Spiritual Autobiography

It started off slow and by slow I mean really slow. My father was a deacon and my mother was the Sunday school teacher for the kids and adults, My Spirituality was something I don’t think much about as a kid. I was more in to Power Ranger and Ninja Turtle that anything else. My mom and dad tried to make god a part of my life but it don’t work. I was just a little kid and all I want was to play.

I was born in Dallas, Texas but when I was 3 years old I was taken to my parents’ home country, Mexico. My mother took my younger sister and me to Mexico while my father stayed in the United States and worked to provide for us. I spend 6 years in Mexico and I went to school there. I had an amazing childhood in the place my parents were born and had the opportunity to grow up around my family and culture. I became a fond lover of the traditions and the peaceful life of what I consider my country. I have many amazing memories from living in Mexico. The way everything called for a celebration where everyone was invited. The dedication that every festival I attended showed. Simply all the traditions that even when I live miles away from Mexico have stuck with me, things I still celebrate with my family every year. I love to be able to call myself Mexican American and to be able to share my parents. My love for Mexican culture plays a role in my decision to want to go to Spain. I want to see where some of the customs I know originated from and see where my ancestors came from.

Seane Corn’s podcast was two-fold: educational and invigorating. Hearing her talk about her journey to happiness is a true testimonial to naysayers who are having doubts about the positive effects of yoga. Corn’s journey to happiness, as she conveyed, was not an easy one. She had to clamber her way from an unsettled place as a child growing up in unstable home. She explained how her blue-collar working class parents raised her in an environment where religious practices were not present and how, as a little girl, she thought of herself as “uneducated.” She abused drugs and the tender age of 19 was diagnosed with “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.” She even suffered from an anxiety disorder but these dark episodes of her life eventually led to healing and happiness once she discovered yoga.

The Trauma Informed Mastery activities were helpful throughout the semester working with my clients at Hamilton Center. I utilized the activities that my supervisor and I discussed were most beneficial towards the client population I was counseling at the time. Many of my clients suffer from PTSD, Substance Use disorders, or other mood disorders. The majority of my clients are also middle aged men who politely refused any yoga activities. One client heard the choice, looked around my small office and shook his head grinning.

Hi, I am Gillian Elizabeth. After struggling with an eating disorder in my early teens I went on to graduate from Redeemer University College with a physical education and psychology degree. I was inspired to use my knowledge to help people live a more intuitive life. I received my yoga teacher certification in 2013, since then I have incorporated daily practices into my life to live a mindful, nourished life. If you would like to receive health and wellness coaching from Gillian Elizabeth or have any other inquiries feel free to email

My parents told me that I was going to start chemotherapy and that I had to have surgery to put my port in. They said that I would have to stay in the hospital for a while and that I would feel really sick. On december 16,2007 I checked into Children’s hospital in Boston. I figured out what cancer was a couple of months later. I was not a big fan of shots but they gave several of them daily. The worst thing about being in a hospital is that there is nothing you can do to improve your situation. I got used to taking pills because they would give me multiple every day. The worst part about cancer was the fact that I lost my hair.During my beginning phases of Cancer I was told to miss school. I ended up missing 5 months of school while in the first grade. The principle wanted to hold me back a year but my teacher said that I was so advanced that I was able to move to the seond grade anyway.In November of 2008 the Make A Wish foundation granted me my wish of going to Disney World. I had never been outside of Massachusetts so going to Florida as a big deal for me. I had also never been on a plane and people say that your ears start to hurt so I was pretty

I’ve always felt conflicted offering certifications as I know what truly certifies us when doing our spiritual work is DOING OUR SPIRITUAL WORK!! A certification says that you’ve paid the money and sat through the class but doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve really done the work. For the first several years of my teaching I did not offer certifications as I found them to be meaningless. I found some of my “beginning students” blew many “advanced students” out of the water as far as their ability to access and share the Records. The piece of paper stating someone was an “advanced practitioner or

An evaluation of the initial implementation of the chair yoga group provided positive results from both, participants and staff of 5 east. Prior to the activity both the nursing and occupational Therapy (OT) staff expressed interest and appreciation that our group was designing and testing a chair yoga group for the patients.

