Bodywork
Workshops
Our workshops cover a wide continuum, ranging from basic body awareness, to fundamental principles of massage, to mindfulness practices. Our intent is to bring awareness to the creative energy that runs through our form, to touch with compassion and skill, and to open to an experience without demands, agendas or expectations. Individuals of all genders and orientations are welcome. All our courses are offered in French and English. All our workshops are designed to meet the particular needs of your group or organization, or as private consultations.
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WORKSHOP Balancing Flexibility & Strength
Next session: Sunday, May 30, 2010 from 10h00-13h00
Location: Yoga Coop 404, rue St-Pierre #402
Contact: Sonia Osorio: 514-495-1691 or David Flewelling: 514-499-2935
Cost: $45 before May 14, 2010; $55 after May 14, 2010
Discover how to increase flexibility in a safe, effective way. Learn to balance flexibility with strength and stability. Explore new ways to release hamstrings, calves, shoulders, back, and learn how to prevent overuse injuries.
Using techniques based on Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF), an advanced form of flexibility training, and Iyengar-based approaches to yoga, this workshop will allow you to move more deeply into poses with increased awareness. Originally developed as a form of rehabilitation, PNF can help increase flexibility and range of motion in those who are less flexible, as well as offer people with more flexibility, the opportunity to feel their internal alignment and release into stability. This allows us to explore poses at various levels: balancing the desire to go deeper or push harder with respecting limits, challenging what we perceive as limits, and acknowledging what our breath and body are communicating to us at all times.
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WORKSHOP Focusing Inwards & Moving Outwards: Introduction to Meditation
Next session: Fridays: Apr. 16-May 14, 2010 from 16h00-17h00
Location: Moksha Yoga NDG 4260 Girouard, 3rd Fl
Contact: Sonia Osorio: 514-495-1691 or Moksha Yoga: 514-544-YOGA
Cost: Contact Moksha Yoga
Wondering about meditation and the various approaches to this practice? Curious about how meditation relates to your yoga practice - or to your life? How do we practice when we feel distracted? How do we sustain a practice? What are we really committing to? This 4-week workshop series is geared towards offering you guidelines for supporting and continuing a meditation practice (on your own and in a group), and bringing it into your daily life. Through a combination of lecture, body-awareness exercises, and various approaches based in Tibetan Buddhism, we'll explore meditation as a sitting, walking - and awakening - practice, so that we can better understand how this relates to all aspects of our lives. Printed documentation included.
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WORKSHOP
Arm Balances and Shoulder Stability
Next session: Saturday, January 30, 2010 from 10h00-13h00
Location: Yoga Coop 404, rue St-Pierre #402
Contact: Sonia Osorio: 514-495-1691 or David Flewelling: 514-499-2935
Cost: $45 before Jan. 15, 2010; $55 after Jan. 15, 2010
Arm balances are poses that can help us connect with our capacity to find balance, strength and stability. They also teach us how to work with skill, both exploring and respecting our limits. Most importantly, the poses teach us how to approach this exploration in the spirit of ease, calm, and confidence - moving from a place of inner strength. This workshop will focus on shoulder stability, so that we can safely and confidently explore both the musculoskeletal and organic effects of such poses as handstand, forearm balance and headstand - along with variations on these. Preparatory poses and specific sequencing will also allow for a deeper experience of these poses, based on each individual's process.
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WORKSHOP Yoga for Women: Practice In-Harmony with Your Body & Your Life
Next course: TBD
Session:
Location:
Contact: Sonia Osorio: 514-495-1691
From adolescence to womanhood, from motherhood to menopause and beyond, a woman’s body undergoes a variety of changes that affect how she relates to herself, others, and all aspects of her life. Yoga can help support these vital changes and nourish a woman's overall health and well-being. Using principles of natural health care and yoga, this workshop series will offer an introduction to how women can better understand their body’s natural rhythms, and how they can develop a yoga practice in-harmony with their own body at every stage of their lives. Mothers, daughters, friends - women of all ages are welcome to participate.
Topics covered will include: how to practice during different phases of the menstrual cycle, practices for peri-menopause and menopause, approaches for special issues that participants wish to explore (e.g. PMS, heavy or painful periods, lack of periods, fertility/infertility, pregnancy). Please contact Sonia in advance to discuss any topic you wish to have covered.
Please bring a yoga mat, notebook and pen. Printed documentation provided.
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WORKSHOP Sacred Expressions: Yoga & Clay
Next course:
Location:
Contact: Sonia Osorio: 514-495-1691
In the spirit of play, exploration and gestural expression, this workshop, led by an experienced professional sculptor and yoga teacher, will allow you to create in fun, new ways. Using breathwork, yoga and meditative principles, we'll delve into how movement, breath and our thoughts define how we move and are moved in the world.
