January 2015
By Shivi Verma and Anusha Singhania
The third Life Positive Expo, Mumbai, with its exciting exhibition area, powerful workshops and sublime discourses, left the attendees mesmerized and energized, say Shivi Verma and Anusha Singhania
The third Life Positive Expo hosted in Mumbai on November 15- 16, 2014, was a smashing hit. The stalls buzzed with activity. Enthusiastic participants jammed the workshops. Celebrated facilitators held forth articulately. Discourses by Smt Jaya Row and Sister BK Shivani drew huge crowds, and celebrities like actor Madhoo Shah, Suresh Oberoi, Smita Jayakar, and health expert Anjali Mukherjee, graced the event, making it a huge success.
Says Satyendra Singh from Thane, “The Expo was absolutely amazing and wonderful. My business partner Shilpa and I enjoyed it very much. Both the workshops as well as the keynote addresses were superb. I will give it a 10 on 10.”
Says Durriya Pardiwala from Lonavala, “The workshops were really fascinating. I only wish Dr Newton could have given us more time than stipulated. Smita Jayaker too was extremely good with her presentation. My daughter Masumah and I, both enjoyed it thoroughly.”
The event started with Sister BK Shivani, Life Positive chairman, Aditya Ahluwalia, actor Suresh Oberoi, and host of the moment, actor Madhoo Shah, inaugurating the Expo by lighting the lamp. Then came the moment everyone was waiting for: Sr Shivani’s inaugural address. As she began to speak, perfect calm and silence descended upon the audience. People sat in rapt attention, drinking in every word uttered by the sublime speaker.
Inaugural address by Sister BK Shivani: Life as celebration
Speaking on the topic of observing life as a celebration, Sr BK Shivani said that in a world looking for peace we forget that peace is our own innate nature. Instead of looking for it outside of us, it is better to start using the peace we innately possess. All the celebrations of the world are a reminder of our permanent celebratory nature. Outer festivals remind us that we have the power to celebrate life internally even while doing our daily jobs. One could be singing and dancing inside even when mired in the toughest life situation outside.
She pointed out that our problem is that we get stuck in our attitudes and mindsets. We put conditions to our happiness believing that we would be happy only when people and situations work our way. Each of us sees life through the lens of our samskaras, and we want everything to be through the same lens. Whereas the reality is that different samskaras, coupled with different parents from different places, result in different people with different perspectives. Each one’s samskara is different. Everybody is playing to a different recording. And you cannot understand a recording which is different from yours. Therefore you judge and force people to be different from who they are. She gave the example of a child who died due to drowning…as his hand slipped away from the hand of his father, his last thoughts would have been of immense fear. When reborn, naturally, the child would be fearful and timid. The parents might resent such behavior, and compare the child to its other more confident siblings, thereby further diminishing his confidence. Therefore, she advocated that we shift our focus from ‘I love you’ to ‘I accept you’. We complain about other people’s negative qualities because they give us discomfort. But our job is not to point out their flaws, but focus on their strengths. The more you focus on strengths, the more they will grow, and the flaws will die a natural death. We must know that nothing is wrong because from a person’s standpoint and samskaras they are right. Her compassionate and wise words gave the audience a fresh perspective of their many relationships.
Day l
Santosh Joshi: SKY healing
The SKY healing workshop by Santosh Joshi was a fun-filled exercise. A facilitator who entertained as much as he empowered his participants, he cracked jokes and sang a ghazal on the request of a participant. Santosh talked about the problem of stress in human life, and how unlike animals, we cannot always fight or fly in response to stressors. Physical good health was possible only when a person was healthy emotionally, financially and spiritually. “Through SKY we come in touch with our bliss bodies. To get to the positive state it is important to flush out stored negativity in the body and mind.” Santosh led the participants through a grounding meditation where delegates were asked to imagine energy tubes emerging from their soles and palms and going to the centre of the earth where a fire burnt, into which they were to cast away their negativity. Santosh then began the SKY healing work. It began with Aum chanting starting at the solar plexus and ending at the sahasrar chakra, and went on to include tapping with affirmation, alternate nose breathing, open-mouth nasal breathing along with a few more breathing techniques. The trance thus induced was so powerful and achieved in such a short span that participants felt energised for the rest of the day.
Said Asit Mohapatra, “I wish there were better words than ‘Thank You’ to convey my sincere appreciation to Santosh. I find it quite useful, and have recommended others to learn this process.”
