Tamara Frankel

The power of breath

Yoga therapist and teacher Tianne Allan (photo from yogatianne.com)

Don’t hold your breath. Breath is life, and each breath we take optimizes our health. This is what I learned at Jewish Seniors Alliance’s third empowerment session – Discover the Power of Your Breath – which was held on May 4.

Gyda Chud, co-president of JSA, welcomed the 75 Zoom participants, explaining that the overarching theme for the empowerment series is “Be Inspired.”

Fran Goldberg introduced the speaker – yoga therapist and teacher Tianne Allan, who was involved for two decades in the world of aquatics and high-performance athletics. After a car accident, her yoga practice became her pathway to healing, both physically and emotionally. She now specializes in pain care and in the treatment of anxiety and insomnia.

Allan guided the group in movement – breathing while opening the arms and bringing them back to the chest. She explained that the foundation of our breath is comprised of three steps:

1. Sit up straight and breathe through your nose.
2. Low and slow, take a breath down into your belly.
3. Smooth and steady, inhale and exhale.

Other types of breathing are the relaxation breath, where you sit back, relax and exhale with a sound; and the humming breath, to relieve anxiety, where you inhale through the nose and exhale through a hum.

Correct breathing can also help ease pain, Allan explained. And it can help us sleep better. The sleep exercise involved imagining ourselves looking through the ceiling to the blue sky and letting the sun fill our bodies with warmth. This exercise actually lulled some of us to sleep.

Shanie Levin thanked Allan for getting us involved in using our bodies and minds, and reminded the audience of the JSA’s next Empowerment Series session, on June 28, featuring Libby Yu, a classical pianist.

For more information on Allan, see yogatianne.com.

Tamara Frankel is a member of the board of Jewish Seniors Alliance and of the editorial committee of Senior Line magazine. She is also a board member of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

Inspired through story, song

Musician Myrna Rabinowitz, left, and Jewish Senior Alliance’s Shanie Levin. (photo from JSA)

The theme of this year’s Jewish Seniors Alliance-Snider Foundation Empowerment Series is “Be inspired!” and the first of four sessions was called Be Inspired through Story and Song.

Held at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture on Nov. 29, Gyda Chud, co-president of the JSA, introduced the two presenters, referring to each as “a gift to our community”: storyteller Shanie Levin, who is a member of JSA’s executive board and on the editorial board of JSA’s Senior Line magazine, and singer-songwriter and guitarist Myrna Rabinowitz.

Rabinowitz opened with the Yiddish song “Abi Gezunt” (“As Long as You’re Well”) and the audience echoed enthusiastically the refrain, “As long as you’re well, you can be happy.”

Levin followed with a story by Kadya Molodowsky, the first lady of Yiddish poetry. A House with Seven Windows is about a proud, strong heroine in the mid-19th century who embraced the dream of “normalizing” Jewish life through a return and settlement in the land of Israel.

Other songs by Rabinowitz included the Yiddish translation of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” as well as “Sleep Little Boy,” a Yiddish song that she wrote eight years ago for her first grandson. She ended with the Yiddish rendition of “Sunrise Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof (Tog Ayn Tog Oys).

Tall Tamara by Abraham Karpinowitz, both sympathetically comic and painfully tragic, was another inspiring story of Vilna’s poor and the unexpected dignity available to one woman through a chance contact with Yiddish literary culture.

Levin also shared Ted Allan’s Lies My Father Told Me, about the relationship between a 6-year-old child and his grandfather that transcends the differences in ages with deep connection. This story was made into a Golden Globe-winning film of the same name.

The last story Levin read – If Not Higher by I.L. Peretz – was about a rabbi who demonstrates that doing good deeds on earth may be a more exalted activity than doing God’s will in heaven.

Chud thanked the performers and urged the audience to attend upcoming JSA events, the next one being the screening of the movie Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep, at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on Jan. 15.

Marilyn Berger, who initiated the Light One Candle project and designed a card to help JSA celebrate Chanukah, encouraged the audience to spread the light and make a special donation to help JSA continue its peer support program, as well as its advocacy work.

For more information about JSA, visit jsalliance.org.

Tamara Frankel is a member of the board of Jewish Seniors Alliance.

The magic of laughter

Magician Stephen Kaplan entertains at last month’s Empowerment session. (photo from Jewish Seniors Alliance)

On March 21, the Jewish Seniors Alliance, in partnership with Temple Sholom Seniors, once again brought the community a magical program of laughter.

In the program, which was the second in the 2017/18 JSA Snider Foundation Empowerment

Series with the theme Laughter and Music: Feeding the Soul, magician Stephen Kaplan delighted the audience of more than 100 people with his energy, sense of humour and enthusiasm.

Kaplan introduced himself as “the Maestro of Magic” and, as such, he said he conducts the magic that is within us all. Combining interactive entertainment with jokes and surprises is what he loves to do – and he does it so well.

The audience was shrieking with laughter and wonder. How did he guess that Heather’s first boyfriend’s name was Peter? How did he guess that Lila was thinking of the city Winnipeg? And how did he guess that the card that Bonny picked was a seven of diamonds? Did he really guess all that? It doesn’t matter. As a finale, he took a section of the Vancouver Sun, tore it into pieces and, within seconds, put it back together.

Gyda Chud, his preschool teacher, introduced him beautifully. Was she the one who instilled the charm and magic in him? Kaplan made sure that every one of the attendees left the program with a big smile.

The afternoon began with greetings from Bill Gruenthal, Arthur Gutman told some jokes and led the audience in Passover songs, and Ken Levitt, JSA president, encouraged people to join the JSA, if they hadn’t already.

Two more Empowerment sessions on the theme Laughter and Music are coming up: Perla’s Music Workshop on April 17 with Congregation Beth Israel, in conjunction with the Jewish Family Services’ Seniors Lunch program; and Music for Our Hearts and Songs We Love on June 25, with the Kehila Society in Richmond. For more information, visit jsalliance.org or call 604-732-1555.

Tamara Frankel is a board member of Jewish Seniors Alliance.