This annual retreat is an important part of my personal practice and yearly reflection. I look forward to spending five nights at Esalen in the darker days of winter when the stars are bright over the Pacific Ocean. These deep skies combined with hot springs water, an amazing sangha (community) of practitioners, and skilled teachers washes away doubt, challenge, and stress.
Registration is open on the Esalen website, and affordable accommodations are available, but can be limited. I invite you to register and experience this magical place with Tias Little (my teacher) and Henry Shuckman. We'll get to be students together.
Yoga & Zen: Entering the Bloodstream
“One minute of sitting, one inch of Buddha
Like lightning all thoughts come and go.
Just once see into your mind-depths:
Nothing else has ever been.”
The alchemy of yoga and zen is deep and powerful. Yoga offers incomparable insight into the body-mind connection, while Zen opens up the way to see through the body and mind entirely to reveal our original nature. In this retreat, we explore the conjunction of these two magnificent traditions, in order to become more intimate with the bare fact of being.
Through the power of Zen meditation, we can discover our true heart, inseparable from all things. On the mat, walking the paths of the magnificent grounds, sitting in deep stillness, we enter into deeper currents of awareness, so that the spirit of practice permeates all that we do. The combination of asana and pranayama with the clear, poignant teachings of the Zen tradition – its poems, koans, and lore – illuminates the heart of our life.
For the third year in a row, Tias and Henry share their delightful and joyous spirits from their respective traditions. The result is a truly radiant week of profound practice. Please bring a yoga mat.
Tias Little synthesizes classical yoga, Sanskrit, Buddhist studies, anatomy, massage, and trauma healing. He has studied B.K.S and Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga systems, and is a longtime student of the meditative arts and Buddhism. He is the author of The Thread of Breath, Meditations on a Dewdrop, and Yoga of the Subtle Body. www.prajnayoga.net
Henry Shukman, associate Zen master of Sanbo Zen, teaches at Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, NM, and Sonnenhof in Schwarzwald, Germany. He is also a prize-winning poet and novelist, and frequent contributor to Tricycle and the New York Times. www.mountaincloud.org
