This morning challenge is held in English. This is why the below information is in English.

3-week morning challenge: „Winter Self-Care: A Somatic Yoga Morning Practice for the Darker Half of the Year“ with Liina Tael
Nov 09-27
Mo-Fr 08.00-09.15
Studio Berg & Online
weeks 1–2: Join in person at Studio Berg or online via Zoom.
week 3: Online for all participants – an intentional integration week to practice from home and allow the morning ritual to become part of your own daily rhythm.
English
195€ in studio + online + access to recordings for 6 months
165 € online only + access to recordings for 6 months

This 3-week morning challenge is held in Studio Berg and online via Zoom. You will receive the Zoom info to join the morning challenge together with your booking confirmation via email. Recordings of each session will be available for 6 months after the challenge.

Please register here for the course in Studio Berg. 
Please register here for the Online-Only-Challenge.

What if winter and darkness aren’t something you have to get through?
The days get shorter. The light gives way to darkness. Nature is preparing for hibernation. That is the natural cycle of descent into Yin. And yet, most of us are expected to carry on as usual. Stay productive. Make plans. Exercise. Work. Socialise. Keep going. This is partly why the darker months feel difficult. Not because there is something wrong with winter or wrong with us, but because there is so little room in our lives for the qualities that winter represents: slowness, darkness, quiet, uncertainty, conservation and rest.

What if we allowed the darker half of the year to have its own rhythm?
This three-week somatic practice series is an experiment in doing just that. For three weeks, we meet every weekday morning before the day gets going. We move, rest, breathe, listen, write and sometimes simply stay still. Not as another thing to accomplish, improve or optimize. But to spend some time together in sync with the season we are actually in and to honor the wisdom within the natural cycles.

As the writer and mythologist Michael Meade writes: “Instead of outward growth and upward climb, life at times must turn inward and downward in order to grow in other ways.”

Who is this for?
This winter somatic yoga series is for you, if you: 
– are already feeling tired or depleted as the darker months approach.
– find yourself dreading winter or wishing you could simply skip ahead to spring.
– are tired of the constant pressure to keep going, keep improving and keep holding yourself together.
– feel increasingly disillusioned with the dominant cultural narratives about what success looks like, that life and growth are linear and that rest needs to be earned.
– want to explore a different relationship with rest, descent and slowness.
– are curious about seasonal living and what the cycles of nature might have to do with your life and your own inner cycles.
– enjoy yoga but want something less focused on performance, achievement or getting into a particular shape.
– are interested in somatic movement, yin, restorative yoga, qigong, meditation or Chinese medicine.
– would like a regular morning practice, but don’t want it to become another box to tick.
– are curious about rest as a form of resistance: a way of remembering your kinship with the wider world, and cultivating the capacity to stay present, discerning and responsive, so we can stand up for what we care about without collapsing, hardening or turning away from what is difficult

You don’t need to be experienced in any of these practices. You can move at your own pace. You can start exactly where you are.

What you’ll get
Over three weeks, you’ll have 15 mornings of somatic yoga, movement and inquiry with the flexibility to participate in whatever way works for you.
Join us in person at Studio Berg, with the woodstove lit for you each morning; join the livestream via Zoom; or practice in your own time with the recordings.
All sessions are recorded and available to you for 6 months, giving you plenty of time to return to practices, revisit the series or make them part of your own rhythm long after the three weeks are over.
We’ll explore somatic movement, yin, restorative yoga, gentle flow, qigong, meditation, breathwork, Yoga Nidra, acupressure, The Five Elements and seasonal cycles, writing and self-inquiry, poetry – alongside silence, stillness and rest.

Turning towards the darker half of the year
In Chinese medicine and Taoist thought, winter belongs to the Water element and represents the most yin phase of the year – a time of conservation, depth, stillness and turning inward. Look at nature in winter. Trees lose their leaves. Seeds disappear underground. Growth becomes less visible. Energy is conserved rather than constantly spent. There is intelligence in this and we are not separate from these cycles. Our bodies, our lives, our creativity and projects have cycles too. We move through periods of expansion and contraction, activity and rest, clarity and uncertainty. Yet our culture tends to reward us for behaving as though we should always live in an eternal summer.

