This is actually good news! Equalizing.  Rather than labeling half the population as left brain dominant, and therefore not as creatively inclined, instead the focus is on something we all carry, and therefore have control over changing!

Awareness

Silencing the inner critic means first picking out her siren-like tones… our inner critic is cunning.   He has access to all the same sophisticated theories and justifications we’ve stored away in both our conscious and subconscious mind.  Her voice can be seductive, damning and wimpy in turns.  The inner critic is not the reality check- he’s the whiny one that clamps down on a good idea before it has time to even hatch!

Gratitude

So we notice… and then we thank her for the role she plays in our self-protection. In Freudian terms, the inner critic might be thought of as an overzealous super-ego protecting us from our id, or dangerous sub-conscious desires: “thank you for warning me of possible dangers but I don’t need you right now.  Please step back so I can explore this further”.

Think of it as self-directed cognitive therapy.  It actually works!  Sometimes, we may even need to release some  feelings the inner critic can evoke—shame, guilt, frustration etc.  When we deny self-expression, there is a physiological kick-back.

Courage

And then we choose to act.  We pair creation with her side-kick, courage. Any kind of true creativity risks exposing our real self… not the one we wear all day at work, but the one who dares to dream.

And who said dreams, can’t change our world.

Finally we are waking up to our ecological imbalance, to the realities of global warming and its catastrophic consequences. It is also beginning to dawn upon us that these environmental changes are accelerating, that time is running out more quickly than we may realize. To quote a recent article in the New York Times by Paul Krugman:

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe—a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable—can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.

And we are beginning to respond, with concerns about greenhouse gases and plans to reduce carbon emissions. We are proposing global protocols that can delude us into thinking we are taking responsible action even as we continue our demand for materialistic progress. But underlying our global predicament is an even deeper delusion, the notion that we can avoid environmental catastrophe without considering its root cause, without the change in consciousness that is needed to effect real change.

angels fountain by alicepopkorn, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0license.

Behind our present ecological self-destruction, caused by industrial pollution, by the chemicals, toxins and particularly carbon that our civilization emits, lies our desire for material progress, the demon of consumerism and greed that walks with heavy boots over the sacred soil of our world. At the root of our predicament is a deep disregard for the environment, and for the consequences of our actions until it is too late. This is the product of a consciousness that is cut off from the natural world and its interconnectedness. It comes from an attitude that we are separate from the world around us and can do with it as we want—an attitude that is unthinkable to indigenous people who respect and revere the physical world, and whose cultures protect the balance between humanity and nature. Our western consciousness evolved through the birth of scientific reasoning to treat the physical world as a mere object, something mechanical whose laws we could learn and thus master. We developed the gifts of science, but also began to create the materialistic wasteland that we now inhabit. We banned the symbolic world as something superstitious, and the understanding of the relationship between the worlds that linked together all of creation, the concept of the “Great Chain of Being,” was forgotten. Rather than part of an interdependent whole, each part nourishing and supporting the other, we became lords of a soulless earth, which we sought to dominate and subjugate for our own ends.

Underlying this outlook is a deep partriarchal conditioning. As our collective consciousness shifted from a matriarchal understanding of the world as a living sacred being, the divine became a transcendent God, living in heaven. The sacred streams and groves became just the stuff of myth, the nature spirits that inhabited them forgotten. Patriarchal consciousness excluded the divine from the natural world, whose darkness man then had to conquer. We were left alone in the world with a God we could only experience after death. Living in a world without the presence of the divine, we had only our own laws to follow, our own desires to nourish us. The results of this consciousness can be seen in our ecological devastation and the soulless world of our materialistic dreams.

The question we now need to ask is whether we can redeem our present ecological situation without addressing the consciousness that created it. Can there be any real change without a shift in consciousness? What would this shift mean and how would it address the very real concerns of global warming? We cannot afford to be idealistic dreamers. There must be real solutions to our very real predicament.

In our patriarchal hubris we have forgotten something that has been central to every other civilization: the primacy and power of the divine. We may have banished God to the heaven of our imagination, but that does not mean that this supreme power is not present. Every other civilization developed and understood ways to work with this power, to channel Its energy. Shamans were trained to understand the way Its spirit worked, priests and priestesses learned to listen to Its voice, Its prophecies and warnings. Sacred geometry was developed to channel Its energy through sacred buildings. But now we have become blind and deaf to Its hidden ways. We may praise and pray to a God in heaven, but we do not understand how to welcome the divine into our lives. How can we heal and transform the world without the living presence of its Creator?

