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My last blog post was about how Mindfulness techniques (learned through practices like meditation and yoga) can help when dealing with stress. Are you interested but don’t know where to start? If so, this is your answer!
WHAT: Discovering the Path to Freedom – Insight Meditation Retreat for People ages 18 to early 30’s
WHEN: July 23-26, 2009
WHERE: Arnprior, Ontario
TEACHERS: Daryl Lyn Ross and Pascal Auclair (meditation) and me, Dawn Mauricio (yoga).
Please visit the True North Insight website for more details, or do not hesitate to contact me directly.
Hope to see some of you there!
When asked what I do for a living, I reply “I teach Yoga.” Almost always the follow-up question is “What kind of yoga?” The times when I’m feeling more talkative I respond “Mindfulness Yoga”. The follow-up to that is a quizzical look.
As defined by my teachers of the Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation Training I completed at Spirit Rock, Mindfulness Yoga is an inter-disciplinary method that blends the insights and practices of yoga with the mindfulness and meditation of Buddhism. Although the act of blending Yoga and Mindfulness together is new, Mindfulness is not, dating back to the time of the Buddha. In laymen terms, Mindfulness is about being in the present moment – letting go of past memories or future thoughts; paying full attention to what you are doing, moment by moment. Mindfulness training involves learning how to be aware of your mind, body and emotions and is taught in yoga, meditation, tai chi, and other similar practices.
Being a yoga and meditation teacher in the Western world, where prescription pills and burn-outs outnumber deep-breathing and meditation, I look for any way to plead my case. My latest finding, from CNNhealth.com, is an article on a study completed at West Virgina University.
The goal of the study was to relieve stress and 103 people participated. Some were given hand-written instructions on how to handle stress at work (the details of the instructions were not disclosed) and the others were taught Mindfulness exercises like yoga, pranayama (breathing techniques), and meditation. All techniques taught or given were designed to help people cope with too many e-mails, ringing phones and the occasional unpleasant co-worker. The program itself lasted eight weeks but participants were followed for another three months.
According to the article, “[Stress] increases your heart rate, your blood pressure and your respiration. Over the long-term, the response gets internalized, which can lead to neck pain, back pain, digestive disorders, sleeplessness. Many people deal with those problems by overeating, drinking or smoking.”
Those who received the mindfulness training, on the other hand, had less psychological distress and significantly fewer medical symptoms like lower blood pressure and fewer aches and pains. One participant even reported that the back pain that followed her for the last ten years went away, a claim not unsual when talking about Mindfulness (see Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work).
Mindfulness can also be extended to daily activities such as walking, eating and talking (all of which is taught in my weekly meditation class on Tuesday nights – see my schedule for more info). By doing so,you will be able to see why they call it the “present”.
UCLA also completed a study a few years ago that found the same thing: Mindfulness exercises provide excellent stress-reducing tools.
In The Gazette on Monday, June 22 there was a snippet with a photo of this year’s Yoga Mala. It was in Susan Schwartz’s Applause section. There were some mistakes in the article and I apologize for them. The corrections are below:
- two teachers excluded from the teaching list were Rocio Mchorro (Yoga Sangha) and Anna Smutney (Moksha Yoga Montreal)
- two teachers mentioned but they were not able to co-teach at the event were Allison Ulan and Dina Tsouluhas
Otherwise, it was great! I’ve included the scan here for those of you who missed it.
I’ve been getting a lot of mass e-mails from yogi friends lately promoting the new documentary Home. From watching trailers I knew this was an “Inconvenient Truth”-style documentary. I was a little reluctant to watch it, not because I wanted to stay in an ignorant bliss, but because a lot of these movies try to convey the urgency of the matter by throwing a lot of hard-hitting facts at you. I do understand and completely believe the urgency, but having them bundled up together for dramatic effect sometimes overwhelms me, causing me to lose hope momentarily.
This is where my yoga and meditation practice really help. Knowing this is my pattern, I try to be aware of this reaction. I then try to sit in meditation for a few minutes exploring this feeling of hopelessness. I allow it to rise, even grow, but as all things do, it also disappears.
This is where the self-proclaimed label “Spiritual Activist” comes from. In my opinion (and after reworking and adding to a few definitions I found online), Spiritual Activism is a growing approach to social justice activism – one that provides a holistic, relationship-based framework for working for social and ecological change. It refers to thoughts, words and actions coming from a place of love and compassion, even towards the very people we are opposing, instead of a place of fear.
