budhism

Read by Terry Casburn

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

For the second episode in our miniseries on mindfulness, wellness professional Jenny Cimaglia ’07 guides a five-minute breathing exercise. All you need is a quiet space. 

The previous episode is a 10-minute walking meditation guided by Jenny.

About Jenny 

Jenny Cimaglia ’07 is a yoga teacher and Reiki practitioner based in Westport, Connecticut. Following her graduation from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the alumna worked in cultural heritage preservation at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, as a Fulbright Scholar and later in culture-tourism strategy in Hanoi, Vietnam, as a Luce Scholar. 

Her experiences in Vietnam introduced Jenny to Confucianism and Buddhism and informed her interest in exploring religious studies. She received a Master’s of Buddhist Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in 2011 as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. 

Jenny returned to the United States in 2012 to work as a special events and development coordinator for the David Lynch Foundation in New York City. Through the foundation, she provided meditation classes to underserved populations, including veterans, victims of domestic violence, and elementary school students. 

Jenny began her training to become a yoga teacher in 2015 and studied massage therapy, health, and wellness through the Swedish Institute: A College of Health Sciences. The alumna’s dynamic teaching style brings together her academic expertise on Buddhism and her training in a collaborative theatre style called devised theatre, incorporating elements of nature into her classes. 

Jenny earned a degree in Classics and a minor in anthropology from UNC-Chapel Hill. 

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

Catalyze is hosted and produced by Sarah O’Carroll for the Morehead-Cain Foundation, home of the first merit scholarship program in the United States and located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on Twitter or Instagram at @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.

 Emma and Davyd Farrell speak about the power of plant dreaming and sacred earth activism.  They will share with you how dreaming can inform your daily life and help you break through illusions to come to a better understanding of reality and therefore become a more whole person.

Emma & Davyd work in co-creation with plants and trees for every aspect of their work, from event design and creation to making medicines and providing healings for their clients. Living in the hills of Mid-Wales their house sits underneath a large 1000-year-old Yew Tree. The plants, trees, and more specifically the ancient Yews serve as spirit guides and teachers and help to inform their actions through dreaming whether it be shamanic dream journeying, daydreaming, or lucid dreaming. 

Emma &  Davyd are the founders of Plant Consciousness, the ground-breaking London event about the conscious intelligent world of plants and trees. A lot of their understanding of the healing process comes from years of their own inner work into childhood, ancestral, and soul traumas. Combined with a daily spiritual practice they have gone to the depths of their souls to make awakening an embodied process and uncover the truth of their existence.

Emma spent 6 months in the Himalayas with master energy healers and five years learning from one of the world's leading plant spirit healers, Pam Montgomery. She is a certified plant spirit healer. Emma also spent 5 months in the Ecuadorian Amazon with Kichwa elder and shaman Kurikindi, his mother and sister learning a unique form of shamanic healing and receiving initiations into their Sacred Tobacco & Jaguar lineages. She is one of the first people to be initiated into the Yew Mysteries for hundreds of years, brought to the modern era by Michael Dunning. She has studied Geomancy with Dr. Patrick MacManaway and Celtic Shamanic Healing with David Leesley.

Emma also holds a practicing Master's Degree in 'The Preservation & Development Of Wisdom Culture & The Art Of Liberation' in the Tibetan Buddhist Mahayana Tradition, writing her thesis on 'Understanding The Nature Of The Self Through Lucid Dreaming'. Emma spent 2 years at the Lama Tsongkhapa Institute in Tuscany studying under lamas and geshes including her refuge lama, Dagri Rinpoche.

Davyd comes from a strong Celtic background with ancestry from both Cornwall and Ireland. This connection forms an essential part of his healing practice. He has trained and studied under many great masters and teachers. After a powerful wake up in Egypt in 2010 he then initially spent 3 years studying Tibetan Buddhism in first India and then at a semi-monastic center in Tuscany. He has received teachings, transmissions and empowerments from; HH Dalai Lama, Dagri Rinpoche, Chamtrul Rinpoche and Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.

After living overseas for 15 years a powerful experience with teacher plant medicine called him back to his homeland and so began a journey deep into the world of plants.  Since then he has spent 5 years studying under herbalist and plant spirit healer Pam Montgomery and is now a certified Plant Spirit Healer. He also spent 2 years learning in Ireland with herbalist and plant diet initiator Carole Guyett.

In addition to that, 4 years was also spent studying the Yew Mysteries with Yew Shaman Michael Dunning during which time he and Emma moved to a house that sits directly under a 1000-year-old tree in Mid Wales. The teachings of the Yew have continued under this powerful tree's tutelage.

To learn more about Emma and Davyd visit their website at https://www.plantconsciousness.com/