Vancouver Landmark Forum - Day 1

Here I am in Vancouver - Lululemon so graciously sent me here as their humble Ambassador to participate in a Landmark Forum. This is the training that Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon did that propelled him into starting Lulu (I think that's how the story goes)! As part of Lulu's commitment to developing their people - they have a budget to send staff and Ambassadors through the program. Some how I was lucky enough to get picked!

I've decided while I'm here I'm going to take in as many yoga sessions as possible and create my own little yoga workshop/conference. This city has always been a source of inspiration for me! Last night I stopped into Meghan Currie's Power class at YYoga Yaletown. When I got there, I saw a sign that said I could do 2 weeks unlimited for $35+tax. Sign me up! 

With Landmark training 9am-10pm Friday - Sunday - my only yoga options on these days are sunrise. This morning I took Meghan's Power class again. I gotta say - even the muscles around my eye balls are feeling the strength of these power classes! 

Last night, after class, I had an impromptu visit in with Christine Price Clark, who's GLOWING! We're planning an encore visit for her to come back to Edmonton - so stay tuned for those details.

Day 1 of the Landmark Forum

Everyone keeps asking "What do you think so far?"

I have to be honest - I haven't formed an opinion on it yet. The methodology is different from trainings I've done in the past, however, I believe the end goal is similar to a lot of the work I've done in different yoga trainings. Our Forum leader, well, I can't figure her out yet either. She's stern and serious, from time to time she cracks the most dead-pan jokes. Hilarious jokes. And I have yet to see her smile. She calls it like it is and scares me. For all of you who have trained with me in the past - you know how I like to add to the conversation - I have yet to speak up. There may be a couple reasons for this.

The first thing they asked us to think about is "What are you here for?"

~ To become more present and refined in my listening skills

~ Become even more courageous to be me

~ Figure out what holds me back from my wholeness

~ To reveal why I get in the way of myself and stop doing that!

Then she went into a cyclical trip of a conversation that I've often had in the classroom: We don't even know what we don't know, so how do we even begin to know what we don't know if we don't know what we don't know yet? All this was to lead into the purpose of the training: What we already know won't give us a breakthrough. It's illumination of our blind spots that trigger breakthroughs.  

"It isn't about you - it's about the impact you have on others." 

Here's what she promised us:

• Procrastination will be gone after this weekend
• We're going to deconstruct our view/story
• She stands in the vision that every human has potential to be extraordinary
• We'll learn to not be so hard on ourselves
• We'll deconstruct FEAR

All she asks in return is that we show up fully, have a willingness to learn and an openness to be coached.

Right before she stated that we'll deconstruct FEAR, I realized that when I left for Australia in 2001 - I decided to drop fear as part of my life. The morning I was to leave on my trip, I had a moment with my older brother where I realized that I was scared shitless to go on this trip across the planet by myself. It felt yucky, so I decided to drop the emotion and plunge forward into this dream. I even went sky-diving the first week I was there, just to stare down the face of fear! I figured I could do anything - and I could! In that moment, I created this delusion that I fear nothing. It's that very aversion to fear that's caused me to deny that it's even present and in reality, the denial of fear is what holds me back from facing my fears head on! Now all of a sudden, I have all this fear flooding back into my world. Wow! Now I have something to work with! Good! 

We examined Authenticity and Inauthenticity. The question: "What area of my life do I lack power, freedom and peace of mind?"

"The more places we can find inauthenticity, the larger the potential for transformation."

"To be fully alive, we have to transcend living reasonably. Take a risk. Live life by choice. Get ridiculous!"

Over the course of the day, we're asked to share a bunch of different things with different people and each time, I'm digging deeper into what it is that I fear and where I am living inauthentically. After each break, we're asked to find a new seat. Each new share partner brought up a different topic and by the end of the day I figure I had the major bases covered.

I have yet to share publicly with the group. Why? I'm not 100% sure, but I think it comes back to what Venerable Robina illuminated for me (the Tibetian Buddhist Nun from the Tushita in India, remember?). Attachment to my reputation. When people speak up, Angie - the facilitator, is relentless in deconstructing their story. It's vulnerable work. I have some fear around sharing. My first partner tried to loop me into her public share and the second she did my heart started beating out of my chest! (Thankfully Angie only wanted to work with her in that moment!!)

There's two more full days. They ended the session with some homework and told us that today was only about 5% of what's to come. Okay - here we go!

K, I gotta get my butt to sleep - sunrise yoga to start my day!

