Everyone is welcome to join in free meditation classes and Sahaja Yoga in Winnipeg this week. (Sahaja means spontaneous: ja means born within, Yoga means union or connection).
This guided meditation is for anyone and you can sit comfortably in a chair, or if you prefer, on the floor.
Sessions take place on Mon. Apr. 18 and Tue. Apr. 19 from 5 – 6 p.m., 6 – 7 p.m. and 7 – 8 p.m., in the Basement Level of the Cornish Library, 20 Westgate St., corner of Sherbrook and Westgate, across from Misericordia Health Centre. Please note, there is no elevator to the basement, as this will be part of a future renovation at Cornish Library in the coming months.
Participants can attend all six sessions and can drop in at any point during the classes as the environment is very relaxed and open.
There is no repetition in the three sessions, and there is only a short introduction at each one hour mark, if someone new has joined in.
These sessions will go a bit deeper into the knowledge of the subtle system we all have within, learning about the chakras (energy wheels in Sanskrit), how to clear them, how to balance your emotions, and get the tools for managing depression, or simply a down mood, and anxiety.
With this knowledge, you can learn how to protect yourself from negative influences or energy and keep yourself in a positive zone.
Often it is our mind directing us to do something or not do something and it is us who need to really know whether that is correct or not.
Before self-realization it is practically impossible to distinguish between our attention and our mind (the ego and conditionings). And thus, our mind makes us do most of what we do.
It is only after our self-realization that we can really distinguish between our attention, and what pushes this attention in every direction away from the present – our mind.
Only then, do we gradually get in touch with our Spirit and slowly see it manifest in our attention.
This mind, these two institutions of ego and conditionings (the big yellow and blue balloons in the chart at the level of the head), are associated with us since we took birth; and as we grow, their hold on us also grows, gradually covering the seventh chakra at the top of our head.
Our every achievement makes our ego (remember the yellow balloon at the agnya chakra = the head) inflate a bit more and so is the case with our conditionings (the blue balloon). Soon the connection with the whole is lost as we overdevelop our right side beyond an identity into ego.
We all come for meditation for different reasons. Some to find peace, while others have no joy in life and then some are searching (maybe only for “material” comforts) and then there are some who are simply looking for a solution to their incurable diseases.
The reasons could be many but they lead us to the same place – to achieve our self-realization.
Some are happy to be freed from the pain they are in or the disease that is troubling them and then they go back to their old ways and are probably not going to take the opportunity to grow deeper and may find themselves in the same situations in the future, the same ones for which they sought to experience meditation in the first place.
These health benefits are all “by the way” benefits of meditation but true joy and peace within will come, although it may be a few weeks if you do not feel it right away (it took me three weeks to feel it), so do not give up!
One Winnipeg truth seeker, Jasmine, and a regular at the Sahaja Yoga classes, says the sessions have helped her in many ways.
“I feel pretty centred,” says Jasmine, who is an artist.
“I’m really not worrying about the past so much anymore which feels amazing. My creativity has definitely sparked. There are about four different canvases I’m working on now for a show … and I hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in weeks! In the classes I feel confident and calm,” she says.
“It is both relaxing and energizing,” says another attendee.
Along with learning how to meditate, we encourage you to foot soak with salt, daily for 10 minutes per day. Through experience we have found this to be beneficial. One feels the benefits as the chakras become clearer and one starts to feel the good vibrations much more.
Participants gain tools for clearing their chakras, balancing their channels, and slowing down the thoughts coming from the past, surrendering worries about the future, learning to enjoy the positive vibrations we can feel in the present when we are “thoughtless, yet aware.”
It is a entirely new perspective that is gained, where one becomes connected with the whole, thereby achieving the state of self-realization, and then feeling this wonderful cool flow inside as it rises along the central nervous system and emits through the hands (something that can be felt and verified scientifically).
By sitting in a chair or on the floor, one learns how to meditate through simple guided meditation also known as “thoughtless awareness” which we do collectively.
Joy and peace is felt when one is completely in the present, with no thoughts, and gets their self-realization during the class. One begins to understand a new reality, where one feels part and parcel of the whole, and can feel their connection to everyone and everything.
Sahaja Yoga is practiced in over 100 countries world-wide and is always free.
The founder of Sahaja Yoga, Shri Mataji, never charged any money as it is everyone’s birthright to get their self-realization, and find the pure knowledge which connects all the traditions and unites them, helping us to feel our oneness as humans on a higher level, our higher self in connection with the all-pervasive power of the universe.
Shri Mataji was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. As a young girl, she advised Mahatma Gandhi on spiritual matters, visited many countries to spread Sahaja Yoga, a unique discovery in itself. Sahaja Yoga is a UNESCO partner for peace.
