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About the Event
Detailed Daily Schedule Coming Soon! Register Interest to receive notification! There will be lots of Taoist cultivation arts training led by Dr Alex Boyd (see below) plus workshops led by Taoist Centre teachers and students in London who will be sharing these as a 'Gift' (performance, talk, workshop etc). Do contact us if you have a 15 - 45 minute Gift you would like to offer with the opportunity to receive feedback from Dr Boyd!
There will also be sessions from professional teachers and friends of the Taoist Centre. For example - from 10am each morning on the 7th, 8th and 9th January Andrea Maciel will lead with an energetics dance activation!
FRIDAY REFLEXOLOGY! 90 minute taught Foot Reflexology Workshop with Marta Witkowska (professional therapist) on Friday 11th January starting at 1.30pm and ending 3pm. Everyone can join in and learn as well as enjoy the treatment. The session will focus on helping with stress symptoms, boosting energy levels and strengthening the immune system.
Equipment to bring : pillow, towel and your feet!
There may well be some take home guides including a foot reflexology chart and key points of the workshop.
An 'Open Door' is a great way of considering Taoist ways of being in the world. It depicts a transition between time and space, an open doorway is an invitation for you to travel through and beyond, there is the potential to freely flow: to enter and exit as you would like - to be a 'free spirit'.
And so it is with your physicality: your embodiment of mind-body-energy/spirit in this lifetime. Your body becomes an open door providing you with the availability to express yourself, to touch, listen, feel, live, love and become..
Taoist Yin / Yang theory informs us that being 'closed' is complimentary to being 'open'. In psychophysical terms it may be that we close-off as a way of protecting ourselves - perhaps because of our upbringing, morals and beliefs, health situation or from certain life experiences or trauma. There is nothing 'wrong' in being closed and in certain situations it is useful - YET - there may be situations where we would like to be more open but can't be. The door is closed to you and you don't know how to access the key to opening it and unblocking.
Of course we're talking here about accessing and opening the internal world of our body energies. Providing YOU with the key to unlocking YOUR OWN potentialities. For many people it takes training and guidance from a knowing teacher or therapist to do this, ideally within a community of people who embody virtues of trust, benevolence, positivity and community. Although change can be difficult the process can be FUN - especially done in a Taoist way which imbues softness, coaxing and love.
Our 'Open Door Winter Course' - is an opportunity and PORTAL for EVERYONE including COMPLETE BEGINNERS to enter our TAOIST CENTRE in Pimlico. Open for 7-DAYS at the start of the New Year - the 'Year of the Pig' could bring PROSPERITY into your life for 2019 - STRENGTH, WARM HEART, GENTLENESS and GOOD TEMPER.
Dr Alex Boyd has a passion for developing collaboration between embodied knowledge practitioners. He is the founder of the Embodied Research Working Group at the IFTR (International Federation for Theatre Research) and is currently developing ‘Intercultural Roots’, a new organisation operating world-wide for practitioners and scholars to attract grants for collaboration and community projects, teacher training, embodied research and to help preserve and promote indigenous and traditional embodied arts. He is a practitioner-scholar who graduated from the University of California at Davis ‘Performance Studies’ PhD programme in June 2014. His dissertation entitled 'The Sustainability of Traditional Knowledge Systems' draws on 20 years of professional practice, performance and teaching in the Chinese Taoist arts (Lishi) that he has immersed himself in under inheritors Chee Soo and Desmond Murray since 1985 until present. The central practice of his dissertation was to develop the first ever teacher training degree programme in the West that values and focuses on the learning inherent to Eastern embodied practices and to research the influence that Eastern embodied arts have had on innovations in Western theatre and acting. Between 2001 and 2011 Alex resourced over £5M UK and European funds and organised community health, arts and social inclusion projects based on teaching the Taoist arts.
Alex is a Research Associate with the University of California at Davis and travels extensively from his base in the UK. His current embodied research explores the micro (qi) and macro (li) energy that manifests ideas into happenings and he works professionally with performers: dancers, musicians, athletes and even CEO’s. As a self-employed consultant he supports people and community groups to help establish grassroot charities (not-for-profits) and social enterprises, helping them to fundraise – 'hopeful in contributing to making the world a better place for people to live and love'.
Please arrive 10 minutes before the session and let the teacher know if you have a medical condition that affects you doing exercise. There will be audio-visual recording during the event, let the teacher know if you do not wish your image to be shown publicly.
