How To Play Your Cards Right
All posts by Shirley
How To Design The Life You Love
The Power of Forgiveness
Want Peace? Try Forgiveness
“The magic didn’t happen to him. The magic happened to me.”
Amazingly, these were the words of abuse-victim Ben Bosinger after letting go of years of resentment toward his father.
So what happened?
One day, fed up with pain he’d been carrying around for so long, he paid a visit to his dad. The “magic” occurred while they were looking at Ben’s motorcycle in the driveway.
“In that instant, when we both were bent down looking at that greasy engine, side by side, I forgave him,” he recalled.
He added: “It was something bigger than me that made me forgive him.”
This really resonated with me, based on what I know from a book key to my own spiritual practice — that “the divine energy of Spirit” helps us progress and see things anew.
Ben’s story is from a different book — it’s just one of the many moving stories in the Book of Forgiving, recently published by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and daughter Mpho Tutu. They’re certainly qualified to discuss the subject. Besides experiencing the everyday hurts of the injustice of apartheid, they also had other struggles. He suffered from an abusive father, and she and her family experienced the devastating murder of their beloved nanny.
In humility the Tutus disclose how they have to continually learn about forgiveness, sometimes in dramatic ways. But they also make it clear that when we’ve been wronged we can use these opportunities to transform ourselves by changing how we think about others.
“No one is bad, and none among us should be defined as the sum total of our worst actions,” they said.
This is another idea I’m familiar with from my own spiritual practice, but I didn’t find it easy to carry out during a recent experience.
I’d just sat down in a cafe next to two young guys. At first, I didn’t mind hearing their pleasant conversation, but out of the blue they started talking about women in a derogatory way. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, “How can these American, hipster guys feel it’s ok to even think like this, let alone voice it so publicly?”
I was angry about the injustice of their ideas, and three things went through my head. First, I considered saying something. Then I realized confrontation probably wouldn’t make things any better. Finally, I wondered if I could actually love and forgive them.
Led by this deeper desire, I leaned back in my chair, and a few lines from a friend’s song came to mind: “Where there is hatred, let me sew love. Where there is injury, pardon.”
This helped me quiet the reactive feelings of self-justification and get on with more solution oriented thinking. As the Tutus said, I knew I needed to see these weren’t bad people, but they’d been taken in by bad ideas. From my own practice, I knew there was a deeper, wiser point of view of who they were — so much more to what really defines each of us than our worst actions.
“Material sense does not unfold the facts of existence; but spiritual sense lifts human consciousness into eternal Truth,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy, my favorite author on how best to connect with that “something bigger than me”.
As I yearned for this even deeper view, and contemplated the divine source of that presence of good in each of us, I felt a kind of mental and emotional shift. My anger and feelings of injustice drained and I suddenly thought: “Their sense of God must be very small, if that’s how they’re thinking.”
My heart went out to them. It occurred to me these guys had probably just been taught a different worldview than mine.
In the larger scheme of things, this was a modest spiritual awakening. But the revised view gave me a palpable sense of peace, which had seemed impossible just minutes earlier.
In their book, the Tutus refer to Dr. Fred Luskin, the Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects, who has seen the effects of forgiveness on health. In an interview, Luskin said: “There are billions of people telling themselves that somebody was a real [jerk] all day long. That’s really easy for human beings to do. That’s swimming with the stream. To create peace, you need to swim against the stream sometimes, in fact, often.”
Indeed, it can be hard to “swim against the stream” of our reactions to injustice. But heading down the path of forgiveness can be as simple as knowing we each have this spiritual sense that can identify the good that’s present even where it seems far from obvious.
As we do that, we shouldn’t be surprised if we have our own Ben Bosinger moment and feel the joy of freedom that can overtake us when forgiveness takes root in our lives.
Sharon McElroy writes about health and spirituality. She practices Christian Science healing, and works in media relations.
Marva Allen
Marva Allen is a noted book expert and author of two acclaimed books, Protegee (1993) and Camouflage (2000) the sequel. Her latest novel, If I Should Die Tonight … will be published by Simon and Schuster in the Fall of 2016. Allen has been the “go to” person for books for NPR, NBC and is the on-air book contributor and commentator for Arise TV.
As a partner in the imprint Open Lens, she is the publisher of the acclaimed Makeda from Randall Robinson, The Roving Tree from Haitian author Elsie Agustave, and has expertise on all sides of the publishing industry.
She has been instrumental in guiding the success of many authors’ books, creating one of-a-kind events and as former co-owner of Hue-man bookstore, hosted major events for Toni Morrison, President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Maya Angelou, Steve Harvey, Alicia Keys, Jill Scott, Tyler Perry, Janet Jackson, Dwayne Wade and a host of other celebrity authors.
