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Detailed List of Retreats

Walking The Sacred Way: Poise, grace and presence in walking

Teacher: Marguerite van der Merwe
Cost: 2 days’ accommodation + R. 350 surcharge
Dates: Friday 30 June 2017 - Saturday 01 July 2017

marguerite-van-der-merweThe essential art of walking - this most ordinary activity of daily life - has been degraded into mindless, extreme exercise. As we change this conditioned mindset, we can restore the poise and elegance of body-mind. In this retreat, we will learn the basics of good body management in daily life as we sit, stand, bend, walk and do what we do. These basic activities are hugely compromised by the stresses and challenges of our lives and times, including sedentariness and techno-speed, resulting in strain, injury (back pain being the norm), diminished attention-focus and performance. Current research reveals the all-round benefits in walking and walking well. We will re-learn walking as nature designed it - effortlessly, gracefully, consciously - in an atmosphere of quiet attentiveness, thereby restoring our inherent poise, grace and kindness. Natural conscious walking then becomes an art, a therapeutic life skill which leads to health and well-being. This is meditation-in-action: a mindful body and embodied mind.

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Marguerite van der Merwe has been teaching The Alexander Technique for twenty eight years, as well as tai chi/chi kung. She is author of "The Art of Walking and Eve-olution" (under her birth-name Marguerite Osler), with more than thirty years' experience in the mind-body-spirit domain. Concerned with development and enrichment of the whole individual, she weaves together principles and practices of scientific, psychological and spiritual understanding into the realm of the body, and into the rich art of living consciously, and constructively.  In 2016, she was awarded the Chancellor's Medal of the University of Free State for exceptional service to the country. She is the sister of Antony Osler.