A New Year at Mandala Healing Arts

May this be a year of great joy, celebration, abundance and love for you!  It has been an exciting winter here at Mandala Healing Arts — for one, our named has changed! “m y c | healing arts” is now Mandala Healing Arts. We’re owning the true meaning of our name, and shining it out in the open! This change is a long time coming, and we feel it more accurately represents the heart of our program here at Mandala Yoga Community. We are, after all, a place to find center, as well as a collective gathered around the sacred light that shines in the center of our hearts. We are one, unified by the circle!

We are happy to announce that Mandala Yoga Community is expanding! For details, please check out the MYC website: www.mandalayogabend.com. This expansion has allowed our Healing Arts program to grow, and we are now available for treatments 6 days a week, from 9am to 4pm. Also, look for new members joining our team soon.

Lots of workshops to look forward to in 2011:

Self Care, Self-Love: Intro to Ayurveda with Carin Cundey  |  Sat, February 5  |  1pm – 3:30pm

Discover your True Self: A Special Night of Satsang with Mukti | Friday, February 25 | 7pm – 9pm

Hands on Health the Maya Way with Katie Silva | Sat, March 5  | 10am – 5pm

Check the website for updates!

Many blessings, and we hope to see you soon.

Laughter Yoga at MYC!

What better form of self-care than LAUGHTER?????? Reduces stress, oxygenates the blood, decreases risk of disease, tones the abs and diaphragm, and it’s just plain fun!

Beginning this Friday (10/8), Lucius will be hosting a free Laughter Yoga club at Mandala Yoga Community from 1:15pm to 1:45pm every week after Jamie’s noon class. If you haven’t tried Laughter Yoga, come on down and check it out. Deep breathing, laughter exercises, and relaxation (yes, we end with Shivasana!) make for an invigorating, often ridiculous, and just downright silly half hour.

Laughter Yoga was developed by Dr. Madan Kataria in India in 1995. In the last fifteen years, it has grown from a few people in a park to thousands of Laughter Yoga clubs all over the world. As Dr. Kataria says, “When you laugh, you change. When you change, the world changes.” Hope to laugh with you soon!

Check this out from the BBC: Benefits of Laughter Yoga with John Cleese. Great laughter scenes in India…

Very Good! Very Good! YAY!

A New Shamanic Flavor

Hello everyone!

I hope your summer has been amazing – it is so beautiful right now! Sunshine and a sweet breeze… August continues to be gorgeous. We are truly blessed.

I just had the great good fortune of returning to Bend after one month traveling in Peru! Three weeks in the highlands around Cuzco, Macchu Picchu and Lake Titicaca, followed by one week in the Amazon rainforest studying with a plant medicine woman at her tranquil jungle retreat center. WOW! Powerful initiations, lots of learning, and so much deepening into my own path as a healer, as a shaman, and as a human!

So I’m very excited to be back, and very excited to share all that I’ve learned with you all. The bodywork sessions I’ve given since getting back have been MAGICAL, and there is definitely a new shamanic element entering my treatments. More energetic clearing, a deeper sacred space, and some really beautiful transformations occurring. If it’s been a while since you’ve been in for a treatment, do give a call — I would love to see you again, and now is a great time to come in for a visit.

I am also pleased to announce that I will have access to another session space in addition to the MYC studio for the next month. This means I have many more availabilities during the week, and we’ll have more freedom in choosing the perfect time for you.

Do send me a message or give a call soon!

I look forward to seeing you,

Lucius

lucius_wheeler@yahoo.com

505.550.2381

Firewalk this weekend!

Hello my friends!

I hope this message finds you so, so well! I just returned from a week sharing music, chants and prayer all over California, and am very happy to be back in little Bend. A very, very big summer has just begun, and I wanted to take a moment to remind you of Bend’s 2nd annual Community Firewalk this Saturday evening. I am so excited for this event — my good friend Ryan Halas will be joining us all the way from North Carolina to guide us through the experience. It’s going to be a sweet community celebration, and a potent opportunity to take the next step forward in your personal evolution. This walk falls on a very auspicious day: June 26th– the Grand Cross, when four planets are located 90 degrees from one another. A recent email I received on this phenomenon described the effects as follows:

“The energetic dynamics of this kind of alignment can provoke a feeling of inner tension, as we feel pulled in four directions at once.  Yet, the upcoming Grand Crosses also hold great promise for evolutionary progress, if we work consciously with the diverse energies and learn to integrate them more fully. We can either get stuck at the crossroads, or we can set the cross into motion, like a windmill that generates energy. Over the next two months, we’re being presented with a cosmic invitation, and plenty of fuel, to take a leap forward with our collective evolutionary growth.”

