Fundraiser to benefit ALS

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By Patrick Ball
GateHouse News Service
Thu Jul 12, 2007, 10:44 AM EDT

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Bedford, Mass. -
By Patrick Ball
Staff Writer

Serenity Yoga Studio will hold a July 20 fundraiser in the name of Mary Ann Whitmore, a Bedford resident who was diagnosed with ALS in November. Admission is free, and 100 percent of the proceeds will be donated to Compassionate Care ALS, per the request of Whitmore.

The event will be a workshop entitled “Explore Intuitive Healing,” in which local healers Leslie Gabriele and Joel Kaplan will be donating their services.

Toni Bradley, owner of Serenity Yoga Studio, hopes to raise awareness about ALS, because it is “the kind of disease we hear about on TV a lot, and we have someone here in Bedford with it.”

Bradley said Gabriele had been asking to help promote Serenity for some time. As conversations progressed, Gabriele suggested the event could benefit a charity, and Whitmore, with whom Bradley began doing yoga in late April or early May, immediately came to mind.

“I was really very moved by her story. … She’s 51 years old – a young woman with young children, and she relatively recently got the news that she was dealing with this disease. Her determination to keep her family as normal as possible and trying to adjust to the huge changes happening to her body, and dealing with this. [ALS] is not a curable disease, and the lifespan is relatively short. To retain as much normalcy as she can – it’s just a huge adjustment in a short period of time,” she said.

She said organizations like Compassionate Care operate outside the medical community, but are instrumental to the healing process.

“Compassionate Care deals with the practicalities that these people have to deal with,” said Bradley. “They deal with, ‘OK, here’s how you live with this disease.’”

Gabriele described Compassionate Care as the “gold standard of ALS help.

“They’ve helped Mary Ann quite a bit. When we told her we wanted to do a charity event, she said she wanted it to go there. Compassionate Care has supplied her with the things she needs to maintain some kind of lifestyle,” she said.

“Explore Intuitive Healing” has not been advertised, save flyers at the studio and on the Web site, serenityyoga.com. Still, Bradley and Gabrielle expect a good turnout – somewhere between 30-50 people.

Gabriele said Kaplan’s healing powers were strengthened by a near death experience.

He died for approximately 10 minutes, and “revolutionized the defibrillator system in the United States,” when he was shocked seven times (instead of the typical three) and “came back without brain damage and with gifts,” she said.

Gabriele said her powers developed over time.
“Unlike Joel, I did not have a tragic event. I just slowly but surely took responsibility for what I consider a gift,” she said. “It’s like you’re doing it, and it’s really working, but it takes a while to let it in – it’s not concrete and it’s not average.”

Gabriele said both she and Kaplan “work in the moment,” so the recipients of the healing will have as much an effect the event’s outcome as the healers.

“We will encourage people not to try to figure out what’s going on, but to trust their feelings and heart to get things done,” she said.

“If you try to figure out what we do, and you figure it out, please let me know. I can’t figure it out logically, but I know after years of this, it can help people feel better. And I’m hoping that’s what happens when we get together at Serenity Yoga.”