November 4-7, 2018
Dzamling Gar

with Elio Guarisco, Stoffelina Verdonk and Alessandra Policreti

This course was designed to enable the discovery of presence of mind and calm, which are psychological resources essential for our wellbeing. Often in our busy and active lives the distracted mind takes over and life turns into a stressful race or dull repetition. We lose our true self and the safety, satisfaction and connection that give meaning to life. The mind can escape into the complexity of untrue representations of reality related to what we see, hear, touch, taste and smell, and what we think.

By learning how to find presence in the experience of the senses, we can shift from the mental level of experiencing things, to a more concrete and direct relation with our world. With experts in movement, meditation, and breathing, this weekend gave the opportunity to learn to be present and aware while our senses were relating to the inner and outer ‘environment’.

Feedback from participants:

The course on the senses was extremely precious for me. The three of you gave, in this alternating way of experiencing and teaching, a profound teaching for the practice in daily life. Especially the summary of Elio the day after the intensive experience of simple senses, and the link to the practice helped me a lot. Especially during Vajra Dance I could recognize how the focus changed with visual and auditory perception, and the integration with the practice in motion made a huge difference on the mental state and breathing. Thanks a lot !

Christine

I really enjoyed the course: Elio’s explanations, Stoffelina’s performance and Alessandra’s guiding the breathing. It was helpful and interesting for me. Also it is nice to practice together. Thank you so much for this course!

Nadia

Day 1- SIGHT

As a being who finds myself extremely visual and expressive through what the eyes perceive, I am happy I could explore more through the exercises we did. Finding my eye field, my range of vision, I noticed how much vision controls my way of my behavior and the thoughts arising in my head. Quite useful points I made for myself:

Being observer – what it is and how I feel

Being observed

Breathing, depending on what you watch

Distance and how it influenced the Inside
Vision with eyes closed
Eyes influence other sense organs and can bring different states of being.

Day 2 – SOUND

On day two I started facing more of my limits and blockages on a personal experiential level. I found myself better at listening, hearing and noticing sound, than actually producing and expressing sound.

Going in particular states while meditating or listening to what was said to us, is extremely nice, especially when guided in the new realms and spaces in us. What was difficult was that sometimes we went to quickly out of the experience and for me it was difficult to switch the mode, especially when I went from meditation to something more active. Maybe smooth ending of flow we are currently in, would be good.

Day 3 – TOUCH

I would love to spend even more time exploring all senses. The breathing session was amazing and I would try even more exercises with breath-touch.
Again, some exercises show me what I feel not so comfortable with and slowly even why how to overcome it, if I feel more or less not reacting, but experiencing it in a new way.
I also noticed the cultural and other factors which change the way how we react.
Extremely grateful to get back to letting my skin feel and even smell. Somehow this was what I experienced.

Day 4 – Activation of the senses while being blindfolded + Taste and smell during being blindfolded)

Leading a blindforlded, exercise was a great experience and showed me how much other senses work when vision is shut down. I started to smell a lot and touch and felt the warmth of the people who led me in the space. Also, you become more gentle and careful with others and yourself.

Tasting food was a great idea! As someone who loves cooking and food, I dove deep into it and learned how precise are our receptors. Even though I wasn’t sure much about it – how pleasant it would be- I am happy to notice food differently now.

With much love. Thank you all.

Lilli

Also a very big thank you to Manu, Vicky and Tomy from the Dzamling Gar Cafeteria for their contribution to the tasting session, their conception and realization that opened up all various forms and tastes of indefinable food for our palettes.