Category: Yoga and Community

Travelling and Teaching

Neil Pearson
Tomorrow I head off to the Canadian Rockies to teach for three days, in Banff and then in the town of Golden. Similar to so many of my teaching trips, I am connecting with quite a diverse group of people. In Banff, I am speaking at the Natural Health Practitioners yearly conference. The first day, I present on the topic of pain science. My goal is to shift the manner...
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National Pain Strategies

Neil Pearson
The past few weeks have been packed with traveling, teaching and advocacy. Although I work clinically up to two-and-a-half days each week with people in pain in Penticton, a big part of what I do includes travel. This can be tiring. Yet it provides me the opportunity to learn from so many people – yoga teachers, health professionals and people in pain. The teaching part isn’t tiring. That energizes me....
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In the Land of OM – Part 3

Cat Chin
This is the last event I attend at the Tadasana Festival in Santa Monica. It is called “Universal Kabbalah”, and was featured in the “Daily Love Lounge Speaker” Series. Madonna is supposedly an avid devotee of Kabbalah. Unfortunately I arrive late, so I miss the first ten minutes. (I was trying out a circular hanging bed, which was so inviting, that I kind of lost track of time. It was...

In the Land of OM – Adventure #2

Cat Chin
After leaving Saul’s yoga experience, I'm hungry and ready to check out the food offerings at the Eco-Conscious Marketplace. There are some wonderful food vendors and, if you are a vegan, gluten-free, lactose intolerant foodie, this would be heaven for you. Being a non-vegan omnivore, I'm surprised by the incredible selection of vegetarian fare available. I really enjoyed the samosas just the right amount of spice and heat infused into the...

In the Land of OM – Adventure #1

Cat Chin
As I enter the grounds of the Tadasana Festival of Yoga & Music, I have to walk through the Eco-Conscious Marketplace, which is a cluster of many tents, each one offering many amazing and green products to purchase. But I need to check in and get to a class, so shopping and browsing can wait. There are classes and speakers held in five major tents with the top yoga teachers and...

In the Land of OM

Cat Chin
Saturday, April 20th — what a perfect day for an event. Crowds of like-minded people, excitedly converging on an amazing location. The hype has been incredible leading up to this moment. It is going to be mind-blowing! Just the line-up alone is getting me so jacked up: The Black Keys, Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Rihanna, Usher, Enimem, Snopp Dogg, Dr Dre, etc… I slowly open my eyes. Hey, wait a minute. I thought...
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What the Dolphins Have Taught Me

Anatara Buckley
I have just returned from a glorious two-week initiation with pods of wild dolphins in the Pacific waters of Hawaii’s Big Island. The experience was an initiation into a world so divine that it defies many of the ‘laws’ and standards that we tend to accept as normal in our human world. Learning from the dolphins is not like going to class…it is instead an experience of total immersion in a...

Watching Things Change

Anatara Buckley
The world as we know it is changing in so many ways… This flux is not new. The flow from one experience to another is part of the timelessness of our existence. That we have changing needs, changing habits and changes in friendship, career and location is all normal. And yet it feels as if there are bigger changes afoot all around us right now. When we feel a new and dynamic form...
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Gaining Through Death

Anatara Buckley
Last week, here in Canada, there was a death that moved many right across the country… It was movement of the people’s hearts and minds in response to the loss of a man who believed in unity and fairness above all else. Jack Layton was a father, a deeply affectionate husband, and a grass roots organizer, always bringing to the fore the true needs of some of the often ignored members...
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Can Death Be a Transition as Magnificent as Birth?

Anatara Buckley
Becoming Familiar with the Transition of Dying...

I was asked recently by a friend to start writing about being a ’midwife’ for the life transition of death. That almost sounds impossible to imagine… ”The life transition of death.” How is death a part of life? Really, it is a completely natural progression of thought…we live, therefore we die. Death is possible as the completion of the harmonious cycle, which is life. Life and...