concession or if you have any questions. 

Payment Terms and Conditions

Please register and pay in full on registration, to pay by card, Please ensure you click on the relevant price option to go through to PayPal where you can also pay by credit/debit card.  Cancellation up to 1 week before the programme will receive a full refund, after that there will be a £5 fee charged for cancellation up until the day before, after which no refund is granted.