Last weekend I took a heartfelt excursion from my home in southwest New Hampshire to the suburbs west of Boston to visit my good friend, Yaron. I consider him a world-class bodyworker and teacher, and have been lucky to call him my friend since 1996 when we studied together in a year-long intensive in deep tissue massage and structural bodywork. I needed Yaron’s input about career direction questions that have me feeling stuck. So I talked and talked ad nauseum and he listened with 100% presence. What a gift.
As we walked and ate soup (not at the same time) through these conversations he told me that it was when I talked about a workshop that I teach, called “How Much Joy Can You Stand?” that I lit up the most. I was animated and happy while discussing what it is all about, what potential it has to move us out of discouragement, especially in times such as these. His feedback gave me a lot to think about on the quiet ride back home, and in this week since then. What is it about this particular workshop that makes me so happy? How does it tap into the essence, somehow, of what I aspire to do with my time on Earth? So, that is what I want to write about today. Maybe it can help you, too, to tap into your own essence.
The How Much Joy Can You Stand? workshop is based on the book of the same name by Suzanne Falter-Barns. I have bought the rights to teach the workshop from her organization, and am encouraged by her to morph the material in any way that suits my work. Basically, the concept that forms the core of the work comes from a problem that just about every one of us faces from time to time. We have an great idea of/for something, anything, we want to make happen in our lives (e.g. fitness, write a book, travel, weight loss, romance, entreprenuership, etc.) but we don’t know how to go about making it actually happen. And, we have a lot of excuses about why any sane person would never go out on a limb like that to follow a crazy idea that is doomed to failure!
What happens during our time together as a group is akin to shining a powerful laser on that particular idea, and helping it to shine and bloom from attention. I’d have to say it’s something like half pragmatic and half miracle! I truly love what happens in this workshop. Being surrounded by a small group of others who are equally motivated to move their own idea forward gives us all a palpable feeling of support and interest. We move through exercises designed to uncover our dreams and explore what is there for us, to look at questioning our excuses, and to build strategy for beginning it and following through. The foundational design is a belief that you have what you need to make this happen already formed inside yourself. I am there to facilitate that process of realization and offer creative experiences to make sure that: 1) you begin to understand just how powerful you can be at creating the life of your dreams, and 2) you develop some structures that keep you from giving up!
That’s a quick snapshot for now. If you a hold a half-covered dream inside yourself that you have sort of given up on, think about this: What would happen if you were given the opportunity to spend a day with others like you who would cheer for you, strategize with you, and help to move you forward to the life of your dreams? Believe me, it is magical.
