Leonardo (interviewer):
Okay, Giovanni, you have your retreat with you in October Wisdom Embodied. Can you tell us what people can expect about the retreat?
Giovanni: So firstly, the retreat is in this beautiful and privileged place. It’s up in Bonnevaux. So that’s already going to be a huge setting for the retreat, the beauty, the nature, the lovely retreat center in the barn. And then there are going to be three periods of meditation every day with liturgy. The retreat will happen in this beautiful place within the rhythm of these times of contemplative prayer. And then in the morning and in the afternoon, we’ll have ample time for a big movement practice each time to look at some fun theory about how bodies move and what that means. And also I’ll be trying to tie that into the wisdom tradition that we find across the human family.
Leonardo: One frequent question is if people need to have any previous yoga experience.
Giovanni: No, it’s for beginners and ongoing movement people. There will be professionals who are coming to the retreat because they want to meditate and move and then there will be people who have a strong desire but little practice. And I’m used to holding a space where people who are beginning can practice in a particular way and people who are more ongoing can add layers to what they’re doing. The other thing is that we’re gonna look at the key groups of poses, especially the standing poses, and we’re gonna see how that takes us into front bending, extending, back bending and what the meaning of that is and how that opens up questions around balance and health, resting, lying on the floor and health, different ways of doing that. And two important themes that we’re going to be working with is one is aerobic support in the body. I’ve noticed in my private practice with people that after COVID, because of lockdown, many of us became more sedentary and we’ve lost the aerobic support to the spine, the whole body needs to be happy and healthy and upright. So we’re going to be looking at what that means and how we can play with that. We’ll be weaving into the work that we do, we’ll be looking at how the nervous system repairs itself. What happens when we get frightened as we know, as we have been because of things like COVID and turbulence on the planet and all this extra looking at social media. So we’re gonna look at what happens in a movement practice that is helping us to come back to safety and to repair. So those are going to weave through. So think it’ll be a really good retreat. You should come.
