Tibetan Monks in Edmonton

Opening the Anahata Chakra





Rose, Candice's Garden Tour, Raja Yoga Summer Camp, 2013



"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

- Rumi, Sufi Mystic

The Heart Centre, or Anahata Chakra, is the main portal through which we relate to and accept ourselves and the world.  It is also considered the main knot in our energetic bodies.

Here are a few simple suggestions for opening the heart:

- Volunteer!  Karma Yoga or helping others, feels good for everyone and breaks down perceived barriers between "us" and "them".

- Sing!  Bhakti Yoga, chanting, singing, dancing, ceremony, arts, crafts and cultivating an connection with the Divine are wonderful ways to release and express pent-up emotions.

- Practice Yoga!  Hatha Yoga moves prana or energy, and shifts feelings of stagnation or contraction.  Energetic vinyasas like Surya Namaskar are great for strengthening the physical heart, and backward bends like Bhujangasana (Cobra), Dhanurasana (Bow), and Chakrasana (Wheel) are considered excellent "heart openers".

- Breathe!  Connecting with your breath is calming for the mind and the nervous system.

- Study the lives of those who live love!  Read the poems of Mirabai, Rumi, and Hafez.  Celebrate the lives of Jesus, St. Francis of Assissi, Mother Teresa, Mata Amritanandamayi, The 14th Dalai Lama and so many others who live loving-kindness or make a habit of doing small things with great love.

- Stop and smell the roses!  Roses have an exceptionally high vibrational frequency.  Even if you don't have a bottle of precious rose essential oil at home, you can visit your favorite Middle-Eastern grocer and buy some rose water to use instead of commercial facial toner, spread rose jam on your toast, and infuse dried rose petals in your tea.  Or take a trip to your local florist or greenhouse and bury your nose in the most fragrant blossom you can find!

For more inspiration about the Anahata Chakra and more suggestions for exploring your heart, check out this lovely post on the Free People blog.

Sattvic Movie Saturday: I Am

A post-injury quest to communicate what is wrong in the world and what we can do about it led Tom Shadyac, director of Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor, and Bruce Almighty to discover instead, what is right in the world.

Click here to watch "I Am" full screen on YouTube. 

This film is beautiful, funny, touching, and surprising.  It encourages us to shift our worldview away from competition, consumption and "survival of the fittest", to compassion and co-operation as the basis of human nature. 

Get your popcorn, and enjoy! 

Sattvic Movie Saturday: The Sun Behind the Clouds - Tibet's Struggle for Freedom

Book Handmade by Tibetan Refugee

Honorary Canadian citizen, The Dalai Lama is an international celebrity.  Tibetan Buddhist teachings are now accessible virtually around the globe. 

But the Tibetan people still struggle for autonomy, religious freedom, economic equality and cultural recognition in their homeland. 

They regularly face persecution, arrest, interrogation and abuse that for most Canadians is the stuff of horror movies.

As we celebrate Canada Day, let us be grateful for our position of privilege and freedom in the world and support human rights and justice for all. 

Please take the time to watch this revealing documentary.  Thank you.

Click here to watch: The Sun Behind the Clouds - Tibet's Struggle for Freedom full screen on YouTube.

Meditation and Momos

I can hardly believe the Tibetan Bazaar has come and gone! 

Every year (this was the 19th)  Gaden Samten Ling Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Society hosts a bazaar that brings the Tibetan community and their friends together for a weekend of travel and cultural presentations, music, meditation and momos!

Momos are a Tibetan and Nepali delicacy; delicious dumplings that are steamed or fried and served with hot sauce.  There are different designs for different celebrations, New Year momos, birthday momos, bon voyage momos and welcome home momos, sweet momos and savory momos, each little works of art! 

I look forward to the bazaar and those savory little bundles that make me Om-sick for India and especially Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama in exile and the Tibetan refugees who gather around him.

I spent just a couple of weeks there several years ago practicing yoga and meditation, and volunteer teaching English to the Tibetan refugees. We read Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist together sitting on the basketball court of a local school in tight little circles. 

It was inspiring and humbling to meet these hardy and beautiful people who suffered so much, and yet maintained an attitude of dignity, courage, and kindness.

In addition to sampling momos from every restaurant we visited, I took a momo making class. 

It was taught by a young man who had been a monk in Tibet but was forced to break his vows in a Chinese prison.  (They made him drink beer, he told us, though I strongly suspect from talking with other escapees that was just the small part he felt ok sharing.) 

In Dharamsala, he had a tiny room with a single bed, a wooden wardrobe, a small table, 2 chairs (two of us sat on his bed), and another small table which served as a counter space for the single burner he used to teach cooking classes to tourists for a living.

I can't say I learned the method all that well.   I was distracted by his story.  It was hot, and I was self-conscious of the nasty smell rising from my only pair of travelling shoes.  It was difficult to understand his English, and impossible to ignore the monkey reaching through the bars of the one small window to steal his shoes. 

He was a calm and smiling model of resilience, and it was a delicious cross-cultural reminder of the sacredness of "breaking (or baking) bread" together.

We crowded together to chop the veggies, and make the dough.  We struggled to fold the tidy pleats that seal in the filling.  But even our sloppy results were delicious, and the basic concept is practically universal. 

For traditional momo recipes and to see Tibetan momo makers at work click here. 

Each year at the bazaar, I sit with friends eating momos.  We laugh, we cry.  We discuss our travels, our purchases and our lives.  We see the merchants and their families, the volunteers, the shoppers, and the resident teacher, Kushok Lobsang Dhamchoe greeting each other warmly. 

It is something of a ritual for us.  It feels like an annual real-life meditation on who we are and where we are. 

And it is a great reminder of the fragility of this precious human life. 


Every day,
think as you wake up,
today I am fortunate
to have woken up,
I am alive,
I have a precious human life,
I am not going to waste it,
I am going to use
all my energies
to develop myself,
to expand my heart
out to others,
to achieve enlightenment
for the benefit of all beings,
I am going to have
kind thoughts towards others,
I am not going to get angry
or think badly about others,
I am going to benefit others
as much as I can. 

- H.H. the XIV Dalai Lama

So thank you everyone!  It was wonderful to see you again, and to eat with you, and to laugh with you.  It fed my tummy and my heart,  I am so grateful!

Tashi Delek! Blessings and Good Luck!  May all auspicious signs come to you!