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Moving Mantras  

Merging Movement & Meditation at Birchwood Center

Nyack, NY (September 8, 2003) -- On Sunday, November 9, Betsy Ceva, director of Birchwood Center, a beautiful, fully equipped yoga studio and quiet sanctuary for healing massage, will host a Moving Mantras workshop, free of charge, from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. A Moving Mantra expresses the body's inner voice through shape, imagery, and movement. It is art, therapy, and prayer, a formula of moving symbolism and repetition, which creates a focused mind.

In 1986, Ceva composed her first Moving Mantra, "Om Ko'Ham/Who Am I?" Through this piece, she devised all the choreographic techniques used in Moving Mantra compositions - repetition, concentration on a single focus, shaping words and moving them through the air and on the floor. As she practiced and performed the Moving Mantra again and again, her life began to take a forward momentum. "I asked with my whole body the essential question, 'Who am I?'," says Ceva, "and I began to receive answers."

Since that powerful beginning Ceva has composed and taught many other Moving Mantras, including those for letting go of resistance, opening up to change, Moving Mantras for strength and wisdom, love, healing, resolution, inner and outer peace, patience, forgiveness, as well as devotional Moving Mantras.

In this workshop individuals will learn to compose Moving Mantras using specific methods and movement improvisation. Moving Mantras are used for one's spiritual practice or can be shared as group meditation. In a group, mantra dancing creates closeness between participants as they connect through movement and collective concentration. Individually, it becomes a personal moving meditation. While moving, one can chant mentally or aloud, focusing the body and mind on the intention, and with repetition the mantra reveals itself and the Self is revealed as the source.

For more information about Moving Mantras at Birchwood Center, please contact Birchwood Center at (845) 358-6409, or via email at info@birchwoodcenter.com.

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