Radical Wholeness Weekend Workshop: Vienna, Austria
May 18 - 19, 2024, 10 am - 5 pm each day
Verein Institut Kama, Benedikt-Schellinger-Gasse 32, 1150 Wien
Although the body is considered to be largely without intelligence, what can be known through its deep wisdom is actually more inclusive, subtle, grounded and vast than anything we could conceptualize in our heads. But we have been encouraged to neglect the body, live in our heads, and undertake a desperate agenda of trying to outthink our circumstances. This exhausting strategy keeps us skittering along the surface of things, never truly connecting with the life around us. Finding your way back home to your body’s vital wisdom, though, is more than a little challenging, because our neurology has been shaped by the disembodied culture we live in.
In this workshop, Philip Shepherd will introduce you to a series of simple, gentle, unique practices that help you encounter the habits of disembodiment within yourself that otherwise remain invisible – habits, for instance, that keep us separate from the deeper intelligence of the pelvic bowl. Once you bring those limiting patterns into awareness, they begin to soften and change. As you feel your relationship with your body transform, you feel your relationship with the world anew – discovering nourishment in both. Over the course of our days together you will develop a set of skills that will serve you for a lifetime.
- For a fuller description of the workshop, please click here.
- Workshop is taught by Philip Shepherd and runs from 10 am – 5 pm each day.
- For info on what to prepare for the workshop, please visit Workshop FAQs.
- Some concessions available. Contact us for details.
- Please note meals and accommodation are not included.
Vienna photo by Andrea Niosi on Unsplash
About the workshop
Why this workshop is like no other
The big hurdle we face in coming home to ourselves lies in the paradox of how to come home to the body while living in a disembodied culture. TEPP doesn't ignore our culture, it steps outside of it. The practices of the Radical Wholeness workshop are playful, simple and gentle, even as they deliberately expose the limiting patterns in which we are all entangled. Because those patterns live within the body, subjugating its intelligence. Once you encounter them, once they are felt, they begin to soften. And as that happens, you find yourself living with more spaciousness. You discover the ease and security of an embodied life.
TEPP is not about sitting in the head and "listening to the body." It is not another way to enhance our self-absorption and self-supervision. It is about listening to the world through the body, and finding both companionship and guidance there. It's not about subduing the brilliant intelligence in the head, it's about bringing it into balanced unity with the body's intelligence. It's not just about being present in the body, it's about escaping the frenzied self-consciousness of our culture and attuning to the spacious ease and grace of the Present, with which you are in continuous exchange. TEPP returns us to our birthright as children of the earth.
All that, and it's fun, too!
What to prepare
Some of the exercises require that you know a short text by heart. Rest assured, this is not something you will ever be asked to perform – it’s just needed for some of the exercises. You can use one you are familiar with, or find a new one. It can be anything at all – a poem, a nursery rhyme, a song lyric, a Shakespearean monologue, the national anthem – as long as it is in a language you are fluent in, and is at least 45 seconds long. If English isn’t your first language, feel free to bring something in your mother tongue. Having it WELL memorized is important.
We would also ask you not to treat this text as song – it is to be spoken. And it helps if it’s something you enjoy.
Workshop Testimonials
"After the workshop I felt more of myself with a gentle stillness that helped me cope with the fastness of life."
"I am feeling more grounded and connected to my breath, perineum & pelvic bowl and find they are valuable resources at any moment."
"I have more awareness of my interactions with others and an enhanced degree of whole-body awareness."
"I have more trust in the wisdom of the body and where it wants to take me in the present moment."
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