Dear WABA Members and Friends, here is our listing of Water Gatherings For 2011.
August 19 - 21 Basic Watsu NEW with Harold Dull and Minakshi at Sag Harbor, New York
This new Basic Watsu can be taken by itself or as the first two days of the six-day watsu Tantsu Basic Flows. After the Basic Watsu in the next four days, the Basic Explore Flow will be taught in the mornings and the Basic Tantsu in the afternoon.
| Basic Watsu NEW |
| In this course you learn a progression of moves that you can share with your family and friends. Sharing it can become a practice in which you find yourself deepening your connection with others. Each time you repeat the progression you start with the Waterbreath Dance, in which you learn to stay in the emptiness at the bottom of the breath until the breathing of the one in your arms draws you up out of it. You then learn to move to the rhythm of that breath you now share, building up into a faster move that stopping, takes you beyond the breath into a stillness where you can connect to whatever movement within the one you float has been activated. In that same stillness, floating someone at your heart, you can access whatever rises up from your heart out your arms under them. Wherever it comes from the more you access together the movement from within the more it leads you into a continuum through the changes of the position of your arm in what is called Explore Flow. Then the return to the breath takes you back to the other side. Besides a deepening of connection, this practice can lead into more flow in your life outside the pool.
Besides being complete in itself, this progression, which is done on both sides, is the first third of what is taught in the new Watsu 1 |
Watsu Tantsu Explore Flow with Harold Dull and Minakshi at Sag Harbor, New York
August 23 - August 28, 2011
| Watsu Tantsu Explore Flow |
| In this course you explore Watsu and Tantsu's potential to engage deep levels of inner movement and creativity. In the water half, instead of a prescribed form or memorized sequence, you work with a format in groups of three, first as a team that explores with copious feedback all the possible ways to apply a simple theme assigned by the instructor, such as presses, or the use of the knee, or a crossing to the other side. Then the three enter into a round in which each receives a complete session that engages our inner movement, the theme, and the spontaneous in a continuum. After receiving from one on the first side and then, from the other on the second, you will be floated and stretched between them in a Tandem Watsu where three become one.
In the land half of this class you will first learn the simple progression of TantsuYoga. Yoga means union. Tantsu is as much breathwork as bodywork. In TantsuYoga the focus is less on the doing of bodywork and more on what comes through our union of unconditional holding, moves that connecting us through the breath engage our whole body and moves that coming through our heart and out our arms join us in a continuum that goes beyond the breath (basic Watsu on land). A position that most people are comfortable in, containing and engaging the whole body from the back while someone is lying on their side in loose clothing, is practiced from both sides in TantsuYoga.
You will also learn to give a complete Core Tantsu which introduces more bodywork and creative exploration as the first side is done from the back and the second side in a position where they are facing you.
In the last part of the course you can choose to practice and explore further with Core Tantsu, or be shown how to start a TantsuYoga path in your community. If you do start a path and bring a log of your experiences to a conference with others who have started paths, after successfully completing the training offered at the conference, you may be registered as a Yoga Path Guide, and be on a list of those sent out when a guide is requested in response to our extensive promotion. Our goal is a world in which everybody unconditionally holds each other
Those from all levels of Watsu benefit from this course and find that it brings more connection and creativity into all their work in water. Some will explore further working with Tandem Watsus. Those who wish can meet others outside a class and explore with the themes Harold has laid out in his new book: Watsu Basic and Explorer Paths.
This course can fulfill half of WABA's requirement for a hundred hours of Shiatsu and/or Tantsu. |
| Harold Dull |
| Harold Dull is the president of WABA and the creator of Watsu®, Tantsu® and the Worldwide Aquatic Bodywork Registry which stores the transcripts of students around the world. Harold trained with the creator of Zen Shiatsu in Japan, Shizuto Masunaga, and the teachers who brought Zen Shiatsu to America, Reuho Yamada and Wataru Ohashi. The profundity and effectiveness of the bodywork forms he has created reflect his passionate practice and deep understanding of energy and the body; the creativity of these forms reflects his background as a poet in the San Francisco Renaissance. His three Watsu books, a new Tantsu book and a collection of his poetry as well as several of his DVDs are available. Harold speaks several languages,which helps him teach his work all over the world. He has been awarded by Water Fitness and Aquatic Therapy associations. Once he completed developing the forms needed in clinics and spas around the world, Harold turned his attention to developing complementary paths that can make Watsu and Tantsu's potential for connection and the creative engagement of our life force universally available, a new humanism in which everybody can float or hold each other without intention. |
| Watsu Tantsu Explore Flow |
| In Watsu, floating someone level with our heart, our heart center becomes as much engaged in movement as our body center. In this course we explore how the continuum of breath connected moves that rise from the emptiness at the bottom of the breath lead to stillness. And how in that stillness our heart is engaged in movements from within that spontaneously draw other moves into their flow.
In the year Harold started developing Watsu he created Tantsu to bring Watsu’s nurturing holding back onto land. Now Harold has created a new Tantsu whose whole body holds contain someone’s heart and body centers as one core. In this course you learn a complete Core Tantsu that can be comfortably shared with anybody. What you learn about accessing the movement within with your own core follows you back into the water.
On the Explore Flow Path inner movement and the spontaneous take you beyond sequence. Instead of a form you learn a format, the Team Round, in which you explore in groups of three. The instructor assigns a simple theme that can be applied in different ways, such as presses or the use of the knee or a crossing to the other side.
The Team creatively explores all the possible ways the theme can be applied with each other with copious feedback as to what pressure and depth, etc., is most comfortable to each. This Explore phase is followed by each one receiving a complete session in a Round that has the following format:
First Floater:
1. Opening Moves, the Waterbreath Dance and a continuum of breath coordinated moves that lead to deep stillness.
2. Stillness- Heart Based Four phase Explore Flow
3. Theme done in whatever way the above Flows into.
4. A crossing to the other side
5. Spontaneous movement (Each crossing is made without any idea of what will follow. The spontaneous can be a move previously learned or something new in the moment)
6. Theme done in a way the Spontaneous leads into.
7. A crossing back to the first side (usually done in some way different than the first crossing.)
8. Spontaneous movement.
9. Stillness- Follow Movement.
Second Floater: When the First Floater’s Follow Movement is complete, the second Floater joins from the second side and, starting with the Stillness- Heart Based Four phase Explore Flow continues through the above progression. When the second floater completes the Follow Movement on their side, the first floater joins from the first side.
Both floaters: The first floater explores how they can apply their theme while the other supports the receiver. Then, floating the receiver between them, they explore how to coordinate their moves so closely they flow as one. Three become one.
When you complete this class you will have learned the above format well enough to meet with two others on the Explore Flow Path outside of class, each bringing your own theme to explore together.
In Harold Dull’s new book:
Watsu as a Path of Meditation, Connection, Exploration and Flow
There are twenty stations on the path, each with its own theme that will be made available to students. Students of this class can find others through the Registry who want to meet and explore the potential of Watsu in Team Rounds. |
