I found out about the Happyness Center in the Fall of 2017 when it was the starting point for a RUNClub session. It was quite a bit later (May or June) when I went to my first counselling session there and began to learn more about myself, and get to know everyone there.

Since my first session at the Center, I have now attended: Wednesday's restorative yoga and meditation classes; the monthly meditations; several Friday solomanacha's (study groups); open houses; India trip information sessions and a trip to India; seminars with Sheryl Yaremco (twice) and the amazing Robin Clements; and just this last winter started my 300 Hour Yoga Training.

We are excited to introduce a brand new blog series: the "People of the Happyness Center".

Every Wednesday, we will be profiling a beautiful soul seeker who we have met through our Center, who will share with you some of their story and their recent experiences with us.

We hope you will find their stories interesting, encouraging and challenging.

If you are interested in sharing some of your story and personal experience with us, we would love to hear from you.

Love,

​your Happyness Team

Often students walk through our doors expecting to learn better techniques and alignment for their yoga practice, not realizing that without knowing themselves fully first, teaching is only regurgitating someone else’s knowledge instead of the authentic teaching that comes from the heart of one who knows and loves her Self. We store our emotions, traumas that we have not dealt with in our bodies and sooner or later they start to show up as physical pain.
 
I asked Malisa how the training changed her life and how she discovered the long hidden physical issues in her body and this was her answer:
 
“I keep looking back at all that I have learned, thinking that each time the ground beneath me crumbles it doesn’t get easier, it gets harder. As my awareness broadens there is always some chaos in the distance just outside of my peripheral vision, that like one of Mother Natures most precious gifts — is a natural disaster waiting to happen.
 
I began to notice that I couldn’t breathe. It was excruciating. I felt that time was both infinitely long and moving devastatingly fast, picking up speed, drawing myself closer to the moment that I finally paused to realize that while I had been collecting myself—as if I’d been scattered in the wind, I was perfectly positioned, perched on the top of a vantage point where I began to see that what was working in my favour was that I had time. Time to heal and learn.
 
My voice is softly spoken confined in the self-imposed isolation that I have held myself in a place where I once considered myself separate and completely alone. I began focusing on my throat chakra when the base of my spine started speaking to me in paralyzing spasms, pulsing painfully through my sacrum. I found that the anger stored in the injury seems to trigger memories that are just as old as the injury itself. My body compensated for the injury and held itself that way for nearly 20-years causing pain in my knees, hips and even heart palpitations as my diaphragms were impacted by the misalignment. After just having come out of yoga teacher training, looking at all the parts of me that I consider to be painful, ugly or unlovable I am starting to see all the ways that my personality is designed to compensate for them with cynical humour, aloofness, and other distorted projections. I bend my body and mind through beautifully sequenced asanas. It is here in stillness that I have found connection through my divinity.”

~ Malisa Lazzinnaro
 
Malisa's journey is far from over, but her eyes are definitely open to what has happened to unattended emotions and how they torture her body. But most importantly, she now understands how she can start to heal herself and live a fuller and more joyful life.
 
Yvette Lehmann