I'm dreaming of an afternoon/evening celebration/practice I'd like to do every 6 weeks or so with a group of  like-minded individuals, both friends and strangers. A couple of the common threads through these practices are that they belong to what I would call a "slower" reality - no need for cell phones or computers, few to no shoulds, musts, etc. Another of the threads is that these practices are all in some sense rooted in antiquity - yoga and meditation have been practiced for millenia, I would guess Bohm Dialogue is similar to wisdom circles, and obviously we as a species have been dancing for millenia. Please contact me if you are interested in participating. I would imagine the location would be Blue Mounds, WI.

90 minutes of yoga, preferably with live music
A mix of yoga styles with a variety of teachers. I'd like to do some yoga that is more breath focused, since I think that gets less attention in the popular flow yoga sometimes. I've been playing around with idea of warm yoga, as opposed to "hot yoga" since hot yoga can be a little intense for many people (myself included) but has obvious benefits. Maybe 80-85 degrees, instead of 95-105 degrees. I do like flow yoga so I'd select some teachers with that style, but also would love to do so some more posture focused yoga styles occasionally to mix it up.

I've been blown away by some of the live music I've heard when doing yoga. It really adds to the experience, and there are many talented musicians who do this practice, some in the Madison area such as Joe Fred Paprocki.

60 minute loving kindness meditation and lecture

I find that doing meditation after yoga is particularly rewarding. The mind is quite settled after all that pushing, pulling, and stretching, and yoga also seems to ground me so I'm particularly well prepared for a session of meditation. I'm thinking of asking one of our resident buddhist nuns or monks from down the street to customarily lead this portion, and rotate in other people to lead the meditation or lecture.

Dinner
I envision this practice and ritual to involve both an intimate circle as well as complete strangers. Breaking bread together would be optional, but I always found the pre-Dialogue dinners we did with the Kenmitz group in Seattle to be a fun way of getting to know people in a more "normal" environment before sharing the awesome flow of Bohmian Dialogue.

2 hour Bohmian Dialogue
See my posts on Bohm Dialogue on this blog. Bohm Dialogue is meant to be a time to have meaningful and exploratory conversations in a slowed down, introspective manner where you temporarily suspend judgment. In my experience, it allows for the interplay of ideas with much more freedom and allows for creative solutions and realities to emerge.

2 hour ecstatic dance
As with many of the things above, I got seriously turned on to this practice while I lived on the west coast, in this case thanks to the Turtle Dance group in Seattle. Ecstatic dance requires little: awesome sound tracks and a nice open space (I'm thinking my pole barn), and in return creates a space where people can explore the joy of movement. If you're like me, you grew up thinking of a dance as a somewhat painful, high stakes social game, rather than a place to joyfully or creatively explore the movements of your own body and the way those interacted with other folks. Ecstatic dance creates a place for the latter - something which is pretty much woefully absent from 99% of adult American lives.

I guess if there is a common thread from all of these practices it would be allowing a space for the wisdom of ancient practices to manifest in our modern lives. My plan is to have the first of these events around the weekend of February 9th - essentially a midwinter celebration.