Workshops, Retreats, Special Classes and Teacher Trainings!

Upcoming Workshops:


Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
June 2nd & 3rd, 2012

Teacher Trainings:

Yoga Alliance 200-hour Yoga Teacher Trainings with Gaiatri Yoga and Beyond

Edmonton: Gaiatri Yoga & YogaLife Studios are teaming up for a 200-hour Teacher Training Program ~ 2012 dates are as follows:

August 1st - 15th

Sept 21st - 23rd

Sept 28th - 30th

Oct 5th - 7th

If you are interested or want more information check out the Gaiatri website www.gaiatri.com, YogaLife Studios or get in touch with me directly: jana.renee@gmail.com. If you want a phone conversation, please include your phone number in your email and I will call you back.

Calgary: Along side Sasha Bahador, Gaiatri is offering a 200-hour Teacher Training Program in three one week intensives in Calgary. Dates:


June 25 - 30th, 2012 ~ Level 1
Sept 10 - 15th, 2012 ~ Level 2
Nov 19 - 24th, 2012 ~ Level 3

Retreats:

Upcoming retreats are in the incubation process. I've been day dreaming of Nicaragua in Oct/Nov... I'll keep you posted.

We had so much fun in Fernie with a full house! The Gods dumped over a meter of fluffy white stuff all over us, the food was delicious and the company was outstanding! We even were treated by Noorish's Ayaaz Kasaam to a Raw Chocolate making workshop! 


Thank you so much to everyone who came!


***If you are interested in hosting myself or Gaiatri for workshops, teacher trainings or have a group interested in building a retreat - please let me know. I am happy to custom design programs, travel to teach workshops or teacher trainings. All you have to do is ask. Contact: jana.renee@gmail.com*** 

Messages from my Dreams

Lately I've been having a similar dream over and over. 

"Everyone I know has someone in their inner circle who recently died. Whether it's a family member, a close friend or a coworker. EVERYone knows someone who died with in a weeks time. In isolation, it wouldn't raise suspicion, but there's someone in every circle. I pan out in my dream, like birds eye vision and realize that it's happening like this all over the world. En Masse. It's outrageous how many people died in one week. It makes me so sad. So sad and I can't stop crying because each and every one of the deaths was preventable. It would seem like humanity went through a bump, where so much information was released toward (or from) earth - Gaia - that raised our vibration and activated light bodies. Those that were open minded enough to receive it and healthy enough to survive the DNA activation lived. People that spent time meditating, eating well, drinking clean water, getting flexible, being embodied by feeling their bodies, breathing well, loving themselves and others, took time to face fears and persevered, living from their heart, seeking peace and harmony  - were all okay.
It became loud and clear that all we needed to do to survive this crazy time was wake up!"

This sense of urgency that washes over me each morning after having this dream is so powerful! We gotta get to work. We gotta wake up. We gotta eat good food. We gotta drink clean, good water. We gotta get gardening. We gotta love each other. We gotta take care of ourselves, so we can take care of each other. We gotta be generous. We gotta stretch and meditate. We gotta get strong. We gotta play and have fun and celebrate. We gotta be connected with Spirit. We gotta believe the unbelievable. We gotta live with no attachments. We gotta be in the present  moment. We gotta live from our hearts! We just gotta! There's no more time to be complacent. We gotta get conscious and loving in our every thought, word and action. The time is NOW. 

What are you doing to wake up?

It's time to leave behind the shell of yourself that buffers between living the life you're meant to live and the life others expect you to live. What is your dream life?

Are you living on purpose?

I love you. Each and every one of you. Please - clean up your relationships & celebrate each other and the unique messages we have to share! 

You. Are. Amazing! Thank you for you!

Vancouver Landmark Forum - Day 1

Here I am in Vancouver - Lululemon so graciously sent me here as their humble Ambassador to participate in a Landmark Forum. This is the training that Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon did that propelled him into starting Lulu (I think that's how the story goes)! As part of Lulu's commitment to developing their people - they have a budget to send staff and Ambassadors through the program. Some how I was lucky enough to get picked!

I've decided while I'm here I'm going to take in as many yoga sessions as possible and create my own little yoga workshop/conference. This city has always been a source of inspiration for me! Last night I stopped into Meghan Currie's Power class at YYoga Yaletown. When I got there, I saw a sign that said I could do 2 weeks unlimited for $35+tax. Sign me up! 

With Landmark training 9am-10pm Friday - Sunday - my only yoga options on these days are sunrise. This morning I took Meghan's Power class again. I gotta say - even the muscles around my eye balls are feeling the strength of these power classes! 

Last night, after class, I had an impromptu visit in with Christine Price Clark, who's GLOWING! We're planning an encore visit for her to come back to Edmonton - so stay tuned for those details.

