Programs
SANSKRIT FOR YOGIS
Whether you are a life-long yogi, or are only just discovering the joys of asana, if yoga has come into your life so has the Sanskrit language. From the names of poses and positions, to the mantras you might intone, chant, or sing, to your repeating Namaste at the end of class — so much of what is spoken in a yoga studio echoes the cadences of Sanskrit. As a language for religion and philosophy, Sanskrit is ancient and sublime. Haven’t you sometimes wished for an opportunity to gain a broader knowledge and deeper understanding of this tongue that is so integral to the practice of yoga? Sanskrit for Yogis is designed to satisfy that desire.
I cannot promise you that this workshop will give you the ability to read Sanskrit — that is an ability measured in years, not hours. As is true for asana, so for Sanskrit too there is a yoga, a discipline. Sanskrit for Yogis is meant to give you greater familiarity with the language, with its beauty, its depth, and its complexity, so that you might in turn gain a greater appreciation for, and insight into, your own practice of yoga.
Click here for a fuller description of the workshop schedule, logistics, and so on.
SOUL ENCOUNTER VISION QUEST (with Spirit Hollow)
Join us for a genuinely powerful week of journeying deep into the mysteries of the wilds: the wild forest of Grass Mountain and the wild capacity for love and wisdom within yourself. Here at Spirit Hollow, we will create a safe circle of support for you as you connect with your deepest longings about your life and with your ability to love and as you break down the barriers to love, confronting your fears and wounds to encounter your soul in its purest, most exposed state.
Through intention setting, joining in council, yogic breathing and asana, meditation, shamanic journeying, wandering the forest, fire ceremony and an initiatory sweat lodge, you will prepare for an encounter with your soul on a three-day vision quest alone on the mountain, “crying for a vision.”
With nature as your mirror, you will have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really dive into your soul, your psyche, your wounds and your gifts and to mine them for the jewels that are your truest essence and most brilliant light.
After questing, you will be received back into the circle as the Sacred Being you are and, in council, we will lovingly unravel your experience on the mountain to help you see patterns and meaning and to work with you to find tools with which to manifest your vision in your life.
Click here for a fuller description of the Vision Quest, schedule, logistics, and so on.
ECOTONING: CONSCIOUS CO-EVOLUTION
● August 5-7, Spirit Hollow in North Bennington, Vermont
In environmental science, an ecotone is a zone of transition that lies between two distinct natural communities — like the shore of a lake or forest’s edge. Biologically, ecotones are particularly fertile regions for biodiversity, abundant and vital.
So too for human beings: our personal boundaries enable us to know ourselves as autonomous individuals. Those boundaries are our ecotones. They are the rough edges that protect us and frustrate us in equal measure. They are our own angular ways of being. But when approached with wisdom and courage, they are the places at which we might grow beyond ourselves, and thus they are also opportunities to thrive.
This workshop is dedicated to identifying, naming, describing, appreciating, and even loving the boundaries you create for yourself, so that they may serve you, rather than you feeling stuck within them. The practice of ecotoning is about attuning yourself to the world around you, so that, as you reach beyond your boundaries, you discover the limitless potential for vitality and abundance that are naturally yours.
LOVE, COMPASSION, JOY, SERENITY: CULTIVATING EMOTIONAL INTEGRITY
Who doesn’t seek harmony for themselves? Who doesn’t want the feeling of emotional wholeness in the midst of chaos?
Generally, there are two ways to find peace in a tumult of time.
One way is to cultivate detachment. Emotions are how we recognize the significance of things in the world; how we know that we care. By freeing yourself from any sense of concern for that which lies beyond your control, knowing that the things of this world are changeable and insubstantial, you free yourself of emotional attachments. The result is equanimity. Come what may, you remain unmoved.
The other way – the focus of this workshop – is to allow yourself to feel; to care deeply; to find profound significance all around you, but to have a holistic perspective on the emotions that move through you, such that as you feel yourself moved by the world you also feel the rightness of those responses.
Considered as a systematic whole, love, compassion, joy, and serenity provide an infinitely subtle range of positive emotional responses, the substance of inner health. The workshop offers a comprehensive way to think – and just as importantly, to feel – your way into a wise relationship with the world that allows you to affirm the rightness and beauty of life, even when it is an awful beauty.
THE AUTOMATIC SALON
Communication is the lifeblood of all relationships. This is as true for communities as it is for families. Regenerative wisdom is not something you can learn from a teacher, as if in a class. Quite the contrary, it emerges spontaneously when we participate in a free-flowing exchange of ideas and insights, expertise and experience; adding our individual voices to the collective song. Regenerative wisdom, in this way, is community wisdom.
The Automatic Salon provides an opportunity for individuals within our community to share their passions, skills, insights, and knowledge.
Each gathering is curated around a theme, with short talks by experts and amateurs followed by open discussion.
If you would like to present on a future theme, or to curate a meeting yourself, do not hesitate to send an email to: regenerativewisdom@gmail.com
No homework. No stress. Just show up with an open mind. Automatic.
Community
Richard Cohen
The Center for Regenerative Wisdom was founded in 2016 by Richard Cohen, who also serves as the Center’s Director.
Richard came to the Center by crooked paths. While still in high school he became deeply interested in Buddhism, inspired by the perennial Be Here Now. Richard would never have made a good monk. But he did make a good scholar. So, after earning a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan, Richard continued his career at the University of California, San Diego, in 1997, where he still teaches.
Richard’s academic writings include two scholarly books – Beyond Enlightenment (Routledge 2006) and The Splendid Vision (Columbia U. Press 2012) – as well as numerous academic articles. These publications have earned him an international reputation for his insight into how the ancient wisdoms of Buddhism and Hinduism still hold meaning for people in today’s world.
Ironically, although Richard’s professional reputation rests on his expertise in ancient wisdom, he does not in fact believe there is any such thing as ancient wisdom.
Indeed, Richard tried to never let his success as a scholar interfere with his continuing pursuit of an education into life. At times, yes, he buried his nose in books. But when the wind blew right, he circled the globe, including living in rural India for three years; he helped found Zirk Ubu, an avant-garde circus that promised, “Sublime Mysteries Revealed” . . . on stage he was a buffoon; he worked as a multimedia installation artist; he taught yoga, offered community seminars, delved into permaculture design. More than once, he journeyed into the desert in search of a vision, and, transformed by those experiences, came back to facilitate Vision Quests himself.
For a dynamic life, these are static words. After all, the meaningful core of Richard’s many pursuits, the molten reality, cannot be found in the doing of this-or-that activity, but in the people with whom it was done; the relationships created; the ways these experiences opened up new opportunities for cultivating love.
Hence the Center for Regenerative Wisdom. Richard conceived the Center as a distillation of that love, and as a platform from which to explore new ways of creating connection through service. He conceived this center in the hope that like-minded folk will join with him . . . together let us bring our intelligence and hearts, our eyes and intuitions, our communities, our social orders, into peaceable harmony with our mother Gaia, so that as we thrive, we create greater abundance for all life!
Given Richard’s path through life, and the Center’s ideals, he is profoundly grateful to Spirit Hollow for its inspiration and encouragement, as well as for offering the Center a home. The Center joins Spirit Hollow in its mission to celebrate and honor the sacredness of the human human spirit, the sanctity of nature, and the divinity of all things.
