2009 gratitude

2009 was a good year for me.

i finished my training as a master practitioner of NLP. it's a fabulous body of work variously described as Now Let's Play, a super-duper set of people skills, and the structure of experience. i learned so much, it would be hard to describe. have had one client since then and am open to more. it's very gratifying to guide someone whose energy about a past event has been dragging them down and holding them back toward shedding their own light on that situation, totally changing their perception of the event into one of expansion and lightness, so they can move on. all i do is guide them.

thank you, tom and bobbi best of Best Resources/Texas Institute of NLP. tom, watching you teach a new class of beginners has revealed even more of your mastery as a teacher/storyteller/shaman. bobbi, your suggestion about working with kids (anchoring happy states) is just one example of the brilliance with which you walk around every day, just like an ordinary person. to a long association!

i also began participating in keith fail's advanced study groups for NLP practitioners. good company, good teacher, much to look forward to in 2010, when i will study strategies (and much more, i'm sure).

thank you, keith, for being such an awesome teacher and being such a fount of knowledge of NLP, and having so much practical experience working with individuals and organizations. there is no internship with NLP coaching unless you find a mentor. you are mine, for which i'm grateful. also, thank you for being a pennywhistle buddy and a friend who really sees me.

and thank you, katie raver (keith's wife and my friend), for helping keith teach and for being your awesome loving self with so much presence. indeed you are the instigator of love, teacher of love, being of love! i'm looking forward to our first Peripheral Walking meetup tomorrow and doing this with you all year, and being your friend on into the future.

in the fall, i began assisting my yoga teacher at her monday class that includes beginners. i love doing this. it reminds me of how far i've come, and that each person can only really absorb what they're ready for. yoga is a practice of developing awareness, strength, and flexibility. we work in small chunks--from cow pose to urdhva dhanurasana--upward bow or wheel pose, aka backbend--and over time i see someone become more capable of doing a pose because their bodymind "gets it". yo!

i've said this before, and i'll say it again. yoga works on the meridians. now i don't know when or if those ancient chinese who invented acupuncture and those ancient indians who invented yoga got together and shared notes and then went their separate ways, but they were both onto the same thing--energy flows through our bodies, and both asana and needles can be used to free, balance, and strengthen our energies.

thank you, eleanor harris, yoga teacher extraordinaire, for being my yoga teacher and for allowing me the honor of assisting you and learning at the same time. you are so devoted to your students and a very gentle teacher, yet you have taken me a long, long way in the past five years. while being aware of my limitations, you know just what to say (and where to touch) to move me into a place of righteousness in an asana. namaste.

and thank you, patrice sullivan, acupuncturist and woman-of-all-trades. you are a pioneer, a role model, a wise woman, a genius, and definitely one of the free-est, happiest, and most competent people i know. thank you for your friendship, needles, partnership, teaching, questioning, guiding, rolfing, yoga and exercise coaching, your music, your lightness and fun, and that thing you do with your hands when i'm on the table covered in needles with my eyes closed. somehow i went into your energy once, felt what you feel, saw your color. mm mm mm wow. let's do it again. (i want to learn to read pulses in 2010.) yes-sayer!

i've already posted about my wonderful cranio-sacral therapist, nina davis, and her incredibly wizardry. you are such a healer, and a role model, and a teacher. you are leading me into greater awareness of my body and self-healing. i suspect too that just being in the same room with you brings my energy a little more up to your level. for all of this, i thank you deeply, nina.

i am so lucky to have found good teachers, tom, bobbi, keith, katie, eleanor, patrice, nina...

in 2010, i am adding a couple of new ones from the appamada zendo--a meditation coach, peg syverson, and a teacher, flint sparks, whose paths i crossed in late 2009. i've already had a couple of encounters with them and look forward to our journeys together.