Yoga & Dharma

The Perils and Gratifications of Optimization

12:30 - 4:30 In Person

$80 - $105

The Yoga Room Berkeley

"Optimization hinders evolution" Alan Perlis

This workshop is for you if you have perfectionistic tendencies that cause you distress and hold you back! We will investigate the habitual undertaking of reflexively improving ourselves, our experience, and our own lives. How far is too far and when does the work of improving become a trap?

“Ashleys classes keep me sane. They help to center me and keep a positive outlook on life.” Racheal M Berkeley, CA

This workshop will give you:

• a working understanding of your pattern of personal optimization

• why and how we get stuck in patterns of optimization

• tools for recognizing compulsive self improvement

• explore when optimization may be the best choice

• practical skills to make different choices

• how to be at peace with the messy imperfection of life

• how to be a "human being" rather than a "human doing"

Tentative Schedule

12 - 1:30 Yoga Asana

1:30 - 2 Guided Breathing and Meditation

2 - 3 Talk with Q&A

3 - 3:30 Small Group Break-outs

3:30 - 4 Restorative Yoga

"Figuring out how to “get better” at being a woman is a ridiculous and often amoral project – a subset of the larger, equally ridiculous, equally amoral project of learning to get better at life under accelerated capitalism... Satisfaction remains, under the terms of the system, necessarily out of reach." Jia Tolentino: Athleisure, barre and kale: the tyranny of the Ideal woman.

To register, send a payment of $80 - $105 (sliding scale) and make a note that it is for the Sept 7 workshop.