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Serving a community of private individuals and professionals who have the desire to cultivate a life of clarity, compassion, and emotional fulfillment. We warmly welcome our new subscribers. Thanks for joining!
1. Announcement
Seishindo Embodied Presence Workshop
"Calm and Confident in times of stress"
with Charlie Badenhop
Washington DC Metro Area, 24-26 June 2009
This stress-management workshop is meant for coaches, consultants, and leaders.
It will be a good fit for you if you'd like to:
• Better manage your health, awareness, and well-being.
• Help teach your clients to do the same.
• Come away with a new set of tools, especially helpful in troubling times.
• Increase the scope of conversations you're able to have with clients.
• Develop a deeper connection and more participatory relationship with your clients, then words alone can offer.
To find out more, please click on this link!
http://www.seishindo.org/workshops/2009/24_26_june.html
2. When you're not here... Where are you?
"When you're not here... Where are you?"
This was the question posed by a Japanese friend sitting at a table near me in our local coffee shop.
"Huh?" I said, as I oriented back to being in the room.
"Well I've known you for some time now" he said, "And I've never seen you go so far away while sitting here."
It's true that I was sitting in the coffee shop, but was somewhere else emotionally. I had transported myself back in time, thinking about the wonderful experiences I had with my teacher Eva who recently passed away, and her husband Gene.
Over the following days, I began to notice there were many times when I was sitting somewhere, or doing something, while my emotional self was actually somewhere else. In fact, I began to realize that my whole self was rarely in any one place, all at the same time!
Recognizing this was both amusing and somewhat unsettling.
I begin to realize I often have an emotional residue from the past, that carries over into the present. Sort of like having the taste of ice cream linger in my mouth for some time after I've finished eating it.
The troubling part being that the aftertaste is not always a pleasant one.
Think about it. How are you feeling right now? Are you fully alive in the moment, or do you find your past experience intruding into the present?
For me, I'm feeling a bit anxious right now. Needing to write this story, while at the same time thinking about other things I need to do after I finish. Part of me is writing this story, while another part of me is feeling "I have so much I need to do!".
How strange this is. Of course I have other things to do. My life would be pretty empty if I didn't!
I ask myself what I'll need to do to feel calm right now,
And I find myself taking a deep breath and beginning to rock back and forth some.
Then I take another deep breath,
As I look out the window and see some people passing by on bicycles.
Finally coming back into the room and looking at the letters of the words I'm typing now, magically appear on the screen.
Another deep breath,
And then I make some short intense sounds and shake my head back and forth. Like a dog shaking off the water after getting drenched by the neighbourhood kids on a hot summer day.
I tense all the muscles of my body,
And hold my breath for as long as I can.
Then I release into a sigh, and another deep breath.
For a few moments there's no thinking,
Only feeling,
And the feeling is one of expansive calmness.
It's like an emotional storm has just blown through me, and is passing by to another locale.
I ask you now, "When you're not here, where are you?"
What will you need to do to find yourself being only here, only now?
Without a past or a future.
Only being in communion with the words on this page.
Realizing that regardless of how you might feel, everything is just as it should be.
In this moment.
Breathe deeply and give thanks for what you do have.
The more you can be here now,
The more you'll find your future will take care of itself.
The more you'll find you are capable of taking care of yourself,
And those you love.
One breath, and one step, at a time.
Is all you'll ever need.
3. The Seishindo Offer
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