Yoga Belly Fusion Movement Class
July 20, 2009
Event Details: Wed Aug 5, 6:30-7:30pm at Indigo Village with Aysun Tezveren
Back by popular demand! Have you ever heard of Yoga Belly Fusion? Belly Dancing instructor Aysun Tezveren is a hypno-, energy and touch therapist who brings grace and positive energy into everything she does. Get ready to shake, shimmy and heal in this fun bellydancing class.
$25 at the door
$20 pre-pay REGISTER HERE
$15 if you bring a friend REGISTER HERE
50% off for members CLICK HERE
Breakthroughs in Business
July 17, 2009
Breakthroughs in Business, Thurs Aug 20 @ 6:30pm, Location TBA
Are you an entrepreneur and want to connect with other women to share business ideas, strategies, and contacts?
Would a round table with like-minded women help you in taking your business to the next level?
Do you need advice from experts in different areas of business?
If so, our monthly Breakthrough in Business Meeting is for you. As a member of Women 4 Wellness, you can participate in this round table discussion where women support each other in growing their businesses. This month’s topic is “Internet Marketing – Attracting Traffic for your Website”
Must be a member to attend, JOIN US for only $7.99!
RSVP to register@women4wellness.net
Create Balance, Abundance & Freedom with Ayurveda – Oct 2
July 16, 2009
Ayurveda, a 5000 year old tradition in India, lives right in our backyard and we don’t even realize it! The Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad has been teaching this healing art form for over 10 years, helping people bring their bodies into balance using the Ayurvedic principles of health.
More than a mere system of treating illness, ayurveda is a science of life (Ayur = life, Veda = science or knowledge). It offers a body of wisdom designed to help people stay vital while realizing their full human potential. Providing guidelines on ideal daily and seasonal routines, diet, behavior and the proper use of our senses, ayurveda reminds us that health is the balanced and dynamic integration between our environment, body, mind, and spirit.
Women 4 Wellness will be hosting an Ayurveda Dosha Party, where you will learn:
* how to cook using the 6 tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, astringent and pungent to balance out the body
* your dosha (or body type – pitta, kapha or vata) and how to create more freedom by knowing your tendencies
* common Ayurveda principles that you can start applying in your life immediately to create abundance in all areas of life
You will have the opportunity to:
* Taste amazingly delicious Ayurvedic dishes
* Connect with other women who share your dosha
* Create long lasting relationships
Where: 8097 Camino Montego, Carlsbad CA 92009
When: Fri Oct 2, 6:30pm
Register now to receive a raffle ticket for the Ayurveda cookbook Eat, Taste Heal. Only pre-registrations will be eligible!
If you have technical difficulties registering, please email info@women4wellness.net to reserve your spot today!
1 Day Intensive Nutrition/Cooking Program
July 13, 2009
Whole Journey Intensive Nutrition & Cooking Program – Sat 11/14, 9am-7pm @ Indigo Village, Encinitas
Just one day to permanently change your diet and health…
Join one of San Diego’s best holistic nutritionists, Christa Orecchio, for an all inclusive one day wellness seminar tailored to change how, why and what you eat for the rest of your life. You will:
- find your natural weight by working with your body instead of against it
- improve digestion, assimilation and elimination
- minimize or eliminate cravings
- Stabilize blood sugar and hormones
- customize an exercise and detox program to meet your needs
- improve energy, mood and mental clarity
- cultivate an incredibly healthy relationship with food
This seminar includes information on:
- pH balance
- how to select healthy snacks, condiments, oils and fats
- food allergies, sensitivities and digestive wellness
- how two hours of prep becomes a week’s worth of convenient, healthy 10 minute meals
Dinner and wine are included!
Cost: $225
Special W4W member price: $195
Please email register@women4wellness.net to sign up, or if you have any questions, we can arrange for you to speak with her for a 20 minute free consultation and see if this program is for you.
Vipassana Meditation: What I Got From My Dhamma Service
July 1, 2009
In the beginning of April, I went to serve at a Vipassana meditation course in North Fork, California, about 45 miles outside of Fresno. Vipassana means “to see things as they really are” and is one of India’s most ancient techniques of meditation, rediscovered by the Buddha. It was lost in its pure form until the 1960s when SN Goenka brought it back to India from Burma, and then spread it around the world. Today, there are centers in over 100 countries. The course lasts for 10 days and is held in “noble silence”. The courses are free and non-denominational; a poor Christian could be sitting next to a rich Muslim and so forth.