Monotheism pointed us away from the many gods and goddesses of the ancient world towards a single transcendent God. If the living presence of God is to return to our consciousness it will be not as a step back to the old ways, but as a divine Oneness that embraces all of creation. Mystics have always experienced the oneness of being, the many facets of creation reflecting the single Essence. We are beginning to be aware of the ecological unity of life and its interconnectedness; economically and technologically we are being drawn into an era of global oneness. We now need to understand divine oneness: how the different qualities of the divine form a living presence in the inner and outer worlds, and how these qualities work together as one.

On a very simple level we do not have the power or technology to “fix” our ecological crisis on our own. The problems we have created are too severe. And yet here is the very root of our misunderstanding. We cannot do this on our own. We need to embrace the divine not as some transcendent being, but as a living presence that contains the visible and invisible worlds, all of the spirit and angelic beings that our ancestors understood. The oneness of God includes many different levels of existence.

We know for our individual self  that real healing only takes place when we our inner and outer selves are aligned, when we are nourished by our own soul and the archetypal forces within us. What is true for the individual is true for the whole. It is from the energies within and behind creation that the healing of creation will take place, because these are the beings that support, nourish and help creation to develop and evolve. How can we heal creation without the help of the devas and other spiritual forces that are within creation? They are waiting to be asked to participate, for their wisdom and power to be used. We need to once again work together with the divine oneness that is within and around us.

But how can we learn how to work together with the inner worlds when our culture has dismissed them to such a degree that we have forgotten their existence? We may talk about angels, and even pray for their intercession, but do we really understand their power, or that they are just one level of invisible beings? The invisible worlds are present all around us even though we cannot see or touch them, just like the wavelengths of light beyond the small portion of the spectrum we can see. First we have to step out of our dream of separation, the insularity with which we have imprisoned ourselves, and acknowledge that we are a part of a multidimensional living spiritual being we call the world. The world is much more than just the physical world we perceive through the senses, just as we are much more than just our own physical bodies. Only as a part of a living whole can we help to heal the whole. Just as we need to work together with the outer ecosystem, we need to work together with the inner worlds. We need their support and help, their power and knowledge. The devas understand the patterns of climate change better than we do, because they are the forces behind the weather and the winds. Just as plant devas know the healing powers of plants (and taught the shamans and healers their knowledge), so are there more powerful devas that know and guide the patterns of evolution of the whole planet.

Once we regain our consciousness of the divine within creation, we will discover Her invisible presence in many different ways. And once we acknowledge how we are an interdependent part of this living whole, we will find that the divine can once again communicate with us. It is only humanity that has exiled itself from the divine, banished Her presence and thus become blind and deaf. When we lift this veil of separation we will rediscover the ways the divine within creation communicates with humanity, and how we can work together to save the planet. She will teach us what we need to know, guide us in the ways we need to go. We only need the humility to be open and listen, just as for our own healing we need to listen to our own soul and the deeper rhythms of our body.

But this shift in consciousness does mean that we will have to take responsibility for our actions and attitudes. We can no longer walk blindly, uncaring, on the face of the earth. Leaving behind the myth of our banishment means accepting our faults and the damage we have done in the inner and outer worlds. We are beginning to take responsibility for the ecosystem, though we have not yet fully realized that we will need to sacrifice our materialistic dream and to suffer the pain of withdrawal from this addiction. Taking responsibility for the damage we have done in the inner worlds, for example the sorrow we have caused the Great Mother by our abuse, is a step we have not yet taken. Nor do we realize how we have desecrated the symbolic worlds, whose sacred images are today being used as just another way to sell materialistic fantasies. Symbols and sacred images used to be a way to connect with the divine, to make the transition from the physical world to the mystery of the soul. Yet we now use these images for personal gain, without taking any responsibility for our actions, for the rape of the sacred. There will be a price to pay if we are to redeem the symbolic world of the creative imagination, just as we have to pay a price for our own faults and failings. Redemption requires real sacrifice. Only then can we regain the dignity that belongs to us, and help to heal the wrongs we have done.  Growing up requires responsibility and is a painful process.

