Religion and Culture

By now, if you’ve been following my posts on Yoga for Peace and how Yoga is related to Peace, you won’t find this information new. Rather, it will be a condensed version of what I’ve been talking about all along…. Bringing Yoga philosophies to Peace Studies in order to create inner peace, communities in peace, and world peace. This is what I taught at the University of Jaume, in Castellon de la Plana, Spain, a region south of Barcelona, east of Madrid, and north of Valencia. I was pleasantly surprised that many of the students had taken yoga lessons, even yoga teacher training before. One mentioned she planned to use it in her Master’s thesis! Our discussions traveled further than the 5000+ mile- journey from India to Spain. We used...

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,...

So… part of peace is to understand the culture of the place you are in. Thus this post is about Divali. Possibly one of the largest Indian holidays, celebrated by Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs (and several of my Indian Christian and Muslim friends admit to reveling in the buzz around the event), Divali is known as the festival of lights. It’s a time to share sweets, exchange gifts, and enjoy with family while praying for a good year to come. On this day, people light up their homes with diyas, oil-lamps, and allow them to burn throughout the day, a mark of auspiciousness. But the real meaning of Divali, or deepavali, goes beyond the lighting of a lamp. Sikhs celebrate Divali as the day when their 6th guru was freed along with 52 Hindu kings, Hindus...