Body IS Awareness The First Annual Embodyoga® Conference brought to you by Yoga Center Amherst. September 24 & 25, 2011 You don't want to miss it! Spend two days immersed in exciting new explorations in embodyoga®. Join us for a Very Special Saturday Evening Kirtan with "DEVOTION" featuring Kalpana Devi and Emmanuel Manou Embodyoga® empowers each individual to discover their own area of expertise and to expand upon it. This weekend will be a celebration of practices, techniques, and wisdom that our senior teachers have been exploring and developing over the last few years. Whether you are a teacher or a serious student of any tradition— this weekend promises to inspire and refresh your personal practice and your teaching. We invite you to join us and share in the dialogue!

The Conference is fully booked. If you would like to be put on a waiting list in case of a cancellation, send an email to: info@yogacenteramherst.com

Click here to see the PDF of the Conference POSTER
 

SATURDAY

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12:00–1:30 • Core Strength—Core Resilience
with Patty Townsend
Join Patty for an experiential journey into balancing strength and softness through your core. Discover core muscles you never knew you had, and discover how to remain soft, open, and resilient as the basis for your own strength.

1:45–3:15 • Prenatal Yoga
with Kelly Savitri and Corinne Andrews 
Pregnancy is a time of tremendous transformation on all levels of the body, mind and spirit. This class will offer our experiences of the most helpful yogic practices to facilitate a peaceful pregnancy and prepare the “whole” woman and baby for birth. This will include modifications and adaptations specific for pregnancy as well as our favorite yogic remedies for common prenatal discomforts. This class is appropriate for everyone! — yoga teachers, students, pregnant women and birthing professionals.

1:45–3:15 • Emotional Embodiment: Visceral Intelligence and the Vagus Nerve with Rolf Pechukas (upstairs studio)
An introduction to the 10th cranial nerve, the 'wanderer' that connects the emotional brain directly to the thoracic and abdominal organs. We'll be discussing some of the unique features and functions of the vagus, as well as social and environmental factors that can influence visceral innervation; and we'll be directly experiencing the vagus nerve through special, targeted asana and pranayama techniques. Several take-home exercises will be offered for individual practice.

3:30–5:00 • Whole Body-Mind Fascial Weave in Asana
with Karen Miscall-Bannon
Join us for an exploration of the web of connective tissue we call the fascia. The fascia provides us with an integrated template of structure we can use in yoga asana to experience unity in the body-mind. Fascia runs everywhere and surrounds everything in the body. It covers each muscle fiber, muscles, bones, organs, and vessels, acting as a main communication organ of the body-mind. Learn to access this tissue to create dynamic movement that encourages the understanding of asana as an expression of the internal experience of yoga and unity.

5:15–6:45 • Embodying the Inner Ocean: Currents and Flows in the Fluid Body with Alexandra Hartmann
Explore the fluid environment within us. Experience the medium of water as supporting, suspending and hugging the body. Become a jellyfish, pulsating through space or regenerate as a sea sponge where body and fluid mediums merge. As we embody the rhythmic tides of filling and emptying through the tissues, our true movement impulses emerge and revitalize our asana practices. Elements include somatizations, movement explorations and opportunities for personal asana applications.

7:45–10pm Kirtan with DEVOTION
Kalpana Devi and Emmanuel Manou
Join us for the vibrant, and deeply transformative music and chanting of Kalpana Devi and Emmanuel Manou. This music originates in the space between seeds of contemplation and silence. Saturate yourself in their energetic voices and allow the resonance of the sound to spur your own inner transformation. Feel love, connection, and heart as you walk, chant, and move. Taste the Divine inside yourself.

SUNDAY

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9:00–10:30am Embodied Metaphor: Self, Earth, and Yoga
with Beverly Duda
Beverly’s use of metaphor and image to illustrate Embodyoga® principles and movements is well known among Embodyoga® teachers. Enjoy Beverly’s down to earth, practicle explanations and demonstrations in this experiential class. Focus on embodying and relating to earth, life, and everyday environments through creative and often spontaneous use of metaphor, asana, breath, and sound.

10:45–12:30 • Mindful Yoga Therapy for Veterans Coping with Trauma with Suzanne Manafort and Daniel Libby, Ph.D.
This class provides an introduction to the special considerations and specific Embodyoga® principles and practices that have been found to help Veterans coping with PTSD. Participants will gain a greater understanding of the development of PTSD, mechanisms by which Embodyoga® prinicples and practices help Veterans coping with PTSD, special considerations and needs when implementing Embodyoga® Mindful Yoga Therapy with trauma-affected Veterans, and specific techniques used to help Veterans suffering from PTSD, including asana, pranayama, yoga nidra, and meditation.

1:15–2:45 • Embodying the Chakras and Glands — Expanding, Condensing, Yield with Alisa Wright Tanny
Together we will explore balancing the endocrine glandular system through alignment principles and developmental movement sequencing. Using both traditional and improvisational pranayama/breath, mantra/sound and rhythms, we will explore the various patterns of balance available through the practice of yoga. Our experiences will be synthesized, integrated and reflected upon with the use of art journaling.

1:15–2:45 • Yoga in the Treatment for Eating Disorders
with Abigail Clarke (upstairs studio)
This class will discuss the components of using yoga as a treatment in eating disorder therapy, including a presentation of current clinical psychological research. Participants will learn appropriate language and class flow when working with people in a therapeutic setting, specifically focusing on ED, as well as the postures that Abigail has found to be most effective in her work teaching yoga to patients at the Walden Behavioral Care Program, an outpatient program for the recovery from eating disorders that includes yoga as part of their intensive treatment. This class is designed to benefit yoga teachers.