To reclaim our dignity and role as guardians of the planet will not be easy. But we can pray for the intercession of His mercy, knowing, according to an ancient promise, that “His mercy is greater than His justice.” There is a real reason that the ancients understood that He is a wrathful God, and made penance and sacrifice to placate Him. We may think that our science and civilization can protect us from this primal power, but the symbol of the dragon as the power of the earth is not without meaning. We have little understanding of the archetypal forces that underlie our surface lives, and of how they are all interconnected and can manifest the will of God. We can no longer afford to be ignorant or think that we can abuse the world as long as we want.

Spiritual ecology means reawakening our awareness of what is sacred in all of creation, and knowing that only if we work together with the divine in all of its manifestations can we hope to redeem what we have desecrated and destroyed through our greed and arrogance. It means to reclaim the wisdom of our ancestors who knew the sacred interconnections of life and the divine forces within it. Once again we have to relearn how to relate to the divine, how to bring an awareness of the many facets of divine oneness into our lives and prayers and meditations. We cannot afford to remain in this wasteland of separation, lost in our ego-driven arrogance. And we cannot afford to wait. We have already waited too long, ignoring the signs that are around us. Nor can we afford to think that science and technology will give us the answers we need to restore our ecological imbalance. Their ideology is born from the separation of spirit and matter, and this is what has caused the problems that are now bleeding the lifeblood of the planet. Matter is not dead, however we may treat it. It is part of a living organism like the cells in our own body. And this living organism is an embodiment of spirit. We have to bring together spirit and matter, heal the split that has wounded our world.

The world has been through many crises over the millennia, but this is the first global crisis that has been created by humanity. Whether we take responsibility for our predicament will determine our future and the future of the world. There is an ancient teaching that in times of imminent catastrophe we are given the opportunity of divine intercession; we can look towards God and pray for divine help. We are at such a moment and the soul of the world is crying out. Are we prepared to welcome back the divine and work together with the forces of creation? Are we able to claim this real empowerment? Or are we going to remain on the sidelines and watch as the politicians argue while the world continues on its present course?

We do not know what it might mean to once again work with the divine forces within creation. In the West we have long since lost touch with this heritage, even though it is buried deep in our psyche. Yet it is a simple shift of awareness to reclaim this consciousness, and in doing so we will step into the future that is being born at this moment of crisis. We will become alive in a new way as we help the world wake up from the dream that is destroying it. We will be active participants in the real ecological work that is needed.

Both incidents PROVE what has been systemically proven by stats, anecdotal evidence and most recently neuroscience.  Neuroscience has shown that our brains are wired to have ‘implicit bias’.  Bias that we carry consciously, but mostly SUBCONSCIOUSLY toward others that are different, particularly those groups that carry less power in society– people of colour; gay, lesbian, bi-sexual  people; people with disabilities; women etc.

Studies show that unless we’re aware  that we carry this subconscious bias, it DOES play out in our actions.  We hire, promote, socialize, forgive and generally favour those most like ourselves. 

What this means is that we need develop our awareness of our own bias… before it negatively impacts our actions.  And more importantly, our organizations and institutions need to develop fierce and compassionate checks and balances so we can hold each other accountable. People are literally dying because of racial profiling. 

Let’s get past the navel-gazing debate of “does racial profiling really exist?” into  acknowledging it’s part of how we’re all wired to be.  We need to take it as the norm, and develop practices and processes to help each other UNLEARN.  We need to hold the tension of creating accountability for systemically reinforced racist behaviour and its horrible consequences and to balance that with compassion because everyone of us carries bias.  It’s not an easy tension to hold… but at least it’s not avoiding reality.

Although these leaders reached the top in a variety of ways, they do share one trait: they know that to become an effective leader—you must know yourself and how to play to your strengths and manage your weaknesses.
In more than 40 years of research on leadership, the Gallup Organization has found that what distinguishes the best leaders is their ability to focus on what they do well.

“Good leaders really know where they can shine and excel, and so they position themselves to do whatever that is more often,” explains Jacqueline Merritt, senior leadership consultant at Gallup.

Developing leadership skills is an ongoing, often complicated process. Here are three key skill areas to focus on.

