Meet Brett Engle and Penpa Dolma of Innovative Yogis in Arvada

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brett Engle and Penpa Dolma.

When Penpa Dolma was four and a half years old, her family fled their home-country of Tibet. Finding safety in India, they enrolled Penpa in a boarding school for children of Tibetan refugees. The school, founded by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and his sisters, provided safe space and educational growth for Penpa’sover the next 14 years.

In her environment, education—both Western and Eastern styles—was a means of supporting the healing of both society and self. As such, her lessons and experiences were rooted in the nurturing of young people who would grow into globally responsible citizens. Their collective charge was to preserve Tibetan tradition, culture and language, and to use their academic knowledge and Buddhist foundation to better the world through uplifting work.

Penpa built upon her humble roots and earned her RYT 200 at the Pramanand Yoga Institute of Science and Research in Indore, India. Her certification training emphasized meditation, mindfulness, Ayurveda, and Yoga Therapy. Prior to that, Penpa diligently pursued and successfully obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Biology. She has paired those studies with her own intuitive knowledge and her community efforts to facilitate growth and healing through humanitarian work.

Today, all of Penpa’s studies and soul work culminate in the form of teaching/training of alchemy of our pain into wisdom by turning inward, learning to listen with compassion and openness to our deepest pains and dreams. She teaches mindfulness in every walk of our life, on and off the yoga mat into our relationships. She has a passion for connecting dots and generating ideas. Penpa’s core goal is to facilitate a contemplative transformative practice of self-inquiry through yoga, meditation, and medicinal plant journeys.. She believes the only sustainable way for harmony and peace in the world is through the silent revolution of individual awakening and collaboration.

Brett grew up in Boulder, CO, playing every sport that his parents could sign him up for, finding himself on the starting roster and pulled into special training sessions on tracks and in gyms. At the same time, his family exposed him to meditation retreats, yoga, and service. As it was the 90’s, there was still plenty of “weirdo” stigma around those practices, and his young mind cared mostly about being cool, so despite the exposure, he refused to add these habits into his life.

In high school, he dislocated his shoulder multiple times, playing football and went for several surgeries. His sports career ended as the doctors couldn’t fix him, and his post-high school years were spent traveling the world working for non-profit organizations, including the Mind and Life Institute, a group bringing together scientists and contemplatives (like the Dalai Lama) to bridge these two seemingly separate worlds, and the PeaceJam Foundation, which connects youth with Nobel Peace Prize Laureates for mentoring and service projects.

Spending time with accomplished practitioners, world-class scientists, and grassroots change-makers inspired him to complete his bachelor’s degree in Psychology, the scientific field which studies human behavior and leads the research effort on yoga and meditation. Upon returning to school In 2011, he began a regular daily practice of yoga, and he completed him 200-hour teacher training in 2014. He has taken a winding road to arrive here and is filled with joy to have the opportunity to share everything he’s learned about yoga, from the postures to the philosophy to the science behind why it all works, with every soul that is ready to receive it.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The work we wanna do is counter to all the mainstream forces of society, so we’re constantly going against the grain and incentives that the systems are built upon. We’ve had to be courageous and jump off the cliff with nothing but our faith that the universe will carry us where we need to go.

Innovative Yogis – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
As Innovative Yogis, we’re dedicated to counteracting the fearful narrative which is trying to capture our planet today by providing training and resources for physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health so that we can all manifest a life of peace on earth together by finding peace in ourselves first. We use meditative and yogic techniques to develop mindfulness, focus, awareness, and optimal health in all levels of the body.

We are all living through a great zeitgeist shift on our planet, globally purging and releasing the behaviors which are driving our civilization off of a cliff while simultaneously awakening to the interconnected nature of our reality. As Innovative Yogis, we see a glorious opportunity to live a sustainable, abundant, vibrant, and joyful life on this planet, not just for the few, but for all, and we are deeply grateful to be here to help manifest it into being.

We recognize that our interconnected reality means we can no longer think of ourselves as isolated from nature or separate from people on the other side of the planet, or separate from those in our neighborhood, or from our relatives, our spouses, parents and children. If we don’t come together as one human family and take care of our home sustainably, then we’ll perish from our own greed and our attachment to the illusion of separation.

We are committed to the personal and social work necessary so that humanity can manifest new systems to replace the crumbling ones, building from the ground of a mystical perspective, the view that we are all one, and a scientific understanding of what that means. We see the problems facing our planet, the abundant solutions available to us, the consciousness block holding us back, the awakening energy bubbling up demanding change, and we’re committed to changing ourselves so we can change the world!

We could slip into an age of scarcity, fear, and totalitarianism, or we can evolve into peace, sustainability, and abundance for all. It’s up to each of us to decide which path we take.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
A life of meaning and purpose guided by truth and integrity. That’s why we decided to dedicate ourselves to living as Innovative Yogis.

An Innovative Yogi moves from a ground of yogic understanding, bringing ancient wisdom into the modern world, embracing the technology surrounding us and employing it for the work of healing all souls, merging ageless contemplative practices with our present-day science in order to support all life on earth, dismantling systems of oppression as we collectively shift away from the current paradigm of greed, destruction, and disconnection, into one of abundance, love, connection, and generosity.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://innovativeyogis.com/
• Email: contact@innovativeyogis.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/innovativeyogis/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InnovativeYogis
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/InnovativeYogis

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