3:00–4:30 • Yoga Sutras, Pranayama, and Meditation for Home Practice and Teaching with Eric Love
In his eight limbed path contained within the Yoga Sutra, the sage Patanjali provides practical tools for the yoga practitioner to experience an expanded state of awareness. We will study the 8 limbs in detail as well as Patanjali's definition of Yoga, "chitta vritti nirodha" or the stilling of the movements in consciousness. To help you incorporate these teachings into a home practice, there will be an Asana class, followed by Pranayama and Meditation.

Receive CE credits for Embodyoga® and Yoga Alliance 100% of proceeds go to benefit Embodyoga® community outreach programs

Patty Townsend is the founder and Developer of Embodyoga®. She has been training yoga teachers since 1984. Patty’s fully-embodied-awareness-centered explorations and teachings are profoundly influenced by her decade of personal study with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen of the School for Body Mind Centering®. She is a uniquely expressive and dynamic teacher who brings the synthesis of over 40 years of study to her workshops with clarity, wisdom and humor.

Kelly Savitri is a 500 hour certified Embodyoga® teacher, certified birth doula, and licensed massage therapist specializing in perinatal massage. She teaches prenatal & postnatal yoga at Green River Yoga in Greenfield, MA. Kelly has been teaching yoga since 2005, and is currently on an academic path to become a certified nurse midwife.

Corinne Andrews is a 500-hour certified Embodyoga® teacher. She also completed the 200 hour teacher training through the Mount Madonna Center, a 75 hr Meridian Yoga Training and a Shiatsu apprenticeship. Corinne has been teaching yoga to all ages and levels since 2003 and teaches class series for both prenatal and postnatal yoga. She is the mother of two children and has received much of her knowledge from the joys and challenges of pregnancy and childbirth.

Rolf Pechukas is a 500-hour certified Embodyoga® instructor with extensive Ashtanga and Iyengar training; he has been teaching yoga since 1999. He is also an architect and professional musician who takes great delight in the architecture of the body and the music of the breath. He is currently writing a book on the vagus nerve.



Karen Miscall-Bannon E-RYT 500 and Certified Myofasical Massage Therapist, is a senior teacher in Embodyoga® at the Yoga Center Amherst, where she has studied with Patty Townsend for the past 10 years. She leads the Embodyoga® teacher training at Newington Yoga Center in CT, and has taught in the 200-and 500-hour teacher trainings at the Yoga Center Amherst since 2006. Karen leads workshops in therapeutics, with a special interest in integrative embodied anatomy.

Alexandra Hartmann is an Embodyoga® Teacher, a Body-Mind Centering® Practitioner and a Massage Therapist living in New York City. For the past 16 years she has been teaching women’s health care practices to medical students. Since 1998, she has maintained a private practice integrating bodywork, movement and asana practices.

DEVOTION – Kalpana Devi and Emmanuel have been music partners and collaborators for 17 years.  Their music has informed their life in miraculous, vibrant, and deeply transformative ways. Their energetic voices persuade an inner urge in the listener toward making potent evolutionary choices for change. They are celebrated for their work touring, performing and recording with ReBelle, formerly known as Black Rebels; “the fortunate in attendance will know what it is to feel the music…ReBelle does some heavy channeling in their live shows…When ReBelle performs, concert halls become temples, and for several hours, at least, people come together. “  -Valley Advocate

Beverly Duda is a 500 hour certified Embodyoga® teacher. She has studied and trained with Patty in her 200 and 500hr teacher trainings since 2001. She now assists Patty in those trainings adding her creative metaphors to the mix. Beverly also teaches at the Listening Wellness Center Yoga Studio in Barre, MA. Her love for the Earth inspires her creativity and joy in guiding one through their body in relationship to Earth and all of Life.

Suzanne Manafort, E-RYT-500, Director of Newington Yoga Center, has been volunteering her time for the past three years providing therapeutic yoga to Veterans in a VA PTSD Residential Rehabilitation Program and is now also conducting Mindful Yoga Therapy for Women groups. She has extensively studied with Patty Townsend, and is a registered 500-hour Embodyoga® teacher. In addition, Suzanne teaches the 200-hour Embodyoga® teacher training program.

Dr. Daniel Libby, Ph.D. and RYT-200 Embodyoga® teacher is a Postdoctoral Fellow for the Dept. of Veterans Affairs & Yale University. Daniel conducts research and psychotherapy with Veterans coping with PTSD & other psychiatric disorders in the Connecticut VA Healthcare System.  He conducts two weekly yoga groups for Veterans and leads a study for the National Center for PTSD examining the use of complementary and alternative medicine practices in VA PTSD treatment.

Abigail Clarke is a Certified Embodyoga® Teacher, and has been studying closely with Patty Townsend since 2008. For the past 3 years she has studied the use of yoga in eating disorder treatment programs and taught yoga classes at Walden Behavioral Center, an outpatient eating disorder treatment center.

Alisa Wright Tanny, is an Embodyoga® and Body-Mind-Centering® Yoga Teacher. She holds a masters degree in Expressive Arts Dance Movement Therapy, is a certified Infant/Child Developmental Movement Educator™, Movement Intuitive, and Pilates Instructor. Alisa’s presence provides the space and safety for inquiry, exploration, transformation, integration, and joyful embodied empowerment. She has a private practice in Western Massachusetts specializing in working with infants, children, teens, and women with specialized health needs.

Eric Love is celebrating his 28th year as a certified yoga instructor from the Yoga Association of Southern California. Eric is a senior Embodyoga® teacher and is on the faculty for Teacher Training at Yoga Center Amherst. Eric has been working his way through the Yoga Sutra for many years now and has memorized the first 2 of 4 books. He considers this a life long study and recommends the Yoga Sutra to all spiritual seekers for its practical advice and proven techniques.