The Story of Stuff !!

RAINBOW KIDS YOGA!!

Life is a collection of awesome strings of experiences. I had this beautiful experience in the week of March 19-22, 2009 with a fun loving group of people at NYC. I came across Rainbow Kids Yoga when I was browsing for something interesting to do for the Siragu kids in India. You all know that the Siragu Montessori School is a free school with an alternative system of education for homeless street children in Chennai, SouthEast India.

When I came across their website, it took me only a few minutes to decide to take the teacher training course. The peace I felt when I met Gopala the first time was contagious. The other wonderful people who joined the training were all so energetic and loving. I could see their eagerness to learn and share their knowledge with the kids they'd go back to.
The playfulness of the group was inspiring and Gopala had brought out the child in all of us. We all left our adulthood outside and interacted with each other as kids. The atmosphere was filled with fun and learning alternating in a smooth flowing way.

We learned a lot of fun poses for kids and family and Gopala taught us to integrate yoga poses in the kids' stories and also gave us each 5 minutes to conduct a class of our own on the last day of training. Creativity flowed as each one of us got a hands on the teaching and the rest acted like kids trying to create a real atmosphere of teaching kids. It was fun trying to distract the teacher and trying to cope up with distracting kids and engaging them while the assignment was going on. It was so much fun! We laughed so much and enjoyed every single moment of the training. By the fourth day, even though we were exhausted, we went with the flow and did not feel it a lot.
I could go more and more about the whole experience but I think after all this learning, it is up to us to practice it and share it with the world outside. I intend to prepare a curriculum and teach the kids at Siragu School next time i go to India.
you can also see pictures here.

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes!!

This is what gives me hope about the forth coming generations...

Piks from the health care 2009!!!

You can check out Dr.Ralph's collage about the Health care Intensive 2009 from the following link...
http://www.naturalworldhealing.com/images/Gesundheit_pics_from_Ralph_Wilson_Feb_2009.pdf

Patch Adams on fun and friendship...

Patch talks about a hospital that includes alternative medicine, and he includes homeopathy and acupuncture. Here is text from his essay:

Vision for a Free Hospital Based on Fun and Friendship

by Patch Adams

I entered medical school in 1967 to use medicine as a vehicle for social change. I used my free time to study the history of health care delivery around the world and to look at contemporary models with the idea of creating a medical model that would address all the problems of the way care is delivered. I didn't intend to create a model that would be the answer to the problems; but to model creative problem solving, and to spark each medical facility to design their own ideal rather than succumb to the garbage of managed care, or a resignation to the impossibility of humanistic care. Beginning in the climate of the political "war on poverty," I felt confident that a free hospital to serve the poorest state, West Virginia, would find easy funding and that we would be built in four years. I smile writing this as we enter our 33rd year without having broken ground on the hospital. However, we have asked our architect to go to finished drawings so that we can begin building as soon as we have funding in hand. None of the journey has gone as I imagined and the vision is so much deeper, more comprehensive and far-reaching as a consequence of such deliberate progress.

The original vision had all the principles we have maintained all these years. There would be no charge for the care. Barter was also not an option. In fact, we wanted to eliminate the idea of debt in the medical interaction as a way to begin recreating human community. We didn't want people to think they owed something; we wanted them to think...for more click here.