Cushi Panga is Kichwa (Native Amazonian Language) and means Happy Leaf!

Guayusa is an amazing tea I have recently discovered and would love to share with you! It is native to the northwestern Amazon Region of South America and the indigenous people there have been drinking it for thousands of years. The leaf of the guaysa tree is used to make a tea that is attributed to creating physical strength and clarity of mind. "Illex Guayusa" pronounced ee-lix why-you-sah is in the holly genus and is a large tree that grows throughout the Amazon Jungle of Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. A distant relative in the illex genus and sharing some similarities is Yerba Mate (illex paraguayensis), a plant used for it's tea leaves in Argentina and Paraguay and recently popularized around the world. Guayusa is caffeinated, has wonderful healing properties, and creates more restful and lucid dreamtime as well as clear dream recollection. Its caffeine is not overpowering . It has been said that instead of creating a buzz, it creates focus. There is also no crash feeling when the effects fade. This is partly because the energy release is more gentle and energizing over a longer period of time than other teas and coffee, and partly just because it is a very different experience from tea and coffee altogether. It is attributed to giving great strength to the body while calming the mind. Guayusa is used to heal stomach and liver ailments, is very helpful in creating the inner conditions for a smooth child birth for women and gives general physical strength to it's drinker. The tea is smooth and sweet tasting, and has buttery and silky textures. Traditionally, it is drank at first rise in the morning, before sunrise, giving great energy for the day, but is also drank throughout the day as well. For many Ecuadorian Indigenous, the morning drinking of guayusa is a social ritual.

Cushi Panga is being set up as an organic, fair trade guayusa tea cooperative. Indigenous Ecuadorians will be working with the existing trees and planting more guayusa trees instead of cutting rainforest down, working for oil companies that destroy the Amazon, or killing endangered animals for their skins. We are creating a small current of positive energy in the midst of the destruction of the world's largest jungle. This vision helps to save Amazon forest and help it's people continue to live safely in harmony there.

This is an incredible opportunity to give back to those who came before us and are willing to share their rich knowledge of the natural world before it is gone. It is also the beginning of a larger vision to create self sustaining business' with plants, art, music and other treasures of indigenous cultures around the planet in order to protect, preserve, and assist these earth based wisdom cultures. This is the larger vision and is called PITA, The Preservation of Indigenous Traditional Arts. My heart is behind this and I welcome you to join the family. I feel this tea company project and the others to come will be very helpful to many people and I pray this will help protect our most precious resource, wisdom! I am in the initial planning stages and I am very open to your input. If you have connections to offer us we are very grateful and I welcome comments, questions, and any other support you have to offer. Let us pray that these efforts result in the highest happiness for all beings!

Thank you and blessings,

Dahmay Shiday

Contact: www.cushipanga.com dahmay @ cushipanga.com

We are starting a non profit called PITA (The Preservation for Indigenous Traditional Arts). It has been created to skillfully preserve the forests and its people by creatng "universe cities". "Universe Cities" are (re)education community centers for tribes to restrengthen their traditions and teach their next generation about their cultural traditions (spiritual, music, dance, medicine, food, farming, clothing, tribal history, etc). The organization and all it's "universe cities" (education centers) will be funded by money raised from sales of art from these tribes, be it music, painting, bead work, clothing, medicine, etc in the western world. We have connections and current plans to work with Huichols of Mexico, Ecuadorian Quechua, Nepalese, Tibetan, Mongolian, Australian Aboriginals, and Native North Americans. We can help save the forest and its people while offering healing to westernized people in the same sweep. I am in the visioning process and would love input or any support anybody would like to offer. I would love your help. Give thanks for life and live fully. We have the key to the doorway this time. Let's walk through it, together, all of us!!!
Luv and aloha

BODHI is a sanskrit word that translates as the mind of infinite compassion and wisdom. Life is an interdependent web of connections between beings and circumstances. To lead a successful life, we must create conduits of virtuous intentions, from and to ourselves. When our web is motivated by the wish to benefit others and we connect with others that share this virtuous motive, a current of benefit and success is activated. Whether we are talking about the spiritual or mundane realm, we must work together with others to achieve our goals.
When one sets out on a path with a positive motive with determination, regardless of obstacles, one will succeed. But in this time of accelerated activity, by working with the proper allies, we will reach our goals and be able to continue on to our next mission. This vision of a network of virtuously motivated allies in the spiritual, professional, educational, and cultural realms is at the heart of BODHI.
BODHI will serve as a Yellow Pages for the good hearted. Beginning in North America and quickly reaching out to the international community, we will create a system in which those seeking assistance in any realm of their lives will be able to reach out and tap into a trustworthy network of allies.
BODHI will be a website where we find our connections. For instance, if I were in San Francisco and looking for a lawyer to help me in an unfortunate accident, I would log into BODHI, enter my location and the field of interest, and come up with a list of pre approved lawyers. To be placed onto the BODHI network, you will have been referred to us, interviewed and approved as motivated by a genuine good heart by a panel of BODHI representatives. As your time on the network passes, there will be reviews and comments posted from those who have received your services. This will be a project of time and care.
With the wish to benefit others all the way up to our full infinite potential, and the wisdom to work together, our goals from small to great will be reached with quickness and ease. This is a big vision, one we can all really feel good about.

In response to my joy and disappointment with the message of the film, "The Secret", I am working on a plan to create a film about the power of Loving Kindness and Compassion, called, "The Good Heart, It's No Secret". I loved that the concepts of self responsibility and potential that we have as humans are hitting the mainstream. But I feel that the power to create reality is a universal concept, not a method that should be used for individual gain. We have sooo much potential, why be limited? The Secret was onto something by revealing the power that consciousness has to influence and manifest reality, but missed on the crucial universal concept of interconnectedness. If we are all intimately connected, then our prayers, wishes, and actions affect others. On the positive side, when we live and use our existence of body, speech and mind for the benefit of all beings in all reaches of existence, then our power becomes just that...limitless. The ripple has no limit and intertwines with all others. In the same light, our love and happiness become limitless. If we can conjoin our awareness of others, which are limitless, with a good vibe and prayer, then our joy reaches its limitless potential. Why stop at one? With the ability to manifest limitless benefit, we should go for it.
I would like to create this film to convey this through interviews with Holy Beings from all Spiritual Traditions and walks of life. They could speak about the benefits of the Good Heart and tell stories that exemplify this. We could interview His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ammachi, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and many others in so many other traditions. I would also like to search the world for ordinary, don to earth people and families that have experiences and stories of miracles that have occurred because of the Good Heart.
Jump on board. I welcome with an open heart your suggestions and support. Namaste

I'd like to organize a theatre group to write and perform a prayerformance that demonstrates the bliss of compassion and service to others. We can play off of some of our experiences about how serving others becomes a great joy. There's motherhood, fatherhood, social service, spiritual service, prayer, to name a few. This could be really fun and really hit people in the heart with inspiration. Blessings. Drop me a line if you feel inspired.