Awakin Calls

David Brown Jr. is an author, leadership coach and management consultant who draws upon the personal transformation he experienced as a result of personal crisis and tragedy as a platform for helping individuals and organizations learn how to navigate adversity, discover inner peace and chase their purpose.  In November 2013, as a new husband and father, David found himself dealing with a defining tragedy of his life, the international parental abduction of his 11-month-old daughter by his then-wife. While meditating on his separation from his daughter, David came upon and ultimately articulated a series of principles that allowed him to find peace. Rather than being governed by resentment and anger, he began to see life from a lens of compassion and forgiveness.

Not knowing whether he would ever see his daughter again, David began writing letters to his daughter sharing the principles.  "When my daughter was abducted, writing letters to her from my heart began the healing process for my grieving, finding compassion for myself and opening the pathway to loving kindness and forgiveness for my ex-wife."  He published the letters as a book, Letters for Lucia: 8 Principles for Navigating Adversity, which became a chronicle of his personal spiritual awakening as well as a story of love, forgiveness and healing.

"As I was writing, I was going through this whole awakening process," David recounts. "I went from being angry and ashamed and embarrassed and feeling guilty about my marriage falling apart and really being a part of creating this fear that would force my ex-wife to make this decision to leave, not only to leave me but to leave the country and to take my daughter from me. . . . The things that I was learning about myself through this awakening, things like following my heart and loving unconditionally and forgiving and being grateful, we all can benefit from looking at life from a different lens." 

David's mission is to help people re-frame their realities for the sake of the greater good of humanity. He believes that redefining our collective relationship to power, honesty and compassion will support positive personal and global outcomes.  By using the eight universal principles from his book Letters for Lucia as a foundation, David seeks to create deep paradigm shifts in the hearts of those who receive his inspirational message.

Prior to being a thought leader in the consciousness evolution movement, David was a senior leader at several Fortune 500 companies. He has earned a degree in finance from University of Delaware, an Executive MBA from Villanova and is studying organizational leadership. His ultimate goal is to take the deeper values he experienced during his personal transformation and bring it back into corporate America and into the organizational structures within which so many people experience their working lives. He has recently founded David Brown Jr. Enterprises, a mission-driven organization that offers personal and leadership development solutions and management consulting services. He has a high desire to encourage others to awaken to their passions and begin to lead more purposeful lives.

David is a certified Reiki Master practitioner and life transformation coach.

 

Arlene Samen has been a Nurse Practitioner in Maternal Fetal Medicine for over 33 years. In 2004, she left behind her clinical practice to dedicate her life to serving pregnant women living in the most vulnerable conditions in the most remote places of the world. By 2009, she started One Heart World-Wide, which spread its life saving "network of safety" model to 60,000 women remote villages in Nepal, the Copper Canyon in Mexico, and deep into the amazon jungle in Ecuador where few dared to go. Arlene is the recepient of many awards, including CNN Hero, Unsung Heroes for Acts of Compassion in 2001, the Soroptimist Women Making a Difference Award, and the Stevie Awards “Women helping Women.” She has been a presenter all around the world and is a guest lecturer at Stanford and UCSF.

Arlene likes to mention that she grew up in Buckingham Palace and was as rich as could be. In fact, Arlene was one of three children living with a twenty-one-year-old single mother in Buckingham Palace Apartments. "Our mother is the most amazing woman in the world," Arlene says. "We did not have enough money for food or clothes, but my mother's love made us feel rich and she always taught us we would always have enough to help others in need."

From the earliest age, Arlene felt a deep concern for those who suffered. "I wanted to help others and myself and had no idea how to do that," she explains.

As a young adult, Arlene had an opportunity to work in an obstetrician's office and went on to become a nurse practitioner. In 1983, she met a plastic surgeon and starting volunteering with Interplast -- which provides free plastic surgeries to needy children. On one of those volunteers missions to Chile, she met a five year old (Nicholas) who was born with a cleft through his entire face. "In attempting to obtain donated medical care for this remarkable boy, I learned never to accept no as an answer when on the path of service," Arlene. Nicholas lived with Arlene while undergoing cranio-facial reconstruction, as did several other children after him. Arlene had found her calling. During the next 15 years, she traveled to Chile, Peru, Honduras, Ecuador, Jamaica, India, Africa, Nepal, Madagascar and finally to Tibet as a medical volunteer.

