Tree House Village

Workshops

Schedule

I would like to propose a different format , combining yoga and thai massage, with the basic theme of breath and heart running between the two. Yoga allows us to observe and relate to ourselves, massage to give and to receive to others.

So the 5 day course will include a yoga practice aimed at a particular part of the body, and a massage sequence. At the end we will have worked the whole body, experienced giving and receiving, and through it all the contact with the breath and the heart.

Prices

Yoga 10 (10 day retreat) : €850 per person

Treatments: €25

Short Biography

Therapeutic bodyworker, Vinyasa Yoga Teacher, Bowen Practitioner

Practicing since 2001 in UK, Carribbean, Spain, Italy, Dubai.

International Instructor in Traditional Thai Massage (Argentina, Mexico, Trinidad, Spain, Germany, Italy, UK) trained in the following disciplines:

Traditional thai Massage (Ancient spiritual bodywork)

Brandon Raynor Massage (Deep tissue energy release)

The Bowen technique (osteopathic style healing )

The Dorn Method (passive chiropractic style adjustments

Luk Pra Kob (Thai herbal massage)

Sivananda Yoga

The Yoga of Sri Krishnamacharya and TKV Desikachar

Formerly at Pure Medicine, Harley Street, London

Re-located to Cagliari, Sardinia

Languages: English, Italian, Spanish, Arabic

About me

My first introduction to Healing bodywork came as a student of Sufi Master Shedar Baba in 1988. We would learn energetic massage. Once after giving a massage I saw a flame like light rise out of the body of the person, and I knew that was his life force. It returned as a deep in-breath. This vision was validated later as the person said in that period he felt dead. I started yoga in 1994 with Dr S Kanchan, and Indian doctor and yoga teacher in Dubai. I went to him to help explain enlightenment experiences , literally light filled ecstatic experiences of expanded consciousness, that I was having during meditation. We would practice everyday together.

Leaving dubai in 1997, I signed up for a 10 day residential workshop in Bioenergetics, with Alexander Lowen, Frank Hladky and others, in Connecticut, NewYork. The experience changed my view of myself, the direct contact with the unconscious, as a descent into the energetics of the body below the diaphragm, into the fire and the archetypes contained therein, allowed me to view biology , esoteric anatomy and mythology as parts of everyday experience. I also perceived the heart as the place where the energies of heaven (expansive white light) and earth (erupting red force) meet and are mixed. At this point I left my career as an Architect and embarked on a new life as a teacher of traditional thai massage, travelling widely to such places as Argentina, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, New York, Spain, Germany. This experience allowed me to learn about the human body in a direct hands on way, and directly complimented my yoga practice. For 8 years I was part of a spiritual group centred around a teacher, I left as I was unable to form a relationship of trust with him, but it taught me to trust my inner teacher, which was telling me from the beginning that I had not found what I was looking for!

During that time I came across the Institute of Heartmath and its amazing revelations of the role of the heart in managing emotions and intelligence, this research provides scientific validation of the wisdom of the ages and a direct way to enter into real time communication with the heart.

I also enrolled in a 4 year teacher training program under the auspices of the Krishnamacharya healing and yoga foundation, I am presently in the 3rd year, it has given a much richer view of yoga as a personalised practice adapted to the individual.

As a yoga teacher I draw upon all my experience as a bodyworker, a “spiritual” seeker, a human being whose life is like any other, and a vision of humanity as all the same, but all different. The basic urge of life is for survival, after that happiness, yoga is about surviving happily. I find most affinity with the teachings of Mark Whitwell, who studied for 20 years with TKV Desikachar, and is also influenced by the philosopher U G Krishnamurti. Marks assertion “To seek the truth is to deny the truth” is a profoundly spiritual statement. He also asserts that what most people want and need is intimacy, not enlightenment, to embrace life fully not to detach from it. His constant assertions that a human being is mind, body and sex, and that we are always a complete manifestation of the miracle of existence, of divine providence, and that we don’t have to try to be anything else, is a call to fall in love with life in all its glorious splendour, and in so doing abandon the struggle, realising that all we are searching for is already right here and now.

Mark emphasises Ha-Tha yoga as the union of opposites, the most basic of which is inhale-exhale. Inhale is receiving, heaven, expansion, space, freedom, movement. Exhale is giving, earth, contraction, solidity, security, stillness.

Favourite quotes:

“Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God. “ Sri Krishnamacharya

“Yoga is relationship, and the relationship is peace” TKV Desikachar “The Heart of Yoga”

“Simply placing the palms together at the heart one can enact the union of left and right, the end of duality. Sitting upright acknowledges the union of everything below the heart with everything above the heart. The place of union – the heart itself – may be felt.” – Mark Whitwell

“When you practice yoga, lighten the load. Don't burden yourself with an idea that yoga will fix an imagined problem. Practice only as your pleasure. There is nothing to attain. Have fun.” – Mark Whitwell

“The principal means of yoga is relationship (always worth repeating). To be fully with our experience energetically moves the life current through the body and mind. This clears the pathways that have been blocked by our reaction to experience. Most of yoga and religion is practiced as part of the complex reaction to experience - in fact, as an alternative to relationship.”

“It is intimacy we need not enlightenment. The embrace of all ordinary life is the means by which we realize the source of all life.” – Mark Whitwell