Month of December 19-January 16, 2011

Work Study - Peaceful Body Peaceful Mind

Oliver Bailey writes, "Even though you no longer live in the primitive jungle of our ancestors your nervous system still reacts as if you do. This causes the sympathetic nervous system to constantly react with a fight, flight, or freeze response that served you well then, but now only makes you stressed out and on alert to danger when you don’t need to be. Accessing your parasympathetic nervous system is the antidote. The parasympathetic nervous system is the normal resting state of your body, brain, and mind, and it produces a feeling of relaxation and a sense of peace."

This work scholar month will focus on massage, meditation, and self-inquiry as a means to access the parasympathetic in order to calm your nervous system down and assist you in experiencing peace. Although this is not massage training, you will learn some basic Esalen® Massage and other energetic bodywork practices to address and relieve your body tension and stress patterns, which often fly under the radar of your awareness. Meditation has proven to be an effective way to calm the mind and body and stop the reactive fight, flight, or freeze response of the sympathetic nervous system. Self-inquiry is an ancient method of looking into the nature of the self and also opens up a still, silent, and peaceful space inside you, that is always there, but often covered over by your personal stories.

Oliver invites you to be curious about what it’s like when you are not constantly on the alert for what might go wrong, and what it’s like to live from the peaceful center of your being.

For information on how to apply go to: www.esalen.org/workshops/workstudy.html.

CEUs available for bodyworkers.