Day 1 of the Landmark Forum

Everyone keeps asking "What do you think so far?"

I have to be honest - I haven't formed an opinion on it yet. The methodology is different from trainings I've done in the past, however, I believe the end goal is similar to a lot of the work I've done in different yoga trainings. Our Forum leader, well, I can't figure her out yet either. She's stern and serious, from time to time she cracks the most dead-pan jokes. Hilarious jokes. And I have yet to see her smile. She calls it like it is and scares me. For all of you who have trained with me in the past - you know how I like to add to the conversation - I have yet to speak up. There may be a couple reasons for this.

The first thing they asked us to think about is "What are you here for?"

~ To become more present and refined in my listening skills

~ Become even more courageous to be me

~ Figure out what holds me back from my wholeness

~ To reveal why I get in the way of myself and stop doing that!

Then she went into a cyclical trip of a conversation that I've often had in the classroom: We don't even know what we don't know, so how do we even begin to know what we don't know if we don't know what we don't know yet? All this was to lead into the purpose of the training: What we already know won't give us a breakthrough. It's illumination of our blind spots that trigger breakthroughs.  

"It isn't about you - it's about the impact you have on others." 

Here's what she promised us:

• Procrastination will be gone after this weekend
• We're going to deconstruct our view/story
• She stands in the vision that every human has potential to be extraordinary
• We'll learn to not be so hard on ourselves
• We'll deconstruct FEAR

All she asks in return is that we show up fully, have a willingness to learn and an openness to be coached.

Right before she stated that we'll deconstruct FEAR, I realized that when I left for Australia in 2001 - I decided to drop fear as part of my life. The morning I was to leave on my trip, I had a moment with my older brother where I realized that I was scared shitless to go on this trip across the planet by myself. It felt yucky, so I decided to drop the emotion and plunge forward into this dream. I even went sky-diving the first week I was there, just to stare down the face of fear! I figured I could do anything - and I could! In that moment, I created this delusion that I fear nothing. It's that very aversion to fear that's caused me to deny that it's even present and in reality, the denial of fear is what holds me back from facing my fears head on! Now all of a sudden, I have all this fear flooding back into my world. Wow! Now I have something to work with! Good! 

We examined Authenticity and Inauthenticity. The question: "What area of my life do I lack power, freedom and peace of mind?"

"The more places we can find inauthenticity, the larger the potential for transformation."

"To be fully alive, we have to transcend living reasonably. Take a risk. Live life by choice. Get ridiculous!"

Over the course of the day, we're asked to share a bunch of different things with different people and each time, I'm digging deeper into what it is that I fear and where I am living inauthentically. After each break, we're asked to find a new seat. Each new share partner brought up a different topic and by the end of the day I figure I had the major bases covered.

I have yet to share publicly with the group. Why? I'm not 100% sure, but I think it comes back to what Venerable Robina illuminated for me (the Tibetian Buddhist Nun from the Tushita in India, remember?). Attachment to my reputation. When people speak up, Angie - the facilitator, is relentless in deconstructing their story. It's vulnerable work. I have some fear around sharing. My first partner tried to loop me into her public share and the second she did my heart started beating out of my chest! (Thankfully Angie only wanted to work with her in that moment!!)

There's two more full days. They ended the session with some homework and told us that today was only about 5% of what's to come. Okay - here we go!

K, I gotta get my butt to sleep - sunrise yoga to start my day!

Loving this life experience...

j

Manifestation & Creation - A New Project

It was about 11 years ago, an old roommate and great friend of mine, Michele, introduced me to her older sister and her boyfriend who were madly in love, jaw droppingly gorgeous, just about the coolest people I knew, AND they made being Spiritual cool. I had always had this HUGE part of myself that was yearning to express my Spiritual side, however, I never had an example of how to do that and still fit in with the 'cool kids.' They talked about all sorts of things that were weird and awesome that I had never heard about, introducing me to ideas that blew my mind. Of course, I would sit and listen to them in awe and never admit that I had never heard of most of this before. Tesla lights? A Spiritual Teacher? Kundalini yoga? Conspiracy theories, strange foods, all sorts of alternative healing modalities, how our thoughts shape our experience, you're going to put a what in your where now? and so many more seeds of consciousness. Some of the seeds lay dormant still to this day, even more have grown and I often pause to sit with gratitude for the direction change in my path meeting all these beautiful people caused. There is one particular seed that I've continued to nurture and take care of since they planted it 7 or 8 years ago.

I was over at Michele's new apartment and she showed me this new book her sister bought her: "Ask and It is Given - Learning to Manifest your Desires" by Esther and Jerry Hicks. I had no idea what this book was all about, but I knew that since Krista & Mat got it for her - it must be good. I left her apartment that day and went straight to the book store to get it.

