Embodying Your Voice, Voicing Your Body
Rediscover playfulness and spontaneity in movement and sound
May 10, 2014 – May 16, 2014
with Laura Stone and Veronika Simonett
in the South of France*
*Shambhala Retreat Center Dechen Chöling
Mas Marvent, Yrieix sous Aixe, near Limoges
Everyone is welcome.
No experience or connection to Shambhala is necessary!
We will explore individual and contact exercises from T’ai Chi and other body-mind disciplines.
Playing with conscious, gentle movement encourages relaxation and synchronization of body and mind. The exercises are simple for beginners and subtle for those with more movement experience and body awareness.
We will practice sitting and walking meditation as ways to ground and relax with what is.
Sensing and observing what is present in yourself and your surroundings as well as experiencing the silence in between is a way to wake up innate curiosity and to touch basic goodness. Walking meditation will be outside in the richness of the natural surroundings of Dechen Choling.
With conscious movement and meditation as the foundation, we will then play with connecting to music, exploring breathing and sounding.
Listening to vocalizing from different cultures and sensing what it does with us will be the ground of touching the breath and our own unique qualities of sound expression. Creative exercises (inspired by various voice and breathing methods) combined with felt-sense experiencing of how we make sound will deepen the process.
Listening with all our senses will provide the framework.
This retreat is for everyone interested, beginners and experienced alike. The interplay of participants and presenters will nourish the flowering of embodying your voice and voicing your body.
Taught in English with translation into Dutch, German and French.
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- 7:15 – 8.15 Pre-breakfast T’ai Chi and Meditation
Gentle Movement and mindfulness exercises for waking up
sitting meditation with instruction
walking meditation (outside) - 8.30 Breakfast
- 10.00 Listening, breath awareness and voicing
- 11.30 tea break
- 12.00 T’ai Chi movement, soft contact exercises, sitting and walking meditation
- 13.15 Lunch
- 15.45 Voicing
- 17.00 Tea
- 17.30 T’ai Chi movement, sitting and walking meditation
- 18.45 Dinner
- 20.15 closing session
integration of the day
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Laura Stone (www.welstone.nl)
In 2012 Shambhalian Laura Stone celebrated 40 years of practicing and teaching T’ai Chi Ch’uan. Along with the basic principles of relaxation, grounding, effortless power and synchronizing body and mind, core themes for Laura are contact, space, and harmony. These within oneself and in interaction with others.
She is fascinated with the art of soft contact pushing/sensing hands and T’ai Chi boxing as metaphors for relationship. These interactive practices are exquisite training for embodying qualities such as mindfulness, fearlessness, inscrutability and joy in (inter) action.
Laura is an accomplished classical pianist. Improvising with Veronika Simonett, she joins her love of making music via the piano and voice with the sound world of today’s music. Music from the heart.
Meditation, counseling and other body-mind disciplines are also part of the mix that inspires Laura and her interplay with others.
Laura lives in Deventer, The Netherlands, with her husband and Shambhala teacher Fred van Welsem.
I love the natural world, small and vast, and people.
Sharing the rich mix of T’ai Chi, music, meditation and life experience with others gives meaning, joy and satisfaction in my life, and hopefully theirs too. A way to contribute to creating an authentic and sane society this very moment.
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Veronika Simonett (www.veronikasimonett.nl)
Music has always accompanied me, helping to process my emotions and to take the next steps in my life.
My expertise lies in the function and operation of breathing, the voice and emotions. In my teaching, I focus on experience, exploring boundaries and pushing the envelope.
After years of working as a breath therapist, I followed my heart’s desire and started my own business: “Klankverbinding” (Sound Connection) in 2012.
A native of Switzerland, I have lived in the Netherlands since 2003.
I believe in the power of small things and of silence. The small is the basis of the large and silence helps to explore power. Passionate about sound and language, I listen with attention and encourage the strengths in people.
If everyone made the sound of his or her heart, the world would become a diverse and cheerful sound field.
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location and sign up: Dechen Chöling
Shambhala Retreat Center near Limoges, France