Month: April 2013

Why Partner Yoga?

Published by smcblog

By Elysabeth Williamson Shambhala Mountain Center is delighted to offer a special partner yoga training with Elysabeth Williamson on May 29-June 3.  Whether you’re a student or teacher of yoga, this five-day intensive is for all levels of practitioners interested in sharing a new form of yoga with others. Couples, friends and individuals are all welcome. Elysabeth is the developer and founder of Principle-Based Partner Yoga™, a powerful style she describes in her own words below. Let me begin with a simple introduction of Partner Yoga for those of you unfamiliar with this practice. Partner Yoga is two or more people joining together to deepen the impact and experience of a Yoga practice. The primary component that differentiates partner practice from individual practice is touch. We touch and are touched by others. We use traction and leverage, and the kinesthetic awareness that comes from touch, to open to greater depths in our bodies and all the levels of our being. As with any spiritual practice, there are many benefits we can receive from Partner Yoga. Along …

Shambhala Mountain Center in the City

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As part of our mission to make ancient wisdom tradition teachings and body awareness practices as accessible as possible, this spring, Shambhala Mountain Center is offering a diverse array of classes in Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins. These “SMC in the City” programs enable city-dwelling participants to engage in a short retreat experience, stretching mind and body.  Programs will range from daytime and evening talks to one-day and weekend programs.  These city programs stand alone and are also  ideal preparations for Shambhala Mountain Center’s more in depth retreat atmosphere. Bruce Tift, MA, LMFT, and a teacher at Naropa University, gave an SMC in the City evening talk earlier this month in Boulder on Relationship as a Path to Awakening. Over 100 people attended the talk held at the Boulder Shambhala Center. In regards to the Boulder talk, Bruce Tift wrote, it “was an overview of one way to understand and work with the very difficult and provocative experience of intimate relationships.” He hopes that people came away with new ideas about how to take better care …

Rabbi Tirzah Firestone: Kabbalah Journey for Women

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Rabbi Tirzah Firestone is an author, psychotherapist, and founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh in Boulder, Colorado. She is widely known for her groundbreaking work on Kabbalah and the re-integration of the feminine wisdom tradition within Judaism. She will be joining us at SMC this May 3–5, 2013 to lead: Kabbalah Journey for Women: Communing with the Radical Feminine Presence. We recently asked Rabbi Tirzah some questions about Kabbalah and her upcoming program: SMC: How does your work with Kabbalah intersect with your work on depth psychology? RTF: Kabbalah is a wisdom system that is universal. It works with archetypal energies running through the macro (cosmos, world) and the micro (each of our us) and helps us understand how to align our body-mind-spirits with these energies that live within and beyond ourselves. SMC: What most excites you about this program? RTF: Women in nature together seeking divine guidance, depth, community, and friendship…What could be better?  Together we create a field to receive…and receiving is the translation of the term Kabbalah…the sacred. We need one another to …

Three Variations on a Theme: Squash and Broccolini Salad

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This is the Part III in our series of squash recipes. All recipes courtesy of Brian Carter, who fearlessly leads the kitchen at Shambhala Mountain. Check out Part I, Butternut Squash Cups & Tabouleh and Part II, Squash Veloute. We thought it appropriate to post our final squash article today in celebration of the significant amount of snow covering Colorado. Happy spring! This salad is perfect for Winter.  And Spring. Both hearty and festive. Serve at room temperature. 1 lb. broccolini 1 acorn squash 1 small red onion 24 oz pomegranate juice 1/2 cup sherry vinegar 1 cup roast whole almonds 1 pomegranate 3 oz. Manchango cheese Pre-heat oven to 300. Bring large pot of salted water to a boil. Trim woody ends of broccalini. Julianne onion into paper thin slices, toss with sherry vinegar and let sit for 90 minutes. Peel squash and cut into ½ inch cubes. Place into a roasting pan, add pomegranate juice cover with lid or foil, and braise for one hour. Once water is boiling blanch broccalini for 5 …

Small Deaths, Big Deaths, and a Wider Perspective

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For Dominie Anne Cappadonna Ph.D.  CT, death has had an immediacy since birth. Born in the “womb of war” as Pearl Harbor raged, Cappadonna has been repeatedly “informed” by global dying. She grew up in a medical family in a Children’s Hospital, co-created the first holistic medical team in the world in refugee medicine and worked in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and recently she both suffered and embraced the loss of both her parents, her husband, and many friends within a few years. “Given multiple deaths in a short period of time, I knew that my work as a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, Chaplain, and mentor needed to more fully engage our important teacher, Death itself,” she explained. So, Cappadonna trained and became internationally certified as a Thanatologist: a death, dying, and bereavement educator. “The subject matter of death and dying concerns us within the Bardo of life itself and appears inescapably intertwined, coemergent with LifeDeathLife,” said Cappadonna. “So I feel our conception and birth to be our invitation to engage consciously with this natural moment …

The Solace of the Stupa

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In the Fort Collins Magazine article, “Solace of the Stupa: Neurobiology, the science of pain and the Buddhist retreat,” Laura Pritchett writes about dealing with chronic pain through meditation, among other things. A central theme in this piece is how she finds peace and the ability to be present with her pain in the “flat-out funky, magical, and free to visit…” Great Stupa at Shambhala Mountain Center (SMC). She discusses the science behind Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a technique she learned at a MBSR retreat at SMC, and how she uses that technique while meditating at the Great Stupa. “It’s more than about ‘stress reduction,’” she says, “it’s about how to face life when all hell breaks loose…” She learns that she can, in fact, change her attitude toward pain. The gist of the practice, she explains, is “…the mind can be taught to pay attention to the present in a particular way, purposefully, without judgment, and, most important, without worrying about the future.” This, she adds, reduces the experience of pain. In conclusion, …