In 1997, Arlene met the Dalai Lama and showed him what Interplast could offer children of Tibet. He said to her, "You must go into Tibet and help rural people. When you are on the path of service, all doors will open to you." That meeting deeply impacted the trajectory of Arlene's life of service. "It was completely transformational. I left that meeting knowing that from that day forward, my life would be dedicated to the people of Tibet."

As she started serving in Tibet, everyday she encountered children who suffered side effects resulting from birthing trauma, as well as pregnant women in desperate need of prenatal care. She discovered that while in the US, 1 in 10,000 women die in children birth, in Tibet, 1 in 33 women die in child birth! To address this, Arlene started her current organization. "I like to think of myself as a spiritual being in human form," says Arlene. "I began my life as a rich child and thanks to my spiritual journey of compassion, I can now share my wealth with the beautiful people of Tibet."

Giuseppi Spadafora, a/k/a Guisepi, also known as the tea-time-traveler, Tea-sippi, G-sips, and G'steepy, has been adventuring the land since 2006 when, while living in a truck on Hollywood Boulevard and working as a video editor, he accidentally stumbled upon the power of serving free tea in building community.

"I discovered that when my interactions with people had money taken out of them, it made them much more genuine," Guisepi wrote in describing how he came upon the concept and lifestyle of the traveling free tea party. "There was something about unconditional sharing that created trust in a way that no interaction based around profit maximization could. And no wonder, because people have been using free tea for thousands of years as a way to create bonds between people."

In 2008, Guisepi's Free Tea Party changed from a truck to a bus, and from Hollywood to elsewhere. He bought a short school bus to turn into a mobile free tea house. For the past eight years, Edna Lu the Tea Bus, also known as the tea-time-machine, has done its job while traveling North America and getting a complete sustainable makeover.

As noted in a New York Times profile about Giusepi and The Free Tea Party, Guisepi bought the vehicle in San Diego for $2,900 then modified it with mainly salvaged materials to include a skylight, rooftop solar panels, an engine that runs on used cooking oil obtained from restaurants, a bed that lowers from the ceiling, a wood-burning stove and a guttural horn that sounds like a submarine’s klaxon. He was influenced by do-it-yourself and "permaculture" aesthetics and by systems of thought that included the so-called slow movement, which asserts that many people experience stress because the world is moving too quickly. Above all, he said he wants to challenge Adam Smith's notions that people are universally motivated by self-interest and the unyielding pursuit of maximum economic return.

Guisepi estimates he has served close to 30,000 cups, including black, green, white, herbal and oolong, since embarking on the free tea project.  Typically, he shows up in a city or town with his bus and begins offering tea to passers-by, hoping to engage in conversation and form relationships — "the highest form of currency" — that revolve around trust, collaboration and reciprocal altruism. He will not accept money for the tea but includes some currency, along with stickers and herbal tinctures, in a drawer full of items that visitors are allowed to take with them.

He works every day, but rarely does so for pay. He has said he is occasionally hired to do video or building work and earned an average of $6,000 to $9,000 per year. Much of his food is donated or comes from discarded supermarket or restaurant provisions, and he does repairs on the bus himself.

"Serving free tea is an experiment in service. The main thing that serving free tea does is bring people together over a non-monetary exchange. In this way there is nothing expected in return other than genuine human interaction. We feel that community is the first step towards any kind of positive social or environmental change."

Guisepi’s influences include Woodie Guthrie, Peace Pilgrim, Sen no Rikyu, the Dalai Lama, the Diggers, Jack Kerouac, Jack London, and Mahatma Gandhi.  He blogs about his tea party adventures and travels extensively, including about his thoughts on money and struggles to operate a gift economy within the constraints of the material world, and on applying the wisdom from the hikers' world to his quest.

