Chopra Programs
Western sciences and the Wisdom of the Vedas.
Deepak Chopra has pioneered mind-body-spirit healing in the west for decades. His own story began in India where his family practiced Ayurvedic techniques and Yoga for generations, but he went to study medical sciences believing them to be better.
While practicing as an Endocrinologist he was simultaneously assisting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (the same who introduced the Beatles to Vedic sciences) so was living a kind of double life. At work in the hospitals meditation was still considered pretty “out there” so he and his colleague and friend Dr. David Simon (Neurologist) became “closet meditators”.
Over time their conviction grew that the best possible healing lies in an amalgamation of the two paradigms of thought. They recognized that western science is essential when dis-ease reaches diagnosable levels, but that it doesn’t address earlier stages of dis-ease.
It was this conviction that led Drs. Chopra and Simon to open Chopra Center university in California, where I did my Certification studies beginning in 2010.
Before that and since, I’ve learned from a wide variety of mind-body healers: Dr. Laurence LeShan, Dr. Candace Pert, Dr. Bruce Lipton, Dr. Jean Houston, Dr. Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), Dr. Rick Hanson, Author Joan Borysenko, Dr. Judith Anodea, Author Lynne MacTaggart, Dr. Dean Radin, Dr. Martha Beck and so many others. It’s been a fascination of mine since the 1980s when we called it psychoneuroimmunology. Remember that?
Primordial Sound Meditation is the Chopra Center’s signature meditation program. It covers everything you need to know and do to develop your own meditation practice. Read More
Perfect Health is their amalgamation of daily healing habits from east and west. That means the best you can do for yourself, whether you’re under western medical care or not. Read More
Meditation Classes
My desire to help you gain clarity and peace came out of my own similar struggles – of course. If you’re here it might be because you’ve come up against something in your life: a relationship or other situation – that’s not going well for you. There’s nothing wrong with wanting things to be better – to feel more comfortable and more fulfilled. In fact until you are, everything you do might only exacerbate the situation.
Perhaps now more than at any other time in human history, we’re in the midst of a psycho-social reset towards having less to do with hierarchy and more with a sacred center where trust and mutual support can develop. In this potential growth medium each of us can feel what we’ve been missing, and out of it we can take greater Presence into the world we live in. Thus, self-care becomes care of the world around you.
Each one-hour class begins and ends with time to check in, maybe set intentions and to reflect on take-aways. Between those I guide a meditative experience that begins and ends in almost the same way every time, so you can do the same at home. Between those I offer different meditative themes, techniques and experiences. My hope is that you find one or several that fit/ feel right for you.
Each class will at least offer you an experience of heart-brain coherence, otherwise known as homeostasis or relaxation.
At the end of each class I email participants a link to a recording of the day’s meditation so you can practice on your own.
Classes are $15 each, on a drop-in basis, or $10 each for a package of 10. All payments by email to sheila@dharanacounselling.com
Intro to Soul Collage
In this 3 hour online class, you’ll learn how to make, read, journal and voice your own collage cards.
Each card becomes an expression of the many parts of your own personality, people who have influenced you, the energies of your own body and those of the larger culture and world around you.
Only you interpret your own cards, so though this is not a therapy per se, it’s definitely therapeutic!
Principles of SoulCollage(R) developed by Seena Frost
- Continue to make and use cards on your own at home, and/ or
- To join our online monthly Satsangs and/or
- To take an advanced class on each of the SoulCollage(R) Card SUITS:
- The Committee Suit represents aspects of your personality so can be thought of as the Psychological Suit
- The Community Suit represents people (living or not) who have had a personal impact on you – on how you see the world and yourself in it. You can think of this as the Social Suit.
- The Companion Suit represents subtle energies in areas where major systems of the mind-body-spirit merge. You might think of it as the Chakra Suit.
- The Council Suit is perhaps the most mythical – representing archetypes we’ve absorbed from our broader culture and stories told over vast distances of time. We call this the Hero/Heroine Suit.
I became a SoulCollage(R) Facilitator just months after being introduced to it, and have loved sharing what participants create and find voice for!
ONLY the person who makes each card/collage ever interprets it. Synchronicity, surprising insights and heart-felt mutual allowing have become our shared community standards. I’m sure you’ll find your place among us.
Christie Lees, Nurse and Wellness Consultant
