Organiser(s)
David FOWLER
Joanna BOGACZ
Tutor(s)
Lynne JONES
Diana O'REILLY
Dr Nicholas Campion
Rajesh DAVID
Marye WYVILL
Swami KRISHNAPREMANANDA
Description
Showcasing expertise in yoga teaching in Wales, BWY Wales are pleased to present our 2024 line-up for our one day only Welsh Dragon Yoga Festival. BWY Wales are working in partnership with The Harmony Institute, part of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in Lampeter, to offer this day of celebration of yoga around the theme Yoga in Action.
The day will focus on:
**yoga philosophy encompassing how we relate to one another and understand our place in the world,
**a recognition that yoga goes beyond the mat, influencing how we engage with others and the world around us, and
**integrating yoga principles into our lives, so we can positively affect our decision-making, our societal impact and environmental responsibility.
The Wales based speakers and teachers for the day have all been chosen for their consistent commitment to yoga practice over the years, contribution to society, and active engagment in the local community. For more information about Yoga in Action principles: www.bwy.org.uk/explore/yoga-in-action/
For attendees joining online there will be three sessions with our experts to attend. For those joinng in-person, in addition to the online programme, there will be two movement classes to enjoy and also lunch and afternoon refreshments incuded in the ticket price. We look forward to welcoming you in either an online or in-person capacity to Lampeter this summer.
Programme for the day
08.00 START/ARRIVALS for in-person participants
08.45 Marye Wyvill: Bones for Life (in person only)
10.15 START for online participants
10.15 Diana O'Reilly: Yoga in Action: introduction to the day & BWY values
10.30 Rajesh David: Om, Consciousness and Daily Life
11.30 BREAK
12.00 Lynne Jones: Kriyayoga (or yogic action) according to Patanjali (in person only)
13.00 LUNCH (Inclusive vegetarian lunch - in-person only)
14.00 Dr Nicholas Campion: Harmony Institute Health and 'yoga beyond the mat' - navigating the sympathetic, subtle level in life as a whole
14.15 Swami Krishnapremananda: Welcoming Grief and Death into our Lives
15.15 BREAK (Inclusive hot refreshments - in-person only)
15.45 Lynne Jones: Phoenix Prison Trust and the potential impact of yoga for prisoners and those in forensic units
16.15 Swami Krishnapremananda: The value and purpose of an Ashram with focus on karma yoga as given in the Gita
16.45 BREAK/ CLOSE for online participants
ADDITIONAL EVENT (in person only)
17.15 Gong bath- tickets available from Dancing Tree Reflexology & Sound Healing: BWY Wales Yoga Festival Gong Bath £10 PLUS booking fee
THE GONG BATH IS TO BE BOOKED IN ADDITION TO THE YOGA EVENT TICKET
For more information please contact Ash at DancingTree
6.30pm CLOSE for in-person participants
For those in Lampeter, the day starts with an in-person movement session in the Old Hall to help you settle into the day. We will move to the tranquil surroundings of the Founders Libarary where our hybrid programme will begin with a short introduction from the BWY Chair setting out BWY's committmemt to Yoga in Action. The programme will include philisophy based sessions with opportunities for satsang style Q&A over the course of the day from some of Wales's most experienced tutors. For those attending in-person there will be a movement session before lunch and an inclusive vegan/vegetarian lunch and afternoon refreshments served in the Founders Library. We will end with an optional sound bath to send you home with a full heart and mind (tickets to be booked and paid for separately).
TICKETS:
In-person event: Full price/non-BWY members - £65
In-person event: BWY members - early bird: £45 (from 1st July: £55 )
Online only - full price/non-members - £30
Online only - BWY members - £20
Additional Information
Celebrating the excellence of Wales based teachers and expertise, our line-up for the day includes:
Marye Wyvill: Mary is a teacher and trainer of Bones for Life and Co-Director of Movement Intelligence UK, the umbrella organization promoting Ruthy Alon’s five programmes, the foremost of which is Bones for Life. www.movementintelligence.co.uk
08:45am - Bones for Life: Focus is on natural movement that can be enhanced in order to help develop the postural integrity, flexibility and stability that support strong bones. It's gentle exercises are designed to transform habitual patterns into ways of moving that can lead to what its originator, Ruthy Alon, calls a state of “biological optimism”. Bones for life helps: strengthen bones, safeguard vulnerable joints, improve posture, increase energy and develop the body-language of gentle assertion. This session will offer the yoga practitioner a variety of movement processes designed to facilitate ease and pain-free functioning at any age, by:
