Papaya Wellness- May News!

Happy Spring!

Such a wonderful time of year, life in abundance– the trees are blooming and starts are springing up from the earth, ready to bear their fruits!

A wonderful time to set new intentions, and make positive lifestyle changes, moving in sync with the seasons, as we so strive to live, in harmoney with nature! Maybe it is time to try a cleanse, give your digestive system a break by fasting, or commit yourself more deeply to your daily yoga practice! Whatever it may be this spring, India and I fully support you, on your journey to a more balanced state of health and wellness!

We have a lot of exciting events planned for the next few months, and we have also fully committed ourselves to a higher level of health, cleansing with juices and smoothies, and taking much more time for ourselves, and our passions, surfing and yoga, continually seeking to deepen our practices, so we can continue to share authentically with all of YOU!

First, we wanted to send a big thank you to all the retreaters who joined us for our two back to back April/May retreats. We were honoured to share time with you, we learned a lot from you, and had a blast! Come back soon!

Also a huge thank you to Bryan and Elizabeth Whitt and their supportive community of family and friends who sent down so many amazing donations, supporting positive, sustainable growth in this small fishing community!

Your donations will find their way to the community through a few different sales,(selling the items at very accessible prices) with funds going to support the building of the Gigante Health Center by Project Wave of Optimism.

Also, we are looking to collect clothing donations from our local yoga community to support an upcoming Papaya Wellness clothing sale, spearheaded by India Reinartz, and Save the Mermaids! 100% of sale proceeds will support the implementation of a reusable bag program in the local grocery store to end the use of plastic bags for GOOD in this fishing town, and increase the level of awareness and education available on trash pollution and its immediate effects on our local community and ocean!

Clothing Sale Date: Saturday May. 17, 2013 – details to follow- if you have any donations please contact India or Carly- by phone or email, Gracias!

It will be a busy weekend, as we have our second RAW CHOCOLATE MAKING WORKSHOP Sunday May 18th- hosted from La Casa de Nicole, India’s beautiful home! Check out all the information on our facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/369881456450519/?fref=ts

Special rates if you come with a friend!! Learn how to make delicious, nourishing, energizing raw chocolate treats, and take a bunch home to enjoy!

We are still booking space for Olympian Jaime Komer’s Yoga/Pilates Retreat @ Magnific Rock this June.20-26th! We are so excited to have such a talented individual down in Nicaragua, and look forward to joining in on some of her classes!

For more information see:

http://athleteyogitraveler.com/travel/nicaragua-yoga-treat/

Last little piece of exciting news, I can’t resist sharing, even though its not 100% done yet, our new papayawellness website is live! Stay tuned for more updates as they come, but check it out in the meantime: Papaya Wellness

Thank you all for continued support!

Namaste,

India and Carly

Get Your Chocolate Bliss on With Papaya and Prairie Yogi!

Latest Jam in Prairie Yogi: GO RAW, FEEL ALIVE.. JiVE!!!!

http://www.prairieyogimagazine.com/2013/04/raw-chocolate-bliss.html

Papaya Wellness Update Spring 2013

Hello Yogi’s and Yogini’s!

I hope this message finds you well  and smoothly transitioning into spring. Embracing the presence of longer days, and more sunshine in your lives!

Here in Nicaragua, we are embracing the season change, drawing closer to the rains that we all love! The winds have calmed, the ocean is warming, and the swell has picked up. The ocean has been churning with energy, bringing big beautiful waves onto our local beaches.

We have also been very busy with Papaya Wellness! A ton is happening at India’s Papaya Grove yoga platform, with daily classes, cross-fit mania taking off, lots of surf coaching, getting involved in inspiring community projects and of course hosting retreats!

We have also recently teamed up with a Santa Barbara based non-profit Save the Mermaids, and are serving as mermaid ambassadors in Nicaragua, because we are so inspired by what they do!  With the help of mermaid founder Kate Nelson, we have been taking part in beach cleanups, education sessions on how to minimize usage of single use plastics and environmental awareness lessons, lots of play sessions and beach soccer. We are also gearing up for another women’s surf and swim day next week, hoping to inspire the mermaid lifestyle into the women of Gigante, taking care of each other, and our ocean! Thank you Kate!

We are also excited to be contributing to local non profit Project Wave of Optimism indie-go go campaign. Woo is raising funds to build a community health center in Gigante, and is crowd funding on Indie Go Go! Support Woo in building the health center, and receive a Yoga and Surf Retreat package for 2 people! Really cool opportunity to contribute to a meaningful project, and enjoy a retreat with us! Details to come…The campaign will launch in May! Wooooo!