Honestly, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The first chapter starts like this:

WTF? Really? I'm lucky I admired them and trusted that whatever they were into was going to be good because honestly - this was too weird for me at that time in my life. The book sat on my night stand for a good couple years. Every now and again, I would pick it up, open to a random page and start reading. Pieces started to make sense.  "You are the creator of your own reality." "That which is like unto itself is drawn." "...you might see the powerful Law of Attraction of sort of a Universal Manager that sees to it that all thoughts that match one another line up... ...You understand this principle when you turn on your radio and deliberately tune your receiver to match a signal from a broadcasting tower. You do not expect to hear music that is being broadcast on the radio frequency of 101FM to be received on your tuner when it is set at 98.6FM. You understand that radio vibrational frequencies must match, and the Law of Attraction agrees with you."

It wasn't until February 2009 when my mom gave me the book "The Law of Attraction" by the same authors on CD that it really started making sense to me. I had a number of really long car adventures that year and on each and every one, I would have the CD's playing in the background of my minds wanderings, (which were just about as wild as my road map). I would zone in and zone out. Something Esther would say would trigger a thought and I'd be off in the canyons of my mind exploring things I had created or experienced. As time went on, I started getting curious: 'What would happen if I actually did these exercises?' As with most of the practices I do these days - I figured I had nothing to lose by trying.

Here's my first big success story working with this practice: 

I had $xxxx in student loans left. I had been picking away at it for almost 6 years and was done with watching it slowly, slowly dwindle away. Even though I was making regular payments, it was taking for EVER! I was playing that game with myself that so many of us often play: 'When my student load is paid off, then I will...' I didn't want it to hold me back any more. I wanted to move on to the next phase in my plan, but I simply couldn't do it with the budget that I had. I decided to take the teachings of the Law of Attraction and put them into practice.

About a month into practicing the suggested meditations, cleaning up my thoughts, especially around my finances, I received an email from someone I hardly know asking me to pick him up a lotto ticket. I emailed him back & turns out he meant to send that to his wife. Weird. I had only played the lotto a handful of times at this point. It decided it was a pretty clear sign I should buy a lottery ticket. So I did. I bought a Lotto Max quick pick and tucked it away in my car. A couple days later, I drove 12 hours to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho listening to the Law of Attraction CD's, imagining myself completely debt free, getting lost in all the things I would do when I won the lottery. I imagined the land I would buy, the yurts I would build, the vegetables I would grow, the workshops I would teach, how I would share when money was that abundant. Funny, even with all that imagining, I was 100% sure that I would still live where I lived, teach yoga and pretty much continue on my path, now debt free. I distinctly remember this feeling that washed across my heart at one point. I had never felt it before, it was a new opening. As soon as I got to Coeur d'Alene, I forgot all about it as I immersed myself in the teacher training. On the second last night of the training, I was sitting in my friend Jessica's living room, remembered my ticket, ran out to my car, grabbed it and came in to check it. First number right, second number right, third number right, cool. Free ticket? Fourth number right, fifth number right, Wow-EE! What does this MEAN? Sixth number wrong. Oh well. Seventh number right! WHAT? I got 6 out of 7 numbers right? What?!? Am I rich? Turns out I won $35 shy of my total debt! It works! The practice really works! Holy smokes! I was debt free!!! Time to activate the next phase in my plan!! 

Crazy right?

The thing about the Law of Attraction is it that its working whether we're conscious of it or not. Over the past couple years, I've been playing with how the potency of the practice of yoga intertwined with this potent conscious mind practice can be used to literally create the life we've always dreamed of. There's lots more to say about this, but I'm going to leave it at that for now.

My new project is this: Video Blogging. It's going to be a place where I tell quick stories of how my thoughts become things. I'm not exactly sure what this will look like right now as I find with most of these things, they start to take on a Soul of their own. Only time will tell. I wish I could say that I would post every Wednesday or something like that. Knowing my crazy schedule, I'm not sure that's a promise I can keep, but I will post. I'm just working up the courage to do my first one. Gulp! Wish me luck!

Still ALIVE!!

How's it going out there in cyber land?

Despite good intentions to post regular tales from my life or insights or random blurbs, I seem to have neglected this blog for some time! Not for being lazy, in fact, quite the opposite is true. I may have become a little over ambitious in what I have taken on over the past months. More importantly, I have developed this deep love affair with unplugging from e-communication.

