KEYNOTE: Judith Hanson Lasater

Beyond Presence: Ripening into Consciousness

Presenter bio: Judith Hanson Lasater, PhD, PT, C-IAYT

Yoga philosophy teaches us that the world is a sacred place because everything that exists contains at least a drop of consciousness.

A well-known saying states that “Awareness sleeps in the stone, dreams in the flower, awakens in the animal, and flowers in the human being.” How can we nourish this flowering of our own consciousness? We can start with becoming Present.

Presence, though, is just the beginning of our spiritual journey. The practices of yoga, especially asana, pranayama, and meditation, all point to presence and the consciousness it reveals. It is up to each of us to trust our own flowering and cultivate recognition of the sacred that this process represents.

We all love learning more about the techniques of yoga, and we show that by practicing every day and by teaching and reading about this yoga we love so well. But what has been intriguing me during the last decades has been a question about broadening my practice: How can I live my yoga practice in daily life by becoming more rooted in the present?

How can I take my yoga off my mat and into my family life, my social life, and the world? How can I become freer from spinning mind? These are the questions we will explore together.