Browse Schedule by Category: Retreats / Online Courses
The Body’s Way of Knowing
August 1, 2027 - August 22, 2027
The Body's Way of Knowing
Online CourseMain Course: August 1, 8 & 15, 2027
Flash Retreat Weekend: August 21 & 22, 2027
Using Integral’s maps to study how we grow from the body out, and practising it so it doesn’t stay a map, with Catherine Pawasarat Sensei.
At-a-Glance
Dates & format:
- 3 online classes (August 1, 8 & 15)
- An optional flash retreat weekend (August 21 & 22) online from home, or at Clear Sky Center
Time commitment:
- Classes are 90-minutes each (Sundays, 9:30–11am Alberta Time)
- 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); in-person participants also cover accommodation and meals at Clear Sky Center.
- See below for an explanation of dāna and for admin fee details
Prerequisites:
- Open to all backgrounds. No prior study of Integral theory is needed
- The Body as Foundation online course (February 2027) is a natural lead-in, but not required
Why This Matters Now
Each of us learned to live in a body long before we learned to think about one. As children we develop physical skills first. Then we become aware of other people and grow our emotional, social and communication skills. Our mental faculties come later still. Body, speech and mind: we grow from the body out.
As adults, most of us live the other way round. A screen-centred, heady life keeps us up in our thoughts, and it’s more painful than we often notice. Even at a retreat centre surrounded by forest and mountains, it’s remarkable how much time we can spend in our heads. A trip to the gym is a good start, but it rarely changes where we actually live.
Integral theory offers some of the most comprehensive maps of human development we have, and it openly acknowledges where it’s thinner: lived experience. This course turns Integral’s lens toward the body, its least-charted ground, and studies somatic development as the foundation our emotional and cognitive growth rest on. In the Namgyal lineage, mapping and direct experience have always gone together. You’ll leave with a clearer map of how you’ve developed through the body, and a felt sense of what it’s like to practise from there. The more we live in our bodies, the more we enjoy life.
Who This Is For
- You’ve studied Integral theory and want to know what it means to live it, not only to understand it
- You took The Body as Foundation in February 2027 and want to keep building on that ground
- You have a body-based practice (yoga, martial arts, dance, sport) and are curious how it fits into the wider picture of your development
- You notice how much of your day happens from the neck up, and you’d like your practice to reach the rest of you
- You’re in a season of life with the bandwidth to take a body of work and actually work it, between classes as well as during them
- You’d love a summer weekend of practice at Clear Sky, horses included
What You’ll Practice / Learn / Discover
Development from the body out. Explore how physical skills underpin emotional, relational and cognitive growth, using the body–speech–mind sequence and Integral’s developmental view as maps.
Studying the body without leaving it. The obvious risk of studying somatics is turning it into one more concept. So this course leans on somatic exercises: in class, between classes and throughout the flash retreat. Like a diver’s weight belt, the exercises keep us from bobbing back up to the surface of our thoughts, and Catherine Sensei will keep pointing us back to direct experience whenever the conversation drifts into theory.
A less-mapped line of development. Integral describes many lines of development, from cognitive to interpersonal. The somatic is among the least explored. As with our exploration of the emotional line in 2026, we’ll chart this territory together through inquiry, rather than receive a finished textbook answer.
Moving between parts of yourself. A particular strength of the Namgyal lineage is integration: the facility to move between body, feeling and thought, rather than living in one and visiting the others. Practise that movement, and notice what changes.
In person: learning from the horses. Horses respond to what’s happening in our bodies, not to what we’re thinking. Being around them simply requires us to be embodied. On-site participants will work with Clear Sky’s horses during the flash retreat as a direct, honest mirror for presence.
What’s Expected of Me
This course is an invitation to practise more than a survey of ideas. Its heart is in your body, so the exercises between classes matter as much as the classes themselves. There’s no fixed number of hours; the care you bring to the home practices will shape what this course becomes for you.
Expect to be pointed back to experience, gently and often, especially when the discussion drifts toward theory. The habit of floating up into concepts is one we all share, and untangling it together is part of the work.
Classes include breakout discussions. We invite you to bring your presence and support to one another, so we can co-create a grounded space where everyone can stretch and grow.
If you’re joining the flash retreat at Clear Sky, you’ll spend time outdoors and with horses. We’ll send practical details on what to wear and how the sessions run when you register.
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
The Somatic Line is the second of three online courses in Planet Dharma’s 2027 Year of Embodiment. Catherine Sensei sees the three as flags planted in the ground. The Body as Foundation (February) began with Namgyal Rinpoche’s Body, Speech and Mind, now more widely available thanks to Bodhi Publishing. The Somatic Line brings in the Integral perspective that Qapel was so keen for us to explore and integrate. Written in the Stars, Manifested in the Body (November) adds AstroDharma.
Each course stands on its own, and many students will take all three
Course Schedule
August 1 – 22, 2027
Class Times (Mountain Time)
- Sunday, August 1 — 9:30–11am
- Sunday, August 8 — 9:30–11am
- Sunday, August 15 — 9:30–11am
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: August 21- 22
The final weekend is a flash retreat (separate registration), full of practical exercises to integrate the course. Join from home, or 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 July 4 $80 USD
- Register by July 18 $100 USD
- July 19 to August 1 $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
I haven’t studied Integral theory. Will I be lost?
No. Catherine Sensei introduces the maps you need in class, and most of the course is practice.
What if I miss a live class?
Each recording is available for one week after the class.
Can I take the course without the flash retreat?
Yes. The retreat is recommended but optional, with its own registration.
