The Practice of Presence is about coming alive to the present moment. Readers will discover practical guidance on how to seek daily what we truly desire behind all the urgencies and obligations of our lives: contact with our own immediate inner truth. Here are the seminal ideas of five great spiritual paths as seen through the lens of a seeker’s experience. Tıai Chi, prayer, and meditation are well known. The Alexander Technique and Jungian studies are not usually thought of as spiritual and the Gurdjieff teaching is relatively unknown. Yet each of these paths to wholeness is complementary to the others, calling on the body, mind, and feeling in unique ways that can lead to a growing integration of all three.
Patty de Llosa, author of The Practice of Presence: Five Paths for Daily Life Morning Light Press 2006, has led group classes, daylong workshops and weeklong intensives in the Gurdjieff work, T ai Chi and Taoist meditation and teaches the Alexander Technique both privately and in group classes. Among her recent public venues are the Open Center, Wainwright House and the Lake Conference Center in New York State; Northern Pines Health Resort in Maine; the Peruvian Aikido Association in Lima, Peru; Columbia University Graduate Theater Program; the Society for Experimental Studies, Toronto. Her recently published articles appear in the Fall 2004 Parabola ( Befriending the Body ), the Winter 2004 issue of the Taijiquan Journal ( Are You a Leader or a Follower? ) and the Spring 2006 Parabola ( Embracing the Irrational ).
After graduating from Swarthmore College (BA) and the Sorbonne (MA), Ms. de Llosa as a reporter for Time magazine for six years, five of them in charge of the editorial Art Section. She married a Peruvian, and raised three children in Lima where she also wrote occasionally for the major local newsmagazine, Caretas. When her husband became governor of the province of Loreto, she served as president of The Green Cross, bringing treatment and medicines to those in need in the Amazon jungle, as well as organizing with the Peace Corps a summer visit of some twenty American doctors and young people to help build roads and schools. Returning to Lima she founded and ran for eight years the first foreign chapter of the United Nations pre-school, International Playgroup.
De Llosa returned to New York in l979, where she worked for six years as managing editor of American Fabrics & Fashions, then as associate editor of Leisure Magazine, a Time Inc. startup. After a year as communications consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation she moved on to Fortune Magazine for thirteen years, where she became Deputy Chief of Reporters. She retired in order to study fulltime to become an Alexander teacher while working halftime as communications director of internet startup e-academy, inc. and writing this book. During all this time, the study of the practice of presence has been integral to her exploration of the meaning of life. She met the enigmatic philosopher, G. I. Gurdjieff, as a child in the 30 s and 40 s, and has taught his sacred dances and led groups for more than forty years in Peru, Chile, Canada and New York. She studied T ai Chi with Master T.T. Liang in l963 and has taught classes for many years. Her interest in Jungian psychology led to a Jungian analysis and intensive work with Marion Woodman in her Body/Soul Rhythms programs.
