Dates: 1/2 March 2025
Venue: Bermondsey, London
Facilitator: Paul King
This workshop is an invitation to unite body, mind and spirit and come home to our embodied wisdom in a world that is pulling us apart inside and out.
Drawing on ancient Eastern wisdom and contemporary somatic practices and neuroscience, we will explore how to move with greater ease, authenticity, and embodied intelligence.
It will be a journey of inquiry beyond our ‘try hard’ over-efforting performative self into grace, centred presence and redefining power. Bringing us to our ground, vitality, resilience and resourcefulness to meet the world as it is today.
This will include exploring our individual and relational embodiment within the larger social and ecological context and the challenges at hand. This is ”microactivism” – change that begins in the intimate and embodied spaces of our being.
The workshop can be seen as a companion to the Leadership Embodiment workshops exploring further into the elements of embodiment and somatics or it can be attended as a standalone event or as a prequel to Leadership Embodiment. As with my other workshops and webinars it will be about inquiry and exploration, and discovery through experience, practice and mutual learning.
This workshop will weave together diverse traditions including:
– Tai Chi and Qigong wisdom
– Leadership Embodiment principles
– Feldenkrais and Alexander Technique insights
– Polyvagal Theory understanding
– Systems thinking perspectives
Over the two days, we will explore:
– Moving from your centre of gravity as a source of substance, balance, and perspective
– The dance of yin and yang energies as creative partners rather than opposing forces
– The aesthetics and musicality of movement – soft power, intentional action and flow
– Interoception and enhanced sensing of both inner and outer worlds
– Making explicit your implicit relationship with space – inside and outside
– The impulses that move you and from where you move
– Resourcefully meeting disruption and navigating chang
– The relationship between personal embodiment and broader social transformation
One of the many influences underlying my approach to somatics and inquiry into our embodied life is my study of Tai Chi with Chungliang (Al) Huang who I first met him forty years ago. He showed me how our movement and the body connect with the psychological, emotional and spiritual dimensions of our human story. We explored movement through metaphor and a Taoist perspective. He worked closely with the mythologist Joseph Campbell of Hero’s Journey fame and the philosopher Alan Watts, among other thought leaders.
So this workshop is all about connecting 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 subtitled “Embodiment & The YinYang of It All”. 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 February): £495+VAT, Standard Fee: £595+VAT
Corporate sponsored: Early Bird (17 February): £650+VAT Standard Fee: £750+VAT
Bursaries are potentially available for anyone for whom the fee is prohibitive.
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.
