Helping people heal has always come so naturally to Marla Hanan that when asked what drives her to help others, she initially struggled to find an answer. She had never really given it a second thought. If she discovered something that bettered her life — from meditation to yoga — she wanted to share it with the world.
When she met Sharon Silverstein, a yoga instructor and spiritual teacher who shares Hanan’s unquestionable drive to help others, it seemed like a natural pairing.
The pair met through a mutual friend in Hopewell and ended up singing a spiritual chant their first time together. It was clear they had an instant connection, but they didn’t just share interests in yoga and meditation — they share an interest in working to live balanced healthy lives that are really full of meaning and intention.
“We’re just excited because we both have grown even more since we first met,” Hanan said.
Through their companies — Hanan owns Blue Lotus Family Wellness and Silverstein runs Living at Peace — the two borough residents have both become known within the community for their strides to lead balanced lives. Silverstein teaches yoga and hosts drumming circles while Hanan teaches and practices meditation and Flora Corona, in addition to selling a handcrafted blend of herbal tea.
While they both began to live their forward thinking lifestyle as a way to find balance in their own lives, they both started their companies in an effort to help others find their own peace.
Silverstein said she first found a way to cleanse her body and spirit through music.
“I had a very traumatic childhood—my home was abusive—and [music] gave me a way to heal,” she said. “Music came to me, I didn’t come to music.”
Music has always been a part of Silverstein’s life: she first began playing the guitar in third grade, but she didn’t realize she was using it as a healthy modality until she was older.
She was always drawn to music, whether it was the guitar, trumpet or singing. To her, music was a way to cleanse the body and release negative feelings and emotions. While Silverstein has always used music as a way to help herself heal, it wasn’t until she had a spiritual awakening where she realized it was time to help those around her.
“I was told through whatever you wanna call it—God, spirit, consciousness—to start doing this work on myself as well as sharing it with other people,” she said. “I was on my own full journey to heal from my traumatic childhood, and I went through a series of workshops, seminaries so to speak.”
In 2002, she took her first yoga seminar, which helped her finally let go of the trauma she was holding.
“It was the first time I ever felt like I was in my body,” she said. “When you have a traumatic childhood, or any kind of trauma, you may sometimes learn to disassociate from your body as a survival technique.”
Silverstein said this survival mode works well as people are going through the difficult experience, but after the trauma has passed it’s no longer a healthy way of living. Through yoga, she was able to fully get back into her own body.
“It was a process,” she said. “Every time a little bit gets released because the body has to feel safe enough in order to release the trauma.”
When Silverstein was finally able to release her trauma, she said she felt a feeling of liberation and freedom.
“The first feeling is a very humble, like ‘Wow I’m just so grateful to be a living being on this planet’,” she said. “And then the second feeling is the feeling of freedom, and then probably that third feeling is just an enormous amount of love. It’s not that kind of romantic love, it’s a love that’s a deep connection within ourselves to a spirit.”
In June, Silverstein became a certified yoga instructor, and she now focuses on different kinds of yoga, including Nada and Prana yogas. Nada Yoga, or the yoga of sound, which uses a person’s voice as another way to connect the body with the mind and spirit. Prana yoga is a type of yoga that uses your voice, your sound, to move the emotional body.
“The prana body is the emotional body and once we start moving the emotional body we can really cleanse the trauma and hurt and pain and suffering that we experience in our everyday lives,” Silverstein said.
Hanan, who practices and teaches mediation, understands the importance of exploring this inner peace.
“When you are meditating, you can have a moment when you feel like you’re literally apart of everything that is in the world, and you can feel this really deep peace of love and peace in your heart that we all have,” she said.
Hanan said that peace and love is always in our hearts, but through meditation people can finally understand how to look for it.
A proponent of wanting to find peace in her life, Hanan’s friend suggested she start using Flora Corona.
“She suggested it as a way to help me make decisions that were coming more from my heart and less from my head.”
Flora Corona elixirs are transparent bottles filled with colors derived from flowers or gems that can be used to remove negative emotions and prevent them from resurfacing. The elixirs are derived from flower essences, which are natural remedies made from the flowers of plants.
The energies and colors of the flowers give off vibrations and healing frequencies, which humans can use to heal and shift their emotions.
“I would say, you might wake up one day and feel like wearing that orange shirt, this is just taking that to a deeper level,” Hanan said. “Imagine if you’re actually bringing the energy of orange into the body. Color feeling has been used for a long time, most people don’t know about it.”
After Hanan and her family started to use them, she noticed how helpful they were and began to study them. After Hanan and her three children had such a positive experience with the flower essences, she decided to begin using them to help other members of the community, especially children. She went on to become a certified practitioner of Flora Corona, and through Blue Lotus Family Wellness, Hanan works with children and adults and teaches them how to use the modality.
The response Hanan has received from clients has been very positive. She said people like to connect with something like flowers—something natural and from the same earth that may be causing their stress or negative feelings—to help them find peace.
“We seem to be bombarded with a lot of fear in our culture,” she said “This is coming from a trusting place, trusting that the world works.”
Hanan has enjoyed working with the Hopewell community, who she said has been very responsive and open to her work.
“I recently gave a presentation about the flower essences and Flora Corona to members of the Hopewell Business Association, and the talk was very well received,” she said. “I am being told that the approach I have developed is unique and it is my pleasure to share my work with the Hopewell Valley community.”
Last year, Hanan worked with a 4-year-old girl who had suffered a traumatic experience. After picking out her bottles, she developed an inner strength and confidence in herself that wasn’t there before, Hanan said.
“It seemed like it empowered her,” Hanan said. “It made her realize she can stand up for herself”
When Hanan checked in with the child a few months later, she found out that when she was going through another hard time she told her mom she wanted her color, which helped her through the experience. Knowing she has helped people, especially children, have more positive thoughts and less negative emotions is what drives Hanan to continue working with Flora Corona.
“One of the things I think is so valuable about this work is it can be hard for even adults to articulate their feelings and their emotions, and for young children it’s almost impossible,” she said. “One of the biggest gifts of this work with the children is you can see that they can heal; they can have a role in their healing.”
Hanan and Silverstein are now looking to combine their talents and launch a Flowing with Ease series, which will use different healing modalities to help relieve participants’ stress. The series would include an hour and fifteen minutes each week of Prana Yoga, guided meditation and a Flora Corona application.
A series scheduled for the fall was postponed, and no official dates have been set yet. The two friends hope to have their class up and running in the near future. In the meantime, they’re happy to be able to do something they’re so passionate about—helping others heal.
“As long as you’re doing something that you’re passionate about, you are healing yourself and you are participating in the healing of our planet,” Silverstein said.
For more information about Living at Peace visit livingatpeace.com and for more information about Blue Lotus Family Wellness visit bluelotusfamilywellness.com.
Marla Hanan,
