Living as a higher you through the power of forgiveness

Sometimes while I am walking down the street, I see a person throw garbage on the ground and I wonder, “What are they thinking?” This careless action makes me feel angry. It is the same when I see people smoking cigarettes in public, especially around babies and children. I cannot understand why they do this.

There are times when I think of all of the thoughtless things that I have done in my life, not only to the people around me, but to the environment as well. During my reflections I hope that God, our Mother Creator, can forgive me for my carelessness.

It is very easy to judge others but it can be more difficult to judge ourselves. I believe that through each reincarnation we develop a higher understanding of who we really are. I am sure that I have behaved just as carelessly as the people that anger me as I am walking down the street. I need to remember that another people may not have learned the same lessons that you or I have learned from the family that raised us in this, and previous, lifetimes.

During the month of November we will focus on changing our perspective through the power of forgiveness. We will focus on the 4th and 7th Chakras. The 4th Chakra represents our love of self and ability to forgive both others and our ourselves. The seventh chakra is our ability to feel a higher power and see that we all exist as one soul, rather than separate entities. Through our practice we will try and strengthen our ability to see a higher truth, use our neutral mind and have compassion in our hearts for everyone. When we are able to relate to others and become one, we can feel the grand experience of freeness and love.

By examining the choices that other people make in the ways that they treat themselves, others and the world around us, we create an enlightened awareness. This awareness is a gift that we can use to guide, teach and act as an example to others. This month, lets take one step closer to the ‘higher you’ through the act of forgiveness, not only of others but also of ourselves. Let’s use this forgiveness to shine a path of light that everyone can follow.

The Power of Projection

Projecting is a way of becoming something. Projecting is a way to experience and live. Projecting, or emanating, is the way you create things. The experience we have in life is created by ourselves, and is not a random act. The way people see you and relate to you mirrors the way you feel about yourself.

This October, we will focus on getting to the core of what you want in this life. What is in the core of your soul? What is your deepest love?

For example, you may have an image of the kind of job you want. It might be a job where you can enjoy the people you work with, or enjoy what you do at work. It might be a job that helps people, or helps the world. Or maybe you want a job where you can make a good salary and still have the flexibility to travel. These job characteristics create an image of your perfect job.

When you believe, feel, visualize, and are PROJECTING the image you have into your meditation, then in time, it will become real – it will become your experience. You can do this to help yourself get a job, a love partner, a home, friends, and to become the person you want to be in this life.

This month we will work through various yoga sets that will help us to release some of the blockages we have deep in our subconscious. In childhood, many of us pick up something that is called “learned helplessness.” Maybe you dreamed of becoming an Olympic swimmer when you were a child but your parents said, “No, you won’t be good enough and we don’t have the money.” After hearing this type of thing many times as a young child, we feel that our dreams and passions being broken. We lose the faith that we can do the things that lay in the core of our hearts.

At anytime in our life we can shift and cleanse old thought patterns and remember our full potential. We can wake up our inner passion and use it to create the life we choose to live now. Join us this month as we remember who we are and take one step closer to our dreams.

イマジンでの展示替えにともなう Launch party では、毎回フードに天然酵母のパンの試食をご用意させていただいており、これらのパンはイマジンのスタッフである私、上野が焼いております。お店は持たずに ‘イツキベーカリー’ として、主にイベントやお店へのケータリング、また、最近では自宅にてパン教室もはじめております。

イツキベーカリーのパンには、全て天然酵母と国産小麦を使用しており、使う材料はできるだけ身体に優しいものを使うよう心がけております。また、ピールやジャムは全て国産の果物から作ったものを使っております。

パンは色々な天然酵母を使って膨らましています。天然酵母って？ と思われる方もまだまだ多いかもしれませんね。

パンを膨らますために、材料に酵母（イースト）というものを入れてあげます。大手のパン屋さんでは、工業的に作られた ‘インスタントドライイースト’ を使って膨らますことが主流となっています。天然酵母とは、インスタントドライイーストを使わず、自然界にある果物や植物から酵母を育て、その力を借りてパンを膨らますという、自然と一緒にパンを作る方法なのです。

酵母を育てるにあたって、その時々に採れる季節の果物や野菜などを使うようにしています。使う果物や野菜によってほんのりパンの香りも変わってくるからです。春ならイチゴ、夏ならトマト、秋なら梨、冬なら… といったように、季節の移り変わりをパンからも感じていただけたらと思っております。

Launch party の機会にぜひご賞味いただけたらと思います。ぜひお越しください。

Feeling the Happiness in You

What makes you smile? What makes you feel happiness and love in your heart? Is it the people you are surrounded by? Or is it the things you do?