I “sat” a 10-day course for the first time in August 2008. Since I had no job and no money to give as a donation for my course, I made a promise to “serve” my next course, cooking meals and cleaning for the students. The time finally came and I was able to pay my dues. In return for my service, I got tremendous benefit, growth and understanding. Here’s my top 5 list of “what I got from my Dhamma service”:
“Busy” is just a conversation
From August of last year to April, I had a hard time maintaining my meditation practice because I was so busy with everything else. By serving the meditation course, I learned what busy really is. We got up at 5am to start preparing breakfast at 5:30am. We meditated with the group from 8 to 9 and then came back to prepare lunch. We had a short break after cleaning up from 1-2:30 and then an hour of mediation. We prepared dinner for 5pm, sat from 6 to 7 and then prepped for the next day or relaxed, depending on the day. The meditation was built into the schedule, making it easy to create and maintain the habit, and the day was more action packed than my usual schedule. Anything is possible if you make the time for it. It is simply a matter of making a commitment, prioritizing and scheduling it, then being consistent in implementing the plan.
Service is about giving to yourself before you give to others
As you could probably imagine, at the beginning we got tired, irritated, frustrated and absent-minded. This is part of the natural process. As you meditate and purify the body and mind, stuff comes up and affects you. It’s like when you go on a detox diet you have side effects at the beginning and then you start to feel good toward the end. At the course, the philosophy is that if you cannot serve with love in your heart and a joyful attitude, then you really are not doing service at all; you are just negatively infecting the environment that is spoiling the mood of the students (who are already going through a tough time in the course). If this is the case, go to your room or the mediation hall and take care of yourself first. You have to give to yourself in order to give to others; if you do not have love and compassion for yourself, it will be very difficult to have love and compassion for others. I learned how to listen to my own needs so I could take better care of the people around me. This freed me up.
Just say what’s going on inside
My first couple days, I did not get along with one of the kitchen managers. I was irritated and wanted things to go my way. On the third night, I realized how difficult I was being. Who would want to work with someone who was constantly snappy, uptight and inflexible? I decided to speak up during our team meeting. I told everyone that I felt myself being annoyed and was taking it out on people in the group. Later that day, the manager came up to me and thanked me for sharing what was going on for me because it enabled him to have compassion for me and not take it personally when I was short with him. I learned in that moment how important it is to tell the people around you when you are having a bad day; it takes the drama out and allows people to be more self-expressed and connected.
I’m not tired, I just need to meditate
By the end of the week, I felt like I was floating. Getting up at 5am felt natural and I had a new sense of peace and energy that I had not felt in a long time. Instead of taking a siesta at 1pm, I realized all I needed was to meditate. What a difference that makes! I realized my body shuts down from stress, making me want to go to sleep to avoid something or recover from something. By facing whatever that stress is during my meditation, I could recover quicker and feel lighter, without keeping that emotional baggage.
Be happy
We had signs everywhere that said “be happy”. I always think of the song “Don’t worry be happy”, and it started to take on a new meaning by the end. Every moment, we have a choice. We can get frustrated and angry that we have to wash 100 dishes, or we can be happy that its not 200. We can get irritated with a coworker for being too chipper in the morning, or we can be happy and whistle with her. We can choose to be happy in every moment, simply because we say so. In our pursuit of happiness, we forget that it is right there under our noses the whole time; we just have to stop and smell it, noticing it is there. And then smile because we found it again.
I will do my second “sit” from July 31 to August 9. You can find the nearest Vipassana center at www.dhamma.org.
–Tanya Paluso
The Ecological Gardener
July 1, 2009
Day 1: Sat May 22, 2009 –
Digging In
I have to admit; I’ve been intimidated by the garden. When we first moved in at the end of March, it looked overwhelming with the massive fava bean plants towering like trees and things like sorel that I’d never heard of. I didn’t know where to start. Should I weed? Which weeds needed to be pulled? How did the water system work? When did we harvest? Where do we plant new vegetables and when? A swirl of thoughts blocked my pathway into the garden. I’d walk the dog around in it and pick strawberries when they looked ripe. That’s about it.
Today, however, Alby will show us the basics. Alby owns the property and has been gardening for 20+ years. She maintains the orchard with two workers Tony and Francisco.
We sat down for a minute.
“What would you like to do?” she asked me, patiently.
“Well, I’d like to know how the whole system works.”
“That’s good. Let’s start with a tour and then you can decide what you’d like to start with, how’s that?”
We went around to all the garden beds, pointing out what weeds needed to be taken out, which vegetable plants were starting to flower and needed trimming, and which plants were overgrown and could be replaced.
I took out four fava bean plants after harvesting all the pods and two overgrown fennel plants that didn’t have an edible bulb. I trimmed the cilantro that had started to flower and some dandelion weeds that could easily spread if not maintained.
Small steps. Just like doing anything else. If you break it down to manageable small tasks, you can feel like you accomplished something really big and feel confident that you can take on the whole project over time.
I no longer feel overwhelmed. In fact, I feel excited to be out there every day, ready to learn the next step in this permaculture garden.
