Anyone do workshops

05-08-2002, 05:50 AM

Sat Nam,

I teach Kundalini Yoga in S Florida and will be doing a workshop in it for
therapists at the Florida Social Work Conference in Orlando in June. I am
interested in learning more about introducing Kundalini Yoga and Meditation
into the work place. Has anyone given classes or workshops for corporations,
associations and companies? It is clearly sorely needed and a lot businesses
will
bring in people who are chiropracters or do massage. I'd love to hear some
personal accounts of how it went, who you contacted to introduce yourself etc.

For myself, I am a licensed social worker so I have been able to give some
continuing education workshops for credit to social workers on my own and
someone gave my name last year to the Social Work Committee for their
national conference.

Debbie

05-08-2002, 10:03 AM

Debbie,

Where are you in Florida? A teacher of the Kundalini School in Altamonte
Springs does workshops for corporations so you might call them for help.

05-09-2002, 07:01 AM

Sat Nam,

I was asked to teach at a big corporation once, scheduling the class to
co-incide with the end of a shift. The class filled up immeditaely with
about 4o stressed out shift workers. Then suddenly people stopped coming. So I
asked somebody what was going on. It turned out that one of the
managers didn't like having the class and made it known to everyone. The moral
of the story: find out who has the authority to get a class going
and then make sure all interested partys are okay with it!

Another time I taught a class for some social workers in a big counselling
agency. Some of the employees started getting together in somebody's
office at break to decompress by doing breath of fire. It worked great until
other people started riding them.......the moral of that story:
target a company that has alternative services and creative approaches as part
of their culture.

Those are just two of many examples I could give you. The psycho-spiritual
maturity and the openess of companies in North America is as varied as
the number of birds in the sky. For instance, in the my region, the corporate
culture rules the roost and it is about as conservative as it gets.
However, the alternative health industry is huge and on everyone's extended
healthcare. Presented in that frame kundalini yoga often works. The
frame that doesn't usually work, at least for me, is fitness. People here have
very rigid ideas about what is fitness and what is not and fitness
is "male" while yoga is "female." (go figure!!!!???) Another frame that is
beginning to work in some companies is spirituality. There is a sort of
spirituality in the workplace movement sweeping North America. Sometimes
kundalini yoga can fit in that frame as long as it is presented in a
non-religious, universal sort of way. The moral of the story here: find out what
the belief system of the company is. You can talk to the HR
department, a manager or two, and some regular employees and you will get a
pretty good idea if it is going to work, or how it needs to be
presented.

Hope this is of use to you.

Seva Simran Singh.

05-10-2002, 04:13 AM

Sat Nam,

I really appreciate both Seva Simran Singh's and CrystalLight's comments.
I'm in Ft Lauderdale and will be hopefully going to the Altamonte Spring's
workshop in August which I heard was a bit on marketing.

Seva Simran Singh: It is sad that people get ridiculed for practicing something
that
they find helpful but people really are influenced by co-workers' opinions. I
find a lot of phone calls I get about my class are people leaving messages about
whether "kundalini" is dangerous or if it's the "sex yoga" etc. For the social
work convention I'm just calling it yoga and meditation to get away from
people's pre-conceived ideas on "kundalini".

I may go to a networking group for women in my area and see if that is a way to
introduce myself to decision makers at companies.

Sat Nam,

Debbie

Seva Simran Singh wrote:

Another time I taught a class for some social workers in a big counselling
agency. Some of the employees started getting together in somebody's
office at break to decompress by doing breath of fire. It worked great
until other people started riding them.......the moral of that story:
target a company that has alternative services and creative approaches as
part of their culture.