Deemed the “land of opportunity,” by those who emigrated to America, it is only natural that as our country grew, so to would the development of new concepts, introduction of new practices, and influence from outside nations. While it may not be common knowledge, the concept, and practice, of yoga was introduced to the United States just over 100 years after the Declaration of Independence

Journey into power is an excellent way to kick off this journey into my yoga certification. Right off the bat I knew this book would open the doors for me. The first thing that I would say that I learned in this book is the difference between using yoga as a tool to cope with things such as stress or body power, but seeing it more as a "total life transformation" as Baron Baptiste says . Until that very moment that I read the line, I truly saw yoga as nothing more than a combination of great exercise and some meditation on the side. But immediately after I took a moment to absorb what I just read. Transformation is a heavy word, in my mind once you transform you don't go back. For me, that's what I want, so I knew reading

In going with the definition of how to construct the spiritual autobiography, I would start with the events, the people and the places that influenced the relationship with God or a higher being. According to Knight, those who were raised in a religious home their journey starts at birth and grows through age. (Knight, 2011) Parents who teach their children about God and who pray with them and worship with them have a close relationship with their God. Knight also states that should you find God later in life you may attribute that to a person or an event in your life. I would encourage someone to write down the people, places and events that influenced their religious journey and how that journey has brought them to the place in their life that they are today. For me personally, God fills my life and has provided me with Christian parents and four brothers and sisters who are also Christians. I would help someone write their autobiography by asking a lot of questions and writing their responses. It would be interesting to find out if, in their family they had the freedom to choose their own beliefs or if they were coerced into being what everyone else is. For instance, if I were interviewing someone from another country, there may be cultural differences in how each family practices their religion and going outside of that may be troublesome. Teachers and pastors as well as family all have a role to play in our lives and our beliefs, so do, the places we go such as

I had the experience of being awed by a truly amazing yogi at a back bending workshop. To my surprise, it wasn't his physical practice and incredible backbends that sparked my adoration, it was the way he connected his knowledge, love, and philosophy (spirituality) with everything he was teaching. It is certainly inspiring to meet a yogi who has accomplished so much physically and mentally; but that success is capable of being a discouragement over my trivial successes. However, after learning about the 12 year journey of this teacher I began to understand his years of commitment and adoration for yoga is why I was so inspired and the same reason for continuing on my own journey.

Deb worked in the Yoga field for 5 years before deciding to go into business on her own. Yoga was more of a part time job for her as her children were very young, but after her Dad’s passing in 2011, she took a short break from working to refocus on her family. During that break she began debating going out on her own, opening her own yoga studio, instead of returning to work for someone else. Deb was really close to her dad and took his suggestions to heart. Her dad had a saying he always followed in his life, “take risks in life, live without regret, go all in”. Deb decided that was exactly what she was going to do and Essence Yoga opened its doors in February of 2012. Four years later, Deb now has seven employees working for her.

My yoga story began in 2004 when I was first introduced to hot yoga by a very good friend of mine. He thought that yoga would be a good way for me to hone in my focus, and help me to tame my hyperactivity. After my first yoga class I was filled with a sense of well being, as well as direction. I felt a fire within myself that energized me in an entirely different way than I had ever felt before. For the first time in my life I was able to bring together the energy that pulsed through my body, connect it to the pace that my mind would run at, and create a balance between the two. I felt like I was practicing a full body meditation, balance between mind and body. I was intrigued, and I was ready for the stability that practicing asana was bringing

My yoga journey started more than ten years ago with an intense and dedicated interest in learning yoga postures from Ashtanga, Hatha, Jivamukti, etc. In the beginning I practised most days of the week and imagined that I would never tire, in spite of long trips to the studio in the early hours of the morning. A pleasant reward was that my blood pressure dropped back to normal and I could stop taking medicines. So, from the start, I knew that yoga could provide health benefits as well as an enormous feeling of wellbeing. No matter how tired and fed-up one felt at the beginning of a session, the mental lift afterwards was deeply satisfying. Meditation, Savasana, or corpse posture, wound up every session so it also became clear that postures or asanas were only part of the remedy. Meditation and yoga practise from the very beginning fired my interest in searching for an inner consciousness. This is an easily misunderstood word and means many different things to many different people. Some will associate it with awareness, or mindfulness