 I eventually got around to watching the movie (mostly because I was sick with the flu for a week with not much energy to do anything except watch TV). It was a great movie. To be honest, I felt like it started off a little slow, but it was well worth the wait. As usual, there was the list hard-hitting facts, but it was followed by a message of optimism. It was so beautiful, I felt the need to include it below, to hopefully encourage others to watch the movie, or better yet, to act.
List of “hard-hitting facts bundled together for dramatic effect”:
- 20% of the world’s population consumes 80% of its resources
- Half of the world’s wealth is owned by 2% of the world’s population
- The world spends 12 times more on military expenditures than on aid to developing countries
- 5,000 people a day die because of dirty drinking water
- 1 billion people have no access to safe drinking water
- Nearly 1 billion people are going hungry
- Over 50% of grain traded around the world is used for animal feed or biofuels
- 40% of arable land has suffered long term damage
- Every year, 13 million hectares of forest disappear
- 1 mammal in 4, 1 bird in 8, 1 amphibian in 3 are threatened with extinction
- Species are dying out at a rhythm 1,000 times faster than the natural rate
- 3/4 of fishing grounds are exhausted, depleted or in dangerous decline
- The avg temperature of the last 15 years have been the highest ever recorded
- The ice cap is 40% thinner than 40 years ago
- There may be at least 200 million climate refugees by 2050
Beautiful message of hope and optimism:
It’s too late to be a pessimist; I know that a single human can knock down every wall. It’s too late to be a pessimist.
Worldwide, 4 children out of 5 attend school. Never has learning been given to so many human beings. Everyone, from richest to poorest, can make a contribution. Desoto, one of the world’s poorest countries is proportionally the one that invests most in its people’s education. Qatar, one of the world’s richest states has opened its door to the best universities. Culture, education, research and innovation are inexhaustible resources.
In the face of misery and suffering, millions of NGOs prove that solidarity between people is stronger than the selfishness of nations.
In Bangladesh a man thought the unthinkable and founded a bank that lends only to the poor. In 30 years it has changed the lives of 150 million people.
Antarctica is a continent with immense natural resources that no country can claim for itself. A natural reserve devoted to peace and science. A treaty signed by 49 states has made it a treasure shared by all humanity.
It’s too late to be a pessimist.
Governments have acted to protect nearly 2% of the world’s territorial waters. It’s not much but it’s 2 times more than 10 years ago.
The first natural parks were created just over a century ago. They cover over 13% of the continents. They create spaces where human activity is in step with the preservation of species, soils and landscape. This harmony between humans and nature can become the rule, no longer the exception.
In United States, New York has realized what nature does for us. These forests and lakes supply all the drinking water the city needs.
In South Korea the forests have been devastated by war. Thanks to a National Reforestation program they once more cover 65% of the country, more than 75% of paper is recycled.
Costa Rica has made a choice between military spending and the conservation of its lands. The country no longer has an army; it prefers to devote its resources to education, ecotourism and the protection of its primary forest.
Gabon is one of the world’s leading producers of wood. It enforces selective logging, not more than 1 tree every hectare. Its forests are one of the country’s most important economic resources but they have the time to regenerate. Programs exist that guarantee sustainable forest management; they must become mandatory.
This is just a small selection of the invaluable information provided in the movie. Take the time to watch it. It’s available for free online (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU). What’s 93 minutes of your time for the rest of humanity? No matter how long you’ve been on this planet, you owe it to her to watch it.
Having been a yogi for a number of years now, it is only natural I get exposed to yoga’s syblings, for example meditation, pranayama, and shatkarmas to name a few. But more and more, a certain sister has been trying to win my attention – and I think it finally won: Ayurveda.
As quoted from an ezine article:
Ayurveda and yoga are sister sciences that have been united for thousands of years for the sake of healing body, mind, and consciousness. Generally speaking, Ayurveda deals more with the health of the body, while yoga deals with purifying the mind and consciousness, but in reality they complement and embrace each other.
Ayurveda is a sanskrit word that means “science of life” and deals with the subtle energies of all things – not just living and the non-living, but thoughts, emotions, and actions as well. At the heart of Ayurveda, there are three fundamental and vital energies, or doshas, that regulate the body, govern its proper functioning and determine its unique constitution. They are: vata (air), pitta (fire), and kapha (water).
There are many online quizzes to find out what dosha you are – and I’m not going to lie, they are fun to take – but the results are not meant to be replaced by the assessment of an Ayurvedic specialist. Reasons being include you may answer the quizzes based on what is going on in your life right now, but these patterns or habits do not necessarily make up your true constitution. Also, things that may not seem to matter to us present day (like past relationships or events in our childhood) may have made its imprint on your cells without you knowing it, and thus influencing your health in some way that an online dosha quiz may not be able to tell you.
