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Mancora, Peru
Welcome! Here you can sign up for the upcoming Yoga/Surfing and Life Balancing retreat in Mancora, Peru. Just click on the Pay Pal cart below to select the Room option that you would like! Any question? You can email me directly at balanceyogaretreats@gmail.com

Yoga Retreat Deposit and Fees

Yoga Retreat Deposits and Fees

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Lesson #1: take 567.

ready to be re-learned: let go of what your ego tells you that you need to be happy, stop looking for what you think you need to be happy, and just choose happiness on the amazing ride that you have been given

Sunday, November 22, 2009

40 Days of Plentitude: Making the radical choice to live in abundance

I have been away from writing this past week, as I have taken on the most essential and truly most difficult task of my life: being with all of the intensity of life exactly as it shows up, and it has been showing up INTENSELY. Through this process I have had the gift of amazing friends and teachers who continue to point me toward the beauty of experiencing the depth of all of my emotions, to be with pain, sadness, fear, anxiety and Still be able to hold onto my inspiration, my knowing of the goodness of my true nature and my faith that our world is truly one of unexpected possibilities. As I am more and more able to take it ALL in, to be with all of the contrast, my life becomes a testimony to our unbelievable strength as human beings.

One of the greatest lessons has been about the importance of where and how we focus our attention. That is, when I continue to focus on what is wrong, what is missing, what is not going the way that I would like it, that is what I see. And when I can allow those things to just BE as they are, and stop resisting against them, they aren't so oppressing, and things naturally begin to shift, as they always do.

Today I was at a service in Agape International Spiritual Center, an amazing place, check it out online http://www.agapelive.com/
They called us all to a wonderful campaign which they called 40 days of Plentitude. This begins today, and runs until New Years Day. The focus of this campaign is that we each commit to focus our attention for the next 40 days on the abundance and plenty that exists in our lives.

This is a conscious contradiction of the Scarcity Mentality that we are constantly being bombarded in the world, with the economic crisis and worries about jobs and health care and mortgages, etc. As we worry more about scarcity, we take on a scarcity mentality that discourages us from sharing more, taking risks, creating more, even spending more, and suddenly we really ARE living in scarcity.

Instead I encourage you all to join me and many others in this campaign to spend the next 40 days until new years, gaining consciousness of all the reality that is our true nature when we have the faith enough to see it: I HAVE ALWAYS HAD EVERYTHING THAT I TRULY NEEDED.

I invite you to join in on this campaign and let me know how it affects your life, and what comes up for you when you do.

As always, any questions or concerns, please write to me.

Monday, November 16, 2009

The possibility of transformation

After months of sitting with my own feelings of impotence, of not knowing how to bring this project into existence, I am now aware that I must create the possibility of sharing these stories, and the how will become apparent. I know that the stores that have been shared with me are a gift to everyone, and it is an honor to share them with the world. Here I am offering a glimpse of what they have meant to me. I hold out the possibility of turning these stories into a book, and even a documentary film, so that they can be inspire as many people as possible. Please, inspire others in your life with these stories. And please contact me if you know anyone who can help to create the possibility of finding a the way to publish these stories...

