1st Year Barefoot Practitioner Training
Dates coming soon
On this first year course we will go deeply into understanding more about the Tao, the nature of being human and looking at how to integrate this into your life and work.
An in-depth self healing course over 9 weekends
that will transform your life & relationships.
2024 - 2025 - dates TBC
A Barefoot practitioner traditionally is someone who has learnt healing ways and is able to share them in the community. Having integrated the ways of self healing into their own lives, the barefoot practitioner can enable self healing in others. “Barefoot” also suggests someone living in connection with the earth, who has found their inter-connectedness with the web of life and so can help others so the same.
The Living Tao Barefoot Practitioner training is a profound journey of self healing and growth. It is a journey to directly experience, integrate and empower your true nature and bring about profound changes in your life and relationships.
On the course we will work with simple, yet deep reaching methods that include conscious breathwork, integrative awareness, and ancient Taoist meditations and energy cultivation practices. Together they create an integrated healing way that works with every aspect of yourself - the physical, emotional, sexual, mental and the spiritual. This is in-depth work that, together with my late wife Ella, I have developed over the last thirty plus years that provides a way of looking under the surface of our existence into the actuality of ourselves.
The course will enable you to recognise and release old patterns of emotion, thought and behaviour that keep you limited or trapped.
It will enable you to come into a compassionate self holding where any wounds, hurts and inner fragmentation are healed and integrated. Through this you become centred, fully present and free to be who you actually are, enabling you to live in a way that fulfils you, and is rich in loving relationship, healthy community, natural well being, in harmony with nature and all of life.
Throughout the course there will be information about, and practical opportunities to experience, working with others in this way. As you integrate the understandings and healing practices in your life you will be able to share with others what you have put into practice for yourself.
About the Tao and the way I work
The Tao (pronounced “Dow”) is the undivided unity of being, both the essence and way of the universe. Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao te Ching c. 500 BC: “There is something obscure which is complete before Heaven and Earth arose. Tranquil, quiet, standing alone, unchanging, infinite, eternally present. It is the mother of everything. I don’t know its name and call it Tao.”
All things are one within the Tao, all emanate from it. We become at peace, fulfilled and enlightened, when we fully realise our oneness with the Tao.
We can realise this oneness by developing the ability to know ourselves as the essential presence within the self, and recognise it in others and within all of life. This is a process that is beyond words or concepts: it happens deep within ourselves, it happens as we become fully present and conscious in our bodies - it happens when we become fully present within the depth and breadth of what is in this moment.
This is an earthy, grounded process - illusory ways of living fall away as we come into the actuality of who and what we truly are. It is a journey to awakening, a journey to become strong and aware in heart, body, mind and spirit, fully alive and able to play our part in life.
This training will support you to:
• understand and integrate limiting and self sabotaging conditioning and behaviour patterns
• be fully present and centered.
• heal and integrate deep fears, wounds or trauma.
• be able to respond creatively to the challenges and stresses life presents.
• have healthy relationships free of the compromises and traps of co- dependence.
• live and love fully and freely.
• free your life energy flow in a way that energises, heals and empowers.
• live in harmony with nature and open to the flow of life.
Making changes, healing and growing often involves facing fears - the frightened places within that often don’t want to make any change at all. The course will teach you how to empower your will in the face of these feelings and fears. You will find out how to put your essential presence into the drivers seat instead of unconscious behaviour patterns and learn ways to take care of and integrate these aspects of yourself.
The nature of the committed group makes a very safe, supportive space for the deepest healing and growth. In such a group a community is formed that is rich in conscious awareness which allows any residual patterns from the past, from family and childhood to be brought to the surface for healing. We work with this consciously and clearly as a valuable part of the healing process, focusing on issues around trust, safety, confidentiality, boundaries, projection, transference and so on.
Course schedule:
Pre-requisites / group agreements.
The course is a unique opportunity to heal and grow at the deepest of levels so there are prerequisites to ensure the depth and safety of the journey to real freedom. This course is offered as deepest service into healing humanity’s condition on the planet and it is offered only to those who want to really deeply heal and transform and are prepared to deeply commit to the healing journey.
To join the course you need to:
This course is only for those who are wanting to work very deeply and are fully willing to heal and grow. We ask that participants commit to being honest and self responsible within the group and to fully engage in the healing process. It is your willingness to work with the practices and processes in your life, along with groups, that brings the results.
You will need to have done at least 4 individual sessions. If you have difficulties in integrating the material of the course we recommend you continue doing regular sessions with us to help this process.
Our commitment to participants is that we do our best to ensure group safety and to support integration on each stage of the journey.
Prerequisites on addictions:
Addictions are an issue that we will work with during the course as they affect almost everyone. However the course will not work for you if you are strongly addicted to and regularly take mind altering substances. These include alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and nicotine. Overuse of psychedelics can also be problematic. We can help dealing with such addictions in personal sessions and strongly recommend programmes that specialise in these areas to help you address your addiction before coming on the course. If you have problems with addictions and want to do the course, please talk to Andy.
Course Schedule:
As new elements are introduced on each weekend they will build on the previous elements and step by step integrate together into a whole system. There are in-depth notes to accompany the course which build into a manual to help integrate the experience of the healing journey.
The cost of the course: £1,900 - £1,500 (concession rate)
Deposit: £300
These are committed groups and payments of the full amount up front strengthens the group. However if you need to pay by committed instalments you will need to talk to me about this and make an arrangement.
Group times: 7.00pm for a 7.30pm start on Friday evenings, then 10am - 6.30pm on Saturdays and 10am - 4.30pm on Sundays.
Food: We provide simple organic vegetarian lunches on Saturday and Sunday.
If you are staying on site we provide filtered water and teas, please bring items for breakfast and for the evening meal on Saturday, you can bring ingredients for a communally created meal. Alternatively, there are many good places to eat locally if you prefer to have an evening meal out.
Staying on site: Staying in group room £14 a night. Camping £14 a night. Staying in the stable room £35 or £30 pppn up to 2/3 people. Staying in the cabin £38 or £32 pppn up to 2 people.
All spaces are heated with a woodburner and we charge a small fee if you use logs.
Prices include filtered water, teas and hot shower, bio-degradable products only please.
Bring your own bedding (if using ours there is a laundry fee of £12) and anything else you need.
For more accommodation details and other options click here.
If you need an attendance certificate for CPD, let me know and this can be arranged.
Certification:
“This is the simple path: to return to the simplicity and naturalness we once had. The path of the breeze that gently whispers through the trees, of the bird that climbs into the open, clear blue sky. The way of the simple flowers that blossom without effort and through Wu Wei catch the warmth and blessing of the sun. The way of the waters that run through the veins of the earth and pass at last into the wide ocean. To feel Wu Wei is to know the inner pulse of the Tao, which is reality itself.”
Lao Tzu c 6th century BC