•    Managing Conflict
Managing conflict head-on is one characteristic of a good leader, says Eric Herzog, a national expert on leadership development and author of the book Future Leaders. “No one approach to managing conflict will work. You need a variety of approaches.”

Drawing on 30 years of experience in leadership and human resource development, Herzog’s Los Angeles–based company, Quest Consulting, teaches hundreds of executives what it takes to be a great leader.

One aspect of managing conflict is being able to admit mistakes, Herzog says. “People try to cover over mistakes, but usually it doesn’t work very well. Great leaders realize we’re not perfect and that we make mistakes. We must admit them, and figure out how to respond and fix them.”

•    Communicating Effectively
Another key component of great leadership, says Herzog, is knowing yourself and your audience, and being able to tailor messages accordingly. Good communication is critical, he says.

Aon Corporation’s Gregg says she spends a lot of her time thinking about how to communicate effectively to the company’s 45,000 employees at 120 offices worldwide. “You have to consider what the messages are, how they are being received by the employees, what feedback they are giving us, and how we need to modify the message to make it more effective.”
Wright calls it ‘transmitting at the right frequency.’

“Communication is the lifeblood of being a leader. You have to recognize the different ways that people communicate, and your responsibility is to try multiple frequencies so that the message is received,” she says.

Communicating effectively can be subtle. A leader needs to be able to read verbal and nonverbal cues and use a communication style that translates well for every audience. For example, Cheryl Pearson-McNeil, senior vice president of communications and community affairs at the Nielsen Company, an African American, adjusts her voice if necessary, especially in contentious situations.

“It’s important to speak up and make sure you’re being understood,” she said. “If you’re a woman of color—or a women period—you might need to soften your voice and tone. Try to keep the emotion out of it. Deliver the message firmly but softly. You don’t want the message to get misconstrued or give any perception that you’re an angry black woman.”

•    Finding mentors

It may seem counterintuitive, but great leaders need great mentors. For multicultural women, however, finding a mentor can be a challenge. According to Catalyst, having women, particularly other African American women, in their networks was positively tied to top promotion rates for African American women. Yet, lack of access to networks of influential colleagues underlies all major barriers to advancement identified by women of color, the Catalyst study said.

“Having a good mentor is important to help you learn how to respond to a challenge,” says Herzog, who encourages women to find mentors either inside or outside the organization.

Pamela Bush-Davis, founder and CEO of Advantage Claims Recovery Group Inc., a nationally recognized medical claims recovery group, says that finding mentors along the way has been difficult. “In lieu of that, I’ve done research, read books, and studied some of the great leaders to keep me motivated,” she says.

IBM’s Burton says, “Having role models that look like you is an inspiration. You can have an open dialogue or a safe place to go.” Burton has found some mentors within IBM, which has made a strong commitment to developing diversity, including promoting mentorships.

“Leadership is about relationships with people, whether mentoring others or building one’s constituency,” Merritt explains. “A leader’s responsibility is to create that culture where relationships can happen, where people feel connected enough to one another that they want to move in the direction that the leader sets.”

The more multicultural women who develop these skills—conflict resolution, effective communication, and mentorship opportunities—the greater the opportunities there will be for women of color in the boardroom.  

Text by: Catherine Crawley, PhD, the founder of Crawley Communications & Research, which provides editorial content and research services to individuals and corporations. Visit her website at www.crawleycommunications.com

truth

We are invited, over and over again in our lives, to make a choice, THE choice really: to be silent and retreat or to speak out and risk vulnerability.  One is definitely safer, sanctioned at every level of our societal relationships, structures and processes.  And yet, the other is what is needed to set us free– free of fear that gradually imprisons us in ever smaller realms of possibility.

 It seems many of us live in a continuous spin-cycle of fear, manifesting something like this:

 -“I can’t say THAT to my father, mother, boss, co-worker, friend”

-‘”Saying this will mean that I’ll lose my job, my relationship, or some other form of security”

-“I don’t have the time or energy to have this conversation”

 And on and on.  We spend much more time trying to manage the ‘undiscussables’ in our lives than it would take to address them.  Speaking the truth is not about confrontation.  It is not about trying to fix someone or something, or trying to control the outcome.  The true warrior of the Spirit knows they can only speak what is honest for themselves and that whatever occurs afterwards is the ‘right’ thing.  

