Come join us every Wednesday morning from 10 - 12 to explore the universal principles of movement that underlie all movement art forms. Using techniques from yoga, dance, Feldenkrais Method, Body-Mind Centering®, Continuum, Bodystorming™, and improvisation, we engage in a process for developing our own personal practices; we find support for living artful lives and making living art. This class will be of interest to dancers, performers, practitioners & teachers of yoga, pilates, martial arts, somatics, bodyworkers, and people who want to try something new.

Wednesdays, 10 a.m. - 12
PATRICK'S CABARET, 3010 Minnehaha Ave S at Lake Street

1st 5-week Series: FORM & FREEDOM
Feb 17 - Mar 17, Weds 10 a.m. - 12, $70 See full class description below.

2nd 5-week Series: THE MOTION OF EMOTION
Mar 24 - April 21, Weds 10 a.m. - 12, $70 See full class description below.

Both Series: $130

*Single or drop-in classes are possible, $15. If you're able to sign up for the whole series, please do. If you are able to and inspired to donate more, that would allow those who are less fortunate to be able to participate. If you have a genuine financial need please talk to me. Thanks much.

FORM & FREEDOM
Feb 17 - Mar 17 with Kevin Kortan

FORM & FREEDOM will be an exploration of the seeds and roots of yoga, movement, and the flow of form. We’ll discover the freedom within form, and the form of freedom.

On one hand we have established form, structure, known sequence, repetition, method. On the other hand we have emergent form, spontaneity, unknown sequence, variety, muse. Like many areas of life, people tend to align themselves with one camp or another, espousing the benefits of their approach, while warning of the pitfalls of the other. We do not have to decide between them. We can embrace both external and internal wisdom, tradition and innovation, form and freedom.

The importation of codified, classical yoga to our culture is a true gift. Yet, like an exotic plant from another land that begins to take over and crowd out the indigenous, native flora, the classical, codified postures can overtake our practice, creating imbalance and rigidity, if we forget to cultivate the life forms or postures that are endogenous – that which arises spontaneously from within.

Form & Freedom honors tradition while opening to innovation and inspiration in the moment. The emphasis in many yoga classes is on a performatory approach. Form & Freedom emphasizes an exploratory approach.

By balancing traditional, established form and structure with innovative, emergent form and structure, we open to our own, deep, internal, authentic yoga. Guided from within, as well as from without by a process of guided, open inquiry, we source our practice from sensation, inspiration and expiration. By giving ourselves permission to color outside the lines and at times to create our own kinesthetic compositions of form and flow, movement and stillness, we enter into Sahaja Yoga, Spontaneous Yoga, and dive into the ocean from which all yoga emerges.

Variety of Vinyasa

We open to exploring and discovering a variety of vinyasa, or posture flows, drawing from tradition, innovation, inspiration, and improvisation. Over the years of practicing and teaching, I’ve discovered and created many unique sequences that I find fun and blissful to experience. I call them Kevinyasa! In addition to experiencing my sequences, we’ll each explore allowing the creative force to move us and find our individual personal flows.

Each Class - Beginning and Ending with the Root of Relaxation

The foundation of functional form and movement is a deep abiding calm that underlies and supports posture, movement, inward reflection, and outward expression and excitation.

• By yielding to gravity we find levity.
• By bonding with the core of the earth we find our own core.
• By releasing holding we are held.
• By releasing unneeded tension we experience embodied trust.

“Beginners start with the basics, Masters always return to them.”

This is the ultimate beginner’s class and the ultimate advanced class. The only pre-requisite is the willingness to open your body-mind to the unknown, the emergent, to the evolution of yoga, and of your life!

THE MOTION OF EMOTION
Mar 24 - April 21 with Kevin Kortan

“Within my body are all the sacred places of the world,
and the most profound pilgrimage that I can ever make
is within my own body.”
- Saraha

What is the relationship between motion and emotion? Between moving and feeling? In this series of classes, we will gently open ourselves to the emotional body of our being. Have you ever done a movement or been in a posture and experienced an emotional release? Tears, sadness, joy, gratitude – anything is possible to experience if we are open to the unfolding of the emotional body of our being. If you haven’t particularly experienced the relationship between motion and emotion, are you curious about how you might approach movement, posture, and meditation in such a way as to open to this layer of your being and of healing?

In our society, much of what passes as physical education and fitness is overly aggressive, competitive, and actually suppresses access to our emotional intelligence or tends to exaggerate certain emotional states, such as aggression and anger. Fortunately, we can make other choices. Our history is contained in our body. For each one of us, some of what we have experienced in our lives was not able to be fully experienced at the time, often due to trauma or an unsupportive environment, and so was stored in our body until such time we can allow ourselves to meet it with awareness and compassion. When overwhelmed, one way that we use to suppress emotion is to hold our body and breath, to tighten and to stiffen. Over time, this creates an armoring that can lead to areas of the body and self that are cordoned off from our awareness. Slowly we inhabit less and less of our bodies, ourselves. We unconsciously decrease our ability to sense and feel. This is called somatic amnesia. Fortunately, we can melt this somatic armor and liberate ourselves to sense, feel, move, behave and think more freely and authentically.

So what to do? By taking time, and gently being with our body and breath in merciful awareness, we create the conditions where what was submerged can now gradually emerge into exquisite awareness. The energy that was used to bind those emotions in our bodies is now free to move us. We can welcome the difficult emotions along with the gratitude, peace, and immense bliss that blossoms from this process. We live our humanity with an ever-deepening courage, forgiveness, and joyful expansiveness. Under the guidance of Kevin Kortan, come and be moved with fellow movers who are supportive and caring.

"If you cannot find it in your own body,
where will you go in search of it?"
- The Upanishads