April Challenge Winner Testimonials

Catherine Chaput:
" 30 classes in 30 days! I found this to be a very rewarding challenge. I learned that I could totally balance family, friends, work, and still make time for myself. It's awesome how much giving to myself allows me to give more to others."

Lauren Bird: 
"I came into this challenge expecting to have grown physically and mentally - but what grew more than anything was my love for yoga. Each practice was a growth and exploration, and I'd do the challenge all over again without having it be a challenge - just for the love of yoga, my fellow practictioners, and myself. Thank you again HappyTree for watering the roots of my practice!"

"Healing Through Yoga" by Lolitta Dandoy

Lolitta Dandoy

"You have breast cancer." That's what the doctor told me on the afternoon of March 2nd, 2010. In an instant my life changed, I had gone from being a perfectly healthy 29-year-old to having this terrible thing inside of me. I didn't react well; in fact I fainted in my fiancé's arms. After the initial shock, I managed to be well while waiting for the prognostic. I worked, laughed, went out, and actually didn't think about it too much. I have always been a very positive and smiley person, so I think this took over the rest.

The results were very long to come because the doctor wanted to send them to the US before he decided anything. Two months later, I finally learned that I was going to have radiotherapy. I was happy about that because it meant that I could still get married that
summer, which was the plan. So we finished our list and sent the invitations to our guests. The next day, I received a phone call telling me that my case was presented to the Royal Victoria tumor board and that some doctors thought it would be better if I underwent chemo, as well. I was devastated and couldn't believe it because everything was ready for my radiotherapy to start.

Two weeks before starting my treatments, someone from CanSupport told me that I could attend free yoga classes at HappyTree Yoga Studio and that it would be good for me. I started right away and I really liked it; it made me feel relaxed and happy. On July 9th, the hardest part of my life started. My first chemo went well, but 2 days later, I started feeling the real effects. That first week was awful. I couldn't eat, I couldn't walk and I couldn't even sit for more than 15 minutes. I was restless and at the same time, I didn't have the energy to do anything. The next week, things started to get better and
I started going back to HappyTree. At first, it really helped me breathe and relax, but there came a point where I became so depressed and negative that I even had a hard time going through the sessions. Fortunately, my family and my fiancé were always there to motivate me and get me to class. I was, and I am, so lucky to have them! From August to October, things were so bad that I had lost my smile and I didn't talk anymore. I, who had always been so positive, became depressed and negative.

Now that I look back, I have to say that yoga helped me a lot. The classes made me feel better and I met wonderful ladies going through similar ordeals as me. They were so nice! I also had the chance to meet Melanie, who gives amazing classes and has the most soothing voice. When I was feeling better, around October, I really started enjoying the classes again and I realized how important they were to me. Whenever I went to yoga, I felt relieved and reenergized. Other than the actual positions, one of the best things I learned was the guided relaxation and the breathing techniques. I finally understood what healing through yoga meant, and that's why I would love to attend one of Nischala Joy
Devi's workshops.

Thank you to CanSupport and HappyTree for bringing yoga into my life.

Lolitta

"There is Always Something You Can Do" - by Rafaelle Roy

Rafaelle, bottom right, at the HappyTree retreat at Sutton

A mammogram done in October 2009 was found to be 'suspicious', and after what
seemed interminable tests, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2010. Then the pre-op tests showed cancer in the other breast, and finally on March 10 of that year, I went through a radical bilateral mastectomy.

I had been on an emotional rollercoaster, going from one shock to yet another shock for five months, and now I had to learn to live with no breasts, the distressing feeling that I was mutilated, unfeminine, un-attractive. I grieved for those breasts like the old friends that they were. I had anxiety attacks, panic attacks, and I became depressed and could only sleep with the help of pills.

My wonderful family doctor sent me to HappyTree Yoga. Yoga? At age 65? I couldn't picture myself doing the contortions that I thought were yoga. I called you, and you were so welcoming, so reassuring.

HappyTree has brought me so much - a family of sorts, with the gentle yoga group, and women who have gone or are going through breast cancer, and sometimes through treatments that seem scarier and harder than double mastectomy. I love the fun and the camaraderie and the support that we bring each other, the tea we share after yoga practice. I am so grateful for every single member of the staff. Everyone is so helpful, whether it's giving me advice on the best posture to help strengthen my arms, stretch my scar, or helping out with alternative moves when I am stuck. “There is always something
that you can do” is a sentence I've heard a lot, and it is becoming ingrained, a new philosophy of life! I love the spiritual aspect that is always present at HappyTree; it opens my heart and connects me to something greater than myself - or breast cancer.

I have learned to accept myself as I am, and I have taken yoga home with me, using the breathing of yoga to fall asleep, or to calm a moment of anxiety - and I can say without exaggerating that I am my old happy self again. I am creative again, painting up a storm, and going to yoga 4 to 5 days in a week - thanks to your generosity, too, letting me help out as a 'karma yogi' in exchange for more classes that I could not otherwise afford. I am healing, and yoga in the happy, relaxed, accepting atmosphere of HappyTree is a huge part of it.

This healing aspect of yoga is what interests me most. Now that I am semi-retired, I am planning to spend 4 to 5 months in my native Haiti, hopefully every couple of years, and I want to do a teacher training to bring yoga relaxation and fun to children in orphanages. The earthquake of January 2010 has left over 300,000 new orphans, children who I know must be traumatized, and emotionally suffering even far more than I was when facing cancer last year. I would love to attend Nischala Joy Devi's workshops, for myself, but also because I need to learn as much as I can so I can bring something home with me that I KNOW to be wonderful. My cousin Françoise, hearing of my plans, said to me just this week: "You could do yoga with women who suffer from breast cancer
too..." Oh yes.