What does it mean to transcend victimhood?
My work in conflict resolution and reconciliation has allowed me the opportunity to ask hundreds of people about what it means to transcend experiences of trauma, to move beyond being the victim of their own circumstances into being the creators of their lives and a source of inspiration for others.
The decision to work with victims has been part of my path to understanding my own relationship to empowerment and victimhood. When I went to Colombia the first time on the Fulbright grant I was working from a sense of responsibility, the desire to “help” the victims of the conflict. However with that view, I was buying into the story that the victims were disempowered and did not have the tools to change their own situation. After a few years of experience in the field, when I was researching for my MA in Conflict Resolution I allowed myself the opportunity to see that the term “victim” can be a temporary condition and not an identity.
As I began to see the possibility that anyone can be powerful, no matter what their life conditions are, I was able to meet people who have reshaped my own definition of courage, and generosity of the human spirit. The common ground with these people is the decision to face what most greatly angered or terrified and hurt them, and turn it into a source of inspiration and transformation for all of us. The situations that many of these people have come from truly represent the darkest places of humanity, the depth of violence that we can wreak on one another. And from the depths of this darkness, they have made the choice to be a light. Even more, they have taken their experiences of darkness; of violence and suffering and turned it into the very source of their own transformation.
At first I felt deeply humbled to presence the courage and the strength of the human spirit in these people. But in my experience I came to realize that this source of strength and courage is our human legacy, though it may lie untapped by many of us. It is my experience that through listening to the stories of others, we can be inspired by the possibility to move beyond the stuck places in our own lives where we have not yet seen our own power to create something different.
One of these inspirations was Elias, who had been a political prisoner on death row for 18 years in Uganda, and was released a few years ago. This man, after sharing his story of liberation, reminded me: “You are so lucky my daughter, to have a gift and do so much with your young life. Now take the bull by the horns… don’t waste one second of it. And share it, share it with as many people as you can.”
This is the possibility that I am stepping into. In my work I seek to share the message that the courage and possibility for transformation exists in each one of us. It is for this reason that I know I must share these stories, to turn them into a book and even a documentary film, so that the vastness of human potential that I have experienced can be source of inspiration for all of us.

The first stories
I began to reshape my idea of what it means to be a victim when I went back to Colombia in January of 2006 to research for my MA dissertation about non-violent resistance communities. I went to visit the Peace Community of San José of Apartadó. The members of the community are people who had faced guerrilla and paramilitary attacks on their homes and communities, who had become victims and sought refuge as “displaced persons” in the local municipalities, living off of government assistance and begging. They then came together in the radical stance that they refused to be victims, and also refused to fight, and decided to return to their lands to live and work in peace. Twelve years later they are still holding their ground nonviolently, with the help of international peace building organizations who accompany the community as “unarmed bodyguards”. Still, over 170 people, mainly leaders have been killed since the community’s formation. When I spoke to Esperanza, leader of the community council, I asked her if she was afraid for her life. She smiled and shook her head. “I prefer to die here, with my dignity, than live the life of the desplazada (displaced), with no dignity. We don’t want people’s money. We don’t want the government to re-locate us and build us houses and give us food. We just want to be left alone, to work this land, to take care of ourselves.”
In 2006 I began giving workshops with victims and ex-combatants in Colombia, offering yoga and other tools for healing and inner peace. I was invited participate in the first international conference on reconciliation in Colombia, and there I met Father Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest from South Africa who was active in the anti-Apartheid movement. While he was serving ANC members in exile he was sent a letter bomb that caused him to lose both of his hands and an eye and shattered his eardrums. I listened to Father Michael reflect on learning how to live his journey from victim to survivor to “victor” as a quest to be more fully human. He speaks of the two hooks that now replace his hands, as a visceral example of how all of us human beings are “damaged” but in recognition of our own “brokenness” we can find a deeper connection to our own humanity. While acts of violence and war cause suffering, from this suffering it is possible to find a way forward. Because of my own experience of “brokenness” he says, I can help more people to heal, in a way I have become more fully human.
I found a great connection to Father Michael and inspiration in his story, and he also resonated with the healing work that I was doing with the ex-combatants and victims. He invited me to come later with one of the ex-combatants that I was working with to a conference that was being held in South Africa. The conference, entitled Healing of Memories, brought together people from all over Africa, and the world, united by the experience of violence and the paths of healing from it.
Over that month of the Pan-African conference, I asked people to share with me stories of healing and forgiveness. The people who most deeply inspired me were the ones who had taken their experience of victimhood as an inspiration to transcend, and create a new possibility for themselves, something that contributed to the transformation of others. An example of this is Jean-Baptiste, who watched his entire family killed in the Rwandan genocide. As we spoke, he told me “This year I know that I will go to the man who killed my mother and tell him that I forgive him. I will ask him to take my hand so that we can work together, because we must move on. But I also must wait for him to be ready. I will give him time.” As we parted he asked me to come to Rwanda with this work and told me “Please keep your heart so very open, in spite of what you see in the world around you.”
In another moment I had dinner with a woman, Ginn Lourie, a white South African who started a foundation to work with ex-combatants with one of the former commanders of the Resistance army. This organization is named after her daughter, who was killed in an attack that the Resistance army made on the civilian population. The commander with whom Ginn has co-founded the organization, is the very same man who ordered the attack that killed her daughter. “You just don’t ever know the capacity that you are able to forgive. You just don’t know what you are capable of, until you are put into the situation and you just ARE.”
Elias, upon release from prison has dedicated his life’s work to holding healing workshops with prisoners on death row, and trying to abolish the death penalty throughout Africa. When I asked him to share his experience with me he told me,
“Daughter, I am very happy…. You know, God is funny. He will do things that we human beings will not ever understand. We will think that he is unfair. When my children were 4 and 2 I went to jail and waited to die. When I was released they were 22 and 20 and no longer knew me as a father. I lost all of my money, I lost my friends, I lost my children’s childhood…But now I am free. And those who framed me to send me to jail, they were overthrown. And my friends, many were killed for their money. And because I went through all of this today, I was invited here to South Africa to speak, and now I have met you….So God is funny. He knows the lessons for us. If we are lucky, we will get them. Then we can help others. And so I say God is good.”
In this journey, through the stories that I collected, I have been reminded how to love. To love like Madukele who holds workshops with people infected with HIV/AIDS in Kwa Zulu Natal. “We must restore their sense of their own humanity,” he says, “and our own. We must create a sacred space, where they understand that I love them with AIDS, and that they do not have to change anything about themselves to be worthy of loving”.
What inspired me so much about these individuals is that in the face of all of the death, the injustice, the inhumanity that they have lived, these people remember how to Love. I mean the kind of love that really matters, Divine Love. This Love is big enough to face genocide and apartheid, death row and AIDS epidemics, to look in the face of the man who killed your mother and to still reach out and say “you are worthy of loving.”
If I am to understand that there is any reason for which I came to this earth, this is the closest that I can find. This is a Love worthy of dedicating my life to. And, as Elias reminded me, I know it is my path to share it with as many people as I can.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Appreciations Nov.8

