Community

May 31, 2013- June 2, 2013 RORES NGO, Gownpalli Village, Srinivaspur Taluk, Kolar District, Karnataka, India. 2 hours west of Bangalore The Set Up It was an unassuming location. No mats, no GAIAM blocks, no branded yoga pants. Not even a wooden floor. It was the anti-”Yoga World” that is being marketed around the world now. We came back to the roots of yoga. Yoga for peace. We came to a place where laughter and smiling came from within, and looks were given low importance. We sat under the large oak tree. I was on a stone bench, sturdy yet unstable; the ladies, ages 13+ (many do not have birth certificates), sat upon Mother Nature’s purest gift. The soil was periodically loosened with the advent of torrential rains that came that weekend, long...

I’m involved in a lot of things: besides teaching yoga/ yoga therapy, I am a musician and former music teacher (founded Music for Life in California about 8 years ago); I am interested in (community) gardening (and used to run Hammond Gardens in Arizona about 5 years ago); I’ve previously worked for women’s issues, environmental issues, youth education, and community development; I love hiking, biking, swimming, gymming, cooking, writing, poetry, chatting, and friends. I’m passionate about the things I do. I perform my actions actively, truly seeking to make change and make a difference in the world. Change is the only constant in life, and it’s what drives peace workers. In “The Moral Imagination” by John Paul Lederach,...

In peace building efforts it is important to go slow, not to expect immediate results or for a project to blast off immediately, and listen to the recipient’s feedback. Last year there was an “arab spring uprising”, in places such as Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. These did not happen overnight, nor did they happen without open ears and hearts. The planning for these uprisings took a lot more time than what we might have witnessed from the outside. There was much discussion and  I know this, because a dear friend of mine was a key planner in the events that unfolded in Egypt. I reminded parents this today. They should not worry if they cannot practice a lot with their child, or their child does not catch on immediately. Instead, it is important...

Yoga for Special Needs children is an unique situation in terms of peace studies. While you are trying to affect the children and bring some peace through relaxation, focus, and calming, into their lives, you often have to work with the parents. While this is different than most peace-related work, where you aim to direct your attention to the people whom you are serving, there’s a sense that this is similar to a lot of international development: an organization in a developing country is used as a third-party manager, a sort of liason between the donor and the community. This, as you very well know, is one of the biggest difficulties in development projects: getting the donor to understand the needs of the community and provide funding appropriately. I got...

Lately I’ve been working with special needs kids. They have a range of issues such as ADD, ADHD, global apraxia, and of course, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). One little boy with ADHD shares his thoughts on life and the world with me pretty much in a non-stop chattering manner. When I discovered his newly found interest in ancient civilizations, he first showed me a picture of the Sphinx in Egypt. So, me being me, I told him I would teach him sphinx pose , also commonly called seal pose in Yin yoga. I use it primarily for children who need back support/ spine strengthening, and also to relax and relieve stress and tension which these children hold in. Unfortunately, I had already taught this smart young man seal pose, so we made a slight variation,...

Make Yoga the only purpose, aim, and real interest in your life. Plunge in Sadana now, and realize God.  – Sri Swami Sivananda If only people even knew about yoga! So many people don’t have access to this beautiful aspect of life. My dear friend and colleague, Ms J’aime Tilston, MA, is a peace education researcher. Her Master’s Thesis was conducted on the role of nonviolence education (NVE) in transformation, focusing on how NVE can help prison inmates rehabilitate themselves and lead to a more peaceful life post-release. In the process of interviewing individuals in the system in California, Tilston discovered that many inmates had never had a chance to learn anything but violence. Nonviolence was not even a remote concept in many of the...