What: An Experience of Shaking Meditation and Ecstatic Movement
When: Saturday, February 18th @ 7:30
Where: Downward Dog Yoga Centre – Downtown Location (735 Queen St. West)
Who: Darren Hall

For those who may not know, I am taking off on my first ever yoga retreat in 5 days! Holy crap, 5 days?! I better start packing and getting ready for this. Not to mention, I’m leaving the day after my birthday! For followers of the blog there are two things about me that have become quite obvious — in case you haven’t picked up on this — I do a lot of yoga, and love Jackie Szabo. So when posters went up around Moksha Yoga Downtown that Jackie was organizing a retreat in Costa Rica, I had to go. No questions asked. Mind you, I was (and still am) broke ass from flights I purchased to go home and to New York for the holidays. But, I didn’t care. I know financially this probably wasn’t the smartest plan I ever had (which I know my mother can attest to).

Oh well, the damage is done and I will be Moving into Stillness on the beaches of Manuel Antonio in no time. So where does this shaking come in to play, you maybe wondering…

Well, last Saturday upon arrival to Jackie’s 4pm vinyasa class she excitedly asked me what I was doing the following Saturday. Ummm let’s think for a second. I’ll be taking Jackie’s vinyasa class then most likely head home to polish off a bottle of wine and watch all my shows I missed over the past week. Sadly, this is a typical Saturday for me. So what was my response, “I have nothing planned, why?” Darren Hall (I know him as the crystal bowl guy) is hosting a shaking meditation at Downward Dog. Darren comes once a month to Jackie’s 8pm music class on Mondays at Moksha Downtown and plays his crystal bowls. It’s really cool. Excuse me, Jackie, a shaking meditation? After my 30 day challenge, I have developed an open mind to practices that may seem strange at first and will not judge until I try it. So, I figured why not? A evening shaking (I still didn’t understand) with Jackie and Brendan (the other teacher coming on the retreat) sounded like a good plan for a Saturday night. And apparently we’ll be shaking in Costa Rica. I better give it a try.

In my mind I created this image of what “shaking” would look like. How in the world was I supposed to make myself go into convulsions for 2 hours?! The shakers were intimidating at first, but I quickly realized shaking is more like dancing: you can do what you want and just let go. Darren played African drumming music which was rather fun to shake to. So, once I let go an let my body shake as it wanted, the feeling of both lightness and confusion poured over me when we were done. This is pretty much exactly what I said in the sharing circle afterwards. I’m sorry Darren if this was offensive, but I really did enjoy it.

So I learned shaking is an ancient practice of releasing stress and other bad stuff from the body. When you don’t move around energy blocks are created in the body (the root cause of bad things like anger, stress and disease), you need shaking to release these energy blocks. Now whenever you’re anxious, nervous or stressed just shake it away! And now you know there is a shaking cult out there doing it too.

 

Take this class if: you need a major energy release.