We are in the process of building a new website for Papaya Wellness, so stay tuned for that! We have been taking lots of fun photos, and are excited for a new look to our website! The new website will launch by the end of April, and will include all of our new retreat dates for 2013, and 2014!

In the meantime we are happy to announce the following upcoming events:

• Yoga Fusion Retreat @ Casa Swell- April 25-May 1st, 2013 (we still have a few spaces available)
• Olympian Yoga Retreat with Guest Teacher Jamie Komer– June.20-26th, 2013.
• Manifesting Consciousness Yoga Surf Retreat with acclaimed teacher Noah Krol, Feb.21-28th, 2014

To reserve space in any of this retreats, contact us, or sign up on our website! http://www.papayawellness.com

Set your intentions for the new season and be sure to be very good to yourselves!

Always with Love and Gratitude,

India and Carly

Lululemon Love!

Check out India’s inspiring interview on the Lululemon Blog!

We love the positive, inspiring and empowering message that Lululemon gets behind, and we love India!!

Ya girl!! You are charging!!!

http://www.lululemon.com/community/blog/why-i-went-and-never-came-back/comment-page-1/#comment-501580

Connection Through Community on Drishti Point Radio Vancouver

 

Check out our podcast on Drishti Point, based out of Vancouver, and a wonderful, deep and diverse resource for all things yoga and wellness! Sign up for their podcast for your daily dose of relevant information, and check out my podcast interview with them!

Namaste!

http://www.drishtipoint.ca/connection-through-community/

Today is the Best Day Ever!

Try it as your mantra..maybe just for today. From opening your eyes, to stepping your feet onto the floor. Making breakfast.. driving to work, answering calls, getting in your daily exercise, going on lunch break. Today is the best day ever! (does that sound silly? try it..)

It must be innately human to always be seeking that (seemingly) forward momentum, goal setting achieving. more, better..and to a point, that ideal of forward progression is great, but it also totally overlooks what is happening today.

The appreciate for RIGHT NOW. How EXTRAORDINARY “ordinary” life is. Cultivating a sense of awe and gratitude, for exactly where you find yourself today. Bringing that state of awareness into everything that you do, washing the dishes, drinking your smoothie.. those are the juicy bits of life.. Always happening, really easy to turn on auto-pilot through those tasks, but what are we piloting through? That’s life! That is it. All we have is now.

now now.

That is why I’m reminding myself that today is the best day ever.

On Giving and Receiving Love

Love!

We were created in the image of love, we thrive as human beings by giving and receiving love! Underneath everything is loooove!

India and I were preparing raw chocolate for our retreaters today. We wanted to share some healthy, delicious, raw, Valentines day treats, and it got me on the “love train”…

One could easily argue the validity of Valentines day, being the commercially driven holiday that it is. I tend to easily slide down that path of skepticism as well. A day for single people to feel lonely, and a day for couples to feel pressure to carry out extravagent gestures of their love, yuck!

But underneath that superficial level, it is an opportunity to consciously celebrate love, and honour your relationships.

Now..this should be done everyday.. but a whole day devoted to love and being loving.. sounds good, sounds necessary!

I started thinking about the giving and receiving of love, that push and pull in relationships.

Are you getting what you want, do you give too much? Those icky feelings that can often leave one feeling depleted. And this led me to the point of my blog today….

I do have a point.. I think.

Before you can share unabashed love with other’s your love tank needs to be full. If you are not full, and do not have ways to full your own tank, sharing your love will inevitably lead to that push and pull struggle of feeling like you are not getting enough.

Here is why: Sharing and loving in relationships is a fundamental, beautiful aspect of being human, but it is not what sustains us, what feeds us.

I have found that in seeking to be filled or satisfied by another person, you will never quiet have enough, you never get exactly what you need…. because that is not the role of your partner in relationship, not to feed your starving need for love.. that leads to trouble..

You have to be tapped into the source of all love, this will be that fuels you. The love that is present in every moment, everyone and everything, if you have a tap into that essence, have a connection to the source of ALL of that love, if you have communcation with that source.. If you give yourself time to pause, breathe, and individually plug in, then you can share your love whole heartidly. Without needing something in return. When you full heartidly love yourself, your life, and are overflowing with gratitude.. you come to your relationships full, overflowing. Whatever you share is in abundace, and without expectation, and whatever you receive is pure joy, a beautiful enrichement to your life, a delicious supplement to your overflowing heart. This leads to a cycle of abundance.. a good place to live from, don’t you think?

Jai Om, Namaste,

I LOVE YOU!