 

Producer/Director Mickey Lemle has been making feature films, television series and documentary specials with spiritual, environmental, and socially conscious themes since 1971. In 1982 he founded Lemle Pictures, Inc., with a mission "to tell moving stories about human transformation." His film and television works -- which highlight spiritual and contemplative commitments as forces for change -- have been shown theatrically, on television and at film festivals around the world.

In 1992, Lemle produced and directed the multi-award winning documentary COMPASSION IN EXILE: The Story of the 14th Dalai Lama. For this film, the Dalai Lama personally granted unprecedented access and cooperation. The film, the first major movie that was made about His Holiness, introduced millions of people all over the world to the Dalai Lama. Phillip Glass composed the music for the film. The film continues to be screened somewhere in the world every single day. COMPASSION IN EXILE was broadcast on PBS and received numerous awards and honors, including two Emmy nominations for Best Director and Best Documentary; and the Grand Prize at the Earth/Peace Film Festival. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences selected it as "One of 14 Best Feature Documentaries of the Year."

Lemle also created the film RAM DASS FIERCE GRACE, named one of the five best non-fiction films of 2002 by Newsweek Magazine. It is a feature-length documentary that shows the wisdom of Ram Dass (aka Richard Alpert), the man who’s been at the forefront of studies in consciousness for over 55 years, as he uses his own practices to deal with the effects of a massive stroke he suffered in 1997, including the resulting suffering and alleviation of suffering. The film screened theatrically in over 60 cities across the US and was broadcast nationally on PBS in 2004.

In 2013 Lemle began production on THE DALAI LAMA, a new feature-length film looking at the life of the Dalai Lama and his commitment to understanding the nature and science of the mind.  Just this past month, in June 2016, Lemle completed this feature film, re-titled THE LAST DALAI LAMA?, and offered a sneak preview of it at an event to benefit The Tibet Fund. A description of the new film notes that "Lemle filmed extensively with the Dalai Lama, with a palpable intimacy made possible by the 30-year relationship they share. . . . In the new film, the Dalai Lama speaks candidly about the issues that come with aging that can disquiet the mind: regrets, unfulfilled dreams, frustrations, and the inevitability of death. His Holiness shared his personal perspective on each of those subjects, and explored the persistent questions about his next reincarnation."

Lemle’s other films include: HASTEN SLOWLY: The Journey of Sir Laurens Van Der Post (1996), which weaves a tapestry of key moments in the life of an extraordinary writer, filmmaker, commando leader, statesman and anthropologist through his own intimate stories; A WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE, a half hour portrait of Massachusetts State Representative Elaine Noble; BRILLIANT, based on the life of Larry Brilliant, a "hippy doctor" who traveled overland to India from England in the ‘70s with 32 members of a commune and ended up playing a major role in the eradication of small pox (Brilliant was later named the first head of google.org).

Lemle received a personal Emmy nomination for editing P.O.W. and JIM, two programs in the RELIGIOUS AMERICA series. He also directed, shot and edited segments of the Emmy Award-winning series, ZOOM, and the Peabody Award-winning series, EYE-TO-EYE. Lemle was recently named "One of the 40 Artists Who Shake the World" by UTNE READER.

Lemle holds a B.A. from Brandeis University. He served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Nepal and since 1992 has served as Chairman of the Board of the Tibet Fund. He has also served on the Boards of Advisors for the Joseph Campbell Foundation, The 52nd St. Project and The Rubin Museum, New York.

He has movingly written about the transformation of his relationship with his mother in the final years of her life.

David Sands has made sustainable living his life’s work as an architect. When he was attending Washington and Lee University in Virginia as an undergraduate, a professor of Chinese art introduced him to the idea of bamboo as a metaphor for the perfected human being:  strong yet flexible with an inner emptiness representing the essential Buddha nature of existence.  That metaphor, together with a recognition of the significant environmental qualities of bamboo, has set the tone and theme of David’s life.  He has initiated a campaign to make bamboo the most prevalently used building material on the planet. He cofounded in 1995 and is Chief Architect of Bamboo Living in Maui, Hawaii, with the mission to protect and restore the planet by pioneering the use of bamboo as a building material. David is now an international leader on structural bamboo, and he designs both individual homes and prototypes for large-scale construction.

