MYTH, MIND AND BODY

WITH TEW BUNNAG AND EMILIOS BOURATINOS

MAY 6, 7, 8 -  2011

Our intention in this meeting is to combine working with specific myths which are particularly relevant to our times, with the practice of Meditation and T’ai Ch’i.

Myth is a journey into the land of metaphors and symbols  that evoke a response in the listener’s heart/mind. You are not told how to interpret but you are given a key with which to unlock the gate into your own deep consciousness, where the fragmented self finds wholeness, where compassion and the resulting morality are discovered, where empathy begins to have life, where the sense of responsibility for one’s actions is born.

The practice of sitting meditation and loving compassion is the opening of consciousness to a breadth and depth of the heart and mind beyond the limitations and conditioning set by culture and background.

The movements of the T’ai Chi and the Ch’I Kung unlock our potential to experience our physical being, not merely as function but as the concentration and flow of energies that are intimately related to our environment and to our position in it.

Through the body and its actions, ritual is born and through ritual myth is given life. With the expansion of the heart and mind in meditation the mythic dimension to our lives becomes accessible.

Tew Bunnag was born in Bangkok, Thailand and has been teaching T’ai Chi Ch’uan, Qigong and Meditation since the 1970s. He is the founder of the Centre in Athens, and the European School of T’ai Chi Ch’uan: he teaches throughout Europe, and has for the last two years taken part in Health Service  symposia in Alicante on death and dying. He also works at the Mercy Centre in Bangkok, a hospice for children and adults with Aids, where he cares for and accompanies dying children.

Emilios Bouratinos is a philosopher of science, who was born in Athens in 1931. Disenchanted with 20th century analytical and positivistic philosophy, Bouratinos turned early on to the thoughtful writings of the great physicists of our era. He discovered that quite a few consider a better understanding of the mind indispensable for advancing further in the study of physical reality. Thus, since 1972, Bouratinos has been devoted to the study of consciousness from a footing that is equally inter-disciplinary and self-reflective. Today he advocates the creation of a new science that, starting from the great breakthroughs of 20th century physics, will accept the profound implications of these breakthroughs for the way we think about  and handle the world.

Child care provided