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Embodied Resilience

Atelier 2024

A training for practitioners and teachers of embodied yoga and mindful movement modalities.
Personalize and optimize embodied practices based on bodymind, nervous system and movement science.
Deeply honor ancient wisdom teachings and align with Nature.

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WE BEGIN EARTH DAY WEEKEND
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Make a difference by aligning with Nature
-from the inside out-
for safety, accessibility & longevity of practice.

Refresh your practice with wonder, inspiration, fluidity & creativity.
Empower students’ agency & innate embodied wisdom.
Maximize benefits, minimize harm, evolve embodied practice.

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The Embodied Resilience Atelier brings a needed paradigm-shift to modern approaches to embodied practice.

 This training bridges perspectives of biotensegrity & joint integrity with modern evidence-based understandings of the mechanisms of bodymind connection,  applied to embodied practice of various styles - with a particular focus on modern postural yoga.

 

You'll learn how & why to move, teach, sequence & cue in ways that you weren't taught in other trainings ~ ways that honor the body's spiraling, interconnected design... and align with the root teachings of yoga. You'll learn how to better support personal & collective health, vitality, adaptability & resilience. 

The world needs this right now. The world needs evolutionary embodiment teachers to help build resilience, one person at a time.
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Embodiment is a powerful tool of being human. 

It's how we're wired to digest life experience, self-regulate & self-resource.

Unfortunately, many, (if not most) forms of  modern, mindful, embodied practice are taught with outdated maps of alignment that neglect our body's design. 

We tend to get ourselves stuck in common ideas of linear alignment - easier for our mind, but limiting (& sometimes harmful) for our living, breathing spiral design.

The solution is simple ~ to align with our body's design. To understand & prioritize biotensegrity & the spiraling, interconnected nature of our joints, tissues & movement. 

This shift to aligning from the inside->out (rather than with an imaginary outer grid) cultivates healthier movement patterning, injury prevention, greater accessibility for all bodies, more adaptability in the body+mind (physical, mental, emotional & nervous system) & increased resilience on all levels.

The Embodied Resilience Atelier is one-of-a-kind. 

Most modern movement & yoga trainings teach the same standard approach to alignment.

 

The Embodied Resilience Atelier will teach you how to adapt embodied practices (with an emphasis on modern postural yoga) to teach optimal, balanced & functional movement while cultivating greater body+mind+nervous system resilience. 

In this training, you'll learn to embody integrity within your biotensegrity - aligned from within our design. You'll investigate movement at each of the main motion centers: hips & pelvis, shoulder girdle, spine & head, hands & feet. You'll explore & embody adaptations needed to align from within & free your body+mind from rigid, linear paradigms of moving, thinking & being. 

The Embodied Resilience Atelier bridges modern scientific understanding & ancient yogic teachings that have been woven into many forms of modern mindful movement. You'll learn how yoga is a path of life, and embodied practice a powerful tool for all.

3 PILLARS OF EMBODIED RESILIENCE

Patterns of Modern Life

Do we get the movement nutrition needed for strength, vitality, adaptability & resilience?

How can embodied practice best balance patterns of modern life?

Resilience & Anti-Fragility

Adaptability physically, mentally, emotionally. How we handle stress & how we can grow stronger from it. Inside-out self-care for demands of today's world.

Living Yoga as Integration

Yoga as a Living Tradition of Connection: with self, others, the world, Life itself & something greater. Living in flow with Nature & the flow of life.

The problem with standard grid alignment:
we're part of the spiral nature of the universe

The Embodied Resilience Atelier is an invitation to teach yoga & movement meditation that cultivates adaptability, longevity & resilience in our bodymind - by aligning from within, with our body's design. 

Maximize benefit + Minimize harm
Ancient yogic wisdom + Modern scientific understanding
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Join the Embodied Resilience Atelier 2023

Learn how to adapt embodied yoga practice to maximize benefit & minimize harm, while cultivating bodymind resilience one person at a time. Doors open for 2024 in February.

