Embodied Awareness for Tough Times

Mudra Space Awareness practice, or Mudra, leads to embodied awareness through the fearless and unhesitating action of being fully present and engaging wholeheartedly with ourselves and with whatever is arising.

We make gestures all the time:

• Our movements are gestures.
• The words we speak are gestures.
• Gestures are how we relate with others and the environment around us.
• Our whole life is a gesture.

In Mudra, embodied awareness is feeling our body fully and awakening our sense perceptions (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch). This is accomplished through:

• Physical intensification and relaxation postures that heighten the contrast between being present for and being trapped by our habitual thoughts and emotions
• Sensory awareness exercises that increase our awareness and feeling of body and mind, and
• Contemplation and application.

By exploring and engaging in these ways, we discover a greater sense of space - a powerful and lighter sense of being - within our minds and hearts, and in our lives. This is embodied presence.

Typically, we are physically tense in some ways and relaxed in others. For example, our stomach is relaxed but our neck and shoulders are tight. The core exercises of Mudra invite us to feel 100% intensified or 100% relaxed. Through this process, we cut through unexamined and habitual physical and mental patterns, and awaken to feeling our bodies and freeing up our minds. This becomes the ground for greater awareness and presence.

In response to requests from leading theater professionals and other performance artists in the early 1970s, Chögyam Trungpa created Mudra Space Awareness practice, drawn from Tibetan Buddhist yogic practices and monastic dance. Through Mudra’s meditative view and practices, these students became more aware of themselves and others, opened their sense perceptions, and experienced embodied presence. This benefited them in their professional and personal lives. Mudra’s meditative view and practices result in:

• Recognizing the contrast between habitual physical and mental reactions and fresh experience
• Reclaiming embodied presence
• Embodied awareness through postures that call for total involvement
• Experiencing embodied or genuine presence through activating awake gesture, speech, and movement.

Nonaggression is the key to life, and to perception altogether. It is how to perceive reality at its best. Out of that comes the notion of dignity.

Chögyam Trungpa

• Exercises that ​wake up your sense perceptions and increase mindfulness and awareness in your life
• Feeling your body wholeheartedly and energetically
• More openness and awareness of yourself, others, and the environment
• The ability to see your thoughts and emotions within a larger perspective
• Attuning to the power and beauty of our sense perceptions.
  
  
  

With the increase of embodied awareness and presence that Mudra practice brings, we are able to see, meet, and embrace tenacious thoughts and emotions and tough energetic situations instead of ignoring, becoming aggressive, or being overwhelmed by them.

Suzann Duquette

• Recognition and practice of awake gestures
• Intensification and relaxation exercises that lead to wakeful and compassionate living
• Principles, such as Total Involvement, that you can apply in your daily life
• Contemplative slogans related to physical embodiment postures
• Sensory awareness exercises that lead to deeper reflection in life and guide you toward nonaggressive living
• Exercises and materials to help you apply awakened awareness, gesture, and action in your life - work life, with friends, and at home.

To help facilitate your attendance, this retreat will be offered in two parts.

Full Retreat - Parts 1 & 2
Everyone is invited to attend the entire retreat, Wed. October 4 to Sun., October 8.

Weekend Retreat - Part 2 Only
You may attend the weekend only, Friday night, Oct. 6 to Sun., October 8.

No prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for either retreat.

Part 1:
Wednesday, October 4, 7:30p to Friday, October 6, 6:00p
We will ground ourselves in Mudra Space Awareness practice four sessions a day. Sessions will emphasize practice and discussion, including:

• 5 of the core intensification postures
• Working with poles to increase mindfulness-awareness
• Mudra slogan contemplation and
• Sense perceptions, play, and interaction – inside and in nature.

Part 2:
Friday, October 6, 7:30p to
Sunday, October 8, 5:00p
The first session each morning will focus on core intensification postures.
For the remaining three sessions, practice and discussion will focus on ways to bring Mudra into our lives, especially in these challenging times. Sessions will emphasize:

• Awakening our senses to broaden awareness
• Feeling embodied presence in our surroundings
• Deepening genuine gesture through key Mudra principles
• Exploring Mudra and trauma - Because trauma lives in our bodies and is not always accessible through the thinking mind, mudra practice allows us to open up to greater mental and emotional space and awareness
• Mudra slogan contemplation with physical movements
• Mudra in nature.

This retreat is for you if you are interested in…

• Increasing awareness of your habitual gestures and reactions
• Understanding embodied awareness and perceptions as gateways to nonaggression and presence
• Increasing embodied presence, especially when engaging with uncomfortable situations
• Joining with others to explore gesture, movement, and play
• Being fully present in your life - work life, with friends, and at home.

Please plan to arrive between 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. on October 4 or October 6 to register and check-in.
Dinner is offered at 6:30 p.m.
The retreat begins each of these evenings at 7:30 p.m.
Part 1 will conclude at 6:00p on October 6.
Part 2 will conclude at 5:00 p.m. on October 8.

If you would like to take the Full Retreat October 6 - 8 registration here:  https://www.karmecholing.org/program/mudra-and-meditation-five-day-retreat

If you have any questions, we would love to hear from you. Please contact Joan Carney at MudraSpaceAwareness@gmail.com