Butterfly is a mystery school, a cocoon that becomes a melting pot for our longing, joy, grief and humaness. Together we create a space for uncensored exploration, truth telling and physical and emotional nourishment. Through dance, poetry, voice, yoga nidra, creative enquiry and breathwork we dive into our beingness and follow the unique curriculum of our souls unfolding.

Next year, 2021 will mark 7 years since the Butterfly work was seeded here in Sheffield and now it’s form is changing shape again. Over lockdown it has become clear to me that the Inanna – Erishkegal work is the work of now. So from 2021 the Heroine’s Journey will now form the main body of the work. Therefore from next year Butterfly will be a 6 month initiation journey followed by a 9 month Heroine’s Journey.

The Initiation Journey takes place over 6 months at Sharrow Performing Arts Space, Sheffield. Each month we adventure into a different portal of our humanness beginning with womb wisdom then undressing the voice, breathwork, the wheel of consent, sexuality and pleasure and the naked heart. The course invites us to the places within that have been calling out to us but that we never dared visit until now…

DATES

Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th February 10-5pm and 10-5pm

Saturday 20th March 10-5pm

Saturday 17th and 18th April 10-6pm and 10-5pm

Saturday 22nd May 10-5pm

Saturday 12th June 10-5pm

Saturday 10th and Sunday 11th July 10-6pm and 10-5pm

Previous Butterflies have said,

“The Butterfly course is one of the best things I have ever done. It has been challenging in a way that I needed it to be and I have learnt so much about myself and the power of female groups.” ~ Rachael

“It is difficult to explain how much I have benefited from Carly’s work. She creates such a safe space to allow me to be open with my vulnerabilities. Signing up to the butterfly course was one of the best decisions I have made.” ~ Suzie

“There is a real magic in what Carly creates. I’m not sure it’s something you’ll be able to understand from my words alone; the beauty of Carly’s work can only really be understood by being felt. Carly creates and holds beautiful, nurturing spaces for you to explore whatever it is that arises within you, an opportunity for personal growth and exploration. Carly delights in the exploration of our humanness and there is no emotion that is not welcome. That, in itself, is a rare gift. She is a generous, wise and humble teacher.” ~ Kiran 

To apply please send an email to info@carlymountain.com with approx 300 words on what is calling you to the course. After this you will be invited to a free half hour zoom call so we can chat about the course and check that it’s right for you.

Costs: in order to make the course as affordable as possible I offer a sliding scale payment according to what you can afford of between £795 – £950. Earlybird price of £725 if paid in full by December 1st 2020. The circle will be limited to maximum 12 women so apply early to avoid disappointment. I require £100 non-refundable deposit will hold your place.

This work is one of the greatest joys in my life, witnessing time and again women flourish, change and explore new ground is such a privilege. We work to heal the rift between sexuality and spirituality, envisioning new possibilities of what an earth based sense of the sacred is and what that means within our wider lives and culture. Covid-19 has renewed my awareness of how the nuance of human interaction is essential for our spirit and soul lives. I am so looking forward to holding in person gatherings again.

Carly 

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You can listen here 

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I am longing for a world where we have forms of language that recognise and respect the deep feminine and women’s experience for the good of us all. Poetry is one form that can reach to the heart of the matter. It has the capacity to speak to parts of us that are dormant, denied or forgotten and can lead us into deeper intimacy with ourselves.

About Jouissance

Jouissance is a selection of poetry that I have written over the past 5 years that wants to be spoken and shared. The idea just wouldn’t leave me alone, so eventually I followed it and here I am.

If you would like to know more or pledge click this link https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jouissance/jouissance-poetry-of-the-deep-feminine 

Thank you for being a part of it!

Carly x

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How do we experience Angels? What names do we give for those presences in our lives that we cannot see but can on some level feel?

To end the year, we have a very special candlelit Poetry Dive on Angels. The poems will explore encounters with that which is beyond and a part of the mystery of our lives and will also explore, the very varied ways in which poets depict and refer to angels.

I am delighted to welcome guest speaker, John Hillman my Teacher, Guide and Friend who first introduced me to poetry.

We hope this will be a unique and atmospheric dive to enliven your senses and nourish your being.

Advanced booking click here to book £16 per person. There is one assisted place at £8 if anyone is struggling with money and would like a reduction please email me info@carlymountain.com.

