Fund Raising for Eco-Yoga Retreat Center

(Go to Eco-Yoga in Costa Rica)

Click here (or scroll below) for an interview with Aya:
A Call & Fund Raising Campaign for New Global Education

Fund Raising Letter to the Universe

1. The purchase of a Costa Rica property suitable for
the Eco-Yoga Retreat Center.

2. The development /  landscaping of the property,
construction of Yoga Shala, common buildings
and residences for the Eco-Yoga Retreat Center.

3. The initial promotion & operation of Retreat Center.

 

I am commonly known by my spirit & artist name AYA.  I am a native of France, European Union. But I have been in the US for over 20 years, now being an american citizen. And, as you can hear, I have carefully kept my French accent.

After 10 years of academic studies in the finest French universities, including La Sorbonne and the Paris Institute of Political Sciences, I started my professional life as Attaché to the French Embassy in Singapore, Asia.  A first breakthrough occurred then: while at the embassy, I realized that my career was to be an ambassador of spirit via art, rather than a political ambassador.

Several years of adventuring journeys followed, as I was exploring a variety of cultures & ways of life. These were my years of world pilgrimage, each destination proving to be a wonderful classroom with unique & wise teachers, and a delightful garden with colorful shapes & scents.  Then, in Santa Monica, California, in 1985, another breakthrough occurred. This time, it was a spiritual vision, which, in a powerful flash of revelation, showed me my life work:  the creation of a family of airbrushed mandala templates called the StarWheels, equivalent to the world-wide traditions of sacred circles or the Medicine Wheel tradition of the American Indians. This unique collection of colorful archetypal symbols & geometries comprises to date 108 paintings (6 ft x 6 ft) covering over 4,000 square feet. The StarWheel vision calls for another 36 paintings to be completed, for a grand total of 144 visionary templates.

Now the interesting part about this vision is not only that it prompted me to create 12 series of large paintings, all designed for transformation of consciousness on a global scale. But, and foremost, the vision was for me to manifest a new educational Curriculum as well as a learning environment based on the mandala model of Sacred Arts and the fractal model of Sacred Geometry.  Hence the primary project of the StarWheel School of Sacred Arts and Sacred Geometry.  These programs are supported by my non-profit educational organization, the StarWheel Foundation, established in 1991 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

A comprehensive website (www.starwheels.com) displays the entire collection of StarWheel paintings, as well as many documents about the StarWheel Vision and the StarWheel Foundation’s educational projects involving the sacred arts.  My online store (www.starwheelmandalas.com) offers a variety of prints, cards, coloring & sacred geometry books, DVDs and even some of my mystical poetry booklets.

Moving to Sedona, Arizona, in 1997, I have been involved with sacred arts classes and events, mandala creation, ceremonial site development, labyrinth making and my budding Sedona School of Mandalas & Sacred Geometry. I had several StarWheel exhibits, have offered community awareness events at the Sedona Library, have co-created green projects with Gardens for Humanity, was a speaker at the Sacred Geometry Conference in Sedona in 2002, co-designed several labyrinth sites (the Lodge at Sedona, Mago’s Ranch and the recent Chartres-type labyrinth at Angel Valley Retreat Center), and have been on the Board of Directors of the Sedona Raw Spirit Festival in 2007 & 2008.

As a spirited artist, a meditation practitioner, a yogi and a mystic, my life has been dedicated to the global service of humanity and to sacred arts education. The beauty of the red rocks, in and around the open-sky temple of Sedona, has called me because of its vortex energy and the sacredness of the land, just like it has, for millennia, attracted many generations of American Indians. I realized, ten years ago, that Sedona was progressively becoming a global spiritual university for many people around the world.  I am now looking for the best ways to harmonize these various strands of a new global culture focused on respecting life and honoring spirit. This includes setting up a home-base for the School of Sacred Arts and Sacred Geometry I am envisioning.

Working with a local real estate agent, I have found in the Sedona area a property fulfilling my requirements as headquarters for the educational projects of the StarWheel Foundation.  We have launched a fund-raising campaign to attract donations from philanthropists, educational corporate foundations, friends of the StarWheels & the StarWheel Foundation, and all people genuinely concerned with the future of education on Earth.  We hope to raise enough funds to cover the initial purchase of the property already located and create a supportive endowment enabling us to offer to the new generations born on planet Earth the works & the plays of the traditional and future sacred arts. 


One of the global projects we are looking at, in conjunction with Silver Seas Dolphins and advanced schools across the nation, is to establish a special learning environment for kids and young teenagers involving ocean trips with wild dolphins. These unique experiential encounters with the dolphins as dance, music & playful awareness partners, would be coupled with highly innovative study programs in the fields of cutting-edge science as well as the creative arts of music, dance & yoga, and the visual media. This educational project would also be multi-national, inviting kids from all over the world, as well as from the American nation and continent.