They let life unfold itself through them.

 YES, people will have a reaction.  It might mean losing a contract, a relationship, a promotion in the short term.  However, it builds a sense of deep integrity that draws deeper trust from others, infinitely ‘better’ opportunities in the long-term, and allows one to live life with greater ease and flow.

 Does this mean speaking everything that comes into our minds?  God no!  It means being attuned for that inner voice, that felt sensation, that occurs in certain moments letting us know “you’re out of integrity—you’re doing something that is not true for you.”  Our responsibility is to listen to this voice and come back into alignment:

 –“Sorry, I can’t change the content for this speech.  I feel this is what needs to be spoken.”

–“What is being said is not ringing true for me.  The way I really feel about this is…”

–“That really makes me angry to hear.”

–“I won’t be able to come to the event next week.”

“No.”  “Yes!” What is your truth?  Do you know moment to moment what is true for you, outside of the cacophony of shoulds, and expectations that entice and distract?

 I didn’t really start listening to this deeper part of myself until I was 28 years of age.  It took losing my chosen career path, losing a love relationship and hitting a physical and emotional health crisis to tell me that ‘maybe’ my life was out of alignment.  I was spurned by body breakdown, dreams and deeper ways of knowing to investigate some ‘other’ way to live.  It has been a process of many years to unlearn my tendency to override my truth in a desire to please people, rescue them and manage situations so that they ‘go well’.  Other people carry out the flipside of this pattern by ignoring their truth through avoidance, hiding and pretending everything is okay.  One is an active override, the other passive.

Neither are authentic choices.  Both are habits, familiar pattens of behaviour that don’t serve us, others or the situation.  Living in our truth means listening deeply for what THIS moment, THIS relationship, THIS context calls for. It is ALWAYS different.  And never without vulnerability, because speaking our truth means revealing what is true in our hearts.  Speaking our truth requires the courage to be vulnerable.

Faith image

I feel that I am in the presence of truth.  Reading the book “Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership” by Joseph Jaworski.  The words bring me home to myself, to what I intuitively feel to be true about the nature of the universe, about creating meaningful change, about transformative leadership.

I am struck by the reminder that once we shift our internal blocks and patterns to seeing that we are all interconnected at a deep level, the implicit intelligence of the universe starts to manifest itself through us more strongly.  What does this mean?  It means that we are called to our highest potential, to carry out what we are truly here to do.  And if means that doors open, the right people appear, obstacles are magically shifted, to help us carry forth this vision.  It requires a deep faith. 

I have been challenged to return to this truth over and over in the last decade of my life.  It has become ever clearer to me that I can live in fear… fear of not having enough income, fear of not having enough work, fear of not making a difference, fear of not being good enough, fear of being invisible… fear of not being loved.

Or I can choose to have faith.  To have faith in the idea that like everyone here, I am here for a purpose.  Faith that I will be guided more deeply into this purpose.  Faith that without pushing, or controlling, what I need will be there to help me.  Faith that I am not alone, that I am deeply held in the web of life around me.

 I felt a sense of this growing up, but the faith was mediated by a white Jesus, and through a strict religious doctrine.  That faith didn’t feel expansive, it didn’t feel inclusive. In fact, it was crushed when at 19 my roommate, and best friend, came out of the closet and my church told me I could like him but not condone his behaviour.  That there had to be limits to my love.  That here was proof that he was different, “other”, than me.  That was the end of that faith for me.

Embedded in this new kind of faith is synchronicity, the “meaningful coincidence of 2 or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved” (Jung).  A week ago I had a session with a native elder.  It was held at a home in east Toronto.  I happened to arrive accidentally half an hour early for my session (a miracle in itself for someone with a gift for constant tardiness!).  And I walked in at the same time as an older woman, with white hair and wise crinkly eyes.  Turns out she is someone who I had twice been told I should contact in the previous fortnight, by two separate people in my life!

I also felt a deep resonance stepping into one of the most beautiful spaces I’ve ever been in in my life.  Light pouring in, completely open space, Persian type rugs, altar and masks on the wall… I felt held and awed by the beauty.  In my half an hour waiting period, I kept thinking, “whoever owns this space, I need to meet.”  Sure enough, after my session the owners happened to return earlier than expected.  As we sat and chatted, we discovered all kinds of overlap and connection in terms of work and interests, people and places.  I felt buoyed, and inspired, unsure of why we had entered each others lives, but sure that there was a reason.  We have dinner scheduled together for May 7^th… 

And lastly, as I was leaving, I ran into a woman who was in my Shiatsu practitioner course who I haven’t seen for 2 years!  Two hours of time, connections and re-connections that felt deeply meant to be.