** Becoming familiar with the two main options for the response of the spine to pressure.
** Training the neck & lumbar to sustain the dynamic movements that can build bone.
** Exploring strategies for promoting uprightness and the body-language of gentle assertion.
Diana O'Reilly, BWY Chair: Originally from Toronto, Canada, she has been practicing yoga for over twenty years and teaching for eighteen. Diana's passion for yoga stems from the belief that we can affect the mind, body and spirit together through movement, breath work and meditation and that yoga creates an alchemy of these to bring us to a deeper understanding of our true selves. Diana has trained with various schools and styles such as Iyengar, vinyasa flow, ashtanga and Scaravelli-inspired. Her own style is influenced by all these schools as well as her own personal work on the mat.Yoga in Action, an introduction to the day & BWY values
10.15am - Yoga in Action: introduction to the day & BWY values: Yoga in Action is a theme BWY is committed to supporting. It recognises that our yoga goes beyond the mat, influencing how we engage with others and the world around us. By integrating yoga principles into our lives, we can positively affect our decision-making, our societal impact and environmental responsibility.
Rajesh David: Rajesh David: trained at The Yoga Institute, Mumbai, he is an experienced teacher of Nada Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and the philosophy of Advaita. Born into a family of singers, he is a versatile composer and singer, with a background in Indian classical music. He regularly collaborates with Western musicians in genres that range from Welsh folk to Indo-Jazz, and ambient music. www.rajeshdavid.com
10.30am - Om, Consciousness and Daily Life: Working with some selected verses from the Upanishads, we will reflect and deepen our understanding of the mantra Om and explore its relevance in our daily life. In our session we will:
** Look at the mantra OM, through the lens of the Upanishads, reflecting on sound, symbolism and meaning within the framework of Advaita philosophy.
** Move through discussion, chanting and practice from sound to silence.
** Develop a practice of meditation with OM
Lynne Jones: Lynne experienced the power of meditation to inspire presence and dissipate fear when she took swimming lessons back in 1994, whilst working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley. The first hour of the 3 hour lesson was spent sitting in a room and meditating. Four months later she was snorkelling in Hawaii, no longer afraid of deep water. This led her to seek out a meditation teacher, and she began to spend long periods on silent meditation retreats at Spirit Rock in California, and later at Gaia House in Devon, studying with many notable teachers. This changed the direction of her work, and led her to train as a teacher with BWY, and to teach yoga full-time. She began offering BWY In Service Training days (CPD) on the topic of Meditation for yoga teachers in 2006. She has taught yoga in numerous settings over the past 22 years, including children and teen-agers, adults with special needs, blind and partially-sighted students, countless one to one sessions, at a specialist healthcare service for people with mental health problems who were offenders or who had the potential to offend (12 years), and teaching prisoners twice weekly at HM Prison Service in South Wales (7 years). In addition, Lynne is a BWY Foundation Course tutor and Diploma Course Tutor currently running her third teacher training course (OFQUAL regulated to NVQ level 4). Lynne has studied the Pranayama Foundation Module with Philip Xerri and the Teaching Yoga in Prisons Module with the Prison Phoenix Trust. She has been a student of the Ridhwan school of personal development since 2005.
12:00 - Kriyayoga (or yogic action) according to Patanjali: Tapas, svadhyaya and isvarapranidhana which can be translated as discipline of practice, self-reflection / self-study, and ‘orientation toward the ideal of pure awareness’. This will be an opportunity to practice kriyayoga during guided, breath-centred movement that will gently encourage digestion and assimilation. You will be encouraged to work at your own pace throughout.
15.45 - Teaching Yoga to people in prison: the potential impact of yoga for prisoners and those in secure mental health services: Lynne began teaching prisoners at HM Prison Service seven years ago. She spent 12 years teaching at a secure forensic healthcare centre which delivers specialist mental health services for people who are offenders or have a potential to offend (Caswell Clinic in Bridgend). She studied the 'Teaching Yoga in Prison' module with the Prison Phoenix Trust in 2019.