Today I appreciated: People who are cool enough to rock out in public on roller skates, being welcomed into family, that the sound of the pacific ocean is different than the Carribean, being reminded that connecting with my own inspiration is a direct source to God, knowing that my life is so full of abundance that I will never really need anything

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Go ahead...tease me!

The other day I was telling my aunt about how I had a breakthrough in that suddenly I was appreciating being teased by my partner. She laughed and said, it’s probably good for you to laugh at yourself more. You know, in our family, no one taught us how to take things lightly. I realize that, given all of my drive and dedication to “doing” all of these important things in the world and “becoming” the person who I want to be, I can often take myself and life too seriously. Which must be why I have manifested this person into my life who is an incessant and merciless teaser, until I break down and laugh at myself. What a relief…
Do you ever find that you are taking life so seriously that you are getting stressed or frustrated or overwhelmed by something that you know, with a bit of context, is absurd, but you just feel like those emotions suck you in without your control? Isn’t it exhausting?
Many of what we call negative emotions, like stress, frustration, sadness, come about from something or someone not meeting our expectations of what we would like to see in life. Now even the idea of “negative” emotions give them a bad rap, because really, all of these emotions are just information that we can use, telling us what direction to move in. Whatever direction we choose folks, the only thing certain is that it is a wild ride. And so why not enjoy it? As Abraham Hicks explains, Why does your dog stick its head out of the window and risk getting all of the bugs in its eyes? Because the exhilaration of the ride is worth it.
So my recommendation is to take every possible opportunity to laugh, particularly at ourselves, because that softens the Ego’s death grip on our thoughts, and because laughing is just fun. Even being teased can be a gift, another opportunity to laugh. If you need someone to do the teasing, just let me know…

Go ahead...tease me!