My new kind of faith… I am exercising it like a muscle.  

From www.psychokhemia.com/

You may think you know how to breathe. However, drawing on over twenty years of study and research into breathwork and body-centered therapies—as well as working with thousands of people worldwide—for all practical purposes we can freely say that everybody breathes inhibitedly.

Discover how breathing can free you from past pain and release your full energy and ability. Learn how to plug into the inexhaustible reservoir of happiness and power hidden deep within you, and draw from it unceasingly.

If life feels dumb or dull

Based on yogic teachings thousands of years old, Conscious Connected Breathing improves physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being, and has now been proven effective by modern medical science. Conscious Connected Breathing purifies not only the body and the energy channels of the body, but the heart and the mind as well. If life feels dumb, or dull, that’XXs because the body, heart and mind aren’t pure.

Crisis = danger + opportunity

Conscious Connected Breathing increases energy flow in the body and induces relaxation, which in turn release tension and negative feelings, as well as drive out toxins, impurities and traumas from the body and mind. As a result, we go through a range of bodily sensations, emotions and memories.

Sooner or later, however, something or other will come up to make us feel like not breathing. Sometimes we don’t want to breathe anymore. We get tired of breathing over and over again. At other times we feel we can’t get through it. We want to quit. (A lot of people get stuck at this point.) Yet, this is exactly the time to hang on, stay the course, and allow the purification to occur. Simply continue breathing and endure the duration of the crisis (be it a body, an emotional, or a mental crisis), even when it seems to you that it’ll do you no good to do so. Above all, don’t try and come up with some special solutions to do something else to solve it. If this breathing is strong enough to bring on a crisis, it sure is strong enough to get you through that crisis. Even when it gets rough, or intolerable, keep on breathing and relaxing, just go with the breath, and after awhile the crisis will pass away.

What you resist persists

Pain. Try to look the other way, pretend it’s not there, and it barks its head off. Try to make it go away, and you can’t get rid of it. Fight it, and it hurts like hell. Once you understand this, you relax.

Don’t try to stop or remove the symptoms. You don’t need to make them right, but at least don’t make them wrong. Relax into them and go on breathing. You know you’re resisting it because you’re not feeling it. The fastest (and most painless) way to get past this autonomic resistance is to breathe through it without trying to get rid of it. Open to the pain (or whatever the pattern of energy might be at the moment) and breathe through it. Breathe through it, but don’t push through it. Your breathing should flow.

Perceive exactly where and what you’re feeling. Breathe right into that place. Let yourself feel it completely. Let go and feel it all. Keep breathing, and the pain will go away. That’s how one converts suffering into pure joy. ‘Cause it’s not our experiences that cause our suffering; it’s our resistance to those experiences. Our resistance makes us suffer. And to make matters worse, “what you resist persists.” So be aware in every last detail of everything that you’re experiencing. Allow what is there—physically, mentally and emotionally. Don’t analyze it. Don’t try to make sense of it. Rather, accept and experience fully whatever comes up during the breathing.

We get a mixed response from forcing and resisting. We get some pleasure and some pain. There’s this special thing about surrendering to what is so in our experience—we get only pleasure.

Freeing the life energy

The magic of breathing is that it is both energizing and relaxing at the same time. We breathe to free the life energy in the body, feelings and mind. As we breathe longer, the respiratory rhythm and pattern change frequently, and the energy gets more active and intense. There is a tremendous buildup of energy and emotion. By letting go in breathing, this released energy is transformed. The breathing ends slowly, bringing peace and tranquility, and very often bliss. Eventually, clarity, insight and wisdom will come to you.

Conscious Connected Breathing loosens the grip of the will over the Divine Energy in the body, causing rapid evolution. Later in meditation, the connected, circular breathing occurs spontaneously. Then one can fully understand and appreciate the significance of breathing. Finally, the sexual energy gets transformed into the pure love energy.

