OUR STORY
Back around 2016, when our daughters turned into teenagers, we saw that sharing feelings, longings, and dreams in a way that is open, vulnerable, and truly authentic is not something that can easily be learned in our schools and our community at large.
The focus of so much what young people learn and experience in our communities is on the external. Math, historical facts, and even our arts are focused on results and grades. How you look, being popular or acting cool has for so many of us become too important. For adults, money and status are so important, where you went to school, what job you have, and how successful you are.
But what we have experienced is that most people are not at all happy when these external things become so important. It’s almost the opposite. The stress about good grades, being seen as part of the popular crowd, the worry about the college you may go to, all that seems to make people less happy.
For years our home in California has been a meeting place for teenagers and young adults who seek to connect in deeper and more meaningful ways. Many moments of authentic sharing and listening drove the idea to build a youth program that would draw from these and other seasoned facilitators’ experiences.
In the summer of 2022, this dream came to fruition with the first program with 10 participants. A set of very experienced facilitators led a mix of teachings and experiences inspired by our teachers, lineages, and human development research. Our work includes dynamic meditations, chanting, painting, dancing, theater, and lots and lots of sharing and connecting.
Sharing our lives with young people so eager to learn, to feel deeply, to be vulnerable and to connect and to grow, who seek friendships based in acceptance of all of who we are, fills all of us with joy and gratitude and humbles us to the core of our being.
Love is always the answer.
Devi and Magan
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Magan Arthur
Magan was a student of the Indian Master Osho. He studied experiential psychology with Veeresh D. Yuson-Sanchez at the Humaniversity in The Netherlands and has a wide range of training in therapy, meditation, bodywork, and family constellations.
For the last 25 years, Magan has been working in the business world and he raised three beautiful, engaged, and vivacious children with his partner Devi. In recent years his focus has included facilitating workshops and seminars focused on (re)building trust-based relationships and embodied leadership.
Magan possesses the gift of relating to people in deep and meaningful ways with love and respect. This gift has allowed him to see and understand people and himself deeply. He finds great joy in the intimate, loving relationships in his life, and has been a mentor to many young people in both his personal and professional life. The Youth Program is a way for him to bring together and share his diverse gifts in a way that provides a safe, deeply grounded, and joyful environment for young people to explore their own way to build deep friendships based in honesty and trust and in finding a deep acceptance of themselves.