Archive for the ‘Yoga’ Category

Shiva statue in Rishikesh, yoga capital of the world

Breathe in India TOUR

Do you long to experience spiritual India, and do yoga on the banks of the sacred Ganges River?

Breathe in India is for people who long to experience the  magic of spiritual India. Participants will watch the Taj Mahal float in  a iridescent sunrise, explore the ghats of Varanasi, the world’s oldest  city, bask in the sublime beauty of Khajuraho’s temples and do yoga on  the banks of the sacred Ganges River in Rishikesh. The tour dates are February 5 to 18, 2011 (with a six-day extension in Rishikesh, Haridwar and Aurovalley Ashram).

For more information on the tours visit New! Tours to India or scroll down for dates, cost and detailed itinerary. Read the rest of this entry »

Mariellen at the Taj Mahal, India

The best way to see India

I am very excited to share my passion for India by taking people to see the places I love. Together with award-winning tour operator Indus Travels, I am presenting two tours this winter in India.

Dream in India (starts Jan. 8, 2011) is for people who want to experience inspirational India and learn travel writing and blogging. Click here to learn more about Dream in India.

Breathe in India (starts Feb 5, 2011) is for people who want to experience the magic of spiritual India and do yoga. Click here to learn more about Breathe in India. And read Golden mornings on the Ganges, my Toronto Star article about what life is like in an ashram in India. We will be visiting both of these ashrams on the Breathe in India tour! Read the rest of this entry »

Spiritual wisdom of India: Mallika Chopra on stage at IdeaCity

Goddesses of wisdom:

Lakshmi Pratury and Mallika Chopra

The spiritual wisdom of India was well-represented at the IdeaCity conference in Toronto, June 16-18, 2010. Mallika Chopra (daughter of Dr. Deepak Chopra and founder of Intent.com) and Lakshmi Pratury (TED India conference organizer, India-U.S. relationship builder and organizer of the upcoming INK conference in India) both spoke about taking a positive and proactive approach to life. They are both of Indian origin or ancestry and both live in California — and both told stories about their grandmothers. But it was the essence of Indian spirituality and wisdom, which they shared and embodied, that made them stand out, for me, among the many stellar presenters at the conference. Read the rest of this entry »

Outdoor yoga class at temple, Varanasi

India hits most foreign visitors with sensorial overload, especially during the first few weeks after arrival.  It takes time to become acclimatized to the crowds, noise, pollution, language, culture, religious practises and the way people relate to each other, and to foreigners.

When you visit or move to any new country, there are so many things to get used to. This is especially true if the new culture is extremely different from what you’re used to. And India is about as far from orderly, efficient, sparsely populated, wealthy and cold Canada as you can get.

However, one of India’s most popular cultural exports, yoga, was readily available in my hometown (Toronto) and I practiced and studied it for well over 10 years before I set foot in India for the first time.

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When I am in India, I always make time to go to Aurovalley Ashram. I consider it to be my spiritual home and I have written extensively about it on my original travel blog. I have written about what a peaceful place it is, a veritable garden-of-eden, surrounded by meadows, ringed by the mist-covered Shivalik Hills and situated near a lovely, uninhabited stretch of the Ganges River. I have written about my teacher, Swami Brahmdev (Swamiji) and the activities of the ashram. I have written about the profound effect this place has had on me. But I have never written about Sri Aurobindo, the man whose name is given to the ashram. So, I would like to dedicate this post to Sri Aurobindo (August 15, 1872 – December 5, 1950).

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Oh no, it’s the “s” word!

Hahaha, not the “s” word you thought! But another one that should be the source of just as much joy, if you ask me.

Can spirituality be fun? Does it have to be a serious subject? Read on for a tale of two religions and the joyful vs the sombre.

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[NOTE: Originally published on Humantimes.com, September 2008.]

Mark Whitwell

After studying and practicing yoga for about 15 years, predominantly in Canada but also in India, I had the pleasurable experience of listening to a very outspoken yoga teacher pierce the veil of western illusions about yoga. He basically said the emperor has no lululemons.

I don’t know what it was like for others in the room, but listening to Mark Whitwell at the Yoga Festival of Toronto in August, 2008, was, for me, a sound for sore ears. I am at a point in my yoga journey when I want to try and understand the original intentions of yoga – without the overlay of western thinking, ideas and culture.

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When my teacher, Swamiji (Swami Brahmdev of Aurovalley Ashram, Rishidwar, India), says something during satsang that he wants to underline, he says, “catch this point.” It’s a great example of a non-native English speaker using the language in a particularly creative and effective way.

I have been back in Canada about six weeks since my latest trip to India, where, among other things, I spent time at Aurovalley Ashram — my favourite place on earth — learning the wisdom of integral yoga and feeling inspired by Swamiji’s complete commitment to transformation of consciousness.

So I am now home, facing a difficult life situation, and trying to “catch this point.” I am trying to process, integrate and put it into action everything I learned from my recent two-and-half-months in India. In some ways the journey begins when you get home. You realize what you’ve learned, how much you’ve changed, and how differently you now see the world.

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Dr. Deepak Chopra

While I was in India this winter, I read an article by Dr. Deepak Chopra in the Times of India (March 29, 2009) entitled “Over to India,” about what India can teach the west. In it, he says that the modern era is characterized by “a headlong rush into the arms of science and materialism.” Both, he says, are deeply flawed for solving the human dilemma. “The late Robert F. Kennedy put it pithily when he said that the gross national product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.”

The human dilemma — which is really about the path to happiness society, and each individual in it, takes — will not be solved by external means, e.g. more oil , a better missile defence system. “If the path to happiness is external, disaster will eventually ensue. This is what Indian spirituality discovered thousands of of years ago.”

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