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The Body as Foundation – Somatic Intelligence in the Namgyal Tradition
February 7, 2027 - February 28, 2027
The Body as Foundation — Somatic Intelligence in the Namgyal Tradition
Online CourseFebruary 7 – 28, 2027
Exploring the body-based teachings and practices of Namgyal Rinpoche’s Body, Speech and Mind with Catherine Pawasarat Sensei
At-a-Glance
Dates & format:
- 3 online classes (Feb 7, 14 & 21)
- An optional flash retreat weekend (Feb 27 & 28)
Time commitment:
- Classes are 90-minutes each
- Plus time during the week to work on practical application (discretionary, but at least 1 hour is recommended)
- Option to join a study group meeting once a week for 1 hour
Cost:
- For the 3-week course: Admin Fee + dāna to the Teacher
- For the Flash Retreat Weekend: dāna only (no admin fee)
- See below for an explanation of dāna and for admin fee
Prerequisites:
- Open to all backgrounds.
- Reading Body, Speech and Mind is recommended but not required.
Why This Matters Now
Most of us are practiced at thinking about our bodies, but far less practiced at actually living in them.
We try to bridge the gap with yoga classes, martial arts, or long walks to clear our heads. Yet in a world organized around the intellect, these practices easily stay in a supporting role—tools to help us recover from overthinking, rather than ground beneath our feet. Meanwhile, our bodies bear the quiet cost of the imbalance: hurried meals, frayed nervous systems, and immune responses pushed to the margins. Another wellness routine will not fix that. It asks for a fundamentally different relationship with the body itself.
This course explores what shifts when somatic intelligence stops being a self-improvement task and becomes our ground. Ground for clarity, and especially ground for compassion.
Drawing on the Body teachings in Namgyal Rinpoche’s Body, Speech and Mind, we will treat physical embodiment not as an isolated technique, but as the base upon which the rest of the path rests—much like our work with emotional intelligence this past year. You will not leave having mastered an intellectual concept. You will leave with a felt, firsthand sense of what it means to inhabit body, speech, and mind together—and a reliable compass for keeping that practice alive.
Who This Is For
- You already have a somatic practice (yoga, martial arts, movement work) and sense there’s a deeper layer underneath it you haven’t reached yet
- You noticed something shift through the Emotional Intelligence work we did in 2026 and want to keep building on it
- You feel the disconnect between an active mind and a body that’s been running on empty, and you’re ready to address it directly rather than around the edges
- You’re drawn to the Namgyal lineage’s approach to integrating Eastern practice with Western psychological and somatic understanding
- You want to do serious, sustained practice — not a taste of something, but real ground to stand on
- You’re curious about Body, Speech and Mind but have found the full text a lot to take on alone
What You’ll Practice / Learn / Discover
Somatic intelligence as foundation, not add-on Work with the body not as one more discipline to fit into a busy life, but as the base that the rest of your practice — emotional, intellectual, spiritual — actually stands on.
Integration over addition Rather than collecting another technique, explore what it means to bring somatic awareness into conversation with your intellectual and emotional intelligence.
A living lineage, not just a text Engage with Namgyal Rinpoche’s Body teachings through a teacher who has practiced within this tradition for 3 decades, with the context of how this material connects to the wider Namgyal transmission.
A personal sense of what integration means for you Leave with a first-hand answer to “what does it feel like when body, speech, and mind are working together” — and a working sense of what practice comes next.
What’s Expected of Me
This course is designed as an immersive practice container rather than an introductory survey. To truly experience the shift from conceptualizing the body to living in it, the work asks for regular engagement and a willingness to stay with what surfaces—including the subtle habits of bypassing we all carry.
Because this is deep, reflective territory, it flourishes when you have the space to engage it fully. If your schedule or capacity right now only allows for something light to drop into on the fly, this may not be the most nourishing fit. But if you have the bandwidth and desire to explore your practice at its roots, you will find rich ground here.
Between sessions, you’ll receive home practices and reflection activities to weave into daily life; while there is no rigid time requirement, the care and energy you invest here will directly shape what unfolds for you. We also see this work as deeply relational. Catherine Sensei builds in breakout discussions to nurture authentic sangha, and we ask that you come ready to actively participate—offering your presence and mutual support so we can co-create a grounded space where everyone can stretch and grow.
Meet the Teacher
Catherine Pawasarat Sensei is a contemporary Dharma teacher, attendant, consort, co-teacher via Planet Dharma and co-founder of Clear Sky Retreat Center. In addition to Buddhist philosophy and its applications to daily life, Catherine also draws on generative living and universal spiritual tools including transpersonal astrology and Japanese arts.
She trained daily with Acariya Doug Duncan from 1998 until his passing in 2024, in an intensive spiritual apprenticeship that is rare in the modern West. She received lay ordination from Namgyal Rinpoche in 2003.
The Teaching in Context
This course is part of Planet Dharma’s Year of Embodiment, following directly from the Emotional Intelligence work of 2026. Where that body of work explored the felt sense of emotional integration, this one turns to the body as the foundation underneath it — reflecting the classical body–speech–mind sequence at the heart of the Namgyal tradition’s approach to human development.
It also connects to a broader project of drawing out what’s distinctive in Namgyal Rinpoche’s own synthesis — work that anticipated much of what Integral Theory would later formalize. This approach was built from a rare combination of Buddhist training, Western psychological and esoteric study, and direct transmission (including a wizza/alchemical lineage rarely discussed elsewhere). Those interested in that wider historical context may also want to learn more about the Namgyal lineage.