Dr Nicholas Campion: Associate Professor in Cosmology and Culture, University of Wales Trinity Saint David: Nick teaches and writes about the history and culture of astronomy, astrology, cosmology and utopian and millennial beliefs. At the University of Wales Trinity Saint David he is Director of the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, and the Harmony Institute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Campion
14:00 - The Harmony Institute: Health and 'yoga beyond the mat' - navigating the sympathetic, subtle level in life as a whole
Swami Krishnapremananda: Assistant Director of Mandala Yoga Ashram: www.mandalayogaashram.com and with over 25 years of consistent practice, he plays a key role helping to support and care for the Ashram’s spiritual and practical wellbeing. He is a trained counsellor, independent funeral celebrant, death doula, and facilitator of grief circles and death cafes: https://www.chrisevans-celebrancy.co.uk/. These skill sets enhance his natural empathy, sensitivity and skilfulness in guiding people on the spiritual path. He describes his spiritual journey as ‘touching the ground of existence’, ‘a surrendering to the Divine’ and ‘a coming home’ and is deeply grateful for the many joyful gifts of grace he has received along the way. His primary yogic path is a combination of Bhakti Yoga (‘Yoga of the Heart’) and Gyana Yoga (‘The Path of Insight or Wisdom’), supported by an integrated practice of all the main paths of yoga.
14.15 - Welcoming Grief and Death into our Lives: In recent generations, both death and grief have been largely pushed into the shadows. It is often said that we live in a death, and grief, phobic culture, and are culturally impoverished as a result. Yet both are inevitable and can be teachers for us if we truly wish to embrace the whole of our humanity and find a deeper level of fulfilment as a result. Grief is the other side of Love. Whatever we love, we will lose, at some point or another. We are all touched by grief; it is common for each one of us. Grief is not only for the loss of those we love, huge as this can be, but can also include grief for our planet, for the suffering of our world, for ancestral grief, for our unresolved wounds, and the things we hoped for but remain unfulfilled. Grief is not something we need to fix, but to honour. The more we can allow our grief to move and express, the more it opens space for gratitude, appreciation, and even love. Death is the other side of Life. Birth inevitably leads to death. Yet for far too long talking about death has been seen as morbid; death itself has been relegated to the margins, overly sanitised, and handed over to the professionals. Yet death is in the midst of life, and the more we can accept the reality of death, and the transiency of life, the less we fear it and the more we can learn to appreciate this transitory life. Death reminds us of essentials, rather than being lost too much in superficialities.
16.15 - The value and purpose of an Ashram with focus on karma yoga as given in the Gita: Although there has been an explosion of interest in yoga classes, workshops and trainings in the past 30-40 years, a genuine Ashram is still a rare oddity in the West. An Ashram is an energy centre centred around sincere and sustained yoga practice; a centre which also disseminates the esoteric teachings of yoga and meditation as a service to all those who have a calling to imbibe them. The talk will explore the value and purpose of an Ashram in today’s world and the example and inspiration it can offer to yoga practitioners and teachers seeking the deeper mysteries of spiritual life. The session will also focus on the central practice of Karma Yoga, acting selflessly in the present moment in the spirit of service. We will explore some of the key teachings on karma yoga as given in the Bhagavad Gita and share examples of the practice from the daily life of the Ashram. Modern life is often centred around what can I get from life? Ashram life and karma yoga reverse this process and focus more on what can I give to life?
USEFUL EVENT INFORMATION:
VENUE LOCATION, PARKING, PUBLIC TRANSPORT : https://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/lampeter/how-get-our-lampeter-campus
Visitors should follow signs to Reception. The whole event is in the immediate area around this area. There will be posters with directions.
FOUNDERS LIBRARY LOCATION where the speakers events are taking palce: https://venuewales.co.uk/rooms/founderslibrary/
Movement sessions are next to the Reception area in the OLD HALL: https://venuewales.co.uk/rooms/oldhall/
ACCESSIBILITY: There are stairs to the Founders Library where the speakers event will be. It is possible to go to the Reception area without encountering steps (accessible toilets are there too). The Founders Library is lit with natural light.
BWY MEMBERSHIP: Did you know that annual membership is just £42, why not join us and take advantage of discounts on lots of fantastic events taking place across Wales and online? If you would like to purchase a non-member ticket, please register for a free account here first: https://portal.bwy.org.uk/register then the non-member ticket will appear at the bottom of the event screen.
CANCELLATION & REFUND POLICY: The BWY Refund and Cancellation policy is listed on the BWY website: https://www.bwy.org.uk/about-bwy/key-policies/refund-and-cancellation-policy/
EARLYBIRD TICKETS FOR BWY MEMBERS: Early bird tickets are available until 30th June 2024.
ACCOMMODATION: can be booked before/after the event through the UWTSD estates team. Please contact Elin Lloyd accommodation@uwtsd.ac.uk
What to Bring
A vegetarian/vegan lunch is included in the ticket price for those joining on the day. You are welcome to bring your own food if you wish.
Refreshments will be provided in the afternoon.
Please bring with you your normal equipment to practise yoga - mat, blocks, belt, cushioning - anything you need to make your day more comfortable. Hybrid events in the Founders Library will be seated and chairs will be provided.