So many thanks my dear Mel, to you, to CanSupport, and HappyTree Yoga!

Namaste,

Rafaelle

AMENEZ UN HOMME AU YOGA

Avis à tous les pères, frères, fils, maris, petits-amis, partenaires, collègues, amis;

VOTRE PREMIÈRE CLASSE À HAPPYTREE 

EST ABSOLUMENT GRATUITE PENDANT LE MOIS DE DÉCEMBRE !*

*Nouveaux étudiants seulement. Un par client.

Les hommes et le yoga: des obstacles à arriver au tapis?
Par Jason Wachob

Beaucoup de gars ne s’essayent pas au yoga. Alors quel est le plus grand obstacle qu’un homme rencontre avant sa première classe ?

David Regelin: je pense que la plupart des types abordent le yoga comme ils le feraient d’un sport. Vous choisissez un sport selon vos aptitudes. Les grands jouent au basketball, les costauds jouent au football américain, les coureurs rapides jouent au football, etc. Alors si vous n’êtes pas flexible et si vous avez un mauvais équilibre, vous pourriez penser que le yoga n’est pas pour vous parce que vous ne commencerez pas avec un avantage compétitif. Mais c’est exactement la raison pour laquelle le yoga est pour vous. Vous devenez flexible et fort au fur et à mesure que vous pratiquez. Et vous apprenez à être efficient. Vous apprenez vraiment une méthode pour engager et relâcher les muscles à volonté. Vous commencez aussi à contrôler votre esprit en contrôlant votre respiration.

Studies in Sanskrit: Prem

Taken from Grasping at Intangibles. (c) Dawn McSweeney. Used with permission.

Prem = Love

"Where there is great love, there are always miracles."

- Willa Cather

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet."

- Plato

"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free." 

-Tom Robbins

"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."

- Charles M. Schulz

Studies in Sanskrit: Yoga

(Taken from Grasping at Intangibles. Used with permission)

One could say that yoga headed West in the 1960s, and be mostly right. When Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became the very public spiritual advisor for The Beatles in 1967, a whole generation felt the call to seek the ancient wisdom of the East, and the counterculture found a beat it could march to. By August of 1969, Sri Swami Satchidanana was giving the opening address at the Woodstock Music Festival to nearly 500 000 open hearted explorers. Both yoga and TM (Transcendental Meditation) exploded onto the scene from seemingly nowhere.

The truth is that the information had been inching it's way across the continents for decades: 

Swami Vivekananda traveled to China, Europe, Canada, and America before the turn of the 20th century, speaking about Hinduism and Buddhism at the Parliament of World's Religions in Chicago in 1893. He is quoted as saying in one of his American speeches: 

"I do not come to convert you to a new belief. I want you to keep your own belief; I want to make the Methodist a better Methodist; the Presbyterian a better Presbyterian; the Unitarian a better Unitarian. I want to teach you to live the truth, to reveal the light within your own soul"

illustrating the fact that yoga has and always will be, the path rather than the destination. By 1895 he was teaching yoga classes in the Thousand Island region.

The word yoga comes from the root word "yuj" meaning to yoke, or control, which of course makes sense when we consider the discipline involved in pranayama (breath work), or even in maintaining a consistent practice. The word also means "union", and this is the commonly accepted meaning. 

Unifying with what, then becomes the question. From even a secular position, yoga can be used to remind us the non-duality of everything. We are part of the eco-system, the universe, the collective subconscious; our existence depends on our neighbors, on our planet, and vice versa. From a spiritual point of view, we are connected not only to all that we see and understand, but we are also made of the same celestial pixiesticks and cosmic rainbows as our neighbors: the spark that makes them human makes us human; our souls can relate to other souls; we are all drops of God, even if we call God by a different name. Simply, thou art that.

There are as many paths toward union as there are creatures seeking them, and the truth is, you don't need to unroll a mat to be in yoga. Sure, physical practice helps to get you there (hatha, raja & kriya yogas), but devotional practices (bhakti yoga),  or philosophical approaches (jnana yoga) will as well. In all honesty, whatever leaves you feeling in tune with all that is, will be, and ever was, is your best path to union. Whether it be composing a song or dancing the night away, your sense of fulfillment and completion is the goal behind each route. Be yoga now.

Studies in Sanskrit: Om

(Taken from Grasping at Intangibles. Used with permission)

Many of us are familiar with the droning hum heard at the start and close of yoga classes, but how many of us consider the meaning of the word?

It is said that this is the sound of creation; the vibrational tone that literally created the universe and everything in it. For instance, if we put it in the context of the quote "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1), this would be the word referred to from a Hindu or yogic perspective.

Most appropriately, OM is pronounced AUM, with three distinct and separate syllables that flow naturally into one another. The opening of the mouth to release sound naturally creates the AHH; the sustaining of the sound with open mouth creates the UHH, and the closing of our mouths as the breath empties from our lungs creates the MMM. Each syllable represents a part of the creative cycle, from inception, to sustenation, to the the close of the cycle, that it all may begin again.

Each stage of the cycle is represented by a god: Brahma is the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer. Together they make up the Trimurti, or the Hindu Trinity.

So the next time you find yourself smiling at the end of class, lost in the soothing sea of OM, take a moment to bask in just how vast that sea really is.