Conversation

The need to question and contemplate and continually re-evaluate is where the change and enlightening revelation come from. Everyday.

Communication about how we feel, why we choose what we do and what it all means: this is the means to healing and changing the social, economic, environmental imbalances all around us. It all begins and ends with self-reflection and sharing, this is real community building.

I like this: communi-ty communi-cation. They both have the same Latin roots “com-mun” or “cum” meaning together or with each other, and “munus” meaning gift or offerings. Very cool.

“Resolution begins within the Self”, or so Thich Nhat Hanh aptly reminds us. This begins with dialogue. With ourselves, with each other.

I focus on this type of dialogue when I work with clients. If you have ever had a session with me, this is the starting point: beginning the dialogue with yourself, what is your body communicating to you, right now? Take some time with your breath and LISTEN.

So a great place to start and, easy to say, but do we do it? Well of course not all the time! Human beings such as we are, but I want to try and I want to surround myself with folks who want this as well. Once we start getting to know ourselves so to speak, on a fairly regular basis, it becomes much easier to begin sharing, dialoguing with each other.

This is the sustainable platform from which we plunge deep into the choices we make everyday. Why sustainable? I think it is because we can not merely claim ourselves “holistic” “healthy” “eco-friendly” “green” “ethical” “yogic minded”. For me it has to run deeper than this.

Just choosing an action, an exercise, a lifestyle and latching on to it, without any personal inquiry into why or how this impacts our every moment actions, makes these motions merely that: a motion, without a deeply personal thread running through. All of these “labels” by their nature require us to be constantly self-reflective and to share with others our thoughts, experiences, doubts, revelations, and hopefully our willingness to evolve, to adapt.

Here are some folks who I feel are inspirations:

Yoga Community Toronto. It seems so simple, the idea, let’s just get together all the amazing people in our local community who are doing amazing work already. But yet! It’s almost revelatory because it’s just not happening all that much, yet….. Just this past weekend was the Yoga Festival Toronto and to be truthful I did contemplate going but I had to resist and continue working on projects here, right in my own city, my own community, my own home, and truthfully, in my own being. This felt right to me and I think that the beauty of what the organizers of the this festival are fostering is something that we can all learn from and transpose to our own local communities. I think we really can be inspired from a distance and then act wherever we actually are. Check out their manifesto, it’s truly beautiful and inspiring.

University of the Streets Café. Have you been yet? These local events are happening all over the city, and the whole point is: yes! You guessed it: Conversation! Amazing, so simple, but yet so effective! From travel, to transition, to letting go, to storytelling, to education impact, to food issues, discussions focus on what’s affecting our lives in our community around us. Get people talking, sharing about important, current, even trendy issues and boom! Things start happening. I love it. The new semester starts up sometime in September.

More inspirations to come! What are yours? What conversation do you want to have?

So here’s my mission: Be Brave! It’s not easy to converse about things that are “difficult” or “controversial”, just like it’s not “easy” to really feel what’s going on in my body all the time, sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but I care about myself, my body, my everything, and my community, so I take the time. In the end it’s worth it.