Course Schedule
Feb 7 – 28, 2027
Class Times (Mountain Time)
- Sunday February 7 – 9:30am – 11am
- Sunday February 14 – 9:30am – 11am
- Sunday February 21 – 9:30am – 11am
The formal, live teachings for this course will occur on Sundays. Class times are estimates and may change slightly.
Registration for the flash retreat on the fourth weekend is optional but recommended. (See below.)
We encourage you to connect with Sangha outside of class times to discuss and deepen your learning of the material. If you are interested in connecting with a sangha study group, we will help you join a group taking place in your time zone.
Flash Retreat Weekend: February 26 – 28
To deepen and integrate your experience, the final (fourth) weekend during the course will be a Flash Retreat, offered by a separate registration, which will include practical exercises to explore. You can participate from home, or you are welcome to spend the retreat with us at Clear Sky Meditation Centre in Eastern British Columbia.
5 formal group sessions will be held at these approximate times:
- Flash Retreat Friday evening session: 7:30pm MT
- Flash Retreat morning session: 9:30am MT
- Flash Retreat afternoon session: 2:30pm MT
- Sessions will be 60-90 mins in length.
Save the Dates in your Digital Calendar Now
Download the course schedules (.ics) to your iCal or Google calendars.
Course Details
Time and Location
Each of the weekly classes in this online course will be streamed live at 9:30-11am MST. We ask participants to attend live whenever possible. The recording of each class will be available for one week after each class. We encourage you to connect with sangha outside of class times to discuss and deepen your learning of the material.
The course culminates with a Flash Retreat on February 27 & 28, 2027, with formal group session times held at 9:30am and 2:30pm Mountain Time on Saturday and Sunday, with a 60-90 minute duration. There may also be a class to introduce the weekend on Friday, February 26th at 7pm MT.
What Does the Course Cost?
This course is offered based on the unique combination of:
- dāna, and
- a $80-120 USD administrative fee:
- Register by January 10 $80 USD
- Register by January 24 $100 USD
- January 25 to February 7 $120 USD
You may have come across this elsewhere in the form of “pay from the heart.” Dāna is a Sanskrit term meaning “generosity.” With dāna, we give as a mutual exchange of generosity. It’s our joy to offer this course, and we trust you’ll match our time, energy, and passion by giving an amount of money that feels good and healthy to both you and us.
The dharma has been built on generosity. No one is excluded for lack of funds. However, it is also extremely beneficial to give as much as you are able.
Typically people give in a range of $120-$500 USD for a course.
As we’re committed to ensuring everyone has access to the Dharma, please feel comfortable to give less if you are not financially secure. Another form of giving dāna is to offer service, and if you are interested in providing support in a non-financial way, we invite you to contact us.
If you are financially secure, we invite you to generate merit by providing more financial support to the Triple Gem. Contributions like these make the difference in supporting our teachers, teachings, and center.
We're delighted to share that we created a short online course so that you can learn more about the practice of dāna here.
In a traditional model of in-person teachings, a retreat center or urban meditation center invites teachers to visit. In these cases the centers have infrastructure and organization costs to cover, which might be covered by an admin fee. For the teaching itself, dāna to the teachers is offered in a bowl. This honors both the sustainability of the teachers, and of the supporting center.
We’ve tried to recreate this approach online. The teachers’ time and the teaching themselves are offered on the basis of dāna, separate to the admin fee. With our dāna offering we are making a direct gift of generosity to the teachers to support their teachings and livelihood.
The admin fee* goes to support the infrastructure and organization necessary to support them to teach. As anyone with an online business will know, the costs of setting up good infrastructure to support effective teaching and connection online can be surprising.
Our admin fee changes based on the date of registration.
Register four + weeks prior: $80
Register two to four weeks prior: $100
Register less than two weeks prior: $120
*We also do not wish to exclude anyone from the Teachings, so if you are not currently in a financial position to afford the admin fee, please contact the course Registrar via [email protected] so we can support you to attend.
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Below are a few of the work and benefits that your admin fee payment is supporting:
- High speed internet (to allow interviews and classes on-line)
- Online class systems (Zoom)
- Registration / admin systems (Eventbrite, Basecamp)
- Communication systems to keep everyone informed, share connection details, teachings and other resources (Mailchimp)
- Online storage (for example, Dropbox, to allow us to let students watch recordings, and to store and share selected teachings in other forms such as podcasts and video later, and Amazon cloud)
- Quality sound, video and editing equipment (both for live teachings and to provide good enough quality for later sharing as podcasts and video). We are regularly updating our equipment to improve your user experience.
- Online calendar booking system to allow students to book interviews
- Website hosting and maintenance for sharing upcoming courses, teachings, blogs and other resources.
We welcome any questions. May all our efforts be sustainable, abundant and for the benefit of all beings!
FAQs
Is this connected to the Emotional Intelligence course from earlier this year?
Yes — it continues the Year of Transformation’s exploration of body, speech, and mind, though you don’t need to have taken the earlier course to join.
Do I need to have read Body, Speech and Mind first?
No — it’s recommended but not required. The course is suitable for people at any point in their familiarity with this material.
Is this connected to the Emotional Intelligence course from earlier this year?
Yes — it continues the Year of Transformation’s exploration of body, speech, and mind, though you don’t need to have taken the earlier course to join.
