The Gritty Sublime: an Intermediate Level Up-and-Out Flow

Holiday Detox with W.S. Di Piero and Charles Bukowski

This intermediate-level class invites a detox of all the ho-ho-holiday bullshit, to return to what’s pure in this dark, sacred time of year. The sequence is designed for intermediate practitioners craving release and whole-self renewal. Di Piero’s image of an explosion of starlings, and Bukowski’s of a horse set free to run, speak to the current of energy that flows up and out in the yogic map of the subtle body - “udana vayu.” So the overall practice begins in stasis and slowly builds internal heat in service of a cleansing release. This approach to seasonal change - a fresh slate - lifts us out of the sleepy fog and awakens fire and flight and freedom.

Includes:

-a 60-minute accessible practice guiding you through movement, breath work, and visualizations that give an embodied experience of poetic language

-a music playlist lovingly chosen to capture the poem's ambiance (crafted to match the arc of the physical sequence, so you can choose to practice with music)

-a link to the poetry, and a short reflection capturing the most striking phrases, themes, and imagery.

-a distilled skeleton of the sequence (poses, breath exercises, and visualizations) for your reference


In an embodied approach to language, the goal is to generate a spontaneous, authentic experience of a poem that you can hold on to (or, if you're a teacher, one you can share)! When we linger with poems not with our rational "thinky" brain, but with a more primal gut layer of our being, we can absorb their truth and beauty deeper into the psyche. When poems live there, they pop up more regularly in our everyday lives, suffusing our days with new meaning and presence. And isn't this the goal behind any practice?

*available for 48 hours upon registration


Your Instructor


Katy Hawkins
Katy Hawkins

Katy Hawkins, PhD, is a somatics teacher based in Philadelphia. This course is an experiment she undertook during the pandemic, a romp through what she calls "Moving Poetics," exploring poems somatically. In her teaching, Katy uses poems as spells, whose magic holds change-making capacity to alter our reality. In bypassing the rational brain, poetic language drops deeper into our beings, where more subtle transformation can happen. These classes provided fodder for her recent book, called Thinking Feelingly: Somatic Approaches to Poetry. For more on Katy, check out katyhawkins.com and movingpoetics.com.


Course Curriculum


  Introduction
Available in days
days after you enroll

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