Dear CIHS Community Members,

It is already December and the year, 2011, is almost over. We greatly appreciate all of your support for CIHS this year. We hope that you are enjoying this beautiful holiday season.

In the last issue of 2011, we have couple of announcements for the upcoming new year, 2012. First, Dr. Hope Umansky introduces our course schedule for Winter 2012, our annual New Year's gathering/Open House, and a call to practitioners and vendors for our Annual Conference in July. We have unique courses this Winter so please contact our program director, Dr. Hope Umansky (Hope_Umansky@cihs.edu), if you have any questions or are interested in enrolling in CIHS.

The second announcement is about our annual yoga workshop, where we have invited Takeshima and Paul & Suzee Grilley to facilitate on April 14 & 15, 2012. There is a workshop outline below so please take a look at it. We plan to set up the fee schedule and online registration by the middle of December so please come back to our website for more information.

Lastly, the third article is from Dr.Tim Laporte, alumni, who is teaching a Yin Yoga course during the Winter quarter. This class is open to public so please contact us if you are interested. It will be on campus on Sundays. It is a great way to deepen your yoga practice.

We wish you a wonderful time during this season. May the good wishes follow you throughout the coming Year.

Sincerely,

Hideki Baba, Ph.D. 

Hello CIHS Community,

Happy Holidays! December is upon us, and the holiday season is officially here. We are wrapping up an exciting year of change and growth for CIHS, and we thank each of you for being members of our unique community.

Open House

Please save the date for our Annual New Year's Open House, Friday, January 20, 6 pm- 8 pm. It is a potluck event. This is an open community event for current and prospective students, Faculty, and anyone interested or who is involved in our community. Everyone is welcome. If you are interested in coming, please RSVP to Tamiko at admin@cihs.edu

Winter quarter

The Winter quarter officially begins January 3, 2012. Registration week is 12/13-12/16/2011. If you register during registration week, there is a $20 per unit discount, which ends up being a substantial savings for a 4-unit course.

**Please note that Topic of Special Interest Life Force, Spiritual Coaching (Topic of Special Interest: Life Coaching), and Yin Yoga (on campus) are open to audit. You do not have to be an officially enrolled student to take these courses.

*Topic of Special Interest Life Force with Dr. Claude Swanson

*Spiritual Coaching or Topic of Special Interest: Life Coaching with Dr. Lana Bettencourt

Consciousness Studies with Dr. Roger Cavnaugh

*Study of East/West Metaphysics and Healing with Dr. Mali Burgess

*Psychodiagnosis and Treatment: Diagnosis in Clinical Psychology with Dr. Sam Aganov

*AMI Data Interpretation and Diagnosis with Dr. Koji Tsuchiya

(Pre-requisite: Intro to AMI Research) On campus

*Advanced Integrative Therapy with Dr. Mary Clark and Victoria Danzig

On campus

*Yin Yoga with Dr. Tim Laporte

On Campus

If you are seeking academic advisement, please do not hesitate to contact me at Hope_Umansky@cihs.edu

I am more than happy to set aside time for an in-person or phone an appointment.

We have several new students joining our community. When you "see" them in your courses, please be sure to welcome them.

Again, we are also happy to welcome Dr. Lana Bettencourt, Master Energetic Healer, to our faculty. Her website is http://www.lanabettencourt.com

Welcome everyone!

 Annual July Bio-Energy Conference

Lastly, our Annual July Conference will have a different feel to it. We will be focusing on the Practical Application of Healing and Consciousness. It is going to be an amazing weekend.

Please save the date of Friday, July 20 through July 22

We are putting out the call to any Healing Practitioners, who are gifted and who practice in any modality, to present with an experiential component in our workshop. If you are interested in presenting at our yearly conference, please email me:

Hope_Umansky@cihs.edu

Subtle Energy Research Center

CIHS' Research Center is open to the recruitment of research projects and/or inquiries investigating the phenomenon of subtle energy. Practitioners can privately contract to utilize our lab equipment and pursue studies of the changes during their healing arts. We have completed some innovative studies in this regard, and we are actively interested in working with more scientists, researchers, and practitioners. You can access more information about our Research Center on the website: www.https://www.cihs.edu/whatsnew/about.html 

If you have a project in mind, please contact me. Dr. Tsuchiya, Center Director, and I will be more than happy to discuss any ideas with you. If you would like a tour of the unique CIHS lab, please contact Koji_Tsuchiya@cihs.edu 

I wish everyone the happiest of Holiday Seasons. I look forward to brining in an even more progressive year of growth for CIHS. 2012 marks our 20th anniversary and we will be celebrating at our unique events throughout the year. I hope you will join us through classes or by attending one of our events.

Sincerely,  

Hope Umansky, PhD

Annual Yoga Workshop - Maniura chakra -  

We are excited to present our annual workshop with Takeshima and Paul & Suzee Grilley next year. The workshop date is April 14, Saturday, and April 15, Sunday. This year, we will focus on the Manipura chakra. Please see the outline and workshop schedule below.

