Online — The Wakeful Body: Somatic Mindfulness as a Path to Freedom

A Six-Month Online-Only Course

Meetings: Tuesdays 3:00–4:30 pm ET, March 1 through July 26, 2022

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Many of us have a complicated relationship to the body. In its vulnerability to aging and illness, we tend to think of our body in ordinary or even pejorative terms. Yet many meditation masters of the past have taught that the body is a temple, a profound source of wisdom. How do we reconcile these two perspectives?

In this gradual, six-month training, participants will explore the body as a domain of practice and wisdom, through the physical, energetic, and cognizant dimensions of experience. Through live instruction, guided meditations, readings, and exercises, we will go from the ordinary to the sublime, as participants explore the body’s hidden potential as a guide to freedom.

This potential does not arise from our ideas and opinions about the body. It arises from the power of the body itself to ground us, awaken us, and draw us into the present moment, the domain of joy and ease.

This course includes:

• Launch Retreat (recordings available if you did not attend on Feb. 5-6)
• Monthly Live Instruction (first Tuesday of every month)
• Live Guided Meditation Practice (2nd, 3rd & 4th Tuesdays)
• Yoga Modules (on demand)
• Assigned Readings
• Audio Meditations (on demand)
• A Practice Cohort to engage with your peers at small monthly online gatherings

Detailed Tuesday schedule (flexible)

1st Tuesday of each month: Teaching and Practice Session (3:00-4:30)
2nd Tuesday of each month: Practice Session (3:00-4:00)
3rd Tuesday of each month: Q and A (3:00-4:30)
4th Tuesday of each month: Practice Session (3:00-4:00)
5th Tuesday of each month: Practice Session (3:00-4:00)

This program, the culmination of Lama Willa’s thirty years of training in meditation and yoga, is simple but substantial, suitable for people of all levels and backgrounds. If you want to discover your own body as a deep teacher, this course is for you.

Launch Retreat – February 5 & 6, 2022. You are welcome to register for the course even if you have missed the launch retreat. You can catch up with the recordings.

Required Course Reading – The Wakeful Body: Somatic Mindfulness as a Path to Freedom by Willa Blythe Baker

Closed captioning is available on all online retreats and courses.

ZOOM DETAILS ­– The Zoom link for all sessions will remain the same for the entire course. You will receive the Zoom link two days before the launch retreat, and it will also be posted in your user account on the resource page. If you register after that, you’ll receive the Zoom link shortly after you register. If you don’t see an email from Natural Dharma Registrar or Wonderwell Mountain Refuge, it may have mistakenly gone to your spam/junk  folder or Promotions or Update categories. You may contact the registrar at retreats@wonderwellrefuge.org if you do not receive the the Zoom link at the appropriate time. Please be sure to save the Zoom link in a safe place so you can find it easily.

PROGRAM COST – It is Natural Dharma Fellowship’s aspiration that no one be turned away from our teachings and retreats because they are unable to pay the full cost. In order make our courses affordable for all who wish to attend, we are offering a three-level fee structure that takes into account people’s differing financial circumstances:

Benefactor – for those who can afford it, this fee level helps provide support for those with limited financial resources and assists with the care and maintenance of Wonderwell Mountain Refuge

Series Fee – for those who can cover the basic cost of the series

Supported – for those with limited financial resources or recent financial hardship

The amounts listed are suggestions, although if you register after the beginning of the course, we ask you to remember when deciding how much to offer that you will have access to all of the course materials. You may write in any amount that fits your financial situation. Any amount offered above the Series Fee level will be considered a tax-deductible donation and will be acknowledged as such.

USER ACCOUNTS & RESOURCES

The user account feature of our website provides a secure place where materials from your retreats can be posted and accessed. If you don’t have an account already, you’ll want to set one up as soon as you register.

• Paid resources – retreat recordings and other retreat materials – will only be available in the dashboard of your user account.
• If you haven’t already created an NDF user account, please visit our website to Create an account as soon as possible.
• User accounts are manually synced with each week’s offering within 7–10 days. Please be aware that this does not happen automatically with registration. It is a separate, manual operation.

Please visit the Technical FAQ page on our website for useful information about user accounts, helpful tutorials, as well as answers to many other questions. You can contact support@naturaldharma.org with questions about your user account.

Wonderwell Mountain Refuge Full Calendar