By Rutger Tamminga
The Juei Ai – Blissful Life Center started in 2020, in the Gurukula building in Taipei, Taiwan, just before the beginning of the epidemic. We started the center with the intention of sharing yoga life with adults and offering teacher training in Neohumanist Education subjects, such as Kids Yoga, Story-based Curriculum Development and Environmental Protection. And though we started without any foundation in a totally new area, now, nearly five years later we find a growing community forming, with daily two to three yoga asana and meditation workshops by a variety of teachers, fasting camps, teacher training, meditation camps, singing bowl activities, art and environmental protection activities. As we started with a clear intention and concept based on a clear ideology, we now can see it practically manifesting and organically growing. Some of the topics we are working with:
Yoga Psychology
Juei Ai sees one of its contributions to yoga is to help others develop a spiritual perspective in their practices. We now offer three level courses on Yoga Psychology, and to facilitate that we printed the fifty vrtti cards.
Teenager Yoga
Kids Yoga Teachers usually do not have a clear program for adolescents, while mental health and well-being for teens is a great need all around the world. Apart from our kids yoga teacher training for younger kids we have started a program for training teachers for teenagers. The program was done in Bali, and will also be shared in China, Singapore and Malaysia. We printed a separate set of the vrtti cards for teens for this purpose.
Cultural Activities
Caligraphy, Chinese music, drumming, Tai-chi-chuan and other Chinese cultural activities which are sentient and uplifting are also popular and are being held on weekly basis.
The Earth Lovers Family (ELF)
We started the ELF Association two years ago and began with an exhibition on Diet for a Green Planet. The exhibition was viewed in different locations by about 500 people. What’s wrong with Eating Meat was published in Chinese. Regular programs at Juei Ai and on the Ananda Dhara Master Unit are attracting more and more people. We are involved in farming, education projects and green construction.
Group Meditation & Akanda Kiirtan
Wednesday evenings we have group meditation and yoga philosophy class. Usually ten to fifteen people attend, though the circle is much larger. Monthly chanting activities are also well attended, as is the daily online five o’clock morning meditation.
We find many young people are looking for direction in developing an alternative society based on spiritual values. Under ELF we are planning for a Pathways study program – offering courses on PROUT and NHE – in practical forms sharing the ideas of Shrii P.R. Sarkar. To support others in their meditation we will start a Meditation Coach program later this year.
The constant, gradual expansion of the center’s objectives makes our center dynamic and interesting to our community. It is such a blessing to be part of this!