12/05/2025
Read Full Newsletter Here: https://conta.cc/48nj0C0
Building A Spiritual Community...❤️ Sacred Waters Retreat in Manitou ❤️ Cacao Ceremony ❤️ Winter Solstice Workshop ❤️ New Year's Day Vision Board ❤️ Reiki & Sound Healings ❤️ 200 & 300Hr YTT
"Our Heart Is The Master, The Ego is The Servant…"
Namaste friends,
Happy almost winter. We finally got some snow! I have enjoyed the Indian Summer, but its weird to be in shorts in December in Colorado. I am happy to see the landscape covered in white, especially the mountains. Snow packed mountains means spring abundance. Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!
Winter Solstice is around the corner and that means its time to get our nests ready for hunkering down. Michael and I put the down comforter back on the bed. We pulled the little heater out from storage. All the outdoor plants are either brought inside or put to bed in their garden homes. The storm windows are put on, the swamp cooler is wrapped in a blanket, and the sprinklers blown out. We have old radiators that heat water to warm the house, and they make an endearing gurgle sound as they begin heating and moving the water through their pipes. Our holiday decor is pulled out and on display, and the extra pines and boughs around give that cozy cabin feeling. By 5:30 I am ready to put my jammies on and crawl into bed with my book.
Winter is a still time. A quiet time. A reflective time. By design, it is meant for slowing down and restoring our energy. Yet our cultural norms have made this one of the more frenetic, expensive, and socially active times of the year.
As a extrovert, I love going to all the galas, parties, plays and concerts…but I also feel how counter-intuitive this is to my mind, body, and spirit. My little ego self wants to get dressed up, indulge in the fantastic feasts and spreads, see all the people, lights, and glitter that adorn the plethora of community functions.
But my High Self, or my spiritual heart says, choose wisely as to how you spend your energy. In fact, it says try to restore your energy, replenish with rest and quiet introspection. Use this time to go inward and listen to the deep wisdom of my inner knowing. I am called to journal, write, read, draw, paint all the things that are coming to the surface from deep within my soul. And then study their meaning and look for the messages that are coming from my Higher Power.
I know the importance of carving out time and space for reflecting and reviewing my values, my feelings, and my Self-so that come spring-we emerge with our new births, gifts, and blossoms for the year to come. This is our incubation period. We need to use this time for quiet contemplation, for soon the days will begin to turn toward the light. Winter Solstice is the 21st of December, and that begins the return of the long days. But for a little longer, we are socked in with darkness, and that is nature’s invitation to turn inward.
Michael and I have been working diligently to secure a new home for our studio and community. A wonderful couple in the community reached out to us after the last newsletter and said they had a space that they thought would be a good fit for us. When they told us where it was, I knew instantly the building and had already put the wheels into motion to take a look at it prior to them reaching out. Its a building I have driven by everyday for the last 16 years on the way to taking my boys to school and have always marveled at her elegant beauty-she is different from rest of the big brick buildings around her. I always thought it would make a great studio.
When we met with the owners, it was so refreshing to see how kind, generous and down-to-earth they were. They have been very gracious and accommodating in helping us get the new rent and renovations figured out. I have a renewed faith in humanity because they have put helping us keep our community afloat over monetary gain. In truth, I don’t know how any business stays afloat with the rents that landlords are asking these days. Its nearly impossible for a small business to pay the current asking price per square foot, and expect to make any profit. Hence the reason we see a bunch of for lease signs all over the city. It hasn’t been for lack of availability that we haven’t found something yet, its been for lack of affordability. These folks are different.
I was hoping in this newsletter I could say that we have for certain found our new space, but we are still figuring out a few details regarding the build out of the new space. But I am 99.9% sure this place is it. We need to build a few walls, and rearrange some heating and cooling-and if we can figure out the finances on that then I think its a go. I am very hopeful, and feel excited and positive about everything. But these things take a little time. So we will send out a special addition newsletter later this month to announce our new location and our moving plan. So please keep a look out for that additional newsletter this month.
So many of you have poured out your love, concern, support and have offered to help in all the ways that you can. For this we are extremely grateful and we will most appreciatively take you up on your offers. Some of you have offered to paint, to pack, to schlep, to clean, to replant plants, and to move furniture, and many of you have even offered to give financially as well. We have been resistant to asking for monetary help, but the truth of the matter is that we need it. So, we have created a GoFundMe page if you are feeling called to help us in that way. Your financial donations are most certainly appreciated-especially as we are doing the build out. Your donations help us determine the amount of build we can do, and it helps us to adjust our sails to the new rent increase and studio expansion.
Here is a link you can use to help us:
GoFundMe ~ Help Karma Yoga Center Build Our New Home: https://gofund.me/650c1065e
These acts of generosity fill our coffers, it IS the snow pack on the mountains, so come spring when we open the doors of our new community center, the rivers will be flowing for all of us to benefit from. We thank you in advance from the bottom of our hearts. Once we have a better understanding of our needs, we will update our GoFundMe page, until then we have set our goal number as a ballpark of what we feel we will need to get started. And I will create a SignUp Genius so people can sign up to help paint, pack, move, etc. We will have this all ready to go in the special addition newsletter.
Many hands make light work, as the saying goes. And it is so true. When we moved from Alameda to Pearl St. nearly 11 years ago, it was done in a week’s time. People were shoving lamps, plants and murtis into their cars and driving from one place to the other. It was actually a lot of fun, albeit a lot of work.
