Dates: 1/2 March 2025
Venue: Bermondsey, London
Facilitator: Paul King
The workshop is an invitation to explore and move beyond, and come home to ourselves and the wisdom and grace of our evolutionary somatic inheritance.
Modernity, with all its wonders, has taken us away from that inheritance and our attunement with the natural rhythms of life. Returning to the body is a pivotal step in the broader fields of organisational, social and environmental change.
We will practice moving from and feeling into our centre of gravity as a source of substance, balance, uplift, grounding, ease, calm, alertness, and perspective on our life journey. We will tune into our movement’s aesthetics and musicality and soft and slow power. These qualities offer practical efficiency with intentional action and a good dose of positive biochemistry, especially through playful participation. This qualitative shift also enhances our interoception and sensing into the world.
This workshop could be seen and taken as a prequel to Leadership Embodiment workshops or as a sequel to what you have already covered and explored in those workshops. We will be delving into aspects of our embodied experience that we don’t have time to explore fully in LE. Feeling into our processes within our embodied practice and finding nuance, subtlety and aliveness beyond the performative self.
One of the most significant influences underlying my approach to somatics and inquiry into our embodied life is my study of Tai Chi with a particular teacher. His name is Chungliang (Al) Huang. I first met him forty years ago. Last Easter I spent five days with him in Switzerland on his last teaching visit to Europe from his home in the US. He is now 86 and moves amazingly for his age and his energy is still vibrant.
Well before I engaged with Leadership Embodiment, Chungliang showed me how our movement and the body connect with the psychological, emotional and spiritual dimensions of our human story. We explored movement and form with metaphor and music. He worked closely with the mythologist Joseph Campbell of Hero’s Journey fame and the philosopher Alan Watts, among other thought leaders. His book Embrace Tiger Return to Mountain, has become a classic in tai chi and Taoist wisdom.
The workshop will be an experiential inquiry into chi, flow and the aesthetics of the foundational conversation between masculine and feminine principles of yin-yang explored through breath, movement, posture, and space. We will combine elements of tai chi and qigong, leadership embodiment, and other somatic practices, including Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, and Polyvagal Theory, and we will likely touch on systems theory.
I invite you to join me in this somatic inquiry, which connects the body, mind, and spirit in practical ways. As Chungliang says, “tai ji is not about the form, it is about how we reach for the rice packet from the top shelf of the supermarket”.
Last October I ran a one-day version of this workshop in Ireland. Below are comments from two participants.
“What I really appreciate about Paul’s way of working is his instinctive sense of what might be useful for his participants. This was clear to me in his leading us through the LE1 curriculum on the first two days: he ably covered the curriculum, whilst also noticing and making space for what was going for us as individuals. The extra day, the Yin and Yang of it all, really showcased this way of working for me. Paul clarified that he would be bringing different ways of working in an embodied way, including Tai Chi. What transpired felt like a very fluid, organic and responsive offering that was useful to all of us. It felt like a deepening and expanding of what I had encountered in LE1, and I have taken practices from that extra day that really support me. Paul creates such space, slowing everything down, meeting all of us where we are at, and creating the conditions where we can safely explore. Equally, it was fun, there was a respectful lightness to the exploring – I would highly recommend this course.”
Aileen Gleeson
“The experience of spending a day with Paul on ‘The YinYang of it All’ was tremendous. My abiding reflection is the importance of ‘Quality’ – the quality of our movement, sensing, attention, and spaciousness; all experienced and embodied through discussion and exercises under Paul’s masterful guidance. The tai-chi flow practice deepened my felt sense of being in and part of the world. The quality of movement in our everyday activities – reaching for a book, using a pen, going for a walk, are all opportunities to bring spaciousness to my body and mind, and Paul expertly facilitated our experience of this. I came away with important learnings on the power held in the quality of my movement and with questions and practices to bring into my every day. ‘Life is Movement’.”
Margaret Masterson
Participants: Numbers are limited to 12
Fees:
Self-sponsored and non-profit sector: Early Bird (17 January): £495+VAT, Standard Fee: £595+VAT
Corporate sponsored: Early Bird (17 January): £650+VAT Standard Fee: £750+VAT
If you have any questions please contact paul@thebeyondpartnership.co.uk
Booking: To book please contact info@thebeyondpartnership.co.uk with your name and invoicing address.
