Maureen Dolan: Swami Shraddhanand

By Stacy Jeziorowski

"And I just didn't listen to the whispers, so I needed a shout!" exclaimed Maureen Dolan.

The shout Dolan is referring to is a drunk and drugged man driving 80 miles-per-hour head on into her car. It changed her life.

Dolan survived the crash, despite what the doctors had told her sons. The doctors told her she would never recover completely. The impact of this crash makes Dolan who she is today: Swami Shraddhanand.

Following the accident, Dolan refused to accept what the doctors told her about her recovery. Determined, Dolan looked for other means to heal and found yoga. After a year of rehabilitation, she was fully recovered and questioning why. This curiosity led her to attend seminary.

"I wanted to understand why this worked," Dolan said. "So they had a seminary that had all the spiritual principles and really compared religions which I had never been educated in."

With this second chance at life, Dolan wanted to give back to the world and offer those in pain like she experienced some relief.

Following her seminary training, Dolan trained as a hatha yoga instructor so she could teach all postures. She currently teaches at area YMCAs, through the Chicago Park District and at organizational retreats to give something back to the world.

Dolan is also a professor at DePaul University, teaching courses such as "Global Futures: Oil, Water, War and Peace" and "Gandhi Non-Violence Conference."

"Largely the American public cannot know the realities of the situation with oil or water on this planet or war or even what the tradition of non-violence has been and the victories that it has had," Dolan responded in reference to her "Global Futures" class.

In the fall, Dolan is taking the students to Memphis for the second Gandhi Non-Violence Conference. Although this class' subject matter may seem overwhelming, Dolan tries to balance the scales by using meditation to begin her classes.

Does Dolan believe her classes benefit?

"A lot of them stay in touch with me," Dolan said in reference to her students. "A lot of them want to take more than one course from me and I think that says something."

Dolan speaks on peace building and non-violence, and was present when the idea for Voices-Exchange was born.

"We thought it was important to have a speaker's bureau who can go out and educate on a regular basis. There isn't enough of that going on right now," Dolan said.

Dolan herself is trying to educate both through her articles for Yoga Chicago and through her books. Her book in progress, "Circles of Seven: Creating Power and Joy in the 21st", involves the trinity of creating, maintaining and dissolving.

What does Dolan believe is the most important life lesson?

"I warn people to listen to their whispers so you don't have to get hit head on by a drunken man going 80 miles per hour."

To read more by Maureen Dolan, Swami Shraddhanand click here. You may book her for speaking engagments through Voices-Exchange.