Your hosts for this course have all experienced life-changing growth and unfoldment through their involvement with Clear Sky and its founding teachers. Between us, we bring years of studying and practicing in the lineage, of teaching and meditating around the world, and of governance and management of Clear Sky Centre.
Here, we’ve brought together the fruits of all our learning into the five principles, offered here for the first time publicly as an online course.
Main Hosts:
Karen McAllister
After meeting our founding teachers in Japan, I managed the meditation centre there for many years while serving simultaneously as part of the Clear Sky Board. In 2003, I helped search for a site for Clear Sky, looking at around 30 properties until we found our current location in the magical Kootenays.
I'm now Chair of the Board and Director of Business Development. I'm passionate to be teaching the much-ignored principles of nurturing the factors - like honor your space, structure, and communication - that create the conditions we need to wake up more in daily life. I see how I learned and embodied these principles in my different roles at Clear Sky, as the centre went from self-starter to second-stage growth. This is what I call “the hands-on way of doing an MBA with a spiritual bottom line!”
In my free time, I love travelling, speaking Portuguese and reading history, architecture, and art books.
Duncan Cryle
I'm the former Clear Sky Chair, a certified Mindfulness teacher, Dharma teacher, and an IBM Executive in Toronto.
Through 15 years of teaching meditation and mindfulness, alongside an active career working all over the world, I’ve learnt a lot about an integrated spiritual path. With a Ph.D. in philosophy in my pocket, I was gung ho to join a monastery until I met my root teachers Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat in Japan in 2001, who turned my views upside down and encouraged me to grow and contribute at the busy end of life!
A founding member of Clear Sky in 2004, I’m amazed at the power that working together in compassionate service has for enriching and widening spiritual growth. Combined with a dynamic relationship and a challenging career, I have fun with a wide-ranging and holistic approach to spiritual growth. The spiritual container is a key aspect to this and I’m delighted to teach and share this course.
All of that made me more energetic, active and with the will of exploring this big world. Not only that, but gave me the strength to transform my daily practice making it more consistent. The changes and insights keep coming up and the Sangha has a giant role in maintaining my spiritual growth.
I deeply thank the teachers Karen and Duncan for not giving up on guiding us through this wonderful path.
Tamires Low
The course has introduced complementary concepts that supported me on constructing a more consistent and deep practice, which has contributed significantly for me to see the values that are really important to me, and also gave me strength to keep them and go ahead, no matter what the external circumstances may be.
I can only give thanks for having the opportunity of being part of this group. Deep gratitude for the teachers that offered the course, to the team that created it and to the Sangha that participated on the first group, for allowing ourselves to be together on this learning.
Ana Paula Ueti
Your Other Hosts:
Michelle Heinz
I began studying with the founding teachers and community of Clear Sky in 2003. With them I re-ignited that spark for life I'd been desperately missing and seeking.
I love plunging into things and that’s exactly what I did with Clear Sky. Visiting Clear Sky every summer, I started by developing the farm and land, and then joined the Board of Directors. I then moved from Japan to live at and run the centre for 8 years. I still thrive on connecting with and bringing all kinds of people and events to Clear Sky.
Now based in Nelson B.C., I'm part of a wakeful and innovative team. I help run a co-working space where I'm delighted to say that meditation, mindful collaboration and teamwork are an integral part of my work day.
Fun for me includes punning with friends, finding new ways to eat sea buckthorn berries and getting outside whenever I can.
Andy Rogers
I first got interested in meditation through a school friend of mine who went on to become a monk in Thailand. I left the UK 20 years ago, ending up in Japan for several years where I met Clear Sky's founding teachers through one of their students - and a founding member of Clear Sky - John Munroe.
I've lived at Clear Sky for long periods since 2009 and also served as Treasurer and Board Member for five years. I now offer a weekly meditation and dharma class in nearby Kimberley.
Living or spending time at Clear Sky puts you in all kinds of roles. I've cooked for 30 people, presented at AGMs, written blogs and created budgets, pulled weeds and repaired fences. And I can now see clearly that where I thrived and where I've struggled can be directly related to each of our new principles in some way. Can't wait to share them with you!
I'm now Clear Sky's head copywriter and an active member of the Business Development team - the creators of this course! I love playing golf here in the picturesque Rockies, though the golf season is painfully short! When I'm not pounding the magnetic dartboard in the Clear Sky office, I also earn a living as a copywriter.
Maryline Fortier
I was introduced to Clear Sky through joining the Karma Yoga program (a 3-month service stay). I was instantly seduced by a new way of life - a way that my depth was seeking. I found a place, a community where people work together and accompany yogis like me in the awakening process.
There, I discovered what I'm passionate about: diving deeper inside, understanding what it is to be a wholesome, spiritual being - a being that is participating in the creation of an abundant life and that believes in the powerful ideal of service for the benefit of all. What an incredible journey!
Originally trained as a social work educator, my eight years of work with youth in schools have convinced me to find a better, deeper way to teach life skills to our next generation. I am now in a 3-year university course and I intend to start my own business in the fields of life skills and second-language teaching
Now, I am on the Clear Sky Sales and Business Development teams - and soon joining our Board of Directors - and my love for our offerings to the world is constantly increasing. I see how what we can provide to people is peaceful and loving states of mind. Working to support that? That's really a life worth living!
Jane Casey
I've been a spiritual explorer for the past 30 years, and count myself lucky to have worked with my teachers Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawsat for more than half of those years.
I will never forget the first time I made the trek across the Canadian prairies to Clear Sky, a stunning refuge nestled in the Rocky Mountains! Serving our community as a Board Director for the past seven years is a practice that has transformed my life.
I'm delighted to see the Clear Sky community continue to grow with the application of the five principles. I'm also applying these principles with great results in my university teaching and my explorations with the Enneagram, of which I'm becoming a certified teacher. I live on the Red River in Winnipeg where I enjoy walking and making jewelry.