Madhavaya (the one with the glasses!) has been practicing Mantra meditation daily for thirty years. As a teenager, drugs, alcohol, and poor body image plagued her. At 19 years old she got clean and sober, and after years of recovery she was very eager to deepen her practice of the 11th Step of recovery: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” This desire led her to wanting to learn about yoga and meditation. She started doing yoga and meditation at 3:30 a.m. at a yoga ashram in her hometown of Altadena, Ca. Six months later she started renting a room in the ashram. She became vegetarian and appreciated the structure and discipline of living in the ashram. Unfortunately, the residents of the ashram began to try and convince her that “they were God and she was God.” It was disturbing and despairing to her, as she knew that a power greater than herself, God, had helped her stay clean and sober. Not long after through a series of amazing events, she was introduced to Mantra meditation. When she learned about the heart of this meditation; that we are eternal, individual spiritual beings longing to reconnect to God, it was overwhelmingly heart-resonating. It felt like home. The knowledge that she was more than this temporary material body, took away a lot of the stress she experienced around her poor body image. Most importantly, it was so fun and easy to add to her life, that she never stopped. It has become a deep, peace-giving spiritual activity she looks forward to doing every day. Her hope is that everyone gives it a try and tastes the soul-happiness we all long for.

Carly Foley is what you would call a total wellness junky! However, 20 years ago her life was a complete disaster. She had a crippling anxiety disorder, tremors, chronic fatigue, foggy brain, partied to late hrs, smoked weed and cigarettes, and was prescribed anti-anxiety medication and Adderall! At the time she was a dance major at U of A, but her parents pulled her out of school. That summer she started to pray. She had never felt a connection with God in her whole life, and all of a sudden, one day when she was driving to night school she felt a Presence. Every day she felt the same presence of a Person, a Being she could only describe to as God. So she started to pray to this Person. Shortly after she signed up for a yoga teach training in California and was introduced to mantra meditation. For the first year of being introduced to this mediation practice, tears would just stream down Carly’s face. She felt like all her prayers had been answered, and the Person she was praying to gave her a path to get to know Him and reconnect through His Names. While Carly deepened her spiritual practice, she also started her wellness journey. She ended up getting certifications in Pilates, yoga, massage therapy and Ayurveda. She wrote a book called, “Stress Free For Life: 8 simple ways to free yourself from stress and get that healthy Glow”. Later, during COVID, she got her Master’s in Clinical Nutrition. Carly created a free membership on her website called “Relax and Glow”: www.wholisticwellnessworks.com.