A devotee to yoga practice since 1971, David lived for eight years in an ashram. He served for nearly a decade on the board of Kripalu Center in Massachusetts, the largest yoga retreat facility in America, including several years as chairperson. After relocating to Hawaii in 1988, David co-founded Bamboo Living with Jeffree Trudeau in 1995.

“I left Kripalu in 1987 and moved to Hawaii a year later. Pretty quickly after that, I built my own house with my brother and some friends,” David has said. “I tried to be as green and sustainable as I could …. But when they delivered the construction lumber, it was painful, because I saw how many trees were tied in with that amount of wood. Even for a managed forest, that’s a lot of trees being cut, and the logging process is a mess.  Shortly after completing the house, I left Maui for six months to figure out how I could align my life better with my values. … during that time, a friend from Maui called who had just come back from the World Bamboo Congress in Bali.”

Bamboo Living's homes are the first and only code certified permit-able bamboo structures in the world. Since 1995, David and his team have designed and permitted more than 350 bamboo homes in the Hawaiian Islands and other locations in the world.  Each of the artisan pre-fabricated homes that goes into production saves about 10 acres of forest from being cut down, and benefit from bamboo's qualities as earthquake-resilient and hurricane-resistant.

“Bamboo is probably the most sustainable building material on the planet,” David has explained. “Using it actually restores the planet. It reduces deforestation, creates annual jobs rather than the typically cyclical jobs of forestry—it’s a very different paradigm for construction material. Bamboo plants live 50 to 100 years, depending on the species, and can be harvested every year. When you cut them, it doesn’t kill the plants, so it’s not like harvesting timber. It also looks beautiful, like a work of art. … Bamboo is the fastest-growing plant, so it’s the fastest way to get carbon out of the atmosphere. … It made me realize that switching our construction to bamboo could have a huge impact on the planet. That’s not going to be done with just the niche houses I’ve designed, so I’ve started working toward that through other avenues.”

David served on the INBAR (International Network for Bamboo and Rattan) committee to develop the International Standards Organization (ISO) standard for structural bamboo. He is an international speaker on the subject of structural bamboo, presenting at conferences in Beijing, Hanoi, Mexico, Costa Rica and elsewhere. David has also been a presenter for the American Institute of Architects National Convention, the American Bamboo Society national conference, and a keynote speaker for the World Bamboo Congress in Bangkok. 

David has also recently started a company called Bamboo Ecologic to produce a structural bamboo panel. “It’s an amazing building material with phenomenal properties in terms of durability and resistance to mold and insects. You can build entire buildings with just these panels. … We’re able to match regular construction costs, and this new technology will eventually be the most affordable way to build anything.”

Born and raised in Florida, David received his Masters in Architecture in 1982 from the University of Florida.

Join us for an exciting conversation with this visionary and conscious leader!

Liam Chai carries a depth of presence that transcends his 23 years.

In 2011, while on track to study medicine, he began reading the writings of visionaries like Gandhi, Lao Tzu, Thoreau, and Fukuoka -- and found himself grappling with questions and new perspectives that shifted his sense of possibility.

Moved by a compulsion to "be the change," the then-teenager opted not to apply for university, and instead, created his own self-directed higher education. He read 200+ non-fiction books, built a tiny house, learned Spanish in 3 months, meditated 100 hours in 10 days, grew salad on rooftops in the heart of London, and spent a summer talking to strangers in public.

In his own words, he explains, "I had become disillusioned with the ‘go to school, get a job, retire’ motif. Truth is I was on a search for utopia – an alternative to what I had been told was the only way. What I found instead was a way to eradicate suffering and cultivate genuine happiness. I’m making that exploration of eradicating suffering so it no longer arises my life’s mission, and on the journey I want to be of as much benefit as I can to others."

