Workshop with Gregor Maehle

 

I am very delighted and excited to host Gregor Maehle for this 2 days workshop at Hern 🙂

He is the author of several excellent books and by this he has been indirectly one of my most valued teachers. Reading and studying those inspiring books you can feel Gregor speaks out of his own living experience. Very excited that he will come to Belgium to inspire us with his wisdom and experience.

Gregor has spent many years in India and has been teaching with some of the greatest Yogic & Tantric Masters.

Yoga is so much more then only physical postures, during those 2 days Gregor will lead us true the 8limbs and how to integrate them in our practices and daily lifes.

During this enlightening weekend, Gregor will offer led (guided) asana classes, Yoga Sutra and Sanskrit chanting, Pranayama and Kriya practices, and Yogic meditation practice. Learning more about these practices, including but not limited to asana (postures) can help us to gain a holistic understanding of the practice and science of Yoga, allowing place for more freedom, better health, balance, and spiritual insight.

SCHEDULE:

DAY 1: 

10:00-12:30 Led Class

14:00-17:00 Yoga Sutras & Sanskrit chanting

DAY 2: 

10:00-12:30 Pranayama & Kriya

14:00-17:00 Yogic meditation (Chakra-kundalini)

Guided asana led class

Here Gregor will analyse the many intricate anatomical details of the majority of the postures of the Primary Series, while maintaining as much pace as possible. The focus will be on breaking down the various phases of entering and exiting the postures into their constituents. Performing postures safely while understanding which anatomical actions will get us deep into the asanas will prevent unnecessary energy expenditure. Through inducing precision this format also achieves that conditioning and emotions lodged in bodily tissue are released, preparing us for the higher limbs of pranayama and meditation.

Yoga Sutra, and Sanskrit chanting 

“The Yoga Sutra entered my life 39 years ago and since then it’s been a constant companion. It took me a long time to completely understand it but once this had happened it ended all confusion I had about yoga. Understanding the Sutra gave me complete confidence in how to apply my practices diligently and that I would succeed in due time. The Sutra changed yoga for me from a faith and hope-based system to a science with predictable and repeatable outcomes. It is exactly this confidence and certainty that I would like to pass on to my students. The workshop will be interactive, with ample time for participants to ask questions.”

The Yoga Sutra is the operating manual of yoga. It is only when we understand the why’s and how’s of yoga that we will practice with confidence and beyond doubt. In this class we will chant selected stanzas in Sanskrit and a detailed commentary based on Gregor’s four decades of practice and study will be given. The commentary will retain the depth of the ancient treatises but will be fun, relatable and applicable to modern urban life. 

Pranayama and Kriya

Imagine how great it would be to have a switch that, when operated, would enable you to consciously choose between your right and left brain hemispheres, intuitive and analytical intelligence, sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, fight/flight reflex and rest/relaxation, and between the male and female, solar and lunar, aspects of your psyche. How great it would be if, when required, you could switch from being compassionate to doggedly determined. Or from charged with energy to completely relaxed within a few minutes. Or from extrovert (physically present, expressive and outgoing) to introvert (reflective and absorbing) within a short time. This switch does in fact exist and it is not at all hidden. It is the prominently protruding olfactory orifice right in the middle of your face: your nose. 

Pranayama includes some of the most neglected but yet most powerful methods of yoga. Pranayama is the vital link that connects asana to meditation without which the combined benefit of both cannot be harvested. Learn how to use pranayama to harmonize the doshas (humors of the body) and thus attain a state of health and balance as well as how to still the mind, enabling spiritual insight. 

The kriyas are predominantly methods of purification of the body. They support the work of postures and are especially important for people who live in large cities. They aid in removing contamination from chemical, environmental, electrical, biological and electromagnetic sources. 

Yogic Meditation

Different to Vedantic or Buddhist meditation, yogic meditation contains the same structural elements as yogic postures and breathing and was designed to form together with those an integrated whole. Meditation is the method of bringing your mind into a receptive state
 so that you can receive higher knowledge that is already there. Yogic meditation is a collection of scientific methods to bring about such awareness. To accelerate spiritual evolution yogic meditation employs many means amongst which the prime ones are mantra, mudra, bandha, chakra-visualization and Kundalini-raising techniques. The yogic chakras are representations of evolutionary brain circuitry with the lower three chakras representing our reptilian, mammalian and primate ancestry respectively. By understanding the chakras and skillfully meditating on them yoga offers the opportunity to activate higher brain centres and propel the evolution not only of the individual but of society as a whole. Kundalini-raising techniques consist of a combination of all other yogic means to raise the life force (prana) to a level where meditation is easy and spiritual insight becomes spontaneous.

Gregor Maehle workshop bio

Gregor Maehle began his yogic practices forty years ago. In the mid-1980s he commenced annual travels to India, where he studied with various yogic and tantric masters, traditional Indian sadhus and ascetics. He spent fourteen months in Mysore, and in 1997 was authorised to teach Ashtanga Yoga by K. Pattabhi Jois. Since then he has branched out into researching the anatomical alignment of postures and the higher limbs of yoga. 

In India Gregor also received eight months of mostly one-on-one instruction in scripture and the higher limbs of Yoga through B.N.S. Iyengar, a student of T. Krishnamacharya, and he studied Sanskrit under Professor Narayanachar and Dr Chandrasekhar. Gregor’s internationally acclaimed textbook series consisting of Ashtanga Yoga: Practice and Philosophy, Ashtanga Yoga: The Intermediate Series, Pranayama: The Breath of Yoga, Yoga Meditation: Through Mantra, Chakras and Kundalini to Spiritual Freedom and Samadhi The Great Freedom  – have sold more than 85,000 copies worldwide and have been translated into seven foreign languages. 

Today he teaches an anatomically sophisticated interpretation of traditional vinyasa yoga, integrated into the practice of the higher limbs in the spirit of Patanjali and T. Krishnamacharya. His zany sense of humour, his manifold personal experiences, and his vast and deep knowledge of scripture, Indian philosophies and yogic techniques combine to make his teachings applicable, relevant and easily accessible to all his students.

LANGUAGE: This workshop will be taught in English.

DATE & TIME: Saturday and Sunday, Juli  6 & 7 th, 2024

PLACE: De Herner.

Hernerweg 135 – 3730 Sint-Huibrechts Hern

Price in Australian Dollars AUD490. Price is approximately EUR300 but depends on daily currency fluctuations. Payment options Visa, MasterCard and Paypal.

For reservations & questions please write to: manuomshanti@gmail.com

For payments go to: https://8limbs.com/event/sint-huibrechts-hern-belgium-workshop-with-gregor-maehle/?fbclid=IwAR1LV3baVs3Wpc5GQS0sBZeA0qWW3o3n_2FW0jbE-zHTQCRgachAJHq-ojg

Keep 6 &7 Juli 2024 free for an inspiring uplifting Yoga workshop!

All levels welcome, also beginners!!!

See you in Juli!