In talking to a friend of mine recently, we laughed at the many ways we can connect these days. Email, Facebook, text messages, What's App?, Facebook messenger, Twitter, Skype (okay - I really like how Skype lets me hang out with friends on the other side of the planet or how I can invite a girl friend into my bedroom to help me figure out what to wear! Haha!). It's AMAZING! We reflected how sometimes these forms of communication can create a flat level of communication that perhaps even feeds disconnect rather than deepen our connections. In this conversation - we proceeded to agree to talk as little as possible on these platforms and go back to good ol' face to face (Skype fits, yah?) or telephone chatting. Needless to say, I have decreased the amount of time I spend on a computer and increased the amount of time I spend living, breathing and immersing myself in life. Having said that - I now strive to create a balance. So here I am back in the cyber world ;)

With 2011 nearing its completion, I find myself putting a decent amount of thought into what 2012 looks like for me. 2012. The much talked about, often exploited year: 2012!!!

Today a friend asked me to list five things that would describe what this next stretch of time looks like for me. More specifically, what is important to me in the creation of potential working relationships. I'm not exactly sure what he was expecting, but this is what I came up with:

1. To listen more & to be heard. Truly listen. Truly be heard. To love & respect more fully & freely and to feel loved & respected.

2. To illuminate individual's gifts and talents through creating space for Dharma to be fulfilled (a Soul's truest purpose or calling in this precious life).

3. To share what moves me and to be inspired to move.

4. To be in service (Seva) to Spirit and the many Souls that cross my path.

5. To nurture, build and be an active part of strong communities of Bright Souls. Elevate.

This also triggered a long journal entry that morphed into some what of a visionary practice for what's to come. It's all really exciting! I can't say exactly what the next year looks like as life seems to be changing at unprecedented rates. I truly feel like I have no idea of what's to come. However, it's the way I want it to feel that feels clear.

I'm wildly open to opportunity, hope to continue to travel and teach yoga, and at the same time continue to cultivate this steadiness and ease that has washed over in the past year.

Life is good people. Life is good.

What's your list of 5 things for  2012?

First Day Back on Canadian Soul... 'er Soil

I've never really been much of a poet,
under the influence of jet lag, I feel I should show it.

Hong Kong International prayer room brings peace,
Each handstand an offering for the waiting to cease.

Side body long, Inner body bright,
Please Stand-by Gods, Get me on this flight!

Anxiety surprises me as the airplane door closes!
I must get her back, to inspire my poses!

Balinese Saraswati rolled up in a tube,
Left on the bench, I am such a Boob!

Land on home turf, hop on the train
Canada Line, you've done it again!

New skype app, free wifi
I try to find my guy

now that it's done, where am I now?
it's all starting over, it's all really WOW!

One day at a time, each moment so precious
My memories of ALL will be truly momentous.

<3

Always a Beginner

Each new day, I step on my mat, there is something new to discover. Yesterday, I had a conversation with my warrior postures. Start with my feet. How do they connect with the earth? What happens if I put a little more weight into the inner edge of my heal? Moment by moment, checking in with Anusara's Universal Principles of Alignment (UPA's) and loops as I work my way through my body from my feet all the way to the expression of my fingers.

As I work with these postures that I've done a million and one times before - how do I keep it fresh? How do I continue to learn new things? There was a moment as I worked with the placement of my femur bone in my hip socket in Warrior II, examined the relationship between the four corners of my foot and the freedom in my pelvic floor, I realized - of course it's always new. Each new day, as the story of life unfolds, we are privy to new realms of the self. The way I felt my hip socket 10 years ago and my relationship with my hip socket now are completely different. The basics are where I get to explore the deeper realms. By creating a strong basic foundation, as the practice unfolds, integrity can be maintained in the complicated positions. If every day I step on my mat with the intention to learn something new - they journey is endless.

With about a week left in my journey, I've been pondering coming home. For the past 3 months I have been traveling into essentially, the great unknown. There have been guidebooks, friends and pushy rickshaw drivers to guide me, but the true travel began when I lost my guide book. I must have had a different look on my face as I got off buses because even the rickshaw drivers didn't bother me anymore. Something shifted. I've been doing this traveling on and off for14 years now. I have a pretty good idea how it works. My first trip compared to this trip are quite different. Just like my relationship with my hip and femur. I've got pretty comfortable with this life as a traveler, moving from place to place, living out of a back pack, making new friends and stepping into the great unknown every day. Every day I learn something new.

The paradox of this travel thing is now that I am preparing to come home - home now seems like the great unknown. When talking to friends and family from home, I realize how far away I am. I know everything will be just as it should. The right classes will land in my teaching schedule. The whole process is like starting new again. Come back to the basics. As I come home and humbly work to fill my class schedule at the local yoga studios, all I can do is make my offering and hope you all show up to play along!

To quote one of my greatest teachers: "My wandering nature is always focused on voyaging back to the Source.  And through it all, I really don’t know what the practice of yoga is; all I know is that it always meets me where I am, and never leaves me where it found me."  

Namaste