Some questions he's holding include: What is true security and how can we cultivate that? What role does money play in a life of service? Do we lose the sacred when we measure? What is the value of a temporary pleasure? If temporary is defined as that which is changing, what is not a temporary pleasure? And if everything is changing, and hence temporary, is it meaningful to give it a valuation? If not, and if money is primarily a valuation tool, does money implicitly encourage an illusion of permanency?

With the courage of a sincere heart, his recent experiments amplify the human spirit across England. From spreading smiles at a pop-up Karma Kitchen in London to holding a heart of service amongst family, the array of sights and insights from this pilgrim of life carries a lightness and depth that extends far beyond his years.

Join us on June 18th, as we dive deeper into this 23-year-old's journey on a path less traveled.

Ferial Pearson is an instructor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the College of Education and a former teacher in the Omaha Public Schools. She is the founder of The Secret Kindness Agents project.

Ferial was a teacher at Ralston High School in Nebraska in 2012 when the news came from Newtown, Connecticut: a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Twenty-six dead, including 20 children. As reported in a profile by the Omaha World Herald, Ferial’s thoughts went straight to her own kids, at the time ages 6 and 9. She felt a deep and personal terror. She wanted to shield her kids from danger. But then a conversation with her kids about Sandy Hook took an unexpected turn. Her son spoke about the frustration and anger of being bullied. Her daughter wondered what might have happened if there was just a little more kindness in the world, and if some of that kindness had reached the shooter before he ever picked up a gun.

Naive as it seemed, the thought led Ferial to consider the power in random acts of kindness. She wondered if a simple act of kindness could change a life. She thought of the school where she taught and the students she guided every day and wondered, what would happen if we started secretly carrying out small acts of kindness in school? Could a modest act of compassion really change the course of a life? She posed the question to her students. They didn’t have the answers but they were willing to find out and ran with the idea. They became, under Pearson’s leadership, the Secret Kindness Agents. They adopted secret agent names. Each accepted a mission to do some good within the school. They smiled at passers-by. They wrote impromptu notes of appreciation. They invited isolated students to sit with them for lunch. The only rules set by Ferial were that the acts of kindness could not cost any money, and they had to take place within the confines of the school.

The kindness became addictive. The students wanted to do more. As Ferial recounted in a powerful TEDx talk, “We became a family, we became braver, we became more loving. We fed our good wolves. The [students] couldn’t wait to come to school. They couldn’t wait to make somebody’s day just by smiling at them. And now, when someone reaches into their pocket or their backpack, I find myself waiting for something different to come out. And I no longer feel afraid to let my children out into the world. They too have become secret kindness agents.”

The idea itself spread, too. In 2014, Ferial wrote Secret Kindness Agents: How Small Acts of Kindness Really Can Change the World, a sort of how-to book on creating a Secret Kindness chapter. Pearson estimates there are students at over 30 schools across the country, from elementary all the way up to universities, performing random acts of kindness. Some of them are rogue, anonymous operations. Others are organized movements by clubs and student groups.

Since she started the Secret Kindness Agents, Ferial has been exposed to all kinds of generosity. She’s seen how kindness can catch on. But she’s also seen her share of hate. She has been harassed as a Muslim, and she has found in the stories of other harassed Muslims new reasons to be scared. Once again, she thinks of her children and the world they’ll grow up to face.  Her response is the same: “It just gives me renewed enthusiasm for the project,” she has said.

Ferial has won numerous national and local awards for her work in schools and social justice in the community. Nominated by a former student in moving submission, she is a 2016 recipient of the Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Center Inspirational Teacher Award, which recognizes some of the country's most influential and inspirational teachers. In 2010, she received the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network’s Educator of the Year Respect Award. A year later she was the recipient of RESPECT’s Anti-Bullying Award. In 2015, she was named one of “Ten Outstanding Young Omahans” by the Omaha Jaycees.

