Meditative Hikes (registration required)
Mondays: 10:15am -11:15am
Fully Accessible for low mobility, wheelchairs, walkers, or chronically ills persons
Sitting meditation in a natural setting, some discussion on connecting to self, others and the globe. Practices for healing ourselves and the Earth.
Newmarket
(email for location and directions
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Tuesday: 10:15 am - 11:15am
Full mobility required, hiking component is at a moderate level with steep hills
Two parts: 1. Sitting meditation and discussion around spirituality, healing ourselves and the Earth. Daily practices to change the world we live in. Changes in perception. 2. Guided Hike - connection to nature, learning local flora and fauna. Metaphors related to daily living choices.
Newmarket, King, Aurora
(email for location and directions
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Tuesday: 7:15 pm - 8:45pm
Full mobility required, hiking component is at a moderate level with steep hills
Two parts: 1. Sitting meditation and discussion around spirituality, healing ourselves and the Earth. Daily practices to change the world we live in. Changes in perception. 2. Guided Hike - connection to nature, learning local flora and fauna. Metaphors related to daily living choices.
Newmarket, King, Aurora
For Evening Classes ONLY: If there is inclement weather an indoor space has been donated to the group by Mahalo Naturopathic Center in Holland Landing
(email for location and directions
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Fee
These are "Pay It Forward" activities, however donations are also welcome. (With a Donation of $20 you will receive an MP3 of the guided visualizations and meditations that were facilitated that day). "Pay It Forward"means that as a participant you will pay someone other than the instructor for the services you received, in either money, goods, or services. You do not have to report how or to whom you paid it forward to, that is between you and the Universe. The more you value the meditative Hikes - the more you pay it forward - the more substantial the benefits of the meditation.
The Will to Sustain
My recent journey started out of desperation to not be sick any more – to no longer be in pain. Which lead me to the woods, where I gained a world of knowledge just sitting and being still. It was very hard at first to take the time every day to go into the woods… it felt counter intuitive. I had so much to do – I had to make money, clean the house, market myself, my business, care for the kids, cook, drive the kids around, grocery shop, laundry… but as the days passed it was harder and harder to leave the sanctuary of my woods. The place I felt the most at home, the least pressure to get a move on – to go go go, to be who I thought the world expected me to be. For a few months I was healed. My headaches subsided. My stomach pain was gone. I was eating healthy. I would do a few contracts a month – enough to pay the rent and bills, and maybe a couple days of fun too! I felt strong, connected and healthy. I had captured in film the life forms around me that had engaged me for months and was granted permission to share them with the world.
Then it happened. Life got in the way. I had lofty goals, and was determined. There was a message I was set to the task of spreading. I had a way in my head I wanted things to go. Things did not go that way. So I tried harder. I networked and connected with the community around me. Found an amazing resource of support. Filmed, photographed and wrote articles for the Four Seasons of Green Project. I was absorbed. Maybe too much for my own good. I went months without proper food. Months without meditation. Months without connecting to the one source that sustained me.
And now here it is – I am sick again. I would like to tell you that I realized that I had disconnected at the point in time that it happened – but truly it is just the past couple f days I sat back and laughed at the ridiculousness of my stubbornness. It is a sneaky thing this obsession with the rat race we are all a part of. Working to the bone, or starving to the bone. Balance is a hard thing to strike. It is a very thin, invisible line that each of us has to draw for ourselves--- but too often we let others draw it for us and BOOM, we are disconnected – outta sync and otherwise creating our own dis-ease.
Despite the suggestions from those who know me and how I help others encouraging me to meditate and talk to my guides, I was too tired, and in too much pain. I had a headache that would not relent for a month – no matter how much peppermint oil I put on my head or advil I ate. Home remedies, or over the counter help did nothing to make the pain subside. Often they were so intense I would be nauseas, and dizzy. I went to a chiropractor in hopes that I would find relief. Certainly it helped my neck and back but it actually made my headaches worse – when he would work on me I would experience a blinding pain. Same thing happened with massage. So I turned to my doctor, being that I am usually very oppositional about using medication he was trilled to prescribe something. I got medication for my headaches and within days I had the relief I was seeking – but the side effects did not go unnoticed. So I got a prescription for more medication to resolve the side effects.
