MOVING INTO MEDITATION:
A MindFULL Yoga and Meditation Residential Retreat
The Theosophical Society, Wheaton, Illinois
September 18-19, 2010
Yoga makes us more vibrant and enhances the ongoing refinement of our body, heart, and mind.
Meditation develops a radiant and focused mind, kind heart, and body-centered presence.
Both will bring you home to yourself.
Take time away from your busy schedule to commit your attention to your inner development in this residential retreat. This retreat will offer a potent container for integrating and enlivening the body and mind that will help you re-enter your daily life refreshed, renewed, and re-committed to a regular yoga and meditation practice.
We will have two 2-1/2 hour yoga sessions on Saturday and one on Sunday morning. We will incorporate passive YIN poses with an active YANG practice to help balance our overall well-being while opening the body and enlivening the mind for meditation. As well as being a very meditative practice, the yin style keeps the body supple while encouraging stagnant chi (prana or life force) to flow throughout the joints, balancing the organ and meridian systems. Yin poses are done on the floor (no standing poses in yin yoga) and are held for 3-5 minutes in order to therapeutically stretch the connective tissue in a safe and mindful manner.
The YANG (slow flow style) asana practice will encourage ease and grace in a moving meditation using poses that you already know and love.
All sessions include pranayama and mindfulness meditation.
The retreat starts at 10 AM on Saturday and ends 12:30 PM on Sunday. Please bring an open mind, a basic knowledge of yoga, and your own yoga mat and props.
Bhante Sujatha will give a workshop on METTA (loving-kindness) on Saturday night.
Bhante Sujatha is the spiritual head of the Blue Lotus Buddhist Temple in Woodstock, Illinois. He believes his job is “teaching people how to be happy”!
Read more about Bhante Sujatha at http://www.bluelotustemple.org/People.html.
A local Indian restaurant will provide a vegetarian dinner Saturday nigh; please bring your own food for lunch on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday — vegetarian only please — or you can eat at a local restaurant.
20 residents maximum allowed. Cost: $195.00. $156 for Theosophical Society members
The retreat will be held at 1926 North Main Street, Wheaton, Illinois.
Please call 630-668-1571 to register.
NOTE: I encourage you to use this retreat as a way to step away from your daily life for a short time and NOT to go home on Saturday night. Take time for yourself. The purpose of a retreat is to get a different perspective on life and is an “act of retiring or withdrawing one’s self.” It is the equivalent of stepping back from a painting to look at it with new eyes. In retreat, one steps away from the ordinary in order to see the path anew.
