By Fino Menezes
BrightVibes.com
In 370 schools across England, children will be taught how to meditate, techniques for muscle relaxation, and breathing exercises for mindfulness. The program is being conducted under a mental health study that the British government is running up until 2021.
Dealing with new and complex emotions can be mitigated by meditation and mindfulness. When children act out by kicking and screaming, very often it is simply because they don’t understand. Read More….
Mountain Spirit New Zealand
Half-way through my Outward Bound career, I starting introducing the concept of gratefulness by asking my students to name five things for which they were grateful. The five things didn’t have to be from their wilderness trip, it could be anything. It was an eye opener to see how some of them had a difficulty finding things in which to be grateful. They were just out of practice. So was I. These days, it’s been a daily question in our family, sometimes at the dinner table or while driving. It puts things in perspective, and not only for our 8yr-old.
Echkart Tolle states in his book Power of Now, “When you honor, acknowledge, and fully accept your present reality — where you are, who you are, what you are doing right now — when you fully accept what you have got, you are grateful for what you have got, grateful for what is, grateful for Being. Gratitude for the present moment and the fullness of life now is true prosperity. It cannot come in the future. Then, in time, that prosperity manifests for you in various ways.” (There’s more of this excerpt here.)
If quotes from Tolle aren’t convincing enough, a recent UCLA study should give you something to think about…
Neuroscience Reveals: This Is How Gratitude Literally Rewires Your Brain to Be Happier
From: Real Life Pharmacy
By Justin Brown
We often hear about the power of gratitude for creating a more positive and happy mental state. But did you know that gratitude literally transforms your brain?
According to UCLA’s Mindfulness Awareness Research Center, regularly expressing gratitude literally changes the molecular structure of the brain, keeps the gray matter functioning, and makes us healthier and happier.
When you feel happiness, the central nervous system is affected. Read more….
By Brandie Weikle
Special to The Star
Yes, it’s important to wash your hands. It’s critical during cold and flu season and especially if you visit someone at the hospital.The problem is — in the West at least — parents have taken the business of keeping clean way too far.
New science shows that blasting away tiny organisms called microbes with our hand sanitizers, antibacterial soaps and liberal doses of antibiotics is having a profoundly negative impact on our kids’ immune systems, read more..
Image Credit: hlfinc.org
By Holistic Life Foundation
School Sends Kids to Meditation Instead of Detention, with Amazing Results
Traditionally when children act up in school, they would get detention or they get suspended. An elementary school in Baltimore has a far healthier approach, read more…
For more info: www.hlfinc.org
Outward Bound recently published a piece entitled How to Learn Mindfulness from the Wilderness. I’ve been meditating since my early teens, and grew up spending most of my after-school hours in the woods and mountains of New Hampshire and later working for Outward Bound as an instructor and staff trainer. I’d spend weeks and months in the backcountry without site of a car or airplane in stunning mountains. After a week, the students and I were just starting to adjust to the quieter pace. After two weeks, we were in the groove and were in no rush to return to “civilization”. Teaching out there helped me see more of the quiet mind in myself, and in others. It was a moving experience to see others sink into themselves, the environment and to connect more with each other. So read on.. and enjoy this wonderful piece on connection, mindfulness and wilderness.
It motivated me to start Mountain Spirit USA in 1989 and then Mountain Spirit New Zealand with my wife on the South Island.
How to Learn Mindfulness from the Wilderness.
By Outward Bound Blog
On July 4, 1845, a 28-year old left his comfortable station in life and retreated to the woods. For the next two years, two months and two days, he lived in a cabin that he built himself, surviving on what he could gather with his own hands. His only companions were the books he brought, the birds on his window sill and the ruminations of his own mind. He lived alone and simply, recording his experience as he went along. His experiment was published under the title Walden and as you might know already read more…
Check out our new video which gives you an overview of what we’re up to, our goals and dreams to make Mountain Spirit a place where people can connect to nature, themselves and each other. The video was done by “The Master” *Ashley Leung. Ash did the ground work, all editing and production. Keep the good work Ash! Randall did the aerial footage, and Ash made magic with it.
*We feel very fortunate to have Ashley, his wife Autumn and their new daughter as family friends. We miss them them and look forward to their return to New Zealand.
Decisions on the Life Path
Felix is from Bavaria. He had a choice to make – Follow in his father’s footsteps, or follow his heart. Learn what he and his fiance decided to do!
Half a Million Hectares, Sold
From Stuff.co.nz
New Zealanders have paid $65m to get rid of some of our most treasured landscapes, through an obscure process critics have described as a vast wave of privatization. Wealthy foreigners are snapping up valuable land once owned by the public, who in some cases paid to dispose of it. As gated estates and manicured golf courses spread through our wild places, Charlie Mitchell investigates for Stuff.co.nz: Who owns the high country? Read more here…
Not far from the site of a new development for the very wealthy, golf course included. Here’s a shot prior to all that.