Ferial was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and was the first in her immediate family to attend college, earning her bachelor’s degree in communication arts literature teaching from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. She earned her Master's degree in Urban Instruction from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She currently works as an Instructor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the Teacher Education Department, and is working on her doctorate in Educational Leadership. She lives in Ralston, Nebraska with her husband Daniel, son Ilahi, and daughter Iman.

Join us for an inspiring conversation with this remarkable educator, tireless kindness agent, and visionary leader!

Andrea Casalinho, along with her husband Jeroen and their children, run Casalinho e Escabelado, an emergent permaculture project in the mountains of central Portugal.  They invite volunteers from around the world to experience a different lifestyle and become empowered by learning more about the production of their own food.  Permaculture is a sustainable design system focused on simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems.  It is inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’s natural farming philosophy.

Andrea, Jeroen, and their children moved to Casalinho 8 years ago from their original smallholding, when the family wanted more space to pursue their dream. When the family moved to Casalinho, much of it had been abandoned for many years. The property consisted of a lower section made up of the house (needing renovation) and agricultural land which had at one stage been a market garden complete with numerous fruit trees but had more recently been used to grow animal feed crops; and a higher, larger section made up of pine forest and scrub. The agricultural land was in poor condition as many of the fruit trees had been mechanically ripped out of the ground, hugely disturbing the soil layers, and the soil in the main fields had suffered from years of compaction with tractors and the use of agrichemicals.

“Our adventure began by accident some years ago when we bought a derelict little smallholding in the middle of nowhere,” Andrea says. “We worked hard on it, experimented, practised our skills, but eventually realised that we wanted more space. . . .We bought Casalinho e Escabelado, which is … in need of much love and attention. We are slowly reclaiming the land and now supply most of our own fresh vegetables and fruit. Eggs, milk, cheese, a little meat, much fertility and a lot of enjoyment are provided by our animals. We keep goats, pigs, rabbits, ducks, chickens and pigeons productively, and we’ve got cats and dogs too.”

Prior to living in rural Portugal, Andrea worked in an office management role in England. She fell in love with Portugal while traveling there simply for a holiday, met her partner, and eventually moved to the mountainous center of the country.  Andrea undertook the Sustainable Land Use Course including a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) with Patrick Whitefield in 2011. She was so inspired that she came back insisting Jeroen also attended a PDC.  She realized that in order to live a life conversant with her values she needed to communicate them.  And so it was decided to host the first PDC at Casalinho, and the tradition of hosting annual summer courses and volunteers was begun!

According to Andrea:  “We’ve had immense help over the years from an ever changing group of international volunteers from all over the world and have hosted around 900 so far! Our volunteers share our lives for a short while, receiving meals and basic accommodation in return for their help with our daily activities and special projects.”

“We live a simple life without many of the trappings of modern life, but what we lack in material terms is more than made up for by the satisfaction of shaping and living the life we want. We try to live by the permaculture ethics of earth care, people care and fair shares.”

While observing how the health of the land is improving, Andrea and her family have found that the range of skills and experience they continue to acquire is really empowering. Their constantly growing repertoire of knowledge has made them much more resilient as individuals and as a family. 

Andrea also is focused on imparting valuable experiences to the many visitors and volunteers.  As she described in a beautiful video documenting Casalinho e Escabelado, “I also want us to be in a position to offer an educational experience to people.  What I think the thing we are trying to offer to people is the opportunity to discover a lifestyle which is different to what they may experience at home.  We appreciate that the way we live is perhaps different from the majority of people, and if we can show people that that’s not so bad, perhaps they can go back, and if they can put even one aspect of that into operation then I feel that we will have done something worthwhile.”

Jeffrey Smith is a leading American consumer advocate who has opposed the use of genetically modified foods since they were introduced in the 1990s. Smith authored the books Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating ​in 2003, and Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of Our Lives in 2007.  His book Seeds of Deception is the world’s bestseller on genetically modified organisms (GMOs).  

