Insight/Vipassana Meditation, Somatic Freestyle Yoga/Yin Yoga, Buddhist & Yoga Philosophy
Gemma will be overseeing the course as the Director, she is currently a student on Peter Levines’s Somatic Experiencing 3 year Programme which is body orientated Trauma Healing. She basically teaches different ways to embodiment, including Insight Meditation, Yin Yoga, Freestyle Somatic Yoga, and Buddhist and Yoga Philosophy.
The Still Flowing Style of Teaching: Is not a methodology or a specific technique. It is an approach, an attitude, a direction of sorts. Gemma’s classes are the Heart of Still Flowing Yoga TTC. Wrapped in the reality of the nitty gritty of family life and being human, Gemma delivers a somatic interpretation of quintessential Buddhist and Yoga teachings and practices for the modern human in a direct and informal style.
With minimalist facilitation, Gemma guides students to skillfully explore what it is to embody awareness through the physical, sensate, emotional, cognitive and energetic realms and experience the multi dimensionality of being human. To do this she uses a mix of techniques ranging from free form somatic asana exploration, yin yoga, traditional insight practices of seated and walking meditation, metta practice, and therapeutic and philosophical dialogue.
She uses her intutive skill, somatic insight and trust in the innate wisdom of the body/mind to bring about healing on a deeper level, through this process many things may arise, her presence and the techniques imparted by her will help students to recognize, hold and understand that which comes to the surface for attention with a gentle and attentive curiosity.
Her teaching draws you ever deeper inwards, by emphasising the cultivation of awareness of felt sensation arising in the body and using the body as the anchor to the present moment, she guides you step by step to cross the bridge into what Thich Nhat Hanh calls the Ultimate Dimension.. The here and now
Her main teachers and influences are her son Toby, her partner Sid, Thich Nhat Hanh, Peter Levine and his Somatic Experiencing Method, The Insight Meditation Society (many teachers most recent to date Steven Smith, Martin Aylward), Silence, Nature, Animals, Danny Paradise in Yoga, Bill Wood in Yoga and not to mention all her humble, unamed but certainly not unrecognised family, friends, teachers and students along the way…
She has been involved in the yoga retreat and intensive yoga world for the past 11 years, practicing yoga and meditation for 13 years, and has been running yoga teacher training programmes since 2008. She co owned and co directed El Convento Yoga and Meditation Retreat Centre in Andalucia, and was co founder and director of AshtangaOm Retreats with her ex partner Nic Freeman which was established in 2001. Her depth of experience in this field led her to the creation of Still Flowing Yoga Teacher Training which both consolidated, and allowed an ongoing expression of her knowledge of intensive yoga group facilitation, research and coordination of appropriate yoga curriculum material that would allow for a broad, open minded and integrated study into yoga and meditation.
The programme takes students on a journey of exploration that moves them seamlessly through asana its bio mechanics and technique, through mindfulness of the phsyical form expressed in Vinyasa Flow Yoga, over the bridge of Yin Yoga taking students into embodied energetic awareness, that in turn prepares yoga students to move onto the subtler aspects of the path of Yoga – Meditation and the Buddhist Practices of Mindfulness, Insight and Metta (Loving Kindness), leading students to greater personal freedom and the cultivation of the Brahmaviharas or the Four Sublime States.. Love, Compassion, Joy, Equanimity – The Hallmarks of a Path with Heart.
“Yoga is a journey that leads us back to our true selves. Yoga facilitates the realisation of this great intimacy and acceptance of ourselves, as we are – human beings first and foremost – within this mysterious/unfathomable world – only from here can we even start to contemplate matters of Spirit”
