Awareness through the Body | ATB
At Madhuban Ashram
This March, as several members of AVI USA visited Auroville, AVI USA board member Julian Lines and his wife Wendy Lines, also travelled north to connect with beloved members of the Sri Aurobindo community at the Delhi and Madhuban Sri Aurobindo Ashrams.
During their visit at Madhuban, Julian and Wendy came across an experimental initiative by Amir, an experienced certified Awareness Through the Body/ATB trainer, and Shilpi, and art based facilitator who were giving workshops at the Delhi and Madhuban Ashrams. Julian has participated for many years in ATB and is devoted to the practice, while Wendy, both a yoga teacher and artist, resonates with both the experimental nature of ATB’s mindfulness techniques and art component brought in by Shilpi.
Amir, has been practicing ATB since 2002, and has led numerous trainings, has been a regular volunteer at Madhuban Ashram. His vision is to establish and long term project for training local school teachers to introduce elements of ATB in local school curriculum for the benefit of the children in the Madhuban area. and Shilpi giving an ATB workshop for the local village school teachers near the Madhuban Ashram. When Amir met Shilpi, who was working to develop ART education modules, they decided to put their enthusiasm and skills together to develop and ATB and ART hybrid as an experiment in Integral Education.
The Madhuban retreat had eleven participants, eight of which were educators. The retreat combining Art and ATB in an experiment of non-verbal communication and connection with a very diverse group of people. The goal was to directly tap into the energy of this unique collective regardless of any language and cultural barriers. The participants were all Hindi speakers. As both ATB and art are experiential, the teachers were able to imitate Amir and Shilpi, breaking down any communication barriers. The experiment brought out everyone’s inner child, in a collective sharing of instinctive experiences, resulting in a lot of laughter play and delight.
There was also focus on the more serious issues of awareness and exploration, including developing sensitivity to the edcuators’ daily work with children. Practical skills like teaching the children to freeze or fall into a box giving the children the ability to find a place of quiet and stillness. Amir taught the local teachers techniques of tuning into the children as they walk into class, and getting a sense of their mood and energy: are they lower energy and need something exciting to get their adrenaline up and help them focus, or are they in need of something calming, to help them be more quiet and look within.
Amir and Shilpi plan to return in the Fall. Amir’s workshops are listed at www.atbwithamir.com/
Julian and Wendy have invited Amir to Woodstock to conduct ATB workshops over Columbus Day weekend in October. Please visit matagiri.org for updates.
Stay tuned for an interview with Amir in our April newsletter!