What better way to set the cross into motion and take a leap forward than by walking on fire? In my experience, this is exactly what a firewalk does — it sets things in motion, opens doors, and catalyzes growth and change. It directly and immediately sends us on to our next level of evolution. It opens us up in a big new way … and to me, that’s just plain exciting!

So if you feel like it’s time to catalyze your spiritual growth and celebrate this great gift of life, please bring your heart and your prayers (and your musical instruments and voices!) to the fire on Saturday night. Listen to your heart on this — you’ll know if you feel called to join us. And if you do feel the call, deep down, I encourage you to listen to it, beneath any hesitations, excuses or fears that might arise. A firewalk is no small thing, and the commitment to walk must come from deep inside.

There is a river flowing now very fast. …
Know that the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river,
keep your eyes open, and our heads above the water.
See who is there with you and celebrate …

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

-The Elders Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation

I look forward to celebrating the radiance and abundance of life with you on Saturday night!

There are more details and a preregistration link for the walk online at www.mandalayogabend.com

So many blessings and much love to you,

Lucius

New Short Sessions Available!

Hello! What a beautiful springtime! We hope you are enjoying the blossoming of this season…

Short massage sessions are now available! $1 per minute up to 30 minutes… A specific treatment, focused on whatever is bothering you– neck, shoulders, back, legs. Traditional massage or energy work– you choose! These sessions are short enough to fit into a busy work day, and long enough to notice a significant difference. It’s our intention here at Mandala Yoga Community to make massage therapy accessible and affordable so you can begin to make bodywork a part of your weekly self-care routine.

Consider trying a 1-month massage package: $55 for four 15-minute sessions. A great deal. Schedule one per week, and notice the changes in mind and body!

For questions, comments, or scheduling, stop by the front desk or visit www.mandalayogabend.com

Blessings!

It’s March!

Happy Almost Spring, everyone!

May you be nourished, surrounded by love, and filled with deep sweet breaths! Drink lots of spring water, remember to breathe deeply, and find a few minutes each day to sit in silence. Bathe in the sounds of the world… Breathe deep again… And breathe… And breathe.

“Purity of the body is essential for well being … [I]nternal cleansing gives radiance and joy. It brings benevolence … and banishes mental pain, dejection, sorrow and despair…” -Iyengar, Light on Yoga, p 38.

Join us for a body- or energywork treatment or a workshop soon!

Blessings,

m y c | healing arts

…And be sure to check out Gender Alchemy on March 18th!

Biodynamic Cranial Touch Workshop, Feb. 20th

We are excited to welcome back Sandra Wheeler and Wren Breedlove to Bend for this very special workshop!

Biodynamic Cranial Touch: A 1-day Introduction

Sat, Feb 20th | 9am – 6pm

This workshop is an introduction to the history, theory, and beginning practice of biodynamic cranial work, and is offered for any health care practitioner, body-worker or therapist desiring to cultivate and deepen their experience of Presence and Stillness within a hands-on practice. The foundation of Biodynamic Cranial Touch is the focused and open presence of the practitioner. Different from traditional craniosacral therapy, this work builds on a heightened sensitivity to listening to the deeper rhythms of the cranial system. In this training we will explore different levels of touch and energy awareness through perception exercises, which help to cultivate the inner stillness required for session work.

Biodynamic Cranial Touch is a subtle and powerful approach to transformative healing. It is deeply relaxing to the central nervous system, and a tremendous tool for working with chronic pain, fatigue, PTSD, grief, loss, recovery from surgery, and many other conditions.

BCT is deeply healing for both client and practitioner. In the stillness of open-hearted presence, both client and practitioner are nourished and soothed by the Breath of Life, emerging with a new, body-felt sense of wholeness and peace.

$125 | 5 CEU credits

Preregistration and payment are required by Feb 13th. Click here for more info and to register.

