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

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

Papaya Wellness Update 2013, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Happy 2013 Yogi’s and Yogini’s!

I wanted to connect with you all at the start of this New Year! I hope you each enjoyed a wonderful holiday season, and are feeling healthy, happy and inspired moving into 2013. I am sure you are, but it feels good to wish it for you anyways.

Life in Nicaragua has been amazing, everyday we are filled with gratitude to be here, working on what we believe in!

India and I, with Papaya Wellness have had a busy, fun, exciting six months. We have been running regular yoga daily classes at India’s beautiful Papaya Grove studio in Gigante.

Working hand in hand with the Sweet Water Fund, a women’s initiative in Gigante,  we have been offering weekly yoga classes in Spanish to the local women. With Sweet Water, during our November retreat, we got involved by volunteering our labour in support of their sustainable school kitchen building project.

We are looking forward to starting up a series of swimming lessons, hopefully leading into surf lessons, in partnership with another great non profit organization in Gigante, Project Woo, click here for more information on all the radical work they are doing in the community.

We have been surfing a ton, even with the smaller swells of winter, and are totally looking forward to the arrival of more swell, hopefully soon!

We have added an intermediate vinyasa flow class to our weekly schedule, and have been amping up our classes with more inversion, balance and challenge, to grow with our inspiring, dedicated clientele of in town yogis. Papaya Wellness is also stoked to welcome our new Cross- Fit instructor, India’s super motivating brother, Nile Reinartz! Nile is adding a butt kicking Cross Fit workout, to our weekly class schedule at the Grove!

I wanted to fill you in on what we have going on at Papaya Wellness in the first couple of months into the new year. We are really excited about the growth, fun, inspiration, and adventure we have planed for 2013!

So far, We are running Yoga/Surf Retreats with dates for:

• Jan.26- Feb 2
• Feb 15th- 22nd
• April 12th- 18th

We are hoping to add more dates, and at this point, we are accommodating our clients for specific times they have expressed an interest in. If you are interested in coming, and have dates of holidays that work better, let me know..

The Yoga Surf Retreat Package is all inclusive (minus your flights).

7 Day Retreat Package includes…

• 2 complementary Airport shuttles
• 6 nights at the beautiful Magnificent Rock Hotel (panoramic ocean views, from restaurant, apartment rooms, and yoga studio)
• 3 nutritionally balanced and inspired vegetarian and seafood meals
• natural fruit juice, smoothies, sodas, purified water, tea and coffee
• 2 daily yoga session led by experienced  instructors
• 4 complimentary surf lessons, board hire included
• Karma day visiting our local women’s cooperative
• Hot springs adventure
• Sunset cocktails at the beautiful Rancho Santana Estate

Rates:

$1,330 USD/person

amigos discount,  bring a friend and each get $130 off the price!

If you would like more information check out www.papayawellness.com We have some great pictures from the retreat we hosted at Magnific Rock in November this year, and we are really stoked to head back there for another round!!!

Always with Love and Gratitude!

Contact us today!

xo Namaste!

New Years Yoga Resolutions…

As the new year draws near, we can take it as an opportunity to reflect.

The transition of one year ending, and a fresh year beginning is symbolic..

We can use the changing of the calendar year, as a moment to mark changes in our life.

It is an opportunity to start with a clean slate.

Be mindful. What kind of energy do we want to invite into our life. What changes would we like to spark. What new habits would we like to adopt… New goals to reach, new experiences to be had..

The new year arriving is an opportunity to be bold, and dream big.

Maybe it is time to toughen up a little bit, is a big lifestyle change in order?

Instead of shrinking back in fear of failure, maybe it is a time to stand up, challenge yourself, and dive in to change..

Truly, in this life, anything is possible, with hard work, gratitude, honesty, openess, mindfulness and courage..

So as the shift occurs today into this evening, I will be reflecting deeply on my year that was, with gratitude, and my year to come, with courage and big dreams..

Where would you like your new year to take you??

..if it is more time for yourself, for your sense of physical, spiritual, and mental health, better nutrition, more exercise, or trying something new..

Give yourself the gift of Retreat!

Our next dates with spaces still available are:

Yoga Fusion Retreat Jan.26- Feb.2, 2013:

All inclusive organic, healthy, meals. 2 yoga classes daily. Hiking. Surfing. Paddle-boarding. Dance. Swimming. Hammock swaying. Meditation. Breath Work. Massage. BLISS!

OR Feb. 15-22nd for our next, super popular, YOGA SURF retreat at the beautiful Magnific Rock:

•   2 complementary Airport shuttles
• 6 nights at the beautiful Magnificent Rock
• 3 nutritionally balanced and inspired vegetarian and seafood meals
• natural fruit juice, smoothies, sodas, purified water, tea and coffee
• 2 daily yoga session led by experienced instructors
• 4 complimentary surf lessons, board hire included
• Karma day visiting our local women’s cooperative
• Hot springs adventure
• Sunset cocktails at the beautiful Rancho Santana Estate

JAI OM! PROSPERO ANO!

Papaya Wellness Retreats