 

Jai Ganesha

om gam ganapataye om namaha

its a heavy footed kind of day today for me.  i have been plodding in the heat through my tasks. nothing seeming quiet easy today, and i have been meeting everything with a little bit of resistance. just one of those days.

as the day winds into sunset, i am softening, and laughing at my stubborn inclinations.

today the brightness and beauty is hidden behind some muck in my head.. the “goo” that accumulates after too many days of moving through work and the material world, and forgetting to be mindful, pause, be silent, grateful..

this “goo” is natural, and a part of human existence in this material world.

we all engage in the dance of forgetting our divinity (the beauty of love manifested in each living being on the planet) the mystery of our universe, the juicy stuff… and then remembering < the beauty, who we really are.. forgetting and remembering.. forgetting and remembering.

sometimes we get stuck in the “goo” of daily humdoing, and other times we are shot into that place of wide open, all knowing perspective, the seat of pure gratitude for this incredible opportunity we have to live and breathe.

as we each walk the path, we naturally discover tools, practices, to help us remember more, and forget less.

tools to help us abide more in the seat of acknowledging who we really are, and seeing all others from this same lens of awe and admiration.

for this a “guru” or remover of the goo, a teacher, can be helpful. spending time with those who forget less. daily meditation. sticky notes. songs! mantras! laughing at yourself…

for me, especially when i am feeling  stuck.. my thoughts turn to ganesha. one of the most loveable deities. big happy belly, sweet elephant head, dancing! what is there not to love!

the mantras to ganesh since i learned them (from guruji Jeffrey Armstrong)  serve to be an instantenous shift in the gears of my thoughts..

stuck in the “goo”..turning my glance up, thinking of ganesh, pulls me through. for me it works.

Ganesha is a deity for the material world. He is the remover of obstacles, the lord of beginnings, and transitions. Someone to guide you from one stage to the next, with mindfulness. This can be the grandest of transitions from one stage of life to the next, or something as simple as riding your bike to the grocery store, totally present.

Ganesha helps me stay present.. my favorite mantra is “ganesha sharanam, sharanam ganesha”

or “om gam ganapataye, om namaha”

Sometimes its nice to ask for help from a fat. happy, human with an elephant head.. takes one to the lighter side…

anyways, at the root of this musing today is just a simple thought, use what works!

whatever works to help you become more present and aware from moment to moment, keep doing that!

experiment, try weird things, sing, dance, kirtan.. let ganesha hold your hand..

and have fun..

life is short, and beneath, on top and around all the goo, is a stunning amount of beauty.

Jai Ganesha.

Soul Surfer Sistas Unite!

Since I started my journey with surfing, I have always been seeking soul surfers who share my same passion and exictement for the ocean to get in the waves with and play with. Sharing the stoke with best friends heightens the experience. Seeing a friend catch a perfect wave, is almost as good as catching one yourself!

There is something especially wonderful for me when I get to share the surf stoke with other chickas, equally passionate about the surf. They are a rare breed, sometimes hard to come by!

Surfing with other girls pushes me in ways that others never could. There is also more comaradrie, support, and laughter. When you are one of two chicas in the lineup, sometimes its tough, it gets competitive, aggressive, and the fight for waves is tangible. Also sometimes dudes don’t give you a lot of respect to your ability as a woman, so when you have a surf sister to team up with, who rips, and is hollering you into waves, it is a beautiful, empowering experience.

For this reason, I am so grateful to have met India Reinartz. She is the ultimate surf sister. Such a ripper, so much positivity and perspective, in the ocean, and in life. India has surf mantras, that she repeats to optimize the technical aspects of her surfing. She has always been willing to give me feedback as my surfing evolves.She always pushing my level of surfing, and my perspectives on living a full, positivite and motivated life.

There is nothing but openess and love, and support for other women from India. It has changed my surfing, my life 🙂

Thanks Indy ❤

If you want to join us in Nicargua, and charge with soul surfin sistas.. there are lots of opportunities to involved

check out www.papayawellness.com– for photos, and more information!

We are running a Yoga Surf Retreat at the beautiful Magnific Rock (most stunning location on the coast), Feb.15-22nd.

We also have dates set for the rest of the year, so check them out and start dreaming with us!

Namaste!

Find women that inspire you, and share with them! Have fun together, go on adventures, charge! Support eachother, encourage other, challenge eachother to be better, be more loving, laugh more, and be less scared (especially when paddling into waves)

…there are lots of inspiring women like that around these parts! woohoo! or bring your own amigas along with you! we have an amigas discount – a $130 discount/per person when you sign up with a friend!

xo

Article Published in Prarie Yogi Magazine

check out my recent article in Prarie Yogi Magazine!

We love Prarie Yogi! Namaste

http://www.prairieyogimagazine.com/2013/01/cultural-bridge.html