Our community rallied and we all became a little closer family and deepened our connections, all in the efforts to keep our little Karma family afloat. And many of you who helped us then, are still here now, and have offered to help again! Ya’ll are the OG Karma Krew! And that speaks volumes to the strength of this community.
Since then our community has doubled in size. Some people come all the time- every week; some people come periodically; some people come when they are in town; some people tune in online; some people come when they need it. All of you are our community. Thank you for being a part of us in whatever way that you do. It all adds up to make for a good “soup” of humanity.
As the world is transforming and transitioning into a new level of consciousness, and I know you can feel that we are in that shift, community-in particular a spiritual community-is one of the greatest needs of our current society. We need that communal “soup” for nourishment and sustenance right now. We need places to gather and strengthen our spirits in numbers. We need a place where you can find support and resources and connection. We need a place to discover, recover, uncover, and fortify the great Spirit that dwells within each of us. The spiritual side of ourselves has been pushed down as being too superstitious or make believe; or it has been smothered with religious dogma that feels forced; or it is just flat out ignored due to the mysterious veil that surrounds it.
With the advances of the technological world starting to reshape our lifestyles and human interactions-for example, we can now visit our doctors and therapists online with tele-health visits, we do our banking from our computers, groceries are delivered, we take online classes, and attend virtual meet-ups to name a few examples, yet simultaneously we are becoming more and more isolated-even though the planet has 8 billion plus people on it.
And the internet social platforms are replacing our efforts to make time to see each other in person. Instead we say “Shoot me a text and I’ll get back to you”.
Even just picking up the phone and calling out of the blue is considered somewhat old school and even intrusive.
Now we send a meme or an emoji to speak our feelings in one symbol or image. And we scroll to see what our friends are doing, and swipe to see who is available for our love connections. For those of us who are 35 or older we are in a totally different time then when we grew up. The 35 and under age group doesn’t know a world without the internet-so calling or visiting someone, when you can simply text, seems more normal.
So often we disregard the idea that human connection is the actual gemstone; that hearing their voice, seeing their emotions, and feeling their heart is how we fine tune our compassion and empathy; that spending time and energy with one another in real time is invaluable. Our personal electromagnetic fields get supercharged by one another, and that is something that doesn’t transfer through the ethernet cables. Additionally, we have also invested an incredible amount of faith in the idea that the internet is gospel, and physical research is archaic.
I am not condemning these new ways, in a lot of ways I think they bring a lot of good. If I had been swiping when I was dating, I probably wouldn’t have kissed so many frogs. I could have “filtered” them out. And the McGraw-Hill text books that we used for our educational research were really the compilation of historical revisionists diverting us from the truth of our existence. So this transition into a more tech oriented paradigm is not all bad. But I still think having human connection and honing in our spiritual aptitude is key to our advancement as a species.
The key to living the real Truth of things lies with our spiritual heart, what the yogis call the Hridyam heart or the Inner Sun. Now, more than ever, we need to learn to trust our intuition and follow the guidance of our wise soul. The more we take time to meditate, and do our daily spiritual practices (sadhana), the more adept we become at being able to discern between the voice of the heart, and the voice of our ego. The latter has held the reigns of the human mind for far too long. The yogis teach us that the hridyam heart is the master, and the ego is the servant. We have been operating with it the other way around. Its time for the tide to shift.
Both Michael and I feel this unforeseen move to a new home is giving us an opportunity to bring more people together and into our spiritual hearts. When one door closes another opens-wider. And the good news is that the new space is only 5 blocks away! And its twice as big as the current space. We are planning on expanding our offerings to include ayurvedic spa treatments, additional weekly classes, including an ongoing sacred geometry class, high tea and haiku club, book clubs, crafting classes, classes for the elderly, classes for the little people, storytelling, cooking classes, writing workshops, an ongoing lecture series, open-mic nights, a mini-cafe, concerts, and community gatherings. Our teacher training area will take on a more robust feel to it, the main yoga space will be much bigger, and so will the community area- complete with a little cafe area and stage. And all done without losing our intimate and eclectic ambiance and feel. Its going to be special this one.
We plan on having a closing ceremony in February to say goodbye to the space that has been such a nourishing oasis for many over the years. We will thank the building, the ancestors, and the land and celebrate our time there with music, food, and a special ceremony to honor the 1705 S. Pearl. It has been a beautiful refuge for so many of us. All are invited! And I hope you can come! We will put that announcement in the special addition newsletter as well.
And then a month later, once we are settled into the new space, we will have an opening ceremony and bless the new space, welcome the ancestors of the land and give rise and celebration to new Karmic beginnings. All are invited to that one as well. It is our intention to transition smoothly from one spot to the other, and not have to close at all. Fingers crossed.
We will continue to keep you posted as we move forward. Thank you all for your support and continued patronage. It makes a huge difference in the success of this move. Keep an eye out for the special addition newsletter later this month.
In the meantime, come enjoy some yoga with us in the last few months at this space. Remember to do as nature does this time of year-hunker down, cozy up, try not to busy yourself too much.
Pray for snow, so the spring rivers will flow- And keep close to your inner sun for warmth. Happy Holidays from our hearts to yours.
Much love,
Katrina