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In this workshop we will dive into the heart center as the doorway to this listening. We will work with a fluid yoga sequence that moves from the heart into relationship with the whole body. Inviting us to open and close, reach out and draw inwards, exploring the landscapes of the heart and the wisdom held within.

So often yoga workshops prioritise opening the heart, but there is a maturity in recognising that the close is equally as valuable as the open. This sequence lends itself to both of these polarities the reaching out and the turning inwards as well. The sequence includes balances, backbends, forward bends and twists and is combined with a beautiful soundscape to evoke your emotional and physical bodies. Thereby inviting you to feel how they interweave into expansion and return until eventually winding down to a heart lead yoga nidra to finish.

Booking via Mindbody here

“Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open,

you would be paralysed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated

as birdwings.”

~ Rumi translated Coleman Barks

The post Moving From the Heart – Yoga based workshop at Yoga Kula Leeds appeared first on Carly Mountain.

This is the description from their website –

Verse Matters is an intersectional feminist arts collective based in Sheffield, founded by Rachel Bower. Verse Matters runs events at The Moor Theatre Deli in Sheffield and provides a supportive space for poetry, spoken word, storytelling, music and comedy, showcasing the work of talented people in a friendly, safe environment. Each event has a mix of experienced and new performers.

Events are always open to all. Each night includes two featured artists, and an open mic session with six performers (five minutes each). The structure is non-hierarchical, and door profits are split between performers.

Verse Matters was set up to attest to the structural inequalities in society and the arts. To remember that ‘women’s rights’ are diminished without racial equality and economic justice. To bring people together in solidarity. To create a forum for debate, challenge and pleasure.

Some of our performers tell stories that have been erased by society: refugees, detainees, prisoners. Others might read a page of their favourite book, speaking in public for the first time. Others are experienced poets, puppeteers, dramatists and performers. All are respected and appreciated.

These times call for solidarity and for resistance. We need outlets through which to articulate our anger, our sadness, our joy. Verse Matters exists to provide this space.

This is a special Verse Matters in collaboration with SHE Fest a fringe festival in Sheffield that celebrates International Women’s Day and I am delighted to be involved.

Come down and bring your friends.

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Join me on Sunday 3rd December for the last Full Moon of 2017 to consciously welcome in the end of the year and reflect on the months gone by…..

Once upon a time it was commonplace for people to have parties, hold rituals, make love and dance under the light of the full moon. The moon offers a different kind of light to the sun, a light that can illuminate deep feelings, longings and directions that are not always visible in the bright light of day. This Women’s Retreat day will give space to stir the cauldron of your inner being, to uncover, nourish and behold whatever needs to be felt, celebrated and released as we journey towards the end of the year. Through yoga, dance, poetry and creative reflection we can liberate our inner most expression and evoke and nourish the inner landscapes of our being.

We will begin the day with meditation and yoga followed by lunch and a sumptuous and restful yoga nidra. In the afternoon, we will work with dance, poetry and reflective work in partners and in circle. You do not have to have any knowledge or experience of working with poetry before. Like movement practices, poetry is a form which can cut through to the heart of things, thereby taking us beyond our habitual patterns and awaken us to fresh experience and perspectives.

“At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face into mine.
Breathe into me.

Close the language-door,
and open the love-window.

The moon won’t use the door,
only the window.

– Rumi translated by Coleman Barks

A wonderful way to spend the last full moon of the year, clearing a pathway towards 2018.

Date: Sunday 3^rd December

At: Instinctive Health, Kelham Island, Sheffield

Time: 10.30 – 5.30pm

Cost: £28 early bird if booked by November 5^th £35 thereafter.

To book click here and scroll down to the bottom of the page

Note: Anyone interested in signing up for the new Year 1 Butterfly group starting in January, this retreat will have a flavour of the butterfly work and would be a good opportunity for you to experience the space I hold and feel into if it is the course for you. You can find out about Butterfly course dates and content on the Butterfly page. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to get intouch. 

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I came to the Butterfly work shortly after having my second child. I was exhausted and out of practice, but craving some time to connect to myself and a way to nourish and enjoy my body. I started to practice just 10 minutes a day and quite quickly I found that that time for myself had become integrated into my daily life.

