WELCOME

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  Celts
  P. O. Box 17
  Petoskey, Michigan
  49770

email Seamus at celticbodyprayers@gmail.com

I am grateful for life,
for living in this beautiful place,
for the gift of doing the work I love.

At Tara's Meadow, my Heart is as Open as the Sky    

     “Stress is a primal force of nature.  Without it life would have no impetus to push its way through.  Without stress we would not mature, and nothing would evolve. Stress either opens us up or closes us off.  When it causes us to open, life does not get easier, it gets deeper, more creatively engaged, and more spiritually fulfilling.  Overcoming our tendency to close is our most essential work."
     - James O’Dea, from Creative Stress.

     “Knowing love, I will allow all things to come and go . . .
                       to be supple as the wind,
     and take everything that comes with great courage
                       As they say, life is right in any case.
                       My heart is as open as the sky”
                                                  - Kama Sutra.

     Tara’s Meadow is one small place on this planet, where sojourners can experience the uplift that solitude and sweet company offer, in the deep heart of nature.  We invite you out for the simple grace this beautiful place can provide - a boost to your creativity and inner resilience.  This summer at Tara’s Meadow we welcome out individuals and couples for customized “GUEST SOJOURNS” click here.

     • GUEST SOJOURNS AT TARA’S MEADOW, BEAVER ISLE, SUMMER 2012 Have you ever thought about booking a unique personal retreat in a quiet, beautiful place? A kind of “spiritual vacation” with just the right blend of solitude, discovery, and good company? Check out your options as a potential “guest sojourner” on reserved weekends at Tara’s Meadow.  Make your reservations early.  Both individuals and couples choose from a variety of experiences – from solace and play in the beautiful heart of nature, to Island tours, Celtic Body Prayers movement meditations (described below), life coaching, swimming, hammocking, and hikes through nature. For more detail on “Tara’s Meadow Center” click here.

     • RESILIENCE REJOICE! AUG 31 –SEPT 3   A special retreat made for progressives who live on tiny budgets, and who do "good works" in our communities.  Towards summer’s end over Labor Day Weekend, we will offer the simple gift of rest and recharging, play and camaraderie to our often over-worked, over-committed environmentalists, stressed out social activists, and progressives of all kinds who are doing “good works” in our communities.  This is your time to share in play, spaciousness, exploration, relaxation, networking and creativity with your comrades.  Join us for some R & R time (“refresh & rethink”) during “RESILIENCE REJOICE!”, our 16th annual labor retreat weekend August 31 – Sept 3 (link).

     • CLASSES & PERSONAL CARE SESSIONS  Look for a list of personal services, and/or small group study topics by clicking on: “Workshops/Services.(Above Left)”  You will also find there a full description of our “personal care sessions”, which are individualized programs for your spirit’s growth and the navigation of life’s challenges and mysteries.

We live on a conscious planet.  The joys we feel and the stresses we experience together are part of the neural web of our mother earth’s consciousness.  She is fully alive and awake to our changes and our shifts in energy.  We are her cells.  She carries our messages of joy and suffering, promise and despair in her body electric, along with those of the simians and cetaceans and the grasses.

We live in times of  “Creative Stress”, says the world-honored peacemaker and evolutionary social healer James O’Dea.  These are times of despair and opportunity, endings and beginnings . . . “All swings around us—there is as much darkness as light” – said Walt Whitman.  Yet today we are all witnesses to an undeniable shift, an evolution of consciousness unfolding in the midst of this timeless dynamic of darkness and light.

What is our personal role in this evolutionary shift?  We each carry inside of us our own “evolutionary impulse.”  Honoring it becomes the source of our joy and empowerment.  Dishonoring it can make us sick, depressed, even violent.  We can find our evolutionary impulse by following our bliss, by doing what makes us truly happy, by discovering what it is we seek to create and lovingly bring forth into this world.  The impulse is there in each one of use, a loving unique expression that is the real source of beauty and diversity on planet Earth.

Celtic Body Prayers Celtic Body Prayers® offer us a fresh new path for restoring balance in our lives.  Utilizing gentle movement-meditations, ecology and verse, shamanic healing and the deep wells of native and contemporary wisdom, the Body Prayers® Arts can help us cultivate our bodies, minds and spirits together in one graceful daily practice. First Introduced by Seamus Mullin-Norgaard in 1995 and featured prominently in his annual Beaver Island, Michigan retreat, Celtic Body Prayers® is a unique, healthful exercise and meditation art.  Utilizing recited sacred earth poetry, Celtic Body Prayers® is a new approach to balancing body with gentle exercise, mind with meditation and spirit with prayer.  By once again giving voice and movement to the ancient poetry of the heavens, the elements and Creation, Celtic Body Prayers® offers us a rich new daily practice for celebrating the health and beauty of ourselves and our environment. Body Prayers® are unique for their wide breath of resources and cultural inspirations.  Seamus has skillfully blended his background in contemporary ecology (M.S. in environmental studies) and the movement meditation arts (yoga, T'ai Chi, Qi Gong), along with the sacred wisdoms traditions of the diverse cultures he has studied or lived amongst (notably the Native Irish and Native Americans).  In Body Prayers® the breadth of knowledge and respect for the global traditions is inclusive rather than exclusive, honoring Christianity, Buddhism, Native American Spirituality, and most notably the Sacred Earth Ways of the Celts.  Drawing from these diverse backgrounds Seamus is able to tailor a healthful daily practice of movement meditations, exercise and spiritual affirmations sensitive to a wide range of beliefs and backgrounds.  Come explore the Celtic Body Prayers® Arts for a new ecology of health, grace, and spirit. Celtic Body Prayers® movements, based on nature's creatures, mysteries, elements and plants, include... The Deer's Cry - a simple, graceful morning prayer based on St. Patrick's Lorica. The Wizard's Dance - sheer poetry in motion, a slow dance that breathes shape and fire into the ancient Song of Amergin. The Tree Lorica - A gentle exercise of one's legs, back and trunk involving the spirit of the trees. Please, feel free to investigate our website thoroughly and to tell your friends about us.  Check out when and where Seamus will be holding future workshops by clicking the Workshops/Services link below.  For more information on our Retreats and Community building activities click on the Retreats/Community link, also below. Peace and blessings.