Breathing as medicine

Birth trauma, hurts, negative thoughts and feelings, emotional stress and anxiety, smoking, breathing bad air, etc.—they all inhibit and traumatize our breathing, giving rise in turn to various psychosomatic disorders. Conscious Connected Breathing repairs our breathing, and the forceful energy flow heals, even in a short time, many physical, emotional and mental illnesses. The repressed, unconscious material—that drives people into neurotic behavior—is brought into conscious awareness and integrated. Incidentally, Conscious Connected Breathing enhances the effectiveness of any growth practice one might be doing.

It’s an honour for me to be here tonight- an opportunity to honour Judy’s new book and the new forms of leadership she lays out in it.

I consider myself an activist, no longer at the frontlines, but I was for many years.
I played a major role in the anti-corporate globalization movement for about a decade, organizing at national, regional and local levels. I spearheaded a national campaign against the MAI and again against the WTO. I attended every major protest in North America from Seattle in 1999 to Quebec city in 2001.

It’s this moment I want to reference, the same place Judy starts her book in. I want to recall, as some of you in this room might, being in Quebec city in April of 2001. The protest in Quebec city against the FTAA was the largest protest in Canada in at least a half century. Over a 100, 000 people flooded the streets.

There, protesters encountered a massive onslaught of police brutality through tear gas, rubber bullets, and aggressive arrests that continued straight through a 2 day period and beyond. Stats say police shot an average of one tear gas canister into mostly peaceful crowds an average of every 2min. over a 48 hour period.

I remember it being day 2 or 3, being trapped in an alleyway at one point, trying to protect younger protestors from the riot police advancing and being doused in tear gas, their batons lifted above my head, trying not to panic as I couldn’t breath and couldn’t see in the midst of all the chaos. Then, desperately, reaching the end of the alleyway and collapsing, my body starting to heave with sobs, tears from my gut… releasing not just my own sadness and rage but the overwhelming grief, anger and helplessness so many of us felt in that moment.

And here is where judy’s book comes in to offer the missing piece, which has also become my work through Anima Leadership: how do we create better models and structures in our social change work that allow us to feel supported, to support one another and to be sustainable in this work?

After that moment in Quebec city– the culmination of all the moments I’d experienced being on the frontlines up to that point– I was HURTING. I looked around at my friends and colleagues active in the movement across Canada and I felt overwhelmed at the brokenness and despair felt by many. As a community of change-makers we were struggling en masse with trauma.

And because we did not have the language, the skills, the tools, the structures to be able to deal with what we had faced and were facing, we lost out. I still feel anger and underneath that, sadness, that I did not receive the support I needed from my community at that time. I feel angry that I saw so many other leaders struggling on their own… isolated, burnt out, physically sick, or just despairing. And I mostly feel angry that the forces were up against—the incredible structures of power represented in state, police and economic institutions, won for the moment. Our movement collapsed soon after Quebec city in the face of Sept. 11 for many reasons, a foundational one being that we simply were not able to create alternate structures of power based on healthy relationships to one another.

I use the anti-corporate globalization movement as an example… but I believe the trauma we experienced in the face of coming up against incredibly powerful structures is common to what many face working for change- and I’ve seen it through Anima, working across different sectors –whether in public instutiions, the environmental movement, indigenous communities, anti-poverty activism, social workesr, social entrepeneurs…. We are already moving against the current. That in itself can be hard.
And we are naming and working often with human suffering, inequity, horrors, abuse, rather than making the easier a choice to ignore or turn away. That is hard.
And then often we also have our own baggage.

For all these reasons, as leaders for change we need a more solid foundation to work from. We need to build our house on the rocks of emotional awareness, empathy, purpose, self-care and fundamentally our RELATIONSHIPS to one another– rather than the sands of urgency, matyrdom, reaction, blame and ego-driven activism. We need to re-unite our emotional and spiritual selves with our political selves.

As transformation leaders, we need to be as skilled in the inner realms as the outer, need to be as much self-aware as we are good at strategy, as compassionate as we are critical. This is not an easy path. Creating inner change can sometimes, often, be harder than creating external change. And here is where our real power lies.

Before I end, I want to finish by saying on a personal note as a fellow social change agent, a thank you to you Judy for writing this book. And “I love you”- you’ve done a lot for the left movement in Canada, and for me.