Qigong and Bodymind Healing: The Self-Healing Path
With Michael Mayer, Ph.D.
Esalen Institute
February 15-20, 2009
For health professsionals and anyone who wants to learn Self-healing practices that may become part of your lifetime preventative medicine program.
26 CEUs Available
Tai Chi and Qigong are initiatory traditions drawn from a long-lost lineage that includes self-healing, spiritual unfoldment, self-defense, and changing your life stance through “shape shifting.” You’ll be initiated into the ten-system integrative method, Bodymind Healing Qigong, that Dr. Mayer synthesized over 30 years of training. Learn why Standing Meditation Qigong has been called “the million-dollar secret of Qigong,” how the animal forms of Qigong can reactivate your primordial self, and why Yi Chuan walking meditation adds something vital to traditions of walking meditation. You’ll find a blend of anthropological research, examples from Dr. Mayer’s work in an integrative medical clinic, stories from ancient, sacred wisdom-traditions, and Tai Chi dance. Two-person self-development practices, Western bodymind healing methods, and psychomythological work round out this fusion of ancient and modern approaches to bodymind healing. Discover ways to work with common ailments-insomnia, anxiety, hypertension, chronic pain-as part of a lifetime preventative-medicine program.
Most Tai Chi/ Qigong workshops are focused on the spiritual dimensions of the practice. This 5-day program includes the spirit and soul of the Tai Chi/Qigong tradition. First participants discover how to activate the spiritual dimensions of the bodymind healing Qigong system: You’ll learn to activate an altered state where you dissolve into the Sea of Elixer, cultivate self-healing states by returning to the source of healing, and “reel silk” to alchemically transform your relationship to the space around you. Then, writing your Mythic Journey Process in the middle of the workshop unveils the soul of the tradition, i.e. how Tai Chi movements and self-defense practices and animal forms of Qigong are ways to deal with our inner demons and self-actualization process to create a new life stance.
• This five day retreat can be done with or without being part of the Bodymind Healing Qigong and Bodymind Health Professional’s certification programs. (For information about certification programs, inquire with Dr Mayer or see brochure link on front page of this website.)
For health professionals, you’ll learn how to bring Qigong into behavioral healthcare and psychotherapy with no Qigong movements, and no mention of Qigong through the use of some of the following: The River of Life method of transcending and transmuting psychological issues, acu-point self touch, the psychotherapy of “changing your life stance” with body-based energy psychotherapy, and anchoring spontaneously arising movements at the moment of “felt shift.”
Schedule: Open to Organic Evolution
Esalen Institute: February 15-20,2009
Sunday: 8:30- 10:30 Introductions:
Power-point: Qigong Ancient Path to Modern Health
Monday: 10- 1 PM Bodymind Healing Qigong (BMHQ) Practices
4 -6 PM Self -Healing Applications: Simultaneously energizing and relaxing the bodymind, limbering joints, increasing balance/preventing falls, computer tension in the shoulders, etc
8-10 PM, PP, Bodymind Healing Psychotherapy. Using Qigong in psychotherapy iwthout ever using a Qigong movement and without ever mentioning a word about Qigong. Case example: anxiety.
Tuesday : 10- 12:30 BMHQ
3:30- 6 Two Person Self Development + Animal Forms of Qigong, BMHP
8-10 Tai Chi dance
Wednesday: 10 12:30 PM BMHQ +Animal forms of Qigong
3:30-6 PM Mythic Journey Process- A Psycho-mythological
Thursday: 10-12:30 BMHQ + Animal Form
3:30-6 Other Psycho-physiological disorders: chronic pain, insomnia, hypertension, trauma
Two person Self development Practices
8-10 Research on Qigong/Tai Chi, Ethics, Tai Chi Dance
Friday: 9:30- 11:30 Closure & Review
Suggested Books: Mayer, 1.) Secrets to Living Younger Longer: The Self-Healing Path of Qigong; and Standing Meditation and Tai Chi 2.) Bodymind Healing Psychotherapy: Ancient Pathways to Modern Health; (DVD) Bodymind Healing Qigong. Please note: Michael’s most recent book Energy Psychology: Self-Healing Practices for Bodymind Health was released by North Atlantic/Random House in Spring, 2009.
Register: www.eslalen.org, Information:info@esalen.org