Self
Overview
Shen Tao Self-Application workshops (although open to all) are offered primarily for the benefit of fellow Movement Professionals, to support them in deepening their personal practices, and expanding their skill sets/tools for taking care of themselves.
These workshops offer instructors a unique opportunity to once again become students, not so much to learn new mechanical techniques to share professionally, but rather to provide them with experiences of returning to being fascinated by, and privileged to get to explore one’s own body.
A central organizing principle for these workshops is the belief that the most empowering skills for helping others are acquired as the result of the firsthand wisdom one acquires through direct experience of one’s own body.
These workshops offer tools/techniques for shifting one’s attention from thinking to feeling, helpful suggestions for effective self-to-self communication, approaches/techniques for rehabilitating/developing specific areas of one’s body, and much more.
KINESTHETIC MEDITATION
To “meditate” is to use one of our senses to pay attention to something. It could be something one sees, a sound one hears, or a sensation one feels. Each approach has its own unique benefits.
To sustain attention (meditate) on to the sensations in one’s body is to rest one’s attention on oneself. To shift from thinking, to feeling.
Kinesthetic Meditation is a practical technique for returning to oneself. It is a technique/skill of disciplining one’s attention to explore/experience the sensations of the body.
This workshop offers experiential/sensory specific training in how to sustain one’s attention on oneself, to gentle the body, calm the mind, and bring agitated emotions to a more bearable level. This practice is unaffiliated with any spiritual traditions, or religious beliefs.
Shen Tao Approach
The Shen Tao Approach workshop offers both a theoretical framework, and a practical map of how to most effectively relate to oneself while training/working out/physical conditioning.
This approach is relevant, and applicable in the practices of Pilates, Dance, Martial Arts, Yoga, Athletics, or any other movement, or healing art.
The Human nervous system has many layers of intelligence connecting the conscious (thinking, language based) mind, and the unconscious (somatic, emotional, Neuro-Muscular) minds.
The Shen Tao Approach is a set of principles, guidelines, and techniques, of how to most effectively attend to, and communicate with these non-verbal, somatic intelligences of the body. It is the “How” of how to change as a human being.
This approach brings together practices, and principles from disciplines such as Neuro Linguistic Programming, Sports Psychology, Self-Hypnosis, Meditation etc. to offer a map of how to most effectively manage one’s mind while the body is in motion.
This workshop offers suggestions/guidelines on how to most effectively use one’s conscious mind, while harnessing the wisdom of the complementary intelligences of the human nervous system.
The Shen Tao approach is characterized by a disciplined, compassionate method of self-to-self communication.
8 Hour Self Experience
As people, we can spend a lot of time up in our head, over thinking, planning, worrying, etc. often in ways that are not so helpful for our well-being.
This 8-hour Self-Experience workshop offers an opportunity to hang with oneself at a deeper level of experience than one’s thinking brain, to shift one’s attention from thinking to feeling, specifically the
feeling of one’s Self.
For eight hours, (minus a 30-minute break) one has the opportunity to study how effectively one is controlling/influencing the intelligence of one’s body.
The exercises performed during this training are performed in slow motion, offering an opportunity to become more deeply absorbed into the experience of sensation.
The vocabulary utilizes the full catalog of Shen Tao equipment, and emphasize movements which open, relax, gentle, and lengthen the body.
This is to solve the issue that sensations cannot be registered within a clenched muscle.
The rest, and recovery phase between exercises are dedicated to kinesthetically scanning the body for tension, a practice of mindful meditation in stillness.
The poetic/meditative language of the instructor, the relaxing/opening nature of the exercises, the influence of a disciplined/focused attention, and the duration of the training combine to create a profound, and meaningful experience of one’s Self.
Self Tractioning
In the disciplines of Physical Therapy, Osteopathy, Massage Therapy, etc. Tractioning refers to the hands-on techniques of opening/pulling/lengthening soft connective tissue, and lengthening/decompressing joints.
Self Tractioning is the art, and science of applying those techniques to oneself.
This experiential workshop presents exercises, techniques, and an approach to opening one’s own joints, muscles, and connective tissue.
The mission of this training is to empower people with the skills, tools, and techniques to reduce their own symptoms of tension, joint compression, arthritis pain, etc.
SELF INJURY REHAB
Common injuries such as muscle pulls, ligamental sprains, muscle spasms, as well as chronic symptoms of inflammation, and/or tension, often need more human attention than just 1-2, 55-minute Physical Therapy sessions per week.
The contracted tissue requires more frequent reminders throughout the day to relax, release, and
let go. Unfortunately, many people cannot afford the level of care that healing these common injuries require.
This workshop offers hands-on techniques, and a theoretical understanding of the healing process, to empowers peoples to take responsibility for their own bodies.
Build Better Feet
To walk, run, climb, dance with ease, and grace in this world it can be helpful to have a vocabulary of practices to develop the following qualities for one’s feet.
Methods to soften, relax, and unblock contracted musculature. Drills which improve the coordination of the foot’s neuromuscular intelligence. Exercises to
develop and increase their muscular strength.
Techniques to cultivate suppleness, elasticity, and resilience in the connective tissue of the foot.
Lastly, interventions which can traction it’s 26 bones, and open/lengthen/widen it’s 33 joints.
This workshop will present a total of 26 exercises to open, coordinate, strengthen, and traction the human foot.
Classical Upper Body
At any one moment of the human body being in motion there is an ideal functional/spatial relationship between the bones of the spine, the ribs, the shoulder girdle, and the upper arm.
This optimal functional organization of these skeletal land marks is independent of any paticuler movement technique, method, or system.
It’s optimized physics!
Like a Rubik’s Cube, changing the position of any one of these bones will influence the skeletal relationships of all the others.
The Classical Upper Body workshop presents a detailed map of this shifting skeletal landscape, and how to most effectively organize the bones of the upper body for maximum grace and power.
Build Better Legs
The Build Better Legs Workshop is offered to practitioners of all movement disciplines. This experiential training is an intensive immersion into the training methods of the Shen Tao Approach.
Using the full catalog of Shen Tao equipment, practitioners dedicate 6 continues hours to performing exercises which open, coordinate, strengthen, and
traction the lower body.
The benefits of this experience include an extended opportunity to experiment with the mental techniques of the Shen Tao Approach, as well as providing an extraordinary resulting kinesthetic experience of connectivity, openness, grace, power, and length.
It is my hope that practitioners of complimentary disciplines such as, Pilates, Yoga, Martial Arts, Dance, etc. can interpret this experience in ways that deepen their own understanding of their primary discipline.
