Hello Everyone,
I am now currently based in Basel, Switzerland. I have been working remotely with The Doing Group whilst also developing some key life skills: snowboarding. Yes, I have had the privilege to have spent the first few months of this year learning to fall down mountains gracefully and I have thoroughly enjoyed it.
Whilst engaging with a new challenge, I have also been studying German, Permaculture and other movement practices. With this is mind, I have just returned from a 4-day Embodied Yoga Principles Teacher Training in Brixton, London. It was an amazing weekend. To really understand the principles, we had to do these poses for ourselves and I must say, these poses are very effective. The training was challenging, troubling and very insightful.
So, what is Embodied Yoga Principles? Well in short, it is a set of principles that reveals patterns, behaviours, and habits through a series of poses and movements. The pose reveals how we are, and through this awareness, the pose gives us choice in how we want to be and what we may need more or less of within our everyday lives. EYP is about awareness, choice and integration.
I approached this weekend with some reservations. It was recommended to me, yet I didn’t fully know what it was. I practise Yoga, meditation and breathwork daily and I was unsure whether this course was for me. However, after the first day of critical observation, the practise gave me the opportunity for rigorous self-enquiry. The techniques are so simple, but so profound. This may sound like a lot of Yoga talk, but it really isn’t. This approach brings self-study, responsibility and choice into the foreground and has given me tools for informed transformation into my practises; not just Yoga, but everything I do.
The self-enquiry is one valuable element of EYP, the other is choice. The pose leads us to embody an archetype and asks us to notice how it feels, whether this feeling is familiar or not, whether it is strenuous or easy. Through this process, we notice our behavioural patterns, observe them and having done so, we are given the chance to change them.
I met some truly authentic, genuinely inspiring people on this course and it has opened a channel towards a sharing community where lessons and wisdom within the field are passed on. I cannot wait to share these with the rest of The Doing Group to add another element to our physical practices. I am now in the process of completing the teacher training.
If anyone here is interested in movement, Yoga, embodiment practices, mindfulness, dance or physical therapy, I really recommend checking the EYP website: https://www.embodiedyogaprinciples.com/
Warmth and Kindness,
Hannah
