Somatic & Mindful Yoga for Healing, Health and Recovery
Sunday monthly workshops from 6-8pm at The Loft, Brighton
with Charlotte Watts
Somatic & Mindful Yoga monthly evening workshops
These workshops are for anyone needing to make space and time to breathe deeply, reconnect with their bodies and still their minds with curious, fluid, compassionate and functional movement.
Charlotte weaves Somatic practices - more fluid, explorative, primal motions - with postures and movements more commonly associated with a physical yoga practice. She is most interested in how these gestures bring us into embodied awareness and a compassionate relation with self though.
Exploring the movement within stillness and the stillness within movement, whether there is more containment or fluidity, there is ample time and space to listen in to your deeper needs.
In this way these mindful, meditative practices can help us drop beneath striving and 'getting it right', towards liberation and releasing stress, trauma and tension from body tissues.
This is movement not just about what we can or can't 'do', but bringing curiosity into where our expressions, boundaries, needs and habitual responses lie, so that we might allow new stories and patterns to emerge.
Sundays 6-8pm - £20
please book before, only 16 places available for each
2024 dates
Dec 15th
2025 dates
Jan 12th
Feb 9th
Mar 16th
Apr 27th
May 18th
Jun 15th
July 13th
at The Loft | 42 Upper Gardner Street, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 4AN
Beginning with a meditative, lying somatic practice, we arrive into the body and meet ourselves where we are with explorative and fluid motions. From this grounding, awareness and attunement into our inner landscape, we can then move from the centre in a more integrated way, feeling out what we need moment to moment.
These mostly lying, held, fluid and responsive practices include rocking, rolling, twisting and pulsing, but also lead up through different levels up through gravity to experience the human evolution from the ground up.
We'll stay close to the ground for this nurturing, evening practice and explore practical antidotes to the stresses of modern life – from the postural issues of sitting on chairs and hunching over computers to the ‘busy brain’ effects of constant stimulus and psycho-social pressure.
There will be plenty of time to make our way from curious movement, through a few restorative postures towards a long savasana (final, lying relaxation) to allow the practice to settle into tissues and all aspects of our beings.
Suitable for all levels and a great complement to a more dynamic practice.
How does this type of practice help to relieve mind-body stress?
Yoga is connection; not the shapes we make or the flexibility we might want, but awareness created towards ‘stilling the mind’ (according to the Yoga Sutras). A large part of any yoga practice is to ‘just be’ and help us move away from the stress-inducing ‘fixing and doing’ so rewarded in our culture. This is the essence of being in the here and now – if we are not present then our brains are flitting around in the past and/or future. This is how we tend to live and many of us need dedicated tools and guides to help us stay in the moment and truly feel what we feel, whatever it is, without judgement.
The Somatic and Mindful style that Charlotte teaches may help issues such as anxiety, chronic fatigue, depression, insomnia, IBS, inflammatory conditions in a number of ways, including:
Creating fluid movement into fascia (connective tissue) that releasing tension and the effects of chronic stress and trauma there, as well as introducing coaxing motion into any lesions and adhesions in tissues that can affect organ function and movement
Encouraging diaphragmatic movement, jaw release and softening of the eyes and front brain to communicate it’s ok to allow ease throughout the whole body and mind.
Grounding to register a full sense of where and how we are – in the present moment – to foster signals of safety and potential calm.
Rocking, rolling, pulsing, reaching and revolving motions to move into organs, lymphatics and fascia.
Engaging the vagus nerve for the full mind-body self-soothing that can support us occupying more adaptive, responsive and resilient states.
Fostering awareness of our boundaries and how to not simply crash into them by ‘keeping going’ and ‘doing more’ – rather knowing where and when is enough. From this space, we can learn to recognise when we need to look after ourselves, slow down and allow experience to be processed and integrate.
Fostering the very real relationship of compassion towards ourselves, and being able to respect our own needs. Supporting the space of the heart in relation to our whole being.
“The breath leads, the body follows and the mind observes”
Upcoming dates
If you select a date and are redirected back to this page, it is because the chosen date is already fully booked.
Somatic & Mindful Yoga for Healing, Health and Recovery
- workshop in Brighton -
Sunday, Dec 15, 2024
Somatic & Mindful Yoga for Healing, Health and Recovery
- workshop in Brighton -
Sunday, Jan 12, 2025
Somatic & Mindful Yoga for Healing, Health and Recovery
- workshop in Brighton -
Sunday, Feb 9, 2025
7 Day Calm Package
I’ve created a new Calm Package for you, a 7 day programme that you can use year round to create a sense of calm and ease in your daily life.
