April 14 – 16, 2023
Casa Payer – Luserba San Giovanni

Delicacy is an attitude of the soul connected to sensitivity, sweetness, tenderness, and kindness.
Treccani (an Italian dictionary) defines “delicate” (from Latin delicatus, derived from deliciae “delight”) as that which imparts a pleasant impression of fineness, lightness, and similar qualities to the various human senses (contrasted with rough, harsh, crude, coarse, noisy, strong, etc.).

We often associate delicacy with ideas of vulnerability, fragility, or weakness. However, during these days of practice and observation, we aim to fully rediscover its strength, the power of a harmonious, stable, balanced energy that lacks unruly vehemence or heaviness, rigidity, or strained effort.
Nature teaches us this through the power of a sprout, pushing its way through the soil towards the light to manifest as the gentle essence of a blade of grass.
The delicacy of a soft gaze, resting lightly (not superficially!) upon things, both within and outside us, reveals unexplored possibilities, resources, and spaces for freedom and care. But to be delicate, we must first be sensitive—meaning attentive, open, and receptive. And the exercise of pure feeling is fundamental to accessing the dimension of delicacy. Our tendency to impose ourselves on reality—starting with our inner reality—with our convictions, preferences, phobias, prejudices, and expectations, prevents reality from manifesting in its extraordinary complexity. It stops us from seeing and understanding things as they are and, consequently, from choosing and enacting the “right action”—that which is measured, balanced, and effective.
It’s no coincidence that simplicity, purity, kindness, and delicacy are considered the fundamental virtues of the samurai in Confucianism. According to tradition, a samurai “must resemble the cherry blossom in spirit.” To be brave means to be delicate.
Respect and kindness also extend to our own limits, to what we don’t like about ourselves. If we don’t feel compassion for ourselves, for our difficulties and fragilities, if we don’t understand what lies beneath our defenses, how can we have compassion (etymologically “to feel with”) for others?

Chandra Livia Candiani states.
“For me, tenderness is a strong feeling. You arrive at it; it’s a journey. We often become tender after life has thoroughly seasoned us, unearthed us, gnawed at us, but also after we’ve recognized the harm we do to ourselves by hardening. Tenderness isn’t present where there’s severity, judgment, malevolence. For me, it’s a bit like a younger sister to compassion, less prominent, less on the front lines; tenderness is a bit shy, it has the muzzle of a forest animal, it’s elusive and delicate.
When we say a child is tender, it’s because we see them disarmed, without cunning, unsuspecting. The elderly also stir these small waves of tenderness in us; their state is also one of disarmament, an emptiness of strategies, an inadequacy to always cope, to live up to expectations. Someone who is tender doesn’t want to succeed at all costs; they want to feel how they are and how others are; they are a sister and brother, not a parent, not a teacher. Tenderness knows how to stand as an equal, side by side, not frontal. So rare today, that you turn a corner and find a guru, but you have to travel the whole world to find a sincere friend who cries with you, laughs with you, and doesn’t want to explain life to you or solve its mysteries. Here, tenderness finds mysteries where others see problems (…)

We could say that delicacy is the highest form of attention, of ‘presence.’ In these days, then, we won’t be overly verbose but will practice silence as a form of attentive and participatory, welcoming, and equitable listening”.

Again, the marvelous Chandra.
“There is a fundamental battery within us, made of silence, hesitation, delicacy, wise compassion. It needs to be recharged; it needs silence, emptiness, suspension. By learning to intimately know the breath, we realize it has two pauses: a brief one between inhalation and exhalation, and a more prolonged one at the end of exhalation, before inhaling again. To linger in this pause is like lingering in the land of lack, without seeking remedies or causes; it’s entering into contact with our fundamental, radical lack and discovering that by dwelling in its precarious, elusive land, we recharge, we exist. It’s like saying that the relief we sought by rushing to fill the lack, we find instead by feeling it, by inhabiting it.
However, the stillness that gradually builds by returning with assiduous and delicate care to the breath is merely the nest from which to depart and to which to return; it is neither the goal nor the Way, only a step on it. We easily become attached to that stillness, mistake it for peace, pretend never to leave it, and view everything that disturbs it as an enemy. We believe we can, sooner or later, live in a bubble of serene separateness from everything else, from our very own life. The practice of awareness, however, connects us, not through opinions, preferences, or concepts, but through the breath and the deep, intuitive insight that dwelling in serenity brings forth.
In his work Totality and Infinity, Lévinas says he would like to replace the term “concept”—something that is grasped—with the word “caress“—something that brushes without taking, something that flows. The caress is ‘a march toward the invisible,’ because the caress ‘does not know what it seeks.’ This is the right touch we train ourselves in towards ourselves and others: to know by caressing, letting ourselves be caressed by the breath, letting ourselves be touched by life. Sometimes there will be tugs, slaps, shocks, but if we learn to let ourselves be shaken, to go with the current, the caress will be present as a method, a way of welcoming.”.

The practices.

• Day 1:
  17.30 Hatha Flow Practice. Silence: We will exercise delicacy in listening. This is a focused, non-superficial gaze that has no pretensions or expectations, that doesn’t judge or manipulate based on desires. It makes no strategies to obtain.
  
  From practice to the moment of sleep: Satya (truthfulness) in thought, word, and action (What is spontaneity?)
  19.45 dinner
  
• Day 2:
  From morning until lunchtime, we’ll practice Vipassanā silence. After lunch, we’ll then exercise delicacy in expression (physical, verbal, etc.).
  
  7.30 The Strength of Delicacy. Through core work and twists, we’ll explore the possibility of activating a balanced, delicate, yet powerful energy, free from impetuosity.
  9.15 Breakfast
  11. Optional meditaion
  13 Lunch
  Early Afternoon: Mindful Walk or Meditation. Satya (truthfulness) in speech, thought, and action.
  17.30 Balance, Softness, and Lightness. Through an unstable and disorienting Vinyasa flow and balancing poses, we’ll allow ourselves to experience a light, non-judgmental attitude, adaptability, and once again, loving-kindness.
  19.45 Pizza!
  
• Day 3:
  7.30 Gentle, delicate, soft. Through a practice focused on spinal extensions, we’ll embody the gentle and loving attitude that is the source of delicacy.
  9.15 Breakfast
  13.30 Lunch and reflections

The sessions, courses, seminars, retreats, and materials offered by Sarangi are for inner exploration, problem-solving, and personal growth. They are not a substitute for the work of doctors or psychotherapists, as their purpose is not to consider, treat, or resolve medical or health-related conditions or symptoms.