Retreat Workshops

SomaYoga: WEEKEND RETREATS 2019

Give your future self the gift of health and healing

Register Now or call 647-980-7233

Save the date

June 7/8/9

October 25/26/27

This retreat is suitable for all levels from lay person to movement teachers, doctors, chiropractors, and body workers. Learn how your body has the capacity to heal itself and how to help your clients heal from chronic stress, tension and pain.

Below you will find a list of the workshops that you will be experiencing over the weekend. Each workshop is designed to help your mind/body/spirit heal and find balance.

SomaYoga, Therapeutic Movement & Meditation

These classes are perfect for individuals with pain or tension in their bodies or for anyone that is looking for stress relief and deep relaxation.

This slow and focused practise takes you into a deep meditative state, a state of presence. Breath awareness and targeted movement bring the body into a deep state of relaxation. Enjoy gentle therapeutic and somatic movement that releases tension in the body by changing the movement patterns that create the pain/tension in the first place. Improve flexibility, core stability and promote a deep state of relaxation throughout your entire body.

Experience true presence in your practise

This program is the perfect balance to your busy or active lifestyle. Classes are small so that each participant can receive personalized attention and with a consistent practise you will begin to feel your body shifting and releasing tension.

This is your opportunity to free your body from pain, tension or stress.

Moving from Suffering to Stress Resiliency

Chronic stress can have serious consequences for your physical and mental health and on your relationships with yourself and with others. Nervous system overdrive is at epidemic proportions in our modern society and the demands are constant. When stresses in our lives outpace our ability or skills to cope with stress we are left in a constant “fight or flight” state of agitation. Our stress hormones are overstimulated causing increased heart rate and blood pressure, sleeping problems, illness, tension and pain. So, what’s the solution?

Stress Resilience is your ability to cope with a crisis and then return to balance or homeostasis quickly and easily. This workshop will teach you to recognize how your body reacts to stress and how stress is showing up in your body. You will learn how the mind works, how your belief systems and past experiences can influence your current life and the five behaviours that keep you in suffering. You will begin to understand the role you play in your own suffering and then learn valuable tools to help you bring yourself back into balance.

Buy Now

To complement the deep Somatic Yoga work we will practice during these retreat weekends, you will also be invited to come play with us.

Explore some ways to activate your joy, and simply have fun!

The Power of Joy

The Body heals with play I The Mind heals with laughter I The Spirit heals with joy

Children naturally laugh up to 300-400 times a day. Adults laugh maybe 10-15 times. Somewhere along the way, we became programmed to stop laughing – to quell our natural joy, to become self-conscious. We learn to limit ourselves. We laugh less, dance less, play less, and feel pure joy less often.

Stuart Brown, M.D., says that “play is time spent without purpose.” Our society tends to view time spent without a purpose or goal as ‘wasted,’ that it detracts from the important tasks of earning a living and getting on with our adult lives... Yet, play can bring balance back into overly structured lives, and research now overwhelmingly shows that a balanced life is a healthier life, on virtually every measure. And it gets better: when your life is balanced, you are almost guaranteed to be more productive at your work. Neurologically, play is generated from and activates the right side of the brain, enabling us to tap into our creativity. Because creativity is essential for problem solving, spending time playing just may be, ultimately, a key to developing (or reclaiming) our capacity to find solutions to our own puzzles and problems, as well as the larger issues we face together.

Joy Director, Bev Bettens will lead you to play through laughter, dance, and more. Laughter Yoga combines laughter exercises with deep breathing to bring us to a state of childlike playfulness. Groove is an amazing way to experience dance. It’s the place where you get to dance your dance, be you and explore your creativity to all sorts of inspiring music from around the world. Groove is a perfect way to get moving and feel great while doing. The best part is that you can’t get it wrong.

Bev is the owner of Groove Durham and a licensed facilitator with the World Groove Movement. She is a certified Laughter Yoga Leader with Laughter Yoga International. She has danced most of her life in one form or another and is quite serious about play. Ha-ha-ha-ha. She loves to help cultivate joy.

What is Groove?

The magic of the Groove experience is the amazing energy felt when we UNITE in a common movement or rhythm but everyone gets to be themselves Grooving in their own UNIQUE way. You’ll feel the good vibes with your tribe!

The Groove Philosophy:

Nobody cares with you look like, and if they do, it’s their problem.
Your way of moving is the right way. When you do it your way, you can’t get it wrong.
You are unique! You should look different.
Nobody can do it for you, so let go and dance.
All of these concepts are only effective when put into practice.

What is Laughter Yoga?

Laughter Yoga is a unique concept where anyone can laugh for no reason without relying on humor, jokes or comedy. We will initiate laughter as an exercise in a group, with eye contact and childlike playfulness which soon turns into real and contagious laughter. It is called Laughter Yoga because it combines laughter exercises with deep breathing. This brings more oxygen to the body and the brain allowing one to feel more energetic and healthier. Scientific studies show that the body cannot differentiate between real laughter and voluntary laughter if done with willingness. One gets the same health benefits, whether the laughter is real or simulated.