vienna
practice
house
Where spiritual practice and daily life meet
We are creating a place in the heart of the city where deep contemplative practice and everyday life can meet.
A place for heart and soul cultivation, research, and embodied practice. For the people of the city to pause before and after work, and for communities and individuals to join online from anywhere.
We wish to explore how ancient technologies of practice, and principles of monastic life, can be carried into a modern and secular way of living — not by withdrawing from the world, but by learning how to embody practice in our relationships, work, community, service and culture.
We are creating a place in the heart of the city where deep contemplative practice and everyday life can meet.
A place for heart and soul cultivation, research, and embodied practice. For the people of the city to pause before and after work, and for communities and individuals to join online from anywhere.
We wish to explore how ancient technologies of practice, and principles of monastic life, can be carried into a modern and secular way of living — not by withdrawing from the world, but by learning how to embody practice in our relationships, work, community, service and culture.
Photo Credit for most pictures in the homepage: Cristina Crippa
How did it start?
Practice House is a living experiment born from a group of people who have been practicing and living together in retreats, pilgrimages, and periods of residency over the past six years. Particularly training in Taiji, Qigong, Neigong, and the Tao arts.
It has grown naturally out of conversations, explorations, and imagining what it might mean to bring this way of living more fully into our daily lives.
The house will combine a physical practice space, a residential community, an online ecosystem, and an ongoing programme embedded in the wider city. And through collaborations with other service-oriented initiatives, particularly in Vienna and West Asia.
Daily meditation
You're welcome to join our open sessions, please see our schedule here. These sessions are available online and in person.
It's like a contemporary, non-denominational monastery, opening meditations for anyone to tune into the field together.
taiji,qigong, Neigong, taogong
Drop-in sessions for all levels, multi-month courses, weekend retreats, Taichi&Qigong for kids, Sunday intensives, and more. In person and live.
online platform: the interbeing ecosystem
A shared virtual place to follow the practices, and meet with other communities of practice in recognition of our common shared being. The intention is not to take one’s attention into the platform or consume content, but to bring it back to embodied presence.
interfaith programmes
Although we gather daily mostly around Tao moving meditation, the interfaith dimension is central. We want to create a space where different spiritual backgrounds are not a reason for separation, and each tradition can retain its uniqueness, while meeting each other on our common ground: being. What connects us is not one belief system or form, but a shared wish to live with greater presence, wakefulness and love.
events: Grief, celebration, artistic and musical gatherings
From Sufi music and devotional traditions, to contemporary expressions of the sacred. Artistic performances on contemplative topics. Grief, death and loss gatherings bi-weekly. Research in Love events. Mindful co-working days. Guest teachers. Spiritual movie nights with absolutely divine popcorn :), and more.
in collaboration
In Vienna, many initiatives are responding to ecological and social challenges. We see the Practice House as a complementary part of this wider field: a place dedicated to the cultivation of the inner life, of the soul, of the heart, and to supporting the people and communities caring about the world.
who's behind it?
The Practice House has grown gradually through years of shared practice, retreats, conversations, and relationships.
The house is being held by several concentric circles: the people living and training there, the wider sangha (spiritual practitioners waking alongside each other), collaborators and teachers, and the many people whose participation, generosity, skill and trust are allowing it to take shape.
And behind all of us is something harder to name: a creative power, a movement, that seems to be gathering coherence in many places at once. We do not feel that we are creating this alone, but in total inter-being with everything else. We are listening for what wants to emerge, and trying to accompany and support the conditions for it to take shape.
A Sufi story tells of three moths who long to know the mystery of a flame. The flame being truth&love.
The first flies close enough to see it.
The second touches it and feels its heat.
The third flies into the flame and is consumed by it.
And they say: only the one who entered the flame truly knows the flame.
The story speaks of a love and longing so deep that, at a certain point, there is no longer a separate “me” standing apart from what I seek.
The moth becomes a symbol of the soul’s longing for truth, love, and union with the divine: to move from knowing about something, to experiencing it, to surrendering ourselves to it, in union.
This is the name of our nonprofit association: Walking Together – Verein für Begegnun, Bewerbung und Bildung, that's German :), it means we're into culture, community, education, and the greatness of the human heart.
A child named Leily made both our logos, she left them outside the door for us, and we took them swiftly
our Interfaith common ground
Center is everywhere.
The daily practice we gather around together as a base are the movement meditation arts of Taichi, Qigong, Neigong, and Taogong; but people in our group also continue to walk within their own traditions and callings. Our community includes practitioners with roots in Zen, Christian mysticism, Sufi, Hindu traditions, and other paths.
We come together through a recognition that there are many entry points into practice, and that, at its heart, the whole of life can become sadhana: a path of cultivation, awakening, and service.
We will run Interfaith retreats, where monks and teachers of different traditions gather together to share, with each other and with the wider community.
Training future facilitators
We also plan to train more people who can carry and facilitate this work themselves.
To start, a small group of residents and close practitioners will be supported in deepening their practice, receiving further training, and gradually developing the skills to hold the practice, events and community.
This is important for the long-term continuity of the project: we wish for the house to not depend on one teacher or small founding group, and grow through the people who join and contribute along the way.
Inner
We'd like to invite you to take a moment to notice your body, breath, weight...
Outer
And now the environment your in, the space around you
Inner
We'd like to invite you to take a moment to notice your body, breath, weight...
Outer
And now the environment your in, the space around you
pause, breathe, listen
and sign up to our email-list :)
(If you're subscribed to www.taijitao.net, it will update your email to receive the Practice House emails)
Location
Vienna, Austria
viennapracticehouse@gmail.com