Smita Jayakar: Chakra healing
:If you suffer from aches, fatigue or any recurring fear and emotion, it is your chakras which need to be balanced,” said Smita Jayakar in her workshop on Chakra healing. She added, “Chakras are the powerhouse of shakti. They are responsible for all energies in our body, and the balance of each one is vital.” The announcement of this simple fact gripped the audience, since they now knew the cause and possible solution to many of their problems. The workshop offered an indepth understanding of chakras, helping the audience to recognize not just the properties of each chakra, but also the symptoms of inbalance, their chanting mantras, colours, corresponding deity and cheat codes to remember all of these. For instance, the Manipur chakra symbolizes our inner power. If under active it leads to passivity and victimhood; if over active it leads to aggressive and dominating behavior. What made the workshop unique was the lively interaction between the delegates and the facilitator, creating a high level of involvement. The workshop ended on a high, as Smita led the participants through a chakra balancing meditation. The therapeutic music with peaceful chanting left the delegates fresh, detoxified, and, hopefully, with their chakras balanced.
Book launch: Travelling Lighter
Day 1 wound up with the launch of Editor-in-chief Suma Varughese’s second book, Travelling Lighter, sequel to the much-acclaimed Travelling Light. The panelists included Sathya Saran, former editor of Femina and Me, and Rajni Bakshi, Gandhian and author. Actor Smita Jayakar played the moderator. The gathered dignitaries as well as Life Positive chairman, Aditya Ahluwalia, launched the book with much fanfare, before moving on to a panel discussion on The Twists and Turns of the Spiritual Journey.
“Sharing about the inner struggles with readers is not something which comes easily to a writer,” said Sathya Saran.
Suma Varughese shared that the book, which was a compilation of her popular columns in Life Positive, was a reflection of her conviction that just as she had learnt from the wisdom of those who had walked ahead of her, she too was obliged to share her own learnings for the benefit of those who walked behind her. She also mentioned that many readers had remarked on the honesty of the narration and said, “By allowing myself to be so vulnerable, I am also encouraging the readers to shed their own masks, and be vulnerable.”
Author Rajni Bakshi talked about the struggle that each butterfly goes through to free itself of its pupa and fly free. And that it was this struggle that strengthened its muscles, and made it a fully formed butterfly. She likened the book to the author’s struggle in the pupa.
Sathya Saran shared that while she might like to travel light, she was still encumbered with her fondness for pretty things and added, “There are readers for books like Travelling Lighter, which acts like a lighthouse during hours of need.”
Reflected Rajni, “Though the caterpillar is vastly different from the butterfly, it carries within itself imaginal cells which hold the information of flying, and in due course other cells too begin to replicate those cells. Human beings too carry similar information of spiritual transformation. When the process begins, they rapidly transform.”
After a delightful Q and A session, the audience lined up to get a signed copy of Travelling Lighter from their favourite writer.
Day ll
Past-life Regression by Dr Newton and Dr Lakshmi Kondaveti
World famous couple Dr Newton and Lakshmi Kondaveti mesmerized the participants of the Past-life Regression workshop with their profound explanation of the soul science. Sharing how souls clambered up the ladder of evolution through reincarnation, they said, “Many of these incarnations are useless and easily avoidable if the soul learns its lessons,” while suggesting that past-life regressions put a person in touch with the purpose of the present life, and with unlearnt lessons.
Dr Lakshmi then guided the memory of the audience to childhood times and from there to womb memory.
After that participants were asked to pair up and exchange one of their belongings with their partner. Lights were switched off, and they were asked to look deeply into the eyes of their partners without blinking. This process shifted the physical eye and surfaced the inner eye from which past lives, emotional status and blocks in the partner’s body became apparent. On communicating their discoveries to each other, participants were surprised at their accuracy. After that, a group regression session was conducted and people reported their past life and its connection with their present discomfort, illness and the learning they were supposed to get.
Said S Chandnani, “Whatever my partner said about me after the process was completely true. It’s true that I carry a lot of hurt in my body but I also have the ability to bounce back even more strongly.”
Dr Vijayalakshmi Panthaiyan: Alpha Mind Power
Dr Vijayalakshmi Panthaiyan’s workshop on Alpha Mind Power was crammed with participants, drawn by her clear, precise and powerful workshop. Said Dr Vijayalaxmi, “The greatest power is the power of the subconscious mind.” The subconscious mind, she explained, was the hidden God within us and had the power to manifest all our goals and dreams if we could learn to access it. She went on to explain how the brainwave frequency of Alpha was the ideal state through which to access the subconscious mind, and gave an example of the state through a guided meditation. The highly experiential workshop had many Alpha meditation sessions as she taught participants how to move into Alpha while going about one’s day-to-day life, as well as how to use the Alpha state to heal health, achieve abundance, and maximise relationships. The affable Dr Vijayalakshmi gave many examples of how Alpha meditation had helped her clients achieve the life of their dreams. She also initiated higher energies in the room from the ancient siddhas. Finally, she gave the key to success in the hands of each participant in the form of an alpha meditation help kit containing a book and an audio CD.
