Bís (say “beesh”) is the Irish word for spiral. It's carved into stones all over this island, and it describes how this practice works: you keep coming back to the same few fundamentals, and each time round you go deeper.
Bís is a space to re-member yourself and Nature, through movement and stillness.
Who it's for
Bís is for anyone who feels a pull towards something deeper than the script we have been fed of work, scroll, pints, repeat; and wants to explore it through the body, the breath and stillness rather than more thinking.
You don't need to be flexible, fit or spiritual. All you need is curiosity, patience and a willingness to keep showing up.
The Foundations
of Movement
Movement Foundations is a method I learned from my teacher in Indonesia, and it has changed my entire approach to practise and teaching. Most of us move in a few habitual patterns and lose everything else, so here we start again from the ground up:
Isolate
Free each part of the body on its own, every joint and every direction.
Combine
Link those movements together with control.
Pattern
Build them into flowing, useful movement you can take anywhere.
Breath underpins all of it, and the spine is the central axis: we bend it, twist it and lengthen it, in every direction, every session. This is the groundwork that makes everything else easier, from sport to lifting around the house.
It sits naturally beside traditional Hatha, which begins the same way: freeing the joints before building into posture. Movement Foundations trains how the body moves; Hatha joins that to breath and mind.
The Foundations
of Stillness
A stable seat
If the body can't settle, the mind won't either.
A long, slow breath
This is the simplest lever you have over your nervous system.
Attention you can hold
Pick one thing, stay with it, come back when you drift. That's the training.
Rest is a skill
Most of us have forgotten how to do nothing. We practise it.
Who I am
I'm Aaron. I've been practising yoga, breathwork and meditation for over ten years now, with over a thousand hours of training and a thousand more teaching. I spent nearly a year in India, studying with teachers across almost every state, learning Hatha as it's still taught there: slowly, from the ground up, as a whole practice rather than a workout. I spent over a year with my teacher in Indonesia, breaking movement down to its foundations and building from there. I spent many days and nights on a series of silent meditation retreats all over Asia across the past 5 years, from Buddhist Vipassana, to the Himalayan Yoga Tradition to Tibetan Buddhism.
I came home to Louth to teach it the same way, because honestly I think we need it here much more than in Asia, but without the incense and nonsense.
I'm not here to tell you what to do, and I won't hand you a path. I'll teach you what I was taught, practise alongside you, and help you build your own practice that you take home with you.
Where to start
You can come to a class in Blackrock, join the Midweek Meditation Club, or practise with me on Insight Timer. Wherever you start, we'll keep coming back to the same things: breath, body, stillness, each time a little further in.