Planting Seeds of Wisdom: Yoga for Young Children

Children, who knew how much fun it could be to have children in my life. While the three wonderful children that chose to come to me have been the most intense spiritual challenge of my life to date, they are also the most incredible gift. Children are an endowment of a depth and magnitude that I could never have anticipated.

When our first child, Conor, came along, I remember thinking, as we were walking out the front door of Mount Sinai Hospital, “Isn’t someone going to check that I have the right credentials to take care of this precious little bundle?”

I remember looking around, over both shoulders to see if anyone was going to run up behind me and tap on my shoulder, “excuse me, but do you have a degree in early childhood education? What about a certificate in child care? Or, at the very least, What about your first aid certificate, can I see that please?” But, nothing, nothing happened. No one even checked to see if our baby car seat met industry standards.

I read the books, I took the classes and nothing prepared me for the overwhelming mind, body, and spirit experience that it was to have a newborn baby. “How does anyone ever get a shower, let alone sleep?” B.C., before children, I worked full time at a local TV station, designed and manufactured a line of ladies clothing and ran a showroom in downtown Toronto, I taught 15-20 hours of aerobics and yoga a week, worked out, took courses, traveled and still had time to sleep, eat and have sex. One child and it all came to a screeching halt. Terrified that I would wake up one day and walk out the front door without him, I eventually went on to adjust to parenting; sleep deprivations and other joys of children.

I sit here many years later writing about planting the seeds of wisdom in young children. I really believe that my level of consciousness around this flitted in and out, butterfly fashion, for many years. This process took a real life-time to embody the teachings of the great masters and step back and trust the process of becoming, thereby, letting my children and the children that I have been blessed to work with grow and thrive in the unique and often incredibly resilient ways that they are meant to. The Atlas Children’s Workshop grew out of this process and we seek to train yoga teachers to see the child and  facilitate the child’s unique yoga path in each encounter.

Becoming a Atlas Children’s Workshop facilitator is not just another continuing education course meant to fulfill the basic requirements of being a responsible yoga teacher, but a real lived experience of coming into the stream of consciousness to bring in and nurture seed of wisdom for generations.

The Chakras in Shamanic Practice: Book Review

The Chakras in Shamanic Practice by Susan Wright

Susan Wright’s, The Chakras in Shamanic Practice, Eight Stages of Healing and Transformation takes you on a journey to heal your past, and empowers you in the present. 

As you travel through her book, you will encounter exercises to bring healing and balance back to your chakra system.  I felt that Susan’s approach and techniques had a very strong feminine energy to them.  They are soft and nurturing in nature.  I found the exercises that Susan offers simple and easy to follow; powerful in they’re simplicity.  I noticed that as you progress through her book, Susan takes the reader deeper into the world of spirit.  The progression is slow, but methodical. She doesn’t ask you to take a “leap of faith” before your prepared for it through her exercises.  I found, The Chakras in Shamanic Practice, an easy read and couldn’t put it down.  I read through her book once and then re-read it again, slowly and methodically to really delve deep, discovering my hidden gifts.

Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

* Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask

shamanism archaic techniques of ecstacy

First published in 1951, Shamanism soon became the standard work in the study of this mysterious and fascinating phenomenon. Writing as the founder of the modern study of the history of religion, Romanian émigré–scholar Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) surveys the practice of Shamanism over two and a half millennia of human history, moving from the Shamanic traditions of Siberia and Central Asia–where Shamanism was first observed–to North and South America, Indonesia, Tibet, China, and beyond. In this authoritative survey, Eliade illuminates the magico-religious life of societies that give primacy of place to the figure of the Shaman–at once magician and medicine man, healer and miracle-doer, priest, mystic, and poet. Synthesizing the approaches of psychology, sociology, and ethnology, Shamanism will remain for years to come the reference book of choice for those intrigued by this practice.

Review:

“Eliade writes of the shamans with that masterly combination of sympathy and detachment. . . . . [His] findings will almost certainly be echoed by great voices of the future.”—New York Times Book Review

“Eliade is the most informative guide to the modern mythologies.”–Frank Kermode, New Statesman

“[A] close and detailed yet comparative study of shamanism. . . . [It] has become the standard work on the subject and justifies its claim to be the first book to study the phenomenon over a wide field and in a properly religious context.”—Times Literary Supplement

“Clearly the best work on Shamanism published so far.”—The Review of Religion