“Her open heart is a ballroom in which all of us can dance”
Gratefulness… New Moon Inner Dance at LaZone last night.
Cairo ID schedule next week:
Tuesday, 6 May * Shanti Yoga, Heliopolis
Wednesday, 7 May * On The Mat Zamalek
Thursday, 10 May * Ashtanga Yoga Cairo Zamalek
For me, the New Moon has a very special energy. With it comes the potential of the new. It gives us an opportunity to offer our intentions at the start of a new cycle.
Tuesday, April 29 is a New Moon and a perfect time to delve into our personal process with Inner Dance. This particular new moon is coupled by a solar eclipse on the same date, making it extra special, signaling the rise of much needed feminine energy on our planet.
7:30pm, La Zone in Maadi Degla
To Book, call 0101 3480974. La Zone is located at 23A, Road 206, Maadi Degla–across the back entrance to CSA.
Inner Dance
A process of knowing, being and doing. It’s a healing modality and a moving meditation. It is a question, an answer, a way to release blockages in the body. It is fluid and yet has no form. There are no rules. It can be static. It can be dynamic. Movement is optional. Your dance is your own; it will be whatever it needs to be.
To Book: 0101 348 0974
A lot of times, we think we’re in deep, but really we’re just skimming over the surface. We’re pretty sure of ourselves, that we’re on top of things. We feel good. We feel steady and secure.
Then something shifts. The ground is pulled out from under. Inevitably we slip down deeper.
And that calm that was so easy to maintain up top, isn’t so easy anymore.
Last weekend, I went diving–and I was terrified! This is an old fear, one that I hoped had eased since I last tried to confront it.
It was early on in our second wall dive that water started to leak into my mask. If there was a panic button I would have hit the hell out of it. All I could think of was “abort mission, abort mission” and it took a great deal of coaxing by Hassan, our patient dive instructor, to calm me, to bring me back to a steady breath, so we could go on with our 45-minute (!) underwater tour.
I did manage to to get back on the program, however, bungling up the ascent as I bobbed up quite uncontrollably to the surface, missing the required decompressing safety stop. I came out of the water disappointed in myself–not to mention, (irrationally) paranoid about decompression sickness.
How could I be so brave in so many ways and yet be such a scared-y cat in the water?
What I recognize is that fear is so very deeply entrenched, that it is there, lurking in the depths. That if i look carefully, it is also there in the shadows of my practice, that my own hesitance to confront it has kept me, at times, from diving deeper.
After the dive last Saturday, one of the divers consoled me, he said that all I needed was a lot more practice–emphasis on “a lot”… But, of course!
Pattabhi Jois sagely advised time and time again: “Practice, practice, all is coming.”
PHOTO: Ras Muhammad, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Iman Elsherbiny and I joined Cairo’s B Diving Community Easter weekend. Yoga practice on the beach was a great compliment to the diving program. We head to Gouna this weekend to offer ashtanga yoga and inner dance–April 24-26.
Join Amy and I for the Gouna Weekend Workshop on April 24-26. Beautiful Gouna is located on the Red Sea in Egypt.
@ Insight Counseling and Integrative Health
Thursday, April 24: Opening Circle/Introductory Class 7pm
Friday, April 25: Yoga Class 10am, Inner Dance 7pm
Saturday, April 26: Yoga Class 10am, Inner Dance 12n
Last week, I hit a beautiful stride in practice. All was flowing smoothly: the breath, the corresponding postures. Even my difficult poses seemed to be giving way. Backbending, which has been so elusive of late, seemed to have returned. I was so happy.
The last two days, however, has been a different story with a completely different body. I’m not thrilled, but I also accept that this is a part of the journey.
It’s a humbling reminder that sometimes practice is a little like drawing on sand, that some depths take a great deal of time to set, that there is a certain impermanence to day to day practice, that it takes little to sweep away what we have so artfully crafted.
Still, there is no need to be frustrated. There is no need to be attached. This is the nature of things, that nothing stays the same, least of all our minds, our bodies.
Maybe this is the greater lesson: to know that what we do, what we create, what we breathe life into will inevitably change, or die, or go away–and not just be ok with that, but instead actively celebrate this cycle of life and living.
Photo: Zeina composing circles in the sand, the sun setting behind her, during our Ashtanga in the White Desert Retreat. White Desert, Farafra, Egypt.
When you really give yourself space, when you give yourself room to breathe, something magical inevitably happens, something moves and flows.
It may be spontaneous dancing, a sigh, a cry or a song. It may be very quiet, a tear drop rolling off the cheek. Whatever it is, let it come and then let it go…
Photo: Shifo enjoying a solitary boogie during our Ashtanga Retreat in the White Desert a couple of weekends ago.
Iman Elsherbiny and I are in Cairo this weekend, teaching Ashtanga and Inner Dance workshops near City View. To join or for more information please contact Mariam Sobhy on 01001188660.
On this desert road, the path disappears into the horizon, but I know it just keeps on going, that the further I travel, the stretch of road will continue to expand before me.
This is the same with practice. There is always more beyond what the eye can see.
Once upon a time, this would have been frustrating. The desire to get to an end, to reach a goal, to finish, is so compelling…
These days, however, am relishing the continuity of practice. How getting better at one posture, for example, means seeing that there’s more work to be done elsewhere. How it flows and flows without end, how there is somewhere else to get to, something else to experience, even when I don’t know what it is because somehow there’s a feeling that I know where it’s all going: home, where the perceived end is only another beginning.
Photo: The road into the White Desert, Farafra Desert Oasis, Egypt. Offerings this Weekend: Inner Dance in Cairo, April 11-12, 8:30-9:30.
Happy to be offering more inner dance as a compliment to the yoga practice this weekend.
Come and explore the ashtanga yoga practice with Iman Elsherbiny, then open to the flow of your own intuitive wisdom with Inner Dance, a moving meditation and healing modality from the Philippines.
For full details, see poster.
Friday, April 4, 11am-1pm
Shanti Yoga
22 Obour Buildings, Salah Salem Road, Heliopolis, Cairo
0112 501 0509
150L
A process of knowing, doing and being. Inner Dance is a moving meditation coming from the Philippines. It’s principles, however, are universal: we are all energy, we are full of infinite possibility.
Inner Dance can help us relax, remove physical and emotional blockages and understand our deep internal processes.
No experience required. Movement optional.
Kaz Castillo is a traveling yoga teacher and inner dance facilitator. Over the last year, she has been sharing ashtanga yoga and inner dance in the Philippines, Japan, Spain and Egypt. Having drunk from the Nile, she returns to Cairo this month to expand the inner dance experience in communities like Shanti Yoga in Heliopolis.
one love yoga 