This course is for you if:

  • You've experienced the power of mindful embodied practice & are looking to refresh awe, wonder & creativity in your practice

  • You want a sustainable embodied practice & to move well in all the ways you choose in your life

  • You've ever felt stuck in a rut with embodied practice- doing the same old thing

  • You've ever felt stuck in a pose, with few options to get out of the pose

  • You've ever felt that you pushed your body into over-stretching or overdoing

  • You've experienced joint pain or muscle tightness that doesn't seem to go away

  • You want to know why & how embodied practices work to get strategic & personalize

  • You're a yoga or movement teacher who wants to stand out & make a bigger difference, by applying new paradigms of bodymind understanding to teach movement that cultivates healthy & resilient patterns for real life

  • You're a yoga teacher aware of growing rates of injury in yoga and want to teach safely for all, while honoring the roots of yoga

  • You want to help build a more resilient world, one person at a time

 

What you get:

  • *All virtual training* accessible anywhere

  • Opening Resilience Retreat: (8hrs)

  • 9 Weekend Trainings: education + embodied exploration (8hrs each)

  • 9 Sadhana Sessions: embodied practice flow + discussion (2hrs each)

  • Extensive educational materials - digital training manual

  • Private WhatsApp group for ongoing reflection, sharing & collaboration

  • Lifetime access to all recorded Atelier 2024 sessions

  • Access to all Kutilaa Collections until December 31. 2025

  • BONUS: 3 - 60minute 1-on-1 sessions with Michelle 

  • BONUS: Lifetime access to the Embodied Resilience Training (30hrs) ($1300 value)

 

You'll have forever:

  • A new way of understanding & teaching movement as meditation aligned with our body's design, modern body+mind+nervous system science & timeless yogic teachings

  • Mini-sequences that combine movement + mindfulness + breath + relaxation + functional movement coordinations + embodied balance for modern day movement diets

  • A deeper understanding of the mechanisms of body+mind oneness, including: yoga nidra, restorative movement & somatics, polyvagal theory, science of breath & more.

  • Evolving language & ways to cue to the inherent individuality of prioritizing moving within biotensegrity & a living, breathing soma.

  • Greater purpose & potency to make a positive difference in your students & clients

Dates & Logistics:

  • Training Weekends: Sat/Sun 9a-1p PT | April 20-21; June 1-2; June 22-23; July 20-21; Aug 17-18; Sept 14-15; Oct 12-13; Nov 9-10; Dec 7-8

  • Sadhana Sessions: Fridays 9a-11a PT | May 3, 10; June 28;  Aug 2; Sept 6 & 27; Oct 25; Nov 22; Dec 13

  • This is a fully virtual training on Zoom. Everything will be recorded if you can't make it live. 

  • *dates subject to change if necessary and will accommodate all*

Investment:

  • $3300 pay-in-full

  • Scholarships, pay-it-forward, creative payment plans & alternative exchanges are always possible. 

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Embodied Resilience Atelier

Training for Embodiment Guides & Dedicated Practitioners

Share ancient wisdom + modern scientific understanding

Evolve embodied practice with spiral alignment + biotensegrity

Teach accessible + safe + creative classes for body+mind+nervous system

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The ERA merges ancient+modern & science+spirit to expand your wonder+creativity, spark your passion+motivation & give you practical ways to apply embodied practice for a more balanced & vital life, and to share as a teacher if that's your path... to be able to help clients feel better than ever. 

It's a journey where we take the time to investigate and digest the latest research in bodymind, nervous system and movement science so that we truly embody our physical, mental and emotional alignment, and can share a positive ripple effect in our lives, our work and the world.

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I truly don't know of any other training like it.

Here's what graduates have to say:

Michelle Van Straaten
director of Many Moons Yoga
South Africa & Europe.

"I took took the leap of faith and I signed up for the Embodied Resilience Atelier and I am so glad that I did. It has completely and utterly changed my entire practice and the way I teach. Not even just yoga asana movement, but also weight training and different movement categories. The training itself is wonderfully spaced over many months, so that gives a lot of time for integration.

 

My practice has now become fully embodied because I've been really trying to listen deeply as to what's going in, on within my own awareness in my own body. Cultivating this deep, deep, deep listening, to be able to feel feel the articulation of how the body naturally wants to move is huge.

