Meditation: Cultivating presence
With Gillian @yogianthropologist
The first of Gillian's six-week mediation courses for 2025 explores a beautiful calming, spirit-lifting practice called Cultivating Presence.
Gillian is a patient and caring yoga teacher. She knows it is not easy to arrive at a practice of seated meditation. It is often the most challenging and rewarding aspect of a yoga enquiry. Gradually over six weeks, she will guide students towards a sustainable and enjoyable mediation practice that will become a life-long resource.
The invitation is to be still for a while, to gain in-sight, and explore what it might mean to sit well with one's self. The idea is that in a comfortable seated position, with as many props as you might need for support, or even lying down if necessary, and with a growing awareness of the rise and fall of the breath, we can find enough courage to tune into and pay attention to what's going on in the body and in our experience of life. How, for example, does the breath move the form of the body, can we deepen the breath and calm our own nervous system, regulating our own emotions and all the physiological systems? Can we settle the mind, reduce stress, address burnout and even improve sleep by focusing on the breath and meditating regularly?
What is the quality of energy or vitality in the body and mind? Is the energy moving freely and fully, or is there a sense of tightness, weakness or contraction in the subtle experience of the body and mind? How do emotions take up residence and inhabit the body, creating sudden upward surges of anger or joy, or coalescing in long-held resentments or fears that create holding patterns in the muscles and tighten the form of the body and inhibit feeling? Can we free ourselves from these tensions and open a pathway to peace through a regular meditation practice that makes it possible for us to listen to the cues about what is needed to bring the body and life back into a state of more grounded, easeful, centred balance.
Day: Tuesdays
Time: 19.30–20:30
Duration: 1st February 2025 – 8th March 2025
£15 Early bird discount ends 7th January
Can’t make those dates? You can register your interest for the next course here
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Gillian has been practising yoga for over thirty years. She is passionate about the transformational potential of yoga and leads yoga classes and workshops in London and Manchester.
Inspired and trained at Triyoga by Anna Ashby and Joey Miles in the alignment-based method of hatha yoga, Gillian guides students through 90-minute classes that conquer fatigue, cultivate strength, vitality, and good posture, improve mood and increase body and mind awareness.
Gillian is also an Urban Anthropologist. She lectures in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester, and is preoccupied, like all anthropologists, with the question of what it means to be human. Gillian lends this question to her enquiry into the yoga tradition, and brings a unique anthropological perspective to her teaching practice, summer and winter yoga retreats and to workshops for fellow yoga teachers. She is a member of the teaching faculty of the Advanced Teacher Training programme led by Anna Ashby at Triyoga.
Gillian would love to show you how yoga can transform your life.
Pricing
These sessions are each 60mins in length and the course is priced at £100 for 6 weeks.
You can grab an early bird discount of £15 if you book 4 weeks ahead of the course start date.
Please bring your mat if you have one
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We have a strict latecomers policy. Latecomers will not be admitted any later than 5 minutes after the commencement of the session. Past this point, it will be disruptive for you to enter the room, and since you will not have warmed up properly, heading into class this late may also be damaging for your body. We recommend you arrive 5-10 minutes early so the class and your day can run on time.
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Cancellations within 72 hours of the course starting will not be refunded.
Cancellations outside of 72 hours of the course start will be refunded upon request, otherwise, the passes can be transferred to another course (or a later cohort of the cancelled course).
There is no refund offered for missed sessions within the course.
If we are required to cancel a class due to teacher illness, we will offer a make-up session the week following the last session of the course.
The teacher may choose to cancel a course if a low number of people sign up. Please book in as early as you can to stop this from happening! Your pass will automatically be returned to your Mindbody account in this incidence. You can request a refund if you want one, otherwise, the passes can be transferred to another course (or a later cohort of the cancelled course).