It took three years before the full practice moved through me. At this time, I emerged from a yoga school from which I had learnt a tremendous amount, but whose structures were masculine and hierarchical. I had been teaching yoga for 10 years and the desire to share this work with my students and other women in my life became louder and louder. But I felt instinctively that this feminine work needed a feminine way of holding. The terms masculine and feminine are fraught with often unhelpful connotations and I want to underline that this is not about gender. There are men who have the capacity to hold a feminine space and women who lead with a predominantly masculine energy, which is great. What I am referring to is difficult to name in definitive language, but essentially, what I was seeking to offer was a space that reached beyond the hierarchy of guru and student. A space that could include emotional expression, a space to be nourished and accepted in shadow and in light, and a place where sacred feminine energy could be free to emerge and be felt through each woman.

In Butterfly we sit in circle, the circle connotes a sense of equality. Within that circle, I may take the role of teacher, but I continually hold within my view that the relationship is always reciprocal. There is some teaching through the form of yoga sequences, mudra and poetry. But, both me as the teacher, and the form as the teacher meets what is naturally arising from within you. As my Teacher Kim Rosen illustrates so beautifully, “I cannot teach you anything that you don’t already know. But if I am lucky, I will say it in such a way that you know, that you know it”. Therefore, I would say that the Butterfly work is place where we can remember what we have forgotten, lost or denied. Form can be a beautiful, sacred expression of what is underneath our layers, just as words create a form through which we can reach towards mutual understanding. As a guide, I can facilitate, watch, intuit and create a container within which you can explore, but the rest is up to you.

Likewise, we cannot “do” this work. So many women come to the practice thinking they can muscle through it. But this is a truly yin practice, so what is required is a deep listening and surrender to what lies beneath the waves. We live in such an active world, which can be seen in our obsession with asana. This collection of practices are a powerful antidote to all the doing. I often compare it to orgasm, you cannot muscle your way to an orgasm. All we can do is indulge ourselves to the place where the pulsations of pleasure carry us over into orgasm. We allow ourselves to be taken beyond our will. The practice of yoga is similar. The place where form meets what is spontaneously arising is the union, and when we are taken by that meeting we enter yoga. And like orgasm, it can be a delightful, immersive sometimes even transcendent experience.

Many yoga schools prioritise calm over other emotional experiences as a sort of preordained tick box that we have achieved union. I am not saying that finding stillness and peace is not a desirable aspect of practice, it is very beneficial. But, I have no desire to be permanently calm, anymore than I desire to be permanently in rage. I was craving a space that would embrace and honour the wisdom of my emotional body as much as any other facet of my being. So much of my learning has come through relationships, engaging in them, the breakdown of them and the joyful and often messy interaction that true intimacy can bring. Behind our masks, there are many weather systems and it feels as though rather than always reaching for the light aspects of ourselves through practice, it is time to own and embrace the shadows as equally valuable as well. After all, emotional being is a flow in itself, and when we allow emotional expression to happen at some point we can guarantee that that energy will transform and find it’s onward flow. It evolves, just like a yoga sequence. The more we allow, the more we begin to realise that even the strongest feelings flow into other states. And they can be a vehicle to awakening and absolute presence.

All this creates a delicious cauldron, made even juicier by the unique gifts that each woman brings. One of the benefits of this work is the space it creates for you to spend time with other women. This is often one of the most nourishing and enjoyable aspects of the Butterfly course. In fact, all the ingredients I have named above are about intimate relationship; relationship to practice, relationship to support, relationship to ourselves, relationship to other women and underlying all that, relationship to the mystery that guides and weaves it all.

The Introduction Day at Yoga Kula in Leeds will take place on Saturday 21st October. I cannot teach the Butterfly mudra in one day it takes time and investment. But what this introduction day will offer is a flavour of the work that accompanies the mudra practice, a feel for the space I hold and a chance for us to meet. So, if any of this resonates with you, come along! I am really looking forward to it and would love to see you there. You can book the Intro Day here.

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The transition into Autumn is a perfect time to stoke the inner fires of your creativity with this evening of Poetry & Movement. We will begin with Dancing (5 rhythms-esque) through to a Poetry Dive, which is a really simple and evocative way of experiencing poetry, followed by time to write and possibly share. Finally settling down to a sumptious Yoga Nidra to finish off.

You don’t need to know, like or even particularly enjoy poetry to take part, this is a really delicious way of releasing your creativity through a cocktail of movement and words so if you feel intrigued, I encourage you to come along and give it a go.

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