The other day I was telling my aunt about how I had a breakthrough in that suddenly I was appreciating being teased by my partner. She laughed and said, it’s probably good for you to laugh at yourself more. You know, in our family, no one taught us how to take things lightly. I realize that, given all of my drive and dedication to “doing” all of these important things in the world and “becoming” the person who I want to be, I can often take myself and life too seriously. Which must be why I have manifested this person into my life who is an incessant and merciless teaser, until I break down and laugh at myself. What a relief…
Do you ever find that you are taking life so seriously that you are getting stressed or frustrated or overwhelmed by something that you know, with a bit of context, is absurd, but you just feel like those emotions suck you in without your control? Isn’t it exhausting?
Many of what we call negative emotions, like stress, frustration, sadness, come about from something or someone not meeting our expectations of what we would like to see in life. Now even the idea of “negative” emotions give them a bad rap, because really, all of these emotions are just information that we can use, telling us what direction to move in. Whatever direction we choose folks, the only thing certain is that it is a wild ride. And so why not enjoy it? As Abraham Hicks explains, Why does your dog stick its head out of the window and risk getting all of the bugs in its eyes? Because the exhilaration of the ride is worth it.
So my recommendation is to take every possible opportunity to laugh, particularly at ourselves, because that softens the Ego’s death grip on our thoughts, and because laughing is just fun. Even being teased can be a gift, another opportunity to laugh. If you need someone to do the teasing, just let me know…

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Appreciation Challenge

I used to have this practice with a friend of mine where we would email one another at the end of each day with a list of things that we appreciated from that day. Ok, some days it was a list, and other days I would struggle to come up with one or two. Now I know that for many people this sounds like another new age, "the secret" reading, cheezy practice. However it was MY experience that beginning to notice some things that I appreciate and pay attention to them long enough to write them down, was really a powerful practice that made me feel good about the world. It doesn't mean the whole world becomes soft and fuzzy, but it did remind me of all the things that I felt good about before I went to bed at night. And then after a while I stopped doing it and returned to my practice of worrying and stressing about what I had to do, wasn't doing, should be doing, shouldn't be doing. Great plan.

SO I am inviting you all to join me in a one-month appreciation challenge. I was recently reminded that this month is the month of Thanksgiving in America, so I suppose it is all the more appropriate. I am going to write everday on my blog and facebook pages, a list of things that I appreciated from my life that day. I invite you to read my appreciations, send them to other people if you like them, and comment. Most importantly, write your OWN appreciations and post them here in comments. I would love to hear what you think. My recommendation, if you want to make it the most powerful practice, is to write them just before going to bed. It really is a much healthier way to go to sleep. And then TELL me, if you notice any difference in how you sleep and how you wake up.

So take the one month challenge!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Waking up to who we really are

I am so excited to finally launch this blog, to put my ideas out there in the world fd and hope that I can help other people through the process. My path to becoming a life coach has been one of the most terrifying things I have ever done. You see, it takes tremendous courage to know that you want something so much, that the risk of not being "successful" is very intimidating. Until I realized: my "success" as a life coach, just in being a person that I believe in, means having the courage to choose what I really want in life, and not let anything else get in my way. THAT is success; not allowing yourself to take any excuses that keep you from living a life that inspires you.

So in a nutshell, my path to becoming a coach is exactly what I want to offer to other people:
1) Finding the courage to declare what it is they are longing for
2) Uncovering all of the limiting beliefs that hold them back
3) Ripping through those beliefs with tools that I have learned in order to
4) Create a step by step plan that will lead them to their true desire

Of course, there is much more to explain about the process, but our transformations begin simply by identifying: "What is the story that I am telling myself? And what is the story that I want to tell myself?"

So if you know someone who has been talking about a change that they want to make in their life for a while, and seems to get stuck in the process, have them contact me, through my blog or email, to do a free consultation session. The first session is free so there is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

There is so much more that I am excited to explain ab0ut my coaching. In the next blog entry I will explain my new project "Beyond Victimhood" in which the money that you pay for your coaching session has the added value of funding leadership and empowerment coaching workshops for leaders of victim's groups in Colombia.

But more on that soon. For today, welcome, and please share your inspiration with me.

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