Mindfully Mortal Mondays: Gentle Yoga w/ Ken Breniman

Culturally responsive, Bereavement sensitive, Trauma aware, Thanatologically Inspired. Does that sounds like an appealing way to greet your body at the beginning of each week?

Any body. Any level of experience. All in the comfort of your own home. All you need is a safe, warm space to practice and a foldable blanket as a prop. Most of the practice will be either on the floor or standing and chair sitting modifications will be offered, too.

Honoring the origins of yoga from India and acknowledging myself as a white-bodied male-identified student of Eastern arts with a humble appreciation of how colonization has adversely impacted so many cultures, I am here to hold space in an effort to heal and grow together.

My name is Ken Breniman and I am an Oakland, CA-based Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Yoga Therapist with a passion for nudging the Western holistic health paradigm in regards to integrating Eastern healing arts while acknowledging the historic context of cultural appropriation. I wish to do no harm and invite you into working together to help in healing our nation's myriad of social and environmental injustices. With a thanatological (study of mortality) approach to holding space for others,I hold a deep reverence for Spirit while acknowledging each of us must find our own way of making sense of the experience of being human. Combining the essence of Kierkegaard's "Live life forward, understand it backwards" with Ram Dass' "We are all walking each other home" provides a hint at how I am attempting to understand his own being human.

I strive to be a culturally responsive space holder and continue to engage in ongoing learning opportunities around issues of culture, race, equality, equity, and social justice. In working relationally with whoever wishes to join this class offering, I hope to be transparent and authentic in how I show up in my work and wish to keep the channels of communication open as to how social and cultural identities impact the healing process.

We live in a rapidly evolving time in human history. The world is more interconnected than ever before, allowing important cultural and scientific dialogues to take place. There are many wonderful opportunities for those of us in the West to experience the life-transforming power of ancient wisdom traditions from around the world, including the practices of yoga and meditation, which are now broadly respected by the scientific and academic communities.

My life purpose is to help you find the best combination of practices to bring health, equanimity, and happiness through movement, mindfulness and mutuality.