Editor’s Note: A bit of disclosure – My wife is South African, and I’m a Yank, and we bought an existing house and small bit of land in Hawea. So I’m guilty by association only in that I’m American. I believe in living lightly. We have an off-the-grid home and retreat centre, with gravity fed water and a small house. The scale and rate at which foreigners are snapping up New Zealand’s high country is appalling, and appears to be changing the very values of the country, by gentrification.
In a busy world where taking time off is a difficult thing, it may be the most important thing.
I come from the Northeastern U.S., where there’s a strong “New England work ethic”, where if you’re not busy, you’re not amounting to anything. OK, a slight exaggeration, but there is an expectation of achieving, of going to one of the Ivy League Schools, and getting a respectable career with benefits. Instead, I became a mountain guide. After graduating from the University of Utah, and an early career in the ski boot business I took a sharp left turn into the mountains and never returned, except for leading corporate team building programs for Outward Bound for a few years.
I’ve been living in New Zealand for over 10 years but a few exchanges on the phone last week really rocked me. I finally got an unexpected peek into Kiwi psyche about healthy priorities, of balancing work and spending quality down-time with family and friends, taking a time out.
We’re really busy during the summer holiday season here in the Wanaka area. We run an off-the-grid Secluded Sanctuary called Mountain Spirit, which includes a BnB. We’re ramping up to run health and wellness programs on our land, and we run Lake Wanaka Yacht Charters. So the Christmas season is full-on for my wife and I and our 7yr old son as well.
We decided to block off a couple of days right after Christmas, and take an overnight on the charter boat to Lake Wanaka’s Paddock Bay to unplug. The inevitable happened when we got a few inquiries during that time for boat charters. When I explained we were taking some much needed time off, despite the holiday season being our busy time, without exception the callers responded with, “Good on ya, you need to pay attention to that family and take that time off. We’ll check in with you later.” (Which they did). Correct me if I’m wrong, (you Americans, from the NorthEast), if you were the caller would you not be surprised that a vendor was taking time off, and wouldn’t you think he was expected to be open and available when you call.? Instead of the “Good on ya”, if my memory serves, the first response would not be one of support, rather: “Are you sure you can’t be available for tomorrow”? or, “Why are you not open?”
It was an eye opener. Three separate callers actually took it in stride and said “Of course you’re taking time off, have a good one.”
Not to slam Americans or anything, but it’s almost a cliche at this point – And God love Americans for all that we are, but taking a slow long holiday is not one of them. The American system is set up for a two week vacation, max. And that does not do justice to the country in which you’re visiting. It’s a bit of an insult actually.
Spending time with family on the boat when our To Do list is growing. Damn the torpedoes and head out anyway.
The only way to get more time off from the American workplace is to quit, or set up a longer travel itinerary between jobs, or be a CEO. So we can’t find fault with individual Americans, or can we? I’m not sure – all I know is I was surprised to finally experience being given permission to take time off. I’ve been conditioned not to take time off. To have someone say “it’s OK”, is a eye opener for an American.
For those of us that made recreation our jobs, and travel came with the territory, we were lucky enough to be exposed to different perspectives in the world. It’s not just the Kiwi’s who value taking time off , more than do Americans. Most of the world does.
Mountain Spirit near Wanaka, will be hosting Kirtana, a California-based singer/songwriter will be who performs at events with speakers such as Eckhart Tolle, Gangaji and Geneen Roth. She comes to the South Island for the first time to share her contemporary, sacred songs. She will be performing at St. Columba’s Anglican Church on Sunday, 12th, April from 3:00pm-5:00pm in Wanaka
Described as a ‘brilliant poet, marvelous songwriter and accomplished guitarist’, Kirtana best describes both her music and her purpose in sharing it is to “celebrate divine love and the truth of who we are.”
Randall and Amanda Richards, of Mountain Spirit, the newly created retreat centre, say, “We’re really excited to have 
Kirtana come to the South Island and share her music with us. It will be our first event. We’re still working on infrastructure on our land and permitting for other programs, so we were not quite open to host the event on-site. So when the Anglican Church agreed to have the event at their church, we knew it would be a great venue.”
Kirtana says she is thrilled to have the opportunity to share her music and divine exploration in concert with Kiwis. She will be performing songs from her newest CD “Unseen Grace”
Says Onethemagazine.com, “Kirtana has become one of the most highly sought after modern-day minstrels of non-dual awakening. Her voice and lyrics reach with vulnerable longing for the heart of God, while at the same time transmitting the discovery of that, the opening to that, and the final consummation within it.”
Tickets are $30 in advance, ($35 on the day). With a “Group of 5 offer” at $125 and can be purchased over the phone at Mountain Spirit 03-443-5669 or online at Eventafinda.co.nz For more information call 03-443-5669 or go to the event webpage at mtnspirit.co.nz
