Tai Chi and Natural Movement in the Park 2025

 

Join me for a 12-week intro to Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and natural movement.

This class will be held in beautiful Lindsey Gardens at 7th Ave and N Street.

We begin Wednesday, May 21st from 6-7:15pm.

This introductory class will explore the rich world of Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and Natural Movement practice through the changing seasons. We meet in Lindsey Gardens, the lovely, quiet, public park at the top of N Street in the Avenues.

A unique and rewarding approach to learning Tai Chi includes Qi Gong practices, along with Feldenkrais and Natural Movement explorations.

 

 

While we will be working with a Tai Chi form, much of the class will be dedicated to deepening the principles underneath the forms. These are principles that can be applied and integrated into any aspect of your movement practice and life.

 

“I loved Carl’s Animal Body and Strength and Mobility courses. For me, both were a movement laboratory in which I became aware of my habits, discovered new ways to move, and always experienced myself as a more efficient, elegant, and spontaneous mover. Now, I’m a way “over the hill” being and movement lover, so am thrilled that I continue to add to rather than subtract movements from my repertoire. I have been studying for many years with Carl and Erin and wholeheartedly attribute my body’s vitality and love of learning to their teachings, humor, and kindness. Bottom line, go ahead, give it a try, you might just discover something new and delightful about you. ” – Kristen Paul

 

 

We are living in challenging times, and for many of us, the bodily stress we carry has increased in recent years.

Tai Chi principles and embodied practices can offer profound support and can help us to release unnecessary tension, grow the somatic foundations of resilience, and deepen our embodied, relaxed, alert presence not only during class but during our daily lives.

 

Some of the questions we will explore are:

 

  • How do I discover, and continually return to, a vital, nourishing, living relationship with the ground?

  • Can I deepen the support, strength, mobility, alignment, and presence in my legs?

  • Can my spine be dynamic, powerful, supportive, and free?

  • Can I learn to bring warmth, curiosity, and friendliness to the places where I hold tension?

  • Can I move in the world with grace, self-respect, power, and integrity?

  • Can I maintain a connection to my center without disconnecting from the world around me?

  • Can my breath be free, spontaneous, uncontrived?

  • Can I  inhabit and move from the dynamic, intelligent, vital center of my lower belly?

  • Can I be less stuck in my head and learn to inhabit my whole body?

  • How can I keep my movement dynamic, spontaneous, and enjoyable as I age? 

  • Can I grow my capacity for resilience in how I respond to unexpected challenges?

 

 

 


Class will begin Wednesday, May 21st, and will continue on for 12 classes from 6-7:15 pm until August 13th.

Please note: There will be no class on July 9th

As this class unfolds during the busy season of summer, please know that I teach in such a way that you will not be behind if you have to miss some classes.

As the saying goes, “We will go an inch wide and a mile deep.”

 

  Cost: $295

Before registering, please read our cancellation policy here

 

 

We have limited scholarships available. If you are experiencing hardship, please send me a note. 

I’m so looking forward to our time together.

 

 

 

“Carl creates a friendly and sacred space where the functional, playful, natural, and sublime intersect.
He shares various potent yet accessible somatic practices with an animist lens, inviting you to study and awaken the terrain of your own body while also taking your rightful place in relationship with an alive world.
Carl’s classes assert our (as humans) innate blueprint for ease in movement. He offers a way back to this ease that’s fun, functionally responsible, stress-relieving, and community building. He then helps us remember what’s most important by addressing our embodied humanness in entirety, weaving in beautiful readings and teachings on longing, emotion, lineage, and our relationships with the wild and each other.
Carl teaches with humor, confidence, respect, and love. His mastery of many movement and spiritual traditions is evident, and yet he seems to be continually learning along with his students, curious about our findings.”
—Ruthie Fraser, Somatic Educator & Founder of Body Rewilding

Carl Rabke is a Somatic Naturalist, an Embodiment teacher, and a tender of soul and living culture. For the last 25 years, he has practiced and taught where the streams of somatics,  soul-work, and a deep love of this living Earth meet. He is a Feldenkrais Practitioner and Rolfer, and loves to support people in returning to, and remembering natural, inherent intelligence in movement, meditation, ritual, song, rhythm and community. Carl has studied at Bobby McFerrin’s Circlesongs School and is a Musica do Circulo practitioner. He has mentored with Jozef Frucek of Fighting Monkey, and has been on the Care Team for Bayo Akomolafe’s We Will Dance With Mountains gatherings. Carl has mentored with and taught alongside Francis Weller. He hosts the Embodiment Matters Podcast with his beloved wife, Erin. You can find out more about him here.