2020 is shaping up to be an epic year for this organization, our services, and the community that is taking root and blossoming.
Spiritual Director
Dr Heather Gail George
970-209-6723
Membership & Student Services
Melissa Romano
304-476-2002
In this month’s Newsletter:
I. www.TheLotusWay.org is becoming a WV 501c3!
II. An invitation to connect, align, flow, and grow The Lotus Way
III. Wednesday class and Satsang times (some available live/online)
IV. Dr. G’s schedule, available services, and ways to book with herI. Worshiping and Serving the Body, Mind, and Spirit as Divine.
I. The Lotus Way
A phenomenal community of Spiritually centered practitioners and scholars has been growing around The Lotus Way since its formation in 2001. We have roots in Colorado, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and West Virginia. As of 2020, The Lotus Way is nourishing its original vision and becoming a 501c3. We are establishing places to worship, study, and practice the healing sciences and arts that are integral to our beliefs. We are building a community, a healthcare ministry, a school, and eventually a residential retreat center and farm.
Nature is our God/Goddess.
Love is our religion.
Our bodies are our temples.
Melissa will be sending out an email to anyone interested in the details and application process for our 800-1020 hour certified Yoga Health Educator & Therapist (c-YHET / c-IAYT) program launching this Spring. This will be our flagship training and an ideal certification for any healthcare professional to integrate into your professional services. So please get in touch with her to be added to that email list.
II. An Invitation
If you long to be connected in a diverse multi-generational community that acknowledges Spiritual growth as a necessary component of ALL things; where learning and practicing healthy ways of living in balance with nature and each other is essential, then we welcome you to join us as we grow. There are many ways to begin getting involved in little and big ways. We are here and look forward to hearing from you, meeting with you, and having you join us as we connect, align, flow, and grow The Lotus Way.
III. Community Classes & Gatherings
Most Wednesdays we will gather at 5:45pm for Dr G’s community Yoga Nidra + Acupunture class at The Mind Body Center in Cheat Lake. There is only room for 20 people to attend the class (so please book in advance using this link). At 6:45 you can join us in person or online for Satsang.
We will chant, discuss our community’s growth and cultivate our practices. In order to join us for this and other services, please make sure you like the The Lotus Way’s general Facebook page, And become a member of our Satsang group.
IV. Dr. G’s Services
If you are an individual, a group, or an organization that could benefit from working with Dr G to integrate the wisdom of our most ancient sciences and healing arts with all that this modern world offers, she is happy to offer herself through speaking engagements, as a ceremony officiant, and of course through private and small group sessions and retreats. In order to meet your needs where ever you are, she provides in-person and hands-on sessions as well as remote consultations.
Click here to book, or call/email for her availability to travel for lectures/presentations.
The lotus, a universal symbol in the East (its symbolism is taken on by the lily and sometimes the rose in the West) is “the flower that was in the Beginning, the glorious lily of the Great Waters… that wherein existence comes to be and passes away.” It is both yin and yang and contains within itself the balance of the two powers; it is solar as blooming in the sun and lunar as rising from the dark of the waters of pre-cosmic chaos. As the combination of air and water it symbolizes spirit and matter; its roots bedded in the darkness of the mud depict indissolubility; its stem, the umbilical cord of life, attaches man to his origins and is also a world axis; rising through the opaque waters of the manifest world, the leaves and flowers reach and unfold in the air and sunlight, typifying potentiality in the bud and spiritual expansion and realization in the flower; its seeds, moving on the waters are creation. The lotus is associated with the wheel both as the solar matrix and the sun-wheel of cycles of existence. Iamblichus calls it perfection, since its leaves, flowers, and fruit form the circle. As lunar-solar, yin-yang, the lotus is also the androgyne, the self-existent. It has an inexhaustible symbolism in Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism alike. Again it appears as both solar and lunar associated with sun gods such as Surya and lunar goddesses such as Lakshmi; solar with Amitabha and lunar with Kwan-yin and androgynous in Kwannon. The lotus is the Golden Flower of Taoism, the crystallization and experience of light, the Tao. While on the spiritual level it represents the whole of birth, growth, development, and potentiality, on the mundane level it depicts the scholar-gentleman who comes in contact with mud and dirty water but is uncontaminated by it. Apart from its almost endless symbolism, the lotus is a flower of great beauty and highly evocative; as Osvald Sirén says, a sheet of lotus blossom “emanates a peculiar magic, an atmosphere that intoxicates like fragrant incense and lulls like the rhythms of a rising and falling mantra.” Jean Cooper ‘The Symbolism of the Taoist Garden