This series offers potent inquiries and practices as ways of exploring the larger questions like:
What happens when we begin to question the idea that life is supposed to be a constant movement towards more – more growth, more productivity, more achievement?
How will we live and create if we accept the invitation of darkness, descent and the unknown as places where life is renewed and transformed, deeper connection is kindled, and new possibilities can take shape?

Week 1: Making space for rest
– What does it actually mean to slow down?
– Looking at our relationship with rest, productivity and slowing down.
– Exploring the wider meaning of yin, introduce somatic movement inquiry, and look at the nervous system and its relationship to rest and restoration.
– Exploring Dynamic Rest – rest that isn’t collapse or passivity, but about cultivating a state of quiet wakefulness, embodied awareness and responsiveness.
– The practices will move between somatics, yin, restorative yoga, gentle flow, qigong, meditation, breathwork, journaling and longer periods of rest.

Week 2: Living with the cycles
– Widening the lens to explore seasonal living and cyclicality through Taoist and Chinese medicine perspectives.
– Working with the Five Elements, exploring the transition from autumn’s Metal phase towards winter’s Water phase, and experiment with yoga, qigong and acupressure as ways of relating to these seasonal themes.
– Questioning the increasingly familiar language of self-care. When does self-care become another form of self-improvement?
– And what might happen if taking care of ourselves meant learning to listen rather than constantly trying to change?

Week 3: Integration – Taking the practice home
– The final week is intentionally different. After two weeks of practicing together in the studio and online, we move into an integration week.
– There are no in-person sessions this week. Instead, the practices meet you where you actually live – at home, in your own space, within the rhythm of your own mornings.
– There will be more space, less instruction and more opportunity to follow your own experience. The sessions become less about learning something new and more about letting the practices settle into your life.
– You can make your tea. Stay in your pyjamas. Look out the window. Practice in the space where you live your life. This final week is about beginning to find out how this way of moving, resting and paying attention can become a more seamless part of your own daily rhythm.
– We’ll continue exploring the Water element, winter, depth, instinct, trust and the unknown, while asking how our practice can ripple back into our relationships, our work and the way we show up in the world.

Liina Tael is originally from Estonia, lived and taught yoga in Berlin for ten years. In 2024, she took a bold step towards a long-held dream: to live in deeper reciprocity with nature. Liina moved to Italy, where she is slowly building an off-grid homestead and food forest together with her husband, their two dogs, and their cat – learning as they go.
“I know I can do more, but can I do less?” is an inquiry I received from my Restorative Yoga teacher Judith Lasater over a decade ago. It’s been a guiding North Star in my practice, teaching and life ever since. A more recent one that follows a similar “yin-flavoured” inquiry is by my favorite poet (the late and great) Andrea Gibson “I know most people try hard to do good and find out too late they should have tried softer.” My path into this work has been shaped by a deep curiosity about the human body, our felt experience, our connection to the natural world, and the quiet intelligence that permeates every living thing. Over the years, I’ve been an avid learner of yoga, movement, anatomy, fascia, the nervous system, Chinese Medicine and meditation. My own practice and way of teaching have evolved and changed considerably over the last couple of decades. When I started teaching in 2007, I was drawn to dynamic, alignment-focused practices and creative sequencing. Today, at the very centre of my teaching are somatic practices inspired by the Feldenkrais Method, Thomas Hanna’s Clinical Somatics and Tias Little’s S.A.T.Y.A. (Sensory Awareness Training for Yoga Attunement) training. “Soma” is a Greek word meaning “living body,” and the somatic viewpoint considers the body as wise, adaptive, fluid, self-adjusting and self-regulating – and therefore as a potent gateway to possibility and change. 
More info: https://www.liinayoga.com/winteryogaberlin.html