Smith directed and produced a feature-length documentary film

Genetic Roulette based on his second book in 2012.  The film is critical of genetically modified food, linking genetically engineered food to toxic and allergic reactions, infertility, digestive disorders, and numerous problems that have been on the rise in the US population since GMOs were introduced.  It was awarded the 2012 Movie of the Year (Solari Report) and the Transformational Film of the Year (AwareGuide).

Smith is the founder and current executive director of The Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT), a source of GMO health risk information for consumers, policy makers, and healthcare professionals.  A former politician, Smith in 1998 ran unsuccessfully for Congress from Iowa as a candidate for the Natural Law Party. He ran for Congress in order to raise awareness about GMOs.

Smith grew up in New York City and attended Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa in the 1980s.  His work, which focuses on documenting how biotech companies continue to mislead legislators and safety officials to put the health of society at risk and the environment in peril, has frequently been the target of criticism – criticism which in part targets Smith for his involvement with transcendental meditation.

Smith has lectured in more than 40 countries and has been quoted by thousands of news outlets including: The New York Times, Washington Post, BBC World Service, The Times (London), the Associated Press, Reuters News Service, the LA Times, Time Magazine and the New Scientist.  He appears frequently on radio and television on shows such as the Dr. Oz Show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Doctors, CBS News, Fox News, CNBC, NPR and Democracy Now.

Smith resides in California and Iowa—surrounded by genetically modified soybeans and corn.

Chase Bossart has devoted over 20 years to living and teaching therapeutic yoga in the tradition of Sri Krishnamacharya/Viniyoga. First introduced to Yoga as part of a study abroad program in Chennai, India in 1991, Chase became hooked on its simple yet profound teachings and returned repeatedly to study with Mr. TKV Desikachar at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai. Eventually spending more than 4 years in Chennai studying the therapeutic application of yoga, Chase strives to make yoga available to populations that do not normally have access to it.

“As a philosophy major in college, I went on a study abroad program to India,” Chase said. “One of the courses was Yoga Theory and it just happened to be taught by Mr. TKV Desikachar. Though I knew almost nothing about yoga before the trip, I became completely absorbed by the clear, concise and simple answers that Yoga has for life’s most knotty questions. Yoga not only describes who we are, what our relationship with the world is and why we suffer, but it also gives great advice about what to do about it! I was hooked and have spent the rest of my life delving into it.”

Founder of the Yoga Well Institute and Co-Founder of Yoga As Therapy, North America (YATNA), Chase trains yoga teachers, therapists and health practitioners how to modify movement, breathing and attention techniques to meet the individual capacities and needs of each student. The idea of viniyoga is that all the tools of yoga be adapted to the individual’s capabilities and needs and then developed gradually over time at a pace appropriate for each student. This individualized approach to practicing and teaching yoga is essential if the student is to realize the full potential of yoga practice for healing, self-discovery and personal transformation.  Chase applies this approach to help even severely affected people to participate in their own healing.

Chase believes that understanding the traditional world-view/philosophical perspective of yoga is important and strives to make these ideas easily digestible and applicable to everyday modern life.

“It is easily observable that different experiences during the day affect us mentally, physically and emotionally,” Chase says. “For instance we react to the same road very differently with traffic than we do when it is without traffic. Similarly, different Yoga techniques also affects us in different ways (for instance, inhale speeds up the heartbeat while exhale slows it down). So, Yoga is really just a (serious) game of conscious linking in which techniques are intentionally engineered experiences. If we have an understanding of how experiences influence the way our bodies, minds, emotions, etc. are functioning then we can use all kinds of different experiences to encourage healing. It is not only endlessly fascinating, but unlimited in its applications.”

With extensive experience in the therapeutic application of yoga, Chase travels frequently to present workshops and trainings on a wide range of yoga and yoga therapy topics. Chase also regularly develops yoga interventions for scientific research and formerly served as the Director of Therapy and Education at the Healing Yoga Foundation in San Francisco. Based in California, Chase has an M.A. in Religious Studies from UC Santa Barbara, where he focused on Indian philosophy and wrote his thesis on Patanjali's Yogasutra.  He is a faculty member for the Loyola Marymount University's Yoga Therapy Rx Program.