This workshop is also offered as a class in CIHS' programs, and CIHS students are able to take it as a credited course. If students want to take this course, this will fulfill your core course in a segment of Spiritual Education. The series of Spiritual Education courses is one of the unique courses offered at CIHS, and where students explore the nature of human beings from a holistic mind, body, spirit perspective. This course is open to the public; everyone is welcome. If you are interested in joining the CIHS student body, this course might be a great course to experience what CIHS is like to attend. If you are interested in this workshop/course, please contact me at Hideki_Baba@cihs.edu or call me at 760-634-1771 x102

In tantric yoga, the manipura is associated with the principle (tattova) of fire. It also functions as a control center for emotions and imagination coming from the astral dimension. At the physical level, the manipura is closely related to the digestive system, and to the stomach and spleen meridians. The "gate" of the manipura chakra is located about one inch above the navel, at the acupuncture point chukan (CV12), while the "root" of the manipura lies between thoracic vertebra 12 and lumbar vertebra 1.

Awakening the manipura chakra can enable one to feel the flow of subtle energy in the body and to "see" the color of this energy. Practitioners with an active/awakened manipura chakra can also improve their digestive health and expand the depth and breadth of their emotional understanding. This enables us to become more sensitive to how others feel. It is important to awaken this chakra safely in order to live harmoniously with others, to evolve spiritually, and to understand the various spiritual dimensions.

Awakening the manipura chakra can also improve one's ability to practice or participate in any of the healing arts. As a result, anyone, from beginning students to experienced yogis, can benefit from this workshop. We hope you will join us for this special weekend with gifted and experienced teachers!

Workshop Schedule

April 14 (Sat.)

Morning session

• Meridian exercise by Takeshima (9am - 10:30am)

Pawanmuktasana - A series of movements intended to improve and invigorate the flow of prana through all of the major joints of the body. (Without exercise, body fluid tends to stagnate in the joints.)

Hip-joint exercise, Sacro-iliac joint exercise, etc. - A series of exercises intended to align the sacrum bone, ilium bones, sacroiliac joints, and hip joints, which together form the pelvis, the base of physical body.

• Lecture by Paul Grilley on concept of Motoyama yoga (10:30am-12pm)

Afternoon session    2pm-5pm (by Takeshima)

• Lecture on the Manipura chakra

Lecture will cover the concept of the Manipura chakra, lower abdominal breathing, the circulation of light technique (shoshuten), trataka, and nauli.

• Practice to concentrate on the Manipura chakra
• Q & A

April 15 (Sun.)

Morning session      9am-12pm

• Meridian exercise by Takeshima
• Breathing exercise (nadi shodan pranayama)
• Review of day 1 (trataka, nauli, etc.)
• Meditation practice (Svadhisthana, manipura and Ajna chakra)

Afternoon session    2pm-5pm (by Takeshima)

• Lecture - on the importance of achieving balanced physical energy before starting spiritual practice
• Meditation practice
• Q & A
• World peace prayer - chanting the heart sutra.

Dear CIHS community,

After studying alongside you as a student for the last six years, it is a great honor for me to introduce myself to you as a new adjunct faculty member at CIHS in the Comparative Religion and Philosophy program. Over the coming quarters, I will be teaching two types of classes within the CRP program. The first type of class will be traditional, academic classes in Religion and Philosophy, aimed at CRP students and most likely to be offered online. The second kind of class will be a more active, or "hands on" endeavor, from the new Yoga Studies track in the CRP program. These classes will be offered on-campus and will meet once a week (next quarter on Sundays from 9-11am). Although they will also include reading assignments and a short paper for academic evaluation, these classes will focus on practical yoga and meditation training for students and teachers. These courses will also be open to the public for the standard audit rate, and we will try to synchronize the topic of any quarterly Yoga Studies course with the content of future Yoga workshops so that students can receive deeper training and combined credit.

Next quarter's Yoga Studies offering will be "Yin Yoga." For those who have not yet heard of it, Yin Yoga is a contemporary style of Hatha Yoga developed by yoga teacher Paul Grilley and popularized by Sarah Powers and other well-known teachers. Paul has been a yoga/meditation student of Dr. Motoyama for over 20 years, and the Yin Yoga style reflects Dr. Motoyama's spiritual teachings and scientific research on the acupuncture meridians. In practice, Yin Yoga is unique because it emphasizes long-held postures, as opposed to the relatively short duration stretches that are common in Ashtanga/power yoga or Bikram/hot yoga. In Yin Yoga, poses are held anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes! In addition, each pose in Yin Yoga is considered from a "functional" perspective (i.e. "which muscles and meridians does this stretch target?"), rather than from an "aesthetic" perspective (i.e. "how beautiful or graceful or 'anatomically correct' do I look in this pose?"). Each week, we will focus on a particular target area (muscle/meridian group), or conceptual theme (i.e. the basics of yin, modern meridian theory, etc.). Yin yoga is accessible to yoga students of all levels, and I encourage you to join me on Sundays next quarter as we stretch ourselves into a new and transformative year!

Sincerely,

Tim Laporte, Ph.D,, RYT-500

(Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher)