The Vinyasa Intensive with Teacher and Author
 Rolf Gates

January 24th-31st, 2009

Featuring Johnny Gillespie, Plexus Fitness & Empowered Yoga

 

{The Yoga}

“Where there is flow there is no pain and where there is pain there is no flow.”

The yoga will be a synergy of dynamic flow and alignment-focused sessions dedicated to facilitating within us the vibrant aliveness so unique to a yoga practice. The alignment sessions will move us through a series of understandings of how the body works in order to set a foundation for advanced inversions, back-bends, and hip-openers. They will also be opportunities for us to take a look at the larger implications of the word alignment.

 

{The Meditation}

“One of the most important roles we can play individually and collectively is to create an opening, or to listen too the dreams, visions, and stories that we sense at our center want to happen.”
~ Joseph Jaworski


“Meditation is not forcing the mind to be quiet; it is bringing our attention to the quiet that is already there.”
~ Deepak Chopra

In a life that works from the inside out meditation is indispensable. At its essence meditation is simply the willingness to listen, to feel, to see, to take an interest in what is happening right now. And what is happening right now is that we and, all of the world around us, is vibrantly alive, is vibrant peace, joy, beauty, is utterly and ultimately fulfilling. The first yoga teacher in the U.S. said “You yourselves are the beings that you seek” and that truth is felt directly just by getting still and feeling into, bringing our attention into, the quiet that is already there. Unfortunately many of us feel as though we have had a hard time with meditation. The meditation instruction and meditation sessions this week will be dedicated to bringing down the barriers some of us have to meditation and simplifying and deepening the practice of those who are already meditating regularly. As our understanding of meditation deepens we will come to see that it is a means for allowing ourselves to be that which we have already become.

 

 


{The Company and the Fun}

By now you probably have some sense of how fun yoga people are. Now, take those people on the adventure of a lifetime and what do you think it is going to be like? We will literally have it all, breathtaking sunrises and sunsets, hikes to waterfall gardens and dazzling canopy tours through the rainforests*, yoga, meditation, and even dancing; all surrounded by the rich beauty of Costa Rica.

*Please see Wellness in Costa Rica - Pura Vida Spa for options for half-day excursions during the week.



{The Food}

We will be enjoying delicious, energizing, low-mucus producing foods throughout the intensive. This vegetarian fare (with some fish) will be optimal in supporting our practice on all levels this week.

 

 

 

 

{A Final Word}

“We can do, be, or have anything we want to do, be, or have.”
~ Dr. Wayne W. Dyer


Most of came to yoga to find peace and health and you would not be reading this if you had not found both just by spending some time on your mat. And that would be enough if we did not have jobs, families, bills to pay, along with expansive visions and dreams we would love dearly to see happen in our lifetime. How do we care deeply about the people places and things of this world and remain peaceful and joyful at the same time? How can we commit to an active role in this world without that commitment drowning out the part of ourselves that has guided us to that commitment in the first place? This is one of the great questions that faces each generation. How best to live a life of purpose and principle? Yoga is an answer to this question, and together, as Rilke once said, we will be living into the question until we find ourselves living into the answer.