Day 2: Sun May 23, 2009
New Workers and New Plants
A permaculture garden is one that is a closed loop system that maintains itself without the use of pesticides. In other words, the garden becomes a self-sufficient ecosystem with plants and bugs that live in harmony with each other.
We’ve got spiders, worms, pincher bugs, rolly pollies, ants, beetles and gophers. And we’ve got a mini-dachshund named Ubuntu who loves to eat wood chips and roll around in the dirt.
You know the soil is good when you have worms in it. You know the system is working everything is growing and the strawberries taste like nothing you’ve ever tasted in a store. They are juicy and a little tart.
Today we went to Armstrong’s to buy some seeds and seedlings. We put some seeds in tiny planters up on our deck and placed them in water so the bottom of each container would be super moist. Then we removed the containers so that they wouldn’t completely drown. You want the seeds to be in wet soil, but not flooded.
We cleared out two beds in the garden. One had all garlic, the other had all potatoes. The little girl who lives downstairs came out to help us with the “potato hunt”. We laid those out to dry in the sun; potatoes needs to sit in the sun for a couple of days before been eaten to get rid of some of their toxins.
Leila wanted to plant some sunflower seeds; yesterday she didn’t want to get dirty and help because she had a new dress on, but today she was ready. She insisted on digging each hole and dropping three sunflower seeds in. “Rolly pollies are everywhere! Look!” she exclaimed.
The little girl loved being in the garden. And that’s the only way to teach kids. They don’t really want to listen; Leila didn’t hear a word I was saying as I tried to teach her about compost and mulch. Just get her directly involved and she’ll learn.
After we weeded and cleared out the beds, we were ready to plant. We took two zucchini plants and put them by the trellis so they could grow upward and not take over the entire space.
We also put a winter squash and a melon in the other bed on opposite sides since they will also need a lot of room to grow. We put a layer of compost down and then a layer of mulch on top to keep the moisture in the soil. We used some wood chip/straw mulch.
It’s incredible to see how these small steps have really changed everything. The garden looks completely different now; it looks cleaner with new seedlings and less weeds.
It also makes a difference when you have a team working in the garden. My brother, my dad, little Leila, my friend Anna and Alby. Oh, and can’t forget Ubuntu distracting us with her wood chip lunch.
Day 3: Mon May 24, 2009:
Starting a Compost
We started a little earlier this morning. Today, we were going to make a new compost pile. Francisco was sifting the old compost pile to separate the twigs and other large pieces from the good dirt ready to be used. In the old pile’s place we were going to start over with some plant trimmings.
There are many different ways to compost. Today we were going to use the Lasagna Method. First we lay down some of the green plant trimmings in a square. Next we put down a layer of straw on top. Spray it down with water, then put a light layer of dirt from the old compost. Spray down with some “compost feed” to help with the break down process. Then start over again, green, brown, dirt, just like Lasagna.
We had a finished compost pile that could take anywhere from 6-12 weeks to breakdown and be ready to use in the garden. It’s a process of magic, all depending on how the layers interact with each other, weather, etc.
Next to the “finished” pile, we would also start an “active” pile, which means we would go layer by layer with our scraps from our kitchen and the garden.
Weeds should never go in the compost for obvious reasons; you don’t want the seeds of the weeds going back into your garden. We saw this first hand with the compost that we put in our basil pot; we had cilantro and tomato plants starting to grow from the seeds in the compost we used.
Back to the garden…
Our water system needed maintenance. After replanting the beds, we would have to redirect the water. The whole system was a mess. Many sprinkler heads were broken and some beds were getting too much water.
Reis and Alby fixed it all while I learned how to set up a new sprinkler in the orchard where we planted a new watermelon seedling. We needed a large space for it to run. It also needed a drip by the root because the leaves would mold if they get too wet.
We also set up drips near the new melon and squash seedlings in the vegetable beds.
A gopher popped its head out of a hole near the garden and Ubuntu spotted him. She is naturally a burrower and a digger and for the first time in her 10 months of existence, she was finally using her innate ability to dig and hunt. She was on a mission and so was the gopher. As she dug furiously in the hole, quivering with a rush of adrenaline, the gopher frantically pushed dirt up to block “Bu”. She tried digging on the side and then started pushing dirt with her nose into the hole, then digging it out. We couldn’t figure out if she was trying to get the gopher, and keep him away. She proceeded to push dirt in and dig dirt out for 10 minutes.
Bu was getting nowhere with this game and I’m sure the gopher made it out the back door. I left. At least Bu found a way to use those digging skills she had been practicing on our couch, and hopefully the gopher got the hint to stay away from our tough, ferocious mini doxie.
To be continued…
Tanya Paluso
excerpt from www.ecologicalgardener.com