Midline Meditation | Sunday, Feb 21st | 10am-11:30am

Our Saturday workshop will be followed by a Midline Meditation on Sunday morning at MYC, 10am – 11:30am, led by Sandra Wheeler. The Midline Meditations are specifically designed to help us all come back into our bodies, calming the nervous system and the fight/flight/freeze response in our systems. The sacred space and safety in the group field amplifies this process for all of us, making it possible to come into a deep place of ease and centeredness/connectedness in the body that would be much slower were we to do this on our own. Sandra describes the meditations as “a precise energetic/physiological/spiritual ‘technology’ that matures our nervous systems, in my experience having worked with trauma for many years.” In the words of osteopath James Jealous::

The stillness in the midline is a single doorway through which Primary Respiration ignites the fires of life and reestablishes the pattern of the health in the individual… Our own midline is a single branch on the Tree of Life. All of these (branches) are united through the Dynamic Stillness, and inform the design of life.

Charles Ridley, the creator of Biodynamic Cranial Touch, describes the effects of this practice in Stillness:

In your heart is a mysterious portal that interconnects the infinite ocean of Love to the consciousness in your body. … Paradoxically, by descending inward to heart we contact our inner ocean, which is one with the outer shimmering, pulsing oceanic heart of mother earth. And since the heart of mother earth is one with the infinite heart, we directly realize ourselves as Love – all that is – expressed as body.”

This will be a deeply relaxing, calming and centering meditation. Participants will have the opportunity to experience the profound peace and expansiveness of resting in their own midline.

Suggested donation for the Midline Meditation is $8 – $20.

For more information on the Midline Meditations, check out Sandra’s blog here.

We look forward to seeing you for these special events!

Many blessings,

Lucius and the m y c | healing arts team

a few words on flower essences

Flower essences, essential oils, intuitive healing, energy work…. What do all these words mean, really?

It’s easy to get confused in the realm of alternative healing modalities. One of our missions at m y c | healing arts is to offer clarification and practical application for relatively unknown – and often-misunderstood – treatments that can be of real use to us in both healing crises and in our day-to-day lives.

So: Flower Essences. What are they?

Flower Essences are the concentrated vibration of different types of flowers – the energetic imprint of a plant’s blossom. We’ve all experienced how flowers can change the mood of a room. Fresh-picked flowers make a room feel brighter, more full of life. Flower essences work in a similar fashion with our internal environment, adding their own unique energetic vibration to our body, mind, and emotions.

Each flower essence has a unique effect. Some, like the well-known Bach essence Rescue Remedy, help us to cope with stressful situations. Others are specifically for cultivating a sense of peace or for helping us to make big transitions in life more smoothly. There are remedies for helping with addiction, for cultivating healthy relationships, for healing and balancing our internal masculine and feminine, for resolving childhood trauma of all types, for removing the masks covering our essential nature, and on and on. Many remedies may seem relevant at any given time, but often there is one, two, or a small handful that are most appropriate, at least as a beginning. A flower essence consultation can be helpful for narrowing down the many choices and choosing the proper remedy for whatever healing needs to occur at the present moment.

What does it feel like to take a flower essence?

Everyone responds differently to flower essences based on the essence taken, the concentration of the dosage and the unique healing needs of the individual. Some people may notice very extreme shifts in their thought patterns, emotions, and even in their physical body from taking a very small dosage. Others may take very significant doses and notice only the subtlest of shifts. Some remedies also tend to elicit more dramatic reactions than others. The most important thing to remember when taking flower essences is that they are an aid and a supplement to your healing process. They are here to help! There are no “side effects” to flower remedies – anything that comes to the surface during the course of a flower essence treatment is exactly what needs to be addressed. It is important to have the assistance of an experienced flower essence practitioner, if only for support along the path.

If you desire to open more fully to your life, to encounter your resistances and move through them to new plateaus of experience… in fact, to experience true healing that changes the way that you walk in the world, then I would encourage you to consider flower essences as a tool to help in your journey of healing. Learning how to peel off the layers of wound and how to shine our deepest, authentic light brightly in the world is an adventure that lasts for lifetimes. If you feel called accelerate this journey and actively encourage your own awakening, I strongly encourage you to give flower essences a try.

Many blessings,

In community,

Lucius

Director | Healing Arts

Mandala Yoga Community

I am available for flower essences consultations five days a week at Mandala Yoga Community in downtown Bend.