Through both yoga and the tactile medium of clay, we'll explore and express such themes as: balance and stability in our body, heart and mind; how we hold and can move through tension into support: how movement can become a fluid expression of our creative potential. This represents lila (in Sanskrit): moving with and embracing all aspects of life. By the end of this workshop, you will have created 2-3 small figurines that express, through their form, the movement of creativity within your own body.
Please bring: yoga mat, comfortable clothes, pens, coloring pencils.
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WORKSHOP Reconnection through Touch (Couple's Massage Course)
Next course: June 5, 2010 from 10h00-16h00
Location: 2731 Sandmere; St-Lazare, QC J7T 2B1
Contact: Sonia Osorio: 514-495-1691 or Lydia Waruszynski St-Denis: 450-458-1450
Cost: $200/couple (lunch incl.)
Spend time experiencing another level of connection with your partner in a relaxed, respectful and comfortable setting. By taking the time to be with our partners and learning to explore different levels of our relationship, we can begin to experience a better way to communicate, especially through touch - allowing us to move even deeper into a more genuine and intimate relationship with one another. This workshop will introduce mindfulness-based practices (visualization, relaxation, meditation), gentle stretching and breathing exercises, partner yoga, as well as some principles of conscious touch and authentic communication.
We will also learn some basic techniques for giving and receiving a simple massage to take tension out of neck, shoulders and back, as well as create a fun and sensual way to nurture our relationship. There will be two massage sessions (one with oil and one without).
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WORKSHOP Awakening the senses: Introduction to mindfulness and touch
(Also available as a private consultation)
In this introductory course, we'll discuss and explore the principles of mindfulness and conscious touch. This hands-on clothes-on workshop will incorporate exercises to bring you into more conscious contact with yourself and others in ways that are simple, nonjudgmental - and fun! Using techniques ranging from basic meditative practices, to yoga and dance-inspired exercises, to simple massage principles, participants will be guided to become more aware of a wide range of sensations through movement, touch, breath and stillness. This class can serve as an introduction to a more intensive training in massage and body awareness. Participants must bring pillows or cushions, water, loose, comfortable clothes, and not be wearing any perfume or strong scents.
You will
Discover the importance of being in the present
Learn how to listen to your own body cues and those of others
Become more attuned to your senses
Explore how you are in relationship to yourself and to others
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WORKSHOP Massage Basics
(Also available as a private consultation)
This workshop will teach the basics of how to give and receive a simple massage using principles of mindfulness and conscious touch. Using a combination of deep stretching, breathwork, tai chi and yoga-based moves, and acupressure, this massage helps to ease tension, increase flexibility, and work with the body on a physical and energetic level. You will learn some basic massage moves, in both sitting and reclining positions, to show that when we're mindful of each movement and each moment, we encourage a deep sense of relaxation and release for those who receive our touch. The massage is performed on a floor-mat, fully clothed without oils, so please bring whatever you need to be comfortable working on the floor (a mat, two large towels, and a pillow or cushion). You are encouraged to bring a partner, though it is not required to participate in the training.
You will
Learn to give/receive a basic massage
Be exposed to a broad range of basic body-work techniques
Learn to touch and listen with skill and respect
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WORKSHOP Massage Intensive: Deepening the Massage Experience
(Also available as a private consultation)
This workshop will introduce the fundamental principles of an oil-based massage, including basic massage strokes, contraindications and breathwork. We will explore the principles of giving and receiving touch, and of developing an awareness of how physical and emotional stress affects the vital energy flow in the body, as well as recognizing these areas of tension in our own and another's body. The principles and techniques introduced can form the basis of a more advanced professional massage training or be used with friends, family and partners. You are encouraged to bring a partner, though it is not required to participate in the training. Oils and creams will be provided, but participants must bring two sheets, two large towels, water and comfortable clothing.
You will
Learn to give/receive a full-body oil massage
Learn to touch and listen with skill and respect
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WORKSHOP Natural Birth Control: Becoming Aware of our Body's Cycles & Rhythms
(Also available as a private consultation)
Curious about a completely natural form a birth control, free of drugs, devices and worry? Do you know exactly when you or your partner is ovulating? When you can safely make love without fear of pregnancy? Or, when is the best time to conceive? What the effects of different hormones are? The Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) is a very precise form of birth control based on scientifically proven research. It's absolutely not the inaccurate "Rhythm Method", and it's designed for mature and responsible individuals who can appreciate the natural cycles and rhythms of the body - and of their relationships. This workshop will outline the basic notions of FAM, clarify misconceptions about the practice, and explain when it is and isn't an ideal method. It is open to both women and men interested in learning more about how FAM can offer new insights into their own and their partners' bodies and their sexuality, and in how cyclical changes are related to other aspects of our lives. Printed documentation included.
You will
Learn to read your bodies' cycles
Gain insights into your and your partner's body and sexuality
Learn when FAM is and isn't an ideal method
Learn how cyclical changes are related to other aspects of our lives
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