Harness the Power of Your Breath to Regulate the Nervous System & Support Organ Function

Breath and spirit are inextricably linked in our language.

We aspire, inspire, conspire, and respire — all based on the root word of spiritus. Whether you call it prana, Qi, or ruach, it is connected to your life force…

You’ll begin your journey with the basis of life itself. Breath is the sustaining force that we cannot live without for more than a few minutes.

It impacts health, emotional expression, and can serve as a pathway to awakening the spirit through simple, pleasurable practice.

In this opening module, you’ll explore:

• Breath practices from different traditions
• An experiential practice connecting breath to emotional patterns
• A breathing practice for calming the nervous system
• A somatic practice for internally regulating breath and supporting organ function

Improve Your Relationships, Increase Positive Thoughts & Connect to the Divine Using Gestures & Mudras

Perhaps you recall a time as a child when someone soothed you by gently stroking your forehead. Or the electric feeling the first time you and your beloved’s fingers touched.

From Christian saints to the great Tai Chi masters, the power emanating from our hands can heal and transform. There are images of Jesus using his hands in the same position as Indian mudras.

When we shake someone’s hand or bring our hands together in prayer, we are creating both energetic and neurological links that communicate beyond our conscious thoughts.

Lavinia will share how mudras are connected to different functions, the relationship between how fingers connect to each other, how your hands link to your thoughts, and much more.

In this module, you’ll explore:

• A somatic movement practice for connecting your hands to the divine
• A moving meditation that accesses the healing power of your hands
• A guided experience on the power of mudras
• How the gestures you use can influence your interactions with others — including some gestures that can be counterproductive in your life and relationships

Embrace Mindful Walking for Improved Cognition, Inspiration & Enlightenment

The word “saunter” has two possible origins…

One comes from a word meaning “to muse.” Thoreau cited another origin: that idle wanderers and beggars of the Middle Ages would claim to be on a pilgrimage to Sainte Terre, the Holy Land. They became Sainterrers… and then saunterers.

Each of these definitions reminds us that walking is connected to both thinking and pilgrimage. Every step should be a prayer.

Whether it’s on a Camino pilgrimage route or at a Buddhist sesshin (a period of intensive meditation), mindful walking can serve as both a healthy and a sacred activity.

In this module, you’ll explore:

• An Awareness Through Movement® lesson to feel the power of each step and how to feel the force move through you
• An anatomical introduction to your feet and their relation to intention
• A guided inner pilgrimage practice where you’ll take a tour inside the body of what happens when you press your foot against a surface
• A mindfulness process to take outside on your walks
• How walking interacts with the brain, improving cognition and reasoning
• Insights on the connection of walking to inspiration and enlightenment

Invoke the Divine Using the Sacred Vessel of Your Physical Self

When we think of an invocation, whether it’s a wizard chanting a magic spell or a shaman “calling upon the higher,” the body is always involved.

With the arms outstretched, we open ourselves to be filled, like a sacred container of the life force, evoking insight, power, grace, support, and answers.

Whether the invocation is one of power, calling down the forces, or of humbling oneself before something greater, we raise our arms to communicate, conduct, and channel spirit. This seminal gesture involves a total use of self, engaging the spine, activating the heart, and empowering the whole self.

In this module, you’ll explore:

• The connection between your arms and your nervous system
• An Awareness Through Movement lesson for liberating the arms and invoking internal power
• An overview of world traditions related to the gesture of invocation
• Tools for finding your personal approach to invocation and evocation

Craft Your Personal Mantra to Find Your Essential Sound and Improve Your Relationships, Health & Spiritual Practice

We all know the power of music to influence our mood. Drumming, singing, and immersing ourselves in sound can heal and transform.

The different vibrations in mantras, chants, and even spoken words can have transformative power. Just think of the difference in how you feel when someone says “Have a nice day” with love versus sarcasm. Within our vocal chords we carry this power to transform, heal, or hurt.

Finding your essential sound, using your sonic vibration, is a human superpower that can impact your life on every level.

In this module, you’ll explore:

• The science behind the sound of ohm
• A somatic practice for clearing your voice and freeing your resonators
• Why words have the power to energize you and those around you
• How to craft your own mantra
• A somatic practice for healing physical and emotional wounds
• How learning to listen to yourself while listening to others can change the conversation

Energize Your Inner World & Influence Your Outer Circumstances Through Movement

You are a mini-universe, or what some people would call a microcosm of the macrocosm.

For example, turning (in the Sufi tradition, etc.) connects to the movement of the planets — with you becoming a channel of energy, a connection of the Universe going down into the earth and up into the sky.

Just as the planets revolve, the galaxies move, and the Universe expands, energetic processes are also constantly at work within us. If we zoom in even closer, we see that the movement of atoms and the subatomic world never stops. They’re locked in an endless dance of constant transformation — of energy expanding, contracting, flowing, streaming.

Throughout history, cultures have embodied movement in their prayers, rituals, and dances. Listening to the movement inside as you activate outer movement offers a path to connecting with your own higher intelligence.

In this module, you’ll explore:

• A survey of traditions and their approaches to moving energy
• A somatic Awareness Through Movement practice for energizing your inner movement
• How different tempos and movements can revitalize and reconnect you to the movement within
• The relationship between your inner life and your outer circumstances — and how to improve both
• A meditation to allow inner movement through your whole self

Practice a Variety of Intentional Postures for Contemplation as You Celebrate All You’ve Learned

While many of us have a sitting practice, the act of sitting itself can become physically uncomfortable.

Why sit instead of lying down during meditation? Is there a reason people have sat or knelt for thousands of years? What is the difference between a seated meditation and a lying down meditation? And what happens when we combine stillness with intentional postures and gestures, as in certain shamanic traditions?

So many exciting questions to investigate and experience! This final session will bring together all the knowledge you’ve gained and culminate with a powerful sitting practice.

In this final module, you’ll explore:

• An Awareness Through Movement lesson for easier cross-legged sitting
• A somatic movement practice for finding seiza — the Japanese practice of meditating while sitting back on the heels
• The importance of posture in a sitting practice
• Practice two different kinds of meditation — seated and lying down
• A powerful shamanic practice using ancient imagery

Talking With Your Hands
Video Teaching From Lavinia Plonka

Heaven and Earth and the Pelvis in Between
Audio Teaching From Lavinia Plonka