After many years of being mildly drawn to Ayurveda, I finally went to see Anita Sharma, Montreal Ayurvedic specialist for at least 19 years (www.ayurvedamtl.com) because a good friend of mine, Jennifer Horvath, swears by Ayurveda.
Am I ever happy I went.
Every client begins with a consultation with Anita, and the consultation can last anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. You begin by filling out a questionnaire about the doshas, and then Anita comes in and basically spends the remainder of the time assessing you, based on answers to questions she asks, and by taking your pulse, looking at your tongue and your eye.
Within the first few minutes of meeting, she was able to assess that I was deficient in iron and B12 (a result of not eating meat for three years, four years ago), had a misaligned vertebrae in my cervical spine (from looking at my tongue), and had the premature signs of liver issues due to resentment or anger being harbored there.
After talking further, she gave me names of supplements I should take to balance out my iron and B12, recipes to drinks I should make to give me energy, a list of Ayurvedic services that will help me get back on track, and other do’s and don’ts to optimize my health.
When I left there, I was a bit taken aback, having been overloaded with so much information. But what most caught me by surprise was being deficient in iron and B12. I never would have thought that something I had done a few years ago in order to be more healthy (not eat meat) would actually backfire and I would have to pay for it years later. On top of that, I am a healthy person for the most part – athletic, aware of my body, conscious eater – and I would not have guessed that a “healthy” person would be deficient in anything.
According to Ayurveda, there are six stages to disease and an imbalance of the doshas lies behind all illness. The longer the illnesses are ignored, the more serious they become. Knowing this (from having read “The Book of Ayurveda” by Judith H. Morrison) made me think “If I am iron and B12 deificient at 28 years old, it would only result in anemia in about a decade, and who knows what else in 20 years.”
All this to say, making the effort to get checked now is worth it. No matter how much you think you may not need it, there is almost always something we are overlooking. We will be thanking ourselves for having done so in our retirement, when we will be strong and healthy well into our 70’s and 80’s.
For info on Anita Sharma visit www.ayurvedamtl.com or call 514-369-3561.
For info on some Ayurvedic services visit www.spazazen.com or call 514-287-1772.
With over 170 photos to sift through, photographer Veruschka Boespflug thought it would be fitting to put up at least 108 photos… They are split up into two links. Take a look – I feel like she captured the energy of the day beautifully.
http://veruschka.org/yogamala/
and
http://veruschka.org/yogamala2/
What can I say? This year’s YOGA MALA was crazy (in a good way)! I didn’t expect such an enthusiastic response but there was one, from all levels of the Yoga community – studios, teachers, students and more. There were at least 10 studios who donated good stuff like passes and gift certificates or other goods to give away, 9 teachers who co-taught the event, 71 Yogis (!), all for one cause – Amnesty International: Stopping Violence Against Women.
The Gods were on our side, with the good weather only being forecast for the morning. As soon as we finished up (much later than originally planned mind you) the skies were no longer blue and clouds rolled in. We practiced for over 2 hours by Montreal’s waterfront. Although it was a little windy, it was a marvelously sunny day with a high of 20C.
We had a minimum donation requirement of $25 for the event since all participants would get an event t-shirt, free passes for 3 studios, an Amnesty/Yoga Mala cookie (photo below), Lavash crackers from Pita Break, and other coupons and goodies worth over $70, all in a reusable bag. Donations ranged from $25 to $1080.
After the event, the party moved to an indoor location, to give participants a break from the sun, to use the washroom, get water and to eat! We had fruits, salads and organic pizzas donated to refresh the hard work of the yogis.
All in all, we raised $5,053 for our cause. I think we can confidently say we were successful!
The below photo was taken with my cell phone. I’ll post pics from professional photographer Veruschka Boespflug as soon as possible.
 
Hi everyone,
Thanks to be one of the first to see the launch of my new site. I’ve decided to make it more interactive and be able to share more than just basic info with all of you 
It’s a Saturday night, 9:45 PM. About 12 hours left until the 3rd annual Yoga Mala. This year we’ll be doing 108 Sun Salutations for Amnesty International: Stopping Violence Against Women. What’s fun is 9 teachers from 9 different studios and traditions of yoga will be coming together to help co-teach this event. The past years we’ve had maybe 3-4 teachers at a time co-teaching. As a result, registration is up to 70 people! That’s more than double previous years’ registrations! Here’s hoping we raise lotso cash for our cause, no-one gets hurt, and everyone has fun.
Be sure that I’ll be back in the next few days to post my opinion on how the event unfolded.
Peace.
PS Big, big thank you to Phoun for helping to convince me to turn my site into a blog and then helping me make it multi-lingual.
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