Yoga Living

Derek Thorne lives in the Somerset area and runs a yoga school. From an early age, he sought the meaning of life in addition to living in the world as a practical and capable person. Eastern religions captivated him and yoga offered a way to explore his questioning about life and provided a personal intimacy with the self, the 'I' within. It also provides a good model for the modern age, to avoid and relieve many ills of our stressed and dysfunctional society. Yoga brings people into relationship for the divine and provides a spiritual resolution to many of life's greatest questions and concerns. 

Chants and Mantras

Since time immemorial we have raised our voices in song whether alone or in groups. Our voice is a potent healing instrument that resonates within us and outside of us, surrounding others and imbuing a sense of wholeness, joy and well being.

Today, we seldom use our voices in this way. Our lives are taken over with listening to other voices, the voice on the television, the computer game, the iPhone, CD's and the radio. The power of our voices is becoming lost to us.

Voices of the Sacred Feminine

Book Review: Voices of the Sacred Feminine – Conversations to Re-Shape Our World, Edited by Rev Dr Karen Tate, Published by Changemaker Books. 400 pages 
This is an anthology of specially chosen articles about the Divine Feminine, each between approx. 400 – 1,000 words in length. All articles cover some aspect of the goddess and are derived from many cultures, for instance, sacred activism, social change, planetary welfare, healing, empowerment and mutual support, in addition to challenges to major patriarchal religious thought. 

Thomas Raymond Kelly

Who was Thomas Raymond Kelly? 

Born into an American Quaker family in 1893 and died 1941, Doctor of Philosophy, Kelly originally trained as a chemist. During WWII, he worked in varying capacities becoming a pacifist. He wrote on the subject of mysticism. 

Before 4000BC

Around this date, patriarchal culture began to supercede the previous matriarchal cultures. The most ancient deity was a female, known as the Great Goddess, and her full figure statuettes are found internationally and described as 'Venus' figurines. She was described as Ishtar in Mesopotamia, as Astarte in Phoenecia, as Iset in Egypt. It is said that her culture was peace loving, where the weak and disabled were cared for and where the planet was regarded as sacred. 

Craniosacral Specialist

 

Hugh Milne is Scottish and was born into a family of Osteopaths (his mother, father, grandfather and 2 uncles). Became a highly successful private specialist in Kensington early in his life but was hearing the voice of Spirit and became interested in psychodrama, gestalt, rolfing and other therapies and personal growth disciplines. Travelled to Bombay and met Bhagvan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) and spent seven years as the guru's bodyguard, in India and in Oregon. He returned to UK to become a writer, spiritual teacher and specialist practitioner.  

Fritz Perls and Gestalt

Friedrich 'Fritz'  Perls (1893-1970) was born in Berlin (Germany) but left there when Hitler came to power. Originally Perls studied under Freud. He was a psychiatrist and an innovatory humanistic practitioner whose 'Gestalt Therapy'  became very popular during the 1960s. The word 'gestalt' comes from a German word for form, an organised whole which differentiates foreground from background images. Only parts of ourselves are known, and gestalt exposes the whole, the integrated parts that bring us from dependency to self sufficiency, from authoritarian behaviour to authenticity and self reliance. Top dog and under dog engage in dialogue! Perls was a rather controversial figure at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur but his psychotherapy model provides fast insight for therapeutic change. “Reality therapy for the walking well”. 

Perls joined the German army and was posted to the trenches in WWI. He worked as a psychiatrist with brain injured soldiers at the end of the war, studying under Wilhelm Reich, Jacob Moreno and Otto Rank and other leading lights of the therapeutic movement. As Hitler became more powerful, he and his wife and family fled abroad. 

Sustainable Lifestyles

Jonathon Porritt reflects on sustainability: Governments are failing to meet their responsibilities on climate change and population explosions, pollution, global warming and vital loss of trees. In the USA, it is often city mayors who are making the running, sometimes with the active support of state governors. It was Mayor Bloomberg of New York who succeeded in forcing climate change into the presidential election, endorsing changes he immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In China, there’s an extremely active network of eco cities, enthusiastically competing amongst themselves for government support and new industry investments.