After searching for joy outside of myself countless times, I have found that true happiness can only come from within. This September, it is my goal for us to learn tools we can use to reach our natural state of contentment, no matter what challenges we may face, or what environment life puts us into.

By connecting with our breath, we will be able to ignite our life force energy. In moving through different yogic postures we have the ability to cleanse stagnant energy and to unite with the purity of our true selves. In meditation, we will clear our mind so that we can know what choices we need to make in order to fulfill our life dreams and experience our highest life purpose.

Yogi Bhajan once said, “If you want to be happy, you have to be happy when there’s no happiness around you. How can you be happy that way? Because you feel the infinity in you.”

I love coffee. Not only do I love the way it smells and tastes, but I love coffee shop culture. Spending an afternoon curled up in a cosy cafe with a good book, and a perfectly made cappuccino is my idea of heaven. And I am not alone.

In 2011 people consumed 7,358,897 metric tons of coffee. To help put this into perspective, 1 metric ton equals 1000 kilograms (a small car weighs about 1000 kilograms). That’s A LOT of coffee! Canadians are one of the top consumers of coffee in the world. Perhaps that explains why I love it so much.

In April of this year, a student (Maki) joined imagine* who was getting ready to move to New York for three years. In one of our first lessons she told me that she was a coffee lover (a woman after my own heart!), and that her dream was to order a soy latte from Starbucks in English. I’ve had the experience of ordering a coffee in another language and not getting what I wanted, so I could understand why it was important for her to get the order right.

A perfect example of how confusing ordering a coffee can be is ‘black coffee’. In some places when you order a black coffee, it means coffee with no sugar or milk. On the other hand, in some places a black coffee has sugar in it! To be safe you should always ask for “a black coffee with no sugar”. As you can see ordering a coffee in a foreign country can be a daunting task, and when you start getting into specialty coffees that’s when things can get really confusing!

After just a month of taking two English lessons almost every day Maki was on her way to New York. She had practiced everything from asking for directions to talking about her hometown, and most importantly ordering a soy latte! One of the things that differ from ordering at Starbucks in Japan is having to give your name when you order. The staff write your name on your cup so that they don’t give your order to another customer by accident. So we made sure to practice that while ordering.

In the first few days of her new life in New York Maki had successfully answered all of the questions at immigration, visited the famous Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Yankee Stadium, and was even asked for directions by a New Yorker! During all of her adventures she made her first visit to Starbucks and in her words “I ordered the soy latte at STARBUCKS.”

So from one coffee fanatic to another, well done Maki! I knew that you could do it.

Synchronizing the Body, Mind, and Soul with Kundalini Yoga

During the month of July we will use Kundalini Yoga to synchronize our body, mind, and soul. Many people believe that these elements are separate entities, when in fact they are a team. When the body, mind, and soul unite and work as one powerful force of energy you will KNOW your purpose in life. You will TRUST your own intuition, and you will FEEL vitality, energy, and breath in your body.

Yoga is a tool to bring us back to our core. Life is a constant movement of changing energy. Sometimes we feel challened, emotional, unsure, and uncomfortable. In many cases this is because our body, mind, and soul are out of balance. These periods of life can be frustrating, but it is not always a bad thing. It is part of the cycle of life and very natural.

The most challenging times in our life are often a sign of “New Beginnings.” Think about a child who has mastered crawling, and they look around to see that there is another experience called ‘walking’ that they would like to try. The child could remain complacent and comfortable, but as a natural progression in life, they take on the new challenge. In this process a toddler will fall over and over again as their body is out of balance. Soon, however, they will find their center and become comfortable again.

When we think or want a new experience in life, things will begin to change. The old starts to fall away, and the new experience will begin to take form. This can take place in relationships, jobs, or creative endeavors. The challenges we face will build strength, confidence, and prepare us for the future and the next challenge.

Yoga is tool that helps to remind us of who we are, because sometimes we may forget or become lost. Yoga helps us to learn how to take control of our mind, strengthen our intuition, and build energy for our creations. Yoga is a tool where we bring breath, flexibility, and flow to our body in order to stay youthful, vibrant, and healthy.

