Learning Day 5a Guest Speaker Joanna Cielen | 2022 ACL+

March 25th, 2022 | Learning Day 5a

Though Joanna’s primary ambition is to create a world filled with loving kindness and books that come bundled with extra dark chocolate, she keeps herself busy teaching nutrition & wellness at Niagara College, leading meditations on Buddhist philosophy, Thursday evenings and co-managing Body & Soul, a Nutrition & Personal Training Company.

Her journey into meditation started almost 19 years ago after the birth of her second child. Having created the “perfect” life of a thriving business, a happy marriage to the world’s most patient man, two, (mostly) well-behaved children, she was left with a sense of discontentment. After a friend suggested she attend a Buddhist meditation class to learn the true source of happiness and why the Star Wars episode 4,5,6 came before 1,2,3, the light went off and the rest, as they say, is herstory.

For the past 19 years Joanna has been studying Buddhist philosophy, attending retreats worldwide, meditating daily, and recently she completed a solitary, two-month silent retreat, where, among other things, she discovered why politicians prove the theory of reincarnation. You just can’t get that screwed up in one lifetime.

Initially, what kept her coming back to her meditation studies were her children’s unadorned truths. They would say, “Mumsy you are much nicer to Daddy when you meditate.” What keeps her practicing now are still her children’s indisputable truths and the fact that meditation is cheaper than divorce.