Leading with Genuine Care Elysabeth Williamson - Relationship as a Doorway to the Soul
"Relationships are where we receive the greatest fulfillment and the greatest challenge." — Elysabeth Williamson
Today's guest is Elysabeth Williamson, a self-taught yoga teacher of 35 years who developed Principle-Based Partner Yoga,™ a system of yoga that focuses on relationship and connection with others. She also uses this work to encourage people to think and talk about death and dying as a way to live life more fully. She is the author of the award-winning book The Pleasures and Principles of Partner Yoga and is working on a second book, Becoming Fully Human: How Learning To Feel Saved My Life.
Williamson had a challenging start in life, marked by a mother with mental illness and addictions. This, she says, brought her to seek out healing and understanding, noting "human suffering is the great equalizer." She believes that "we're born into a circumstance that our soul is choosing" and that her life's work has been to integrate her human self with the wisdom nature we are all born with.
Williamson started doing yoga when she was 16. At that time, the 1970s, there were not many places to learn yoga. After playing and touring with a rock band fo several years, at the age of 28 she returned to yoga and started learning more. She says that for her, yoga was about reconnecting with her intuition, and that many of the movements were ones she'd been doing since childhood. As yoga became more popular, Williamson resisted the trend of "competitive" yoga and instead developed a teaching based around the principles of relationship, which became her partner yoga system.
Rather than focusing on just the physical, Williamson's teaching is based on universal qualities of humanity and the idea that yoga can be used to help people get in touch with and cultivate more of these principles.
Williamson also completed training as a hospice worker, which she found helped her to prepare for her mother's death. Though she ultimately concluded, based on witnessing her mother's death, that how we live is how we die, she was able to come to peace and forgiveness for her childhood. She brings what she's learned to her teachings, offering workshops where she challenges people to look at and talk about death and dying. Williamson notes that many traditions use meditations on death to come to a deeper awakening to life.
Williamson strives to create a safe and supportive space for people to voice their fears about death. She uses the sivasana pose as a tool to help people relax and be guided into the "ultimate surrender." Participants report coming away from these experiences with less fear and more joy. One woman told her 10 years after attending a workshop that it had helped her when she was witnessing her mother's death.
Williamson will be offering a workshop as part of the Stanford University Contemplative Arts Summit in October. More information and other events can be found at partneryoga.net/events.
In this episode of Leading with Genuine Care, you’ll also learn:
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Why Williamson focuses on relationship in her yoga teachings
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What she believes we can learn through relationships and connection
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What the hallmarks of a good teacher are
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Why she believes talking about and working with death is so important
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What people experience in a weekend retreat on death and dying
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What she believes forgiveness is
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How Williamson has come to terms with her family and her past, including her brother's suicide
Connect With Elysabeth Williamson
Websites
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elysabeth-williamson-98421a1aa/
https://twitter.com/ElysabethWilli1
Book
The Pleasures and Principles of Partner-Based Yoga
Available at https://partneryoga.net/shop-2/
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