In addition I was having a great deal of difficulty eating. After starving because of our economic state for 3 months I was malnourished enough that my body had difficulty accepting food. And I had trained myself out of an appetite. So I got a prescription for that too. So much for going green and natural. How easy it is to abandon ones convictions when there is this sense of endless suffering. Well, I’ll tell you this – the stomach med’s made the situation worse not better. The headache medicine is highly addictive and if I miss a dose I suffer worse than before I was on the med’s.
I took the med’s to try to continue at the pace I was running at. When clearly what I should have done was STOP! I was determined to persevere. Through the headaches, through the nausea, through the malnourishment, through the abdominal pain, through the exhaustion, through the complete and utter disconnect – the one thing that brought me to the realization of my path in the first place!
It is too easy to get drawn in to the high paced, pressure building urgency of society. The commercials telling me and my children what we need to have- things we didn’t need yesterday but absolutely must have them today. People are often surprised to learn how little we live off of. We live in a nice town home. We have a car. I have my own business. From the outside we look like an average family. My oldest son does skateboard lessons in the winter and soccer in the summer. However We don’t have a home phone. We don’t have cable television. We don’t have stocks of food in our cupboards. Our supplies will generally take us through 2-3 days. And because recently I was buying into what society was telling me – I felt inadequate. I need a ‘real’ job. One with benefits. A 9-5-er. A new car. A flashy new website. New computer with the best programs. My kids needed new toys. Or so I was told.
I finally did meditate and have a chat with my ‘guides’ and was given a very specific diet list and told to go back to the woods. So I am here to invite others to come with me. To find your own quietness. Your serene connection to your place in this world. It is a time of personal healing, focusing, and giving the Earth a chance to connect with us again.
Body, mind and soul are all integrated pieces of what we define as self. And just as we cannot extrapolate one of these tangled pieces of ourselves – we as humans, cannot think of ourselves separate from nature. We are nature. No matter how we compartmentalize, or segregate, or build cement walls around ourselves we do not cease to be made up of the natural world, and our actions do not cease to affect the world around us. It is when we are connected at all levels and have an awareness of this connection that we can be responsible for our health, our actions, and the healing of the Earth. When we understand our complete entanglement with our children, our families, our neighbours, our community – both local and global that we can finally understand how to help those around us who need it – and most of all how to help ourselves. After all it is a fruitless task to try to change someone else – but we have he power with in us to change our own actions, behaviors and yes, even our thoughts.
QUOTE:
Paradox Of Our Times
* The paradox of our times is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We buy more, but enjoy it less.
* We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time. We have more advanced degrees, but less common sense; more knowledge, but less good judgment; more medicine, but less wellness.
* We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We have higher incomes, but lower morals.
* We have been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbour. We've conquered outer space, but inner space is still a mystery to too many of us.
* We have cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; split the atom, but not our prejudices.
* We talk too much, love too seldom and hate too often.
* These are times of steep profits and shallow relationships; world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; two incomes and more divorce.
• It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring a letter to you in seconds, and you can choose either to make a difference or just hit "delete".
What I had forgotten over the past few months of filming ‘other’ people and researching what is going on ‘elsewhere’ is that the focus of this project was never about what is going on outside – it was supposed to be about what is going on inside.
This is your time – right now to choose to heal yourself – to connect to humanity – and in that connection find salvation – too heal your emotional wounds, your physical disease, your loneliness, your confusion, to restore your focus, remember your purpose and invoke your sense of well-being. For some this will mean going back to their place of worship. For others it will mean having family gatherings. Some people will remember to take time for themselves. And other will prefer company in their journey.
If you would like company, then please join me a few times a week as I go into the woods for meditation and hikes. These are all pay it forward activities – though donations will be gladly accepted as well. I will be starting next week – if you are interested let me know I will forward you the schedule & locations. 2 days will be seated meditation in the woods and hiking for mobile persons. 1 day a week will be fully accessible meditation for people with limited mobility, wheelchair access… lawn chairs are welcomed at the accessible meditation practice.