THE POWER OF PERSONAL RITUAL (Thursday September 7th)
with Abbie Galvin

Personal rituals grant our life purpose and potency. It is in time spent with and on ourselves that we access the richness of our depths and garner insights that help us live more authentically. Our physical body is the container with which we address our mobility, staying power and self expression. Stability is not a natural phenomenon, it is learned, it is developed. Yoga is a technique to integrate one's body with one's breath, so that one's soul is accessed. Our first session is a practice whose theme is grounding. We ground ourselves in the effort to rise more powerfully to life’s call.

MAKING THE PRACTICE IMPERSONAL (Thursday September 14th)
with Ty Watson

Your yoga practice is like anything else you do, because you are pulling it out of yourself as a fractal, a piece, of your life. When we measure our practice up against something archetypal, more formal, or measured, what we get to infer is where our own habits, tendencies and blind spots might be doing us in - where our personal techniques won't withstand the test of time. In this session we will explore the idea of an "archetype", go through some of the more common measures of our Katonah yoga practice, and discover how we might use our physical yoga practice to connect us more deeply to our own lives.

EMBODYING THE MAGIC SQUARE (Thursday September 21st)
with Cassandra Simons

The magic of Katonah Yoga comes alive when the esoteric dialogue takes root in the body. If we know what to look for, physical habits, injuries and patterns of movement all offer clues as to how we move about the world and insights into our implicit nature. In this session, we’ll use the framework of the magic square to put the body on a map. We’ll practice reading the map through both asana and breath work, providing you with tools to mediate life’s circumstances and techniques to utilize when life throws you off course.

THE MAGIC OF CHAIRS (Thursday September 28th)
with Brima Jah

A chair is magical tool. Using a chair for practice gives us a point of reference outside of ourselves. A chair can serve as a boundary for containment, a surface that holds, lifts and offers new angles for insight. It is a tool with which all parts of the practice including stability, ability and vision can made accessible for all bodies—each on their own, and integrated together as a whole.

RESTORATIVE TOOLS FOR TRANSFORMATION (Thursday October 5th)
with Cari Friedman

Practicing restorative yoga over time opens up a new way of living. Whether one has physical limitations, injuries or simply needs to recharge due to lack of sleep or over exhaustion, a restorative practice is a powerful tool that can be revolutionary. Restorative postures utilize formal techniques of boundaries and scaffolding (rather than habits and feelings) to orient the body and reconcile one’s physical and emotional structure. When the mind and body connect in this way, breath and energy move effortlessly through the form, transforming chemistry and kindling a new state of consciousness.

RENEWED FOCUS (Thursday October 12th)
with Ally Bogard

Attention is the most powerful currency in building life-force in the practice of yoga. Through a quieter inner state, we can work with self-observation, inquiry and contemplation to aid in physical, mental and emotional ease. In this session we will explore and experience pranayama, yoga nidra and meditation practices to claim and direct our attention and renew our focus.

SOMATIC EMBODIMENT (Thursday October 19th)
with Chase Connolly

Slowing down in the practice offers an opportunity to drop out of the unnaturally fast pace of our daily lives. With a focus on moving more slowly, there is more time to feel the pulsating being of our bodies. In this session we will explore how to build a relationship with our corporeal nature to weave into the narrative of our intellectual practice.

THE PELVIC FLOOR: FINDING STRENGTH + STABILITY (Thursday October 26th)
with Ellen Sirot

The Pelvic Floor. All us have them, but many of us are not able to access our lowest floor fully. In this session we will explore the physical and informational awareness of our bottom floor, finding the ability to both strengthen and release our "basement.” Using breath, body and imagination we will work together to engage the pelvic floor and the adjacent anatomy, with knowledge and comprehension, in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the pelvic organs work into our physicality.

RELEVANT FAITH (Thursday November 2nd)
with Ally Bogard

A devotional practice is balm for the valley’s of the mind and tired heart. Yet, a spiritual path is paved by the Mystery and having a sense of faith you can actually use is key. In this session we will explore teachings and practices to cultivate faith for when you feel lost, disoriented, and doubtful.

EMBODIED HARMONY (Thursday November 9th)
with Kiki Roshe

Weaving elements of breath, vocalizing and listening invites brain and heart coherence - a state of harmony, within. In this session we will explore the qualities of sound through types of music, rhythm, instruments, the voice and some of the math and science that relates to sound and active listening. Closing our session with a short meditation experience that will incorporate these components.

HERBAL MEDICINE (Thursday November 16th)
with Linsey Boisvert

Plants reorganize our physiology and introduce efficient patterns into our bodies and minds. In this session we will move through a guided plant meditation, dive into the intersection of Katonah theory and herbal medicine, learn how to incorporate herbs into our daily rhythms, and discover the therapeutics of a few herbs that will support us through the fall winter season.

ASTROLOGY FOR SELF AWARENESS (Thursday November 30th)
with Sophia Campana

Astrology is the oldest science on earth that points us towards natural laws that govern all evolution. The signs and and symbols that make up this system, represent distinct energies that occur around us in the natural world. In this session we will explore the natal chart as a map of our personality signatures and the purpose of our soul’s incarnation. In order to decode this map we will look to nature and the evolutionary process for clues to create a simple key to break down the inherent meaning of the signs, planets and houses, that can be utilized again and again for self reflection and personal contemplation.

THE BODY AS AN ECOSYSTEM (Thursday December 7th)
with Chase Connolly

The body is an ecosystem, this is not a metaphor, rather the reality of our material body. In this session we will play with this idea in order to ignite our imagination within our meditation and pranayama practice, while bringing us closer to the ecology that supports us each and every day. Ultimately, this can be a practice of loving Great Nature through oneself.

DREAMWORK: WAKING UP THE UNCONSCIOUS (Thursday December 14th)
with Jason Bacasa

One remarkable way to commune with the unconscious is through our dreams. Dreams are nature. And so, if nature is wise and tries to contact us every night, shouldn't we take the call? In this session we will explore dreams and various techniques of working with the unconscious. Students will have the opportunity to submit dreams, so that we may examine a handful as an introduction into how we can work inside our dreams for personal revelation. We will explore how to ask for dreams, methods for working with dynamics of a dream that might otherwise seem like nonsense and how to utilize the unique images that visit us every night as a way to wake up to ourselves.

THE MECHANICS OF BREATH WORK (Thursday December 21st)
with Ty Watson

The lungs are the only organ that mediates what is inside and outside, the personal and the communal, us and our environment. The function of our breathing determines not only what we take in and eliminate from the air we breathe, but our relationship to our nervous system, our health, our immunity, and our most esoteric ideas. In this session we will explore some of the ways to widen the scope of our breathing, metaphors to connect the mechanics of our breath to larger ideas that make it easier to stay with ourselves as we attempt to make our breathing more conscious so that it might be more literate, potent and (full)filling.

SLEEP FOR LONGEVITY (Thursday December 28th)
with Abbie Galvin

We spend a third of our life sleeping and the quality of our sleep determines both the quality and length of our life. Having good sleep hygiene is essential to ensure we are taking full advantage of one of natures most potent rehabilitation and detoxification tools. In this session we will explore circadian rhythms and the Taoist organ clock, while uncovering our specific sleep types, in order to understand the best way to build morning and evening rituals that support optimal sleep to support optimal health.