For flower essence info and to schedule a consultation:

lucius_wheeler@yahoo.com

505 550 2381

To learn more about flower essences, their origin and preparations, click here. The Flower Essence Society is an international organization dedicated to deepening knowledge of flower essences around the globe. Their website is here.

Happy Holidays!

And a splendid New Year to you!

Where have we been and where are we going?

Since its establishment in early 2009, m y c | healing arts has been offering effective and affordable therapeutic bodywork treatments to the Central Oregon community. Our team of practitioners has offered a wide variety of treatments, from thai massage to cranial sacral, from flower essence consultations to dietary counseling. We have offered free bodywork days and information sessions as well, in keeping with our vision of an educated, empowered and healthy community.

2010 will be an exciting year! We will be adding a new practitioner to our team, expanding our available treatment times, and offering regular info sessions and workshops. Our treatment options will expand to include intuitive healing sessions from our newest team member, Erika Kightlinger. Erika is a longtime Bend resident and a gifted healing practitioner. More info on her and an introduction to come!

We will begin our New Year with a 40-day Intention Setting, led by our own Christina Howell, M.A. HHC. Christina will facilitate the group as we set an intention for 2010, and offer support for creating new, healthy habits through weekly check-in sessions. This will be an excellent opportunity to change your habits and make your New Year’s Resolution a reality. The intention setting group will meet for the first time this Sunday at Mandala Yoga Community. Check the m y c website for details.

2010 promises to be an exciting year! Lots of growth, deepening of our practice and offerings, and an expansion of our role in bringing greater health consciousness to the greater community of Central Oregon. We at m y c | healing arts are committed to serving our community through education, experiential workshops, and individual treatments and consultations. Our greatest desire is to empower you to live the vibrant, healthy life you most desire. We strive to offer relevant and useful tools and experiences that can help you to embody your highest, biggest, fullest, brightest self! Please feel free to let us know how we are doing– we would love to hear from you.

Many blessings, and joyful beginnings…

In community,

Lucius and the m y c | healing arts team.

Feel free to contact me directly at: lucius_wheeler@yahoo.com  or (505) 550-2381

Introduction to Biodynamic Cranial Touch

Introduction to Biodynamic Cranial Touch with Sandra Norris Wheeler, LMT, and Wren Breedlove, PT Date: Sat   10/3/2009 Time:  12:00 PM – 6:30 PM This workshop is an introduction to the history, theoryand beginning practice of biodynamic cranial work. Offered for any health care practitioner, body-worker or therapist desiring to cultivate and deepen their experience of Presence and Stillness within a hands-on practice. The foundation of Biodynamic Cranial Touch is the focused and open presence of the practitioner. Different from traditional craniosacral therapy this work builds on a heightened sensitivity to listening to the deeper rhythms of the cranial system. In this training we will explore different levels of touch and energy awareness through perception exercises, which help to cultivate the inner stillness required for session work. This approach was developed by Charles Ridley in alignment with Dr. William Sutherland’s (the originator of cranial osteopathy) later explorations into what he called the Breath of Life. Charles’ book, Stillness, proposes this work not as a treatment model but as a map for the evolution of consciousness.Throughout this training we will be exploring these deeper rhythms of the Breath of Life, accessing these ‘tides’ within ourselves and our clients, and discovering the effectiveness of this approach in the reclamation of wholeness in the body, mind and spirit. We welcome you to this journey. Instructors Sandra Norris Wheeler, lmt is a gifted healer, mentor and teacher and has been in private practice for over 28 years in Eugene OR. She has extensive training and advanced certification including Myofascial Release, Rehabilitative Massage,Visionary Craniosacral Work, Polarity Therapy, and over 18 years of training with the leaders in the field of craniosacral work. She has worked with Charles Ridley since 2002, and brings clarity and delight into teaching this transformative work. Wren Breedlove, pt has had a 30 year career in the healing arts starting with a degree in physical therapy from Stanford University. She has been in private practice for 20 years doing myofascial release and craniosacral therapy and was an early graduate of the Milne Institute for Visionary Craniosacral Work. She has been studying with Charles Ridley since he began teaching this approach in 2002. “Studying biodynamics”, she says, “not only changed my approach to clients, it has changed my life.” She brings her warmth and enthusiasm to the teaching of this work. $100, 5 CEU credits