There's many, many, many more things that I could share. But I would say if you have an intuition or a desire to do this training, don't even second guess it. Michelle is the most amazing guide, she shares resources that are over and above what I expected. There's so much richness, and there is so much selflessness in her teaching and beyond what she shares - even that in itself is a gift. I'm so grateful that I did the training. It was life changing for me." ~ Michelle VanStraaten

Shadow Soleil
Paralysis survivor &
embodiment thriver, California

"I've gained a more in-depth and intimate understanding of how we are truly designed to be in and collaborate with our bodies as we move through this world. I have been on a terrifically long journey of regeneration after a surgery to remove a brain tumor almost 28 years ago left me completely paralyzed on the right half of my face and body and with extreme balance and coordination challenges.

I've explored many movement approaches and practices over the years and I can honestly and sincerely say that this eight month Atelier has offered movement concepts, movement qualities and movement patterns that have finally enabled me to unhook from habitual compensatory ways of holding and moving my body that were imbalanced, unhealthy and created excessive constriction contraction, stress and strain was shallow.

Michelle Nayeli has introduced us to ways of moving that promote resilience and vitality and that can facilitate neurogenesis and establish new neural pathways. I have already experienced an acceleration of my neuro muscular regeneration and have been feeling how my my muscles and nervous system remember how to self organize and coordinate and re-integrate.

It has dramatically expanded my movement options, movement, vocabulary, movement possibilities, and it has unlocked a grace and intuity a more fluid and even distribution of effort and energy and a more resounding continuity of flow." ~ Shadow Soleil

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TRAINING OVERVIEW

Building Resilience - What is Resilience; Yoga Roots, Rivers Evolution

BodyMind Meshwork - Neuromyofascial Biotensegrity & implications of fascia research

Joint Centration: Application to Movement

Pelvis & Hip Joint Articular Integrity 

Shoulder Girdle Articular Integrity

Triaxial Spinal Integrity

Paws: Connecting it all to Hands & Feet

Somatic Restoration & Floor Play

Breath: Anatomy, Chemistry, Biotensegrity

Yoga Nidra & Subtle Body

Integration, Innovation, Personal Project & Continuing Mentorship

COMMON QUESTIONS

Why is embodied practice important?

We are primarily living bodies, animals still... tracking the world around us for signs of safety or danger. Through our senses, perceptions, thoughts and experiences we make meaning of the world. Embodied presence has the power to ground us amidst chaos, to help us tune into our needs, our intuition, and our ability to return to a sense of center when life gets rocky. Modern science is also showing that embodied practices can train greater empathy, compassion, trust and wonder.  

 

Why not keep practicing alignment as usual?

Unfortunately, we're seeing an uptick in related injuries. These are often aches & pains or injuries outside of embodied practice that occur as a result of the patterns set up by devoted, repetitive, linear-focused physical practice. This training aims to alleviate avoidable suffering & help shift embodied practice to center on biotensegrity & the individual, somatic experience.

For the yoga practitioners: Is it still yoga if we adapt asanas?

Yoga is a state of being/seeing/living. Yoga refers to all the practices that touch this state of connection with more of ourselves, life and with something greater. Yoga itself has evolved and changed over time. In fact, the origins of physical yoga practices were in spontaneous, fluid movement in the Tantrik daily ritual. Yoga is a Living Tradition, meant to serve life as it is. All instructors in the Kutilaa school are steeped in the roots and rivers of yoga with deep respect for the healing power in our own lives.

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Meet Your Instructor

Michelle Nayeli Bouvier

Michelle Bouvier, B.S., E-RYT, C-IAYT is an interdisciplinary movement educator, Prana Vinyasa® yoga teacher trainer, certified yoga therapist & GYROTONIC® trainer devoted to the art and science of embodied practice as a resource for personal & collective resilience & (r)evolution. Loved for her inviting spirit, passion for continued learning & meticulous instruction, Michelle guides students to reconnect with & self-resource their bodymind & expand the root purpose of yoga to serve our lives from the inside-out. Michelle specializes in the merging of ancient teachings with modern science to re-pattern the bodymind towards integration & balance.

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Pessimism is a luxury for a less urgent time.
Now is a time for vigorous and positive action.
~ Amanda Ravenhill

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