Loving this life experience...

j

Manifestation & Creation - A New Project

It was about 11 years ago, an old roommate and great friend of mine, Michele, introduced me to her older sister and her boyfriend who were madly in love, jaw droppingly gorgeous, just about the coolest people I knew, AND they made being Spiritual cool. I had always had this HUGE part of myself that was yearning to express my Spiritual side, however, I never had an example of how to do that and still fit in with the 'cool kids.' They talked about all sorts of things that were weird and awesome that I had never heard about, introducing me to ideas that blew my mind. Of course, I would sit and listen to them in awe and never admit that I had never heard of most of this before. Tesla lights? A Spiritual Teacher? Kundalini yoga? Conspiracy theories, strange foods, all sorts of alternative healing modalities, how our thoughts shape our experience, you're going to put a what in your where now? and so many more seeds of consciousness. Some of the seeds lay dormant still to this day, even more have grown and I often pause to sit with gratitude for the direction change in my path meeting all these beautiful people caused. There is one particular seed that I've continued to nurture and take care of since they planted it 7 or 8 years ago.

I was over at Michele's new apartment and she showed me this new book her sister bought her: "Ask and It is Given - Learning to Manifest your Desires" by Esther and Jerry Hicks. I had no idea what this book was all about, but I knew that since Krista & Mat got it for her - it must be good. I left her apartment that day and went straight to the book store to get it.

Honestly, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The first chapter starts like this:

WTF? Really? I'm lucky I admired them and trusted that whatever they were into was going to be good because honestly - this was too weird for me at that time in my life. The book sat on my night stand for a good couple years. Every now and again, I would pick it up, open to a random page and start reading. Pieces started to make sense.  "You are the creator of your own reality." "That which is like unto itself is drawn." "...you might see the powerful Law of Attraction of sort of a Universal Manager that sees to it that all thoughts that match one another line up... ...You understand this principle when you turn on your radio and deliberately tune your receiver to match a signal from a broadcasting tower. You do not expect to hear music that is being broadcast on the radio frequency of 101FM to be received on your tuner when it is set at 98.6FM. You understand that radio vibrational frequencies must match, and the Law of Attraction agrees with you."

It wasn't until February 2009 when my mom gave me the book "The Law of Attraction" by the same authors on CD that it really started making sense to me. I had a number of really long car adventures that year and on each and every one, I would have the CD's playing in the background of my minds wanderings, (which were just about as wild as my road map). I would zone in and zone out. Something Esther would say would trigger a thought and I'd be off in the canyons of my mind exploring things I had created or experienced. As time went on, I started getting curious: 'What would happen if I actually did these exercises?' As with most of the practices I do these days - I figured I had nothing to lose by trying.

Here's my first big success story working with this practice: 

I had $xxxx in student loans left. I had been picking away at it for almost 6 years and was done with watching it slowly, slowly dwindle away. Even though I was making regular payments, it was taking for EVER! I was playing that game with myself that so many of us often play: 'When my student load is paid off, then I will...' I didn't want it to hold me back any more. I wanted to move on to the next phase in my plan, but I simply couldn't do it with the budget that I had. I decided to take the teachings of the Law of Attraction and put them into practice.

About a month into practicing the suggested meditations, cleaning up my thoughts, especially around my finances, I received an email from someone I hardly know asking me to pick him up a lotto ticket. I emailed him back & turns out he meant to send that to his wife. Weird. I had only played the lotto a handful of times at this point. It decided it was a pretty clear sign I should buy a lottery ticket. So I did. I bought a Lotto Max quick pick and tucked it away in my car. A couple days later, I drove 12 hours to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho listening to the Law of Attraction CD's, imagining myself completely debt free, getting lost in all the things I would do when I won the lottery. I imagined the land I would buy, the yurts I would build, the vegetables I would grow, the workshops I would teach, how I would share when money was that abundant. Funny, even with all that imagining, I was 100% sure that I would still live where I lived, teach yoga and pretty much continue on my path, now debt free. I distinctly remember this feeling that washed across my heart at one point. I had never felt it before, it was a new opening. As soon as I got to Coeur d'Alene, I forgot all about it as I immersed myself in the teacher training. On the second last night of the training, I was sitting in my friend Jessica's living room, remembered my ticket, ran out to my car, grabbed it and came in to check it. First number right, second number right, third number right, cool. Free ticket? Fourth number right, fifth number right, Wow-EE! What does this MEAN? Sixth number wrong. Oh well. Seventh number right! WHAT? I got 6 out of 7 numbers right? What?!? Am I rich? Turns out I won $35 shy of my total debt! It works! The practice really works! Holy smokes! I was debt free!!! Time to activate the next phase in my plan!! 

Crazy right?

The thing about the Law of Attraction is it that its working whether we're conscious of it or not. Over the past couple years, I've been playing with how the potency of the practice of yoga intertwined with this potent conscious mind practice can be used to literally create the life we've always dreamed of. There's lots more to say about this, but I'm going to leave it at that for now.

My new project is this: Video Blogging. It's going to be a place where I tell quick stories of how my thoughts become things. I'm not exactly sure what this will look like right now as I find with most of these things, they start to take on a Soul of their own. Only time will tell. I wish I could say that I would post every Wednesday or something like that. Knowing my crazy schedule, I'm not sure that's a promise I can keep, but I will post. I'm just working up the courage to do my first one. Gulp! Wish me luck!