Valedictory speech by Mrs Jaya Row: From discord to concord
Jaya Row was again at her articulate best in her valedictory address at the close of the two-day Expo. Talking on the delicate topic of relationships and how to move from discord to concord, she said that this country was once the picture of success and abundance in every aspect of life. Generations of families lived with each other harmoniously. Generations of employees worked with generations of employers. It was an informal welfare state. But today there is high attrition rate in families and companies and society is virtually at war.
She asserted that the cause of it all was attachment. Attachment to things or people is the root cause of our failure in relationships. Attachment is nothing but love combined with selfishness. When you lean on people for your needs and requirements, you throttle them with expectations and demands. When they leave, you miss their presence in your life. Whereas when you are detached, or more in love with a higher ideal, your relationships flourish. “When the person is there you enjoy his company, and when they are not you enjoy the solitude,” she said. She asked people to read Swami Ram Tirtha’s treatise on attachment.
She continued, “Observe Krishna’s interaction with people. He interacted with Duryodhana as well as Arjuna with the same equipoise.” Quoting Sri Krishna, she said, “Krishna advised Arjuna, ‘Kill them, Arjuna, but kill them with love.’ That was the level of his love and his detachment from people.” She exhorted the audience to change their perspective, focus on the good in people, and revel in their variety. “See a little bit of yourself in everybody. Take a giant leap in oneness,” she urged.
An exhibition of spirit
The LP exhibition was a paradise for those looking for tools to help them on their journey of spirituality. There were several foundations promoting their philosophies and workshops. One of them was Loving Yourself Foundation based on the philosophy of ‘Louise L. Hay’s book, You Can Heal Your Life, a treatise on how illness can be healed through self-work and self-esteem.
Mind Mastery, was another foundation promoting ‘better health, wealth, relationships and success’ through workshops on these subjects under the leadership of Dr Vijayan. They also hold workshops for corporates and students.
Wellness Vibe promoted sound as medicine. Sound, they explained, has healing powers. It elevates the low frequencies of our bodies to a higher and more desirable frequency. At the stall, Wellness Vibe had their singing bowls on sale.
Prasar Communications, a production company producing literature on spirituality, particularly on Sai Baba, displayed their books at the stall. They also had a free tarot reading session where the first-of-its-kind ‘Sai Baba’ deck cards were used.
Karma Sutra, a book on cracking the code of karma written by Hingori, was on display and also available for sale. The book is based on the philosophy, ‘Destiny is the fructification of your negative and positive karmic stock’.
The Organic India stall had on sale multiple products including tea that relieves stress, and improves immunity, to supplements that help bowel movements and other daily utilities like ghee, and chyvanprash.
AstroVed.com, started by Dr. Bhaskaran Pillai, provided statistical analysis and scientific studies supporting astrological predictions and creating effective and result-oriented Vedic remedies for problems related to career, job or even relationships.
The stall of Rudra Universe Foundation was dedicated to imparting knowledge to attain higher consciousness. They conduct periodic workshops helping individuals on their path to a spiritual life.
With an array of useful services, was Guruji Rishi Prabhakar’s Yessence Academy. It had programmes for students, corporates, parents and more. The foundation also promotes community living at the Rishi Niketan where learning takes place in the abundance of nature.
Ifloat India introduced a novel service – the capacity to float on water within an anti-gravity environment, and go into deep relaxation of your mind and body effortlessly. While this service is available at their centre in Pune, Ifloat India also allows purchase of an ifloat tank exclusively for yourself in your own convenient place.
Occupying a large area in the LP exhibition was Life Positive‘s own Soul Space which aims at building and promoting the spirit of an individual through its services or products. Soul Space, located in MIDC, Andheri East, includes a meditation room, events and workshop room, a retail space, and an art gallery. It also includes Soul Cuisine – an international pure vegetarian restaurant serving healthy, soulful, delicious treats. Some of the products on sale included aroma detectors, angel figurines, Himalayan rock salt baths and many more spiritual wonders.
Star Insurance, a consistent sponsor of the Life Positive Expo held a stall too, exhibiting its various schemes providing insurance for your health in many ways.
Bowen therapy presented by Bowen India, is referred to as the homeopathy of body work. It gives subtle inputs to the body stimulating it to heal itself. The Bowtech team conducted free sessions, showcasing the power and effectiveness of the therapy.
Acupuncture heath care and Arya holistic services displayed a variety of acupuncture products produced by the company whereas the other section provided paid acupuncture treatments. The stimulating massages and products aimed to relieve stress and heal other physical ailments.
Soul healing India based on Master Sha’s soul healing promoted a unique technique called the ‘golden ball healing technique’ which vanquishes all negativity.
Visitors to the exhibition zone went away enriched and inspired.
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