During this month our goal is to bring clarity and direction towards the things in our life that serve a higher purpose. When the body, mind, and soul are working together in harmony we can begin to feel a new sense of fulfillment and contentment. We can experience peace in our heart and remember that we are our own creators.

Most students who come to imagine* on Sundays know me well – we’ve had many lessons together. But during the month of May, very few of you had lessons with me. When you came, perhaps you noticed me sitting alone at a desk with many papers around me, typing busily on a computer. Or perhaps you didn’t notice, but I would like to tell you what I was doing anyway. For over a month, I was working on a translation project.

imagine* was contracted to translate the web site of a garment stand maker into English. This was my first serious translation project. It was a very interesting challenge but I came to realize that translation is very difficult for several reasons.

First of all, there are many differences between Japanese and English sentence structure. I noticed that when I changed a sentence into English, I often had to add a subject, such as “we,” our “these products,” because in Japanese, subjects are not always present.

Vocabulary was also difficult, because the topic was something that I am not familiar with in my own language. I had to learn many new English words related to the fashion industry. Luckily, Brandon knows more about that and was able to help my English sound more natural.

Finally, I realized that some things cannot be translated directly. English and Japanese are so different that sometimes we need to stop trying to match them and find things that are equal – we just say it another way. I think this idea is especially important when we speak a foreign language.

When I speak Japanese, I am not translating in my head. Therefore, even though I have been using Japanese in my daily life for many years, this experience was very new for me. I have a Japanese place in my brain, and when I talk, I try to use only that place. It helps make speech faster and more natural, and I recommend this to all students of foreign language. And for anyone who has to translate documents at work, I say: Good Luck!

Kennett & Lindsell  GARMNET STAND TECHNOLOGY

只今イマジン語学スタジオの空間を彩って頂いているのは、アーティスト田中紗樹さんの作品です。
彩り豊かな作品たちが白い壁に映え、明るい雰囲気の中でレッスンを行っております。

6月3日(日)には恒例の展示替えにともなうパーティーを開催しました。
今回パーティー初めての試み、関東から三味線奏者である五錦雄互さんを迎え音楽に合わせてライブペインティングを行いました。

三味線の力強く繊細な生演奏の中、白と黒の紙に一つ一つ色や線が重なって作品が生まれていく、凄く神秘的で貴重な体験となりました。

ライブの後もふたりのアーティストとの会話もはずみ、終始和やかなパーティーとなりました。
沢山の方にお越し頂きありがとうございました。

田中紗樹さんの作品は9月初旬まで展示しておりポストカードなどの小物も販売しております。
事前にご連絡いただければ作品見学していただけます。
ぜひお越しください。

Living in Beauty by Becoming our Light: Strengthening our Aura

Have you ever glanced at an individual as you are walking down the street, and suddenly you find yourself staring at them? In some cases, even years later, you can still remember that particular person. Oftentimes, it is the radiance of a person’s Aura that catches our eye; the Power of their presence is their Beauty. People are drawn to the magnitude of one’s Aura.

Our Aura is a field of energy that surrounds our physical body and expands from three to nine feet on either side. A strong Aura brings you energy, health, and an angelic nature. Your Aura is created by the flow of prana through energy meridians in your body.

During the month of June, we will be focusing on strengthening and expanding our Auras. We will learn ways to intensify our Aura on a daily basis. During class, we will become familiar with various postures and breathing techniques that will assist us in our process.

There are so many ways that we can feel beautiful, graceful, and bright. Let us learn the ancient tool of the yogis and step into our light.

Hello my dear Yoginis! I have been so impressed with the incredible effort and meditative focus that you have put into our classes. You are doing a really good job!

In May, we will be focusing on the second chakra: the chakra of connection. It represents our connection to creativity, passion and money, as well as our own self worth. At times in the past we may have felt neglected. This can happen in childhood when we don’t receive the attention needed from parents, teachers or other important people around us. It can manifest into a feeling that we simply do not deserve greatness in this lifetime. Sometimes we think we do not deserve to make money doing the things we love or we don’t deserve to be in a relationship filled with love, trust and joyfulness.

Our goal is to unleash the second chakra’s stored energy and to channel our energy into the things that we have the most passion for. By moving through specific Kundalini kriyas and meditations we can transform ourselves in very powerful ways. In truth, we deserve the very best and should never settle for anything less. This month, let us move to a place where we stand proud of who we are. Let us live from a place of knowing and believing so that we may experience life to its fullest capacity.