She is a graduate of The University of Michigan.
How To Improve Your Mood – Dance!
How To Improve Your Mood – Dance!
Samuel Salazar
The one-of-a-kind class will be lead by the great Venezuelan dance master, Samuel Salazar. Sam is a Zumba Fitness instructor at the world renowned ALVIN AILEY Dance Center in New York City. His classes are attended by numerous celebrities including Beyonce Knowles and her sister Solange.
He travels the world presenting Zumba Fitness Master Classes and Jam Sessions to Zumba Instructors. In the summer of 2012 Sam was invited as a guest instructor to lead the warm-up for the Guinness Book of World Record’s largest Zumba Fitness class in Budapest, Hungary. The class broke the world record with an amazing 1750 participants.
He has numerous exercise certifications and Zumba qualifications and has made appearances on The View, Today Show, and CBS News and has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Elle and Seventeen magazines. Sam is involved in annual fund-raising events for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and was greatly honored to be invited by the White House to teach a series of Zumbatomic classes during Michelle Obama’s ‘Wordwide Day of Play.’
POLLY YOUNG-EISENDRATH, Ph.D.,
The workshop will be lead by POLLY YOUNG-EISENDRATH, Ph.D., author of 15 books, including The Self-Esteem Trap, The Resilient Spirit, and Women and Desire. Polly is also a Jungian analyst, psychologist, and clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont. She is a frequent speaker and facilitator at conferences, a teacher of mindfulness, and maintains a clinical and consulting practice in central Vermont.
Her most recent book, The Present Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Discovery is an unsentimental meditation on the healing power of love in the face of early onset Alzheimer’s that attempts to answer the question “What is love, anyway?”
Polly is dedicated to an interpersonally sustainable and ecologically sane world in which we recognize, moment-by-moment, that we are webbed in a network of relationships and conditions that require compassion and kindness for ourselves and others if we are to become confident about our lives.
How To Free The Writer In You
How To Free The Writer In You
Everything in your life, from the mundane to the extraordinary, is a story waiting to be told. Many of us want to leave behind a record of our lives that we were here. Yes, our footprint.
In this memorable workshop, you will discover your own unique and powerful story. We will use the memoir form of writing to encourage you to live out loud and to help you comprehend the value of your life. “If you are not afraid of the voices in you, you will not fear the critics outside you,” so says Natalie Goldberg. Writing can let you hear your voice above the critics.
Did you know that there were health benefits to writing? There is recent evidence to support the claim that increased intellectual activity and brain stimulation i.e. recording one’s memories can lower the individual risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Through fun exercises, practical techniques and group discussion, this insightful, fun and practical workshop, will help you uncover the writer hiding in you. You'll get tips, skills and encouragement in this powerful workshop. You will also find your authentic voice, along with a way to express it. And you’ll be surprised at how great a writer you can become.
We will also share how to become a published writer. You’ll learn all about the publishing industry from writing a query letter to finding a publisher.
Bring your favorite pen and a writing journal. All levels welcome.
“I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.” - Natalie Goldberg
HOW TO LIVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE
HOW TO LIVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE
SELF AWARENESS 101: The Path To Fulfillment & Ease
What constitutes a worthwhile, joyful and fulfilling life?
For each person the answer will be different, since there is no standard path to a calm, peaceful, and joyous life; everyone's path is different. Yet, a peaceful, calm, joyful and fulfilled life is what we all seek and yearn for.
Joy is not something that can be pursued and it's also not a permanent state of chirpiness. It ebbs and flows with periods of great pain and suffering. This acceptance of the impermanence of joy is one of the keys to a life of fulfillment and ease.
Plus, there is an advantage to being joyful. Studies have shown that when people are joyful and at peace they are more effective at work and also relate better to their coworkers and families. Happiness is the "key to fast tracking our professional and personal success." A meta-analysis of 225 academic studies, found that "happy employees, have on average, 31% higher productivity; their sales are 37% higher; and their creativity is three times higher."
This workshop is designed for ALL individuals who believe there is value in investing in themselves - that they are worth it - and for those who yearn to be more joyful, more fulfilled and more peaceful in their lives at work and at home. Join us as we share two major secrets, insights and a methodology for the path to joy, personal mastery and self-respect through exercises, practices and tools.
You will learn:
- About Self Awareness
- About Self Acceptance
- About Self-Love ... the "kind that does not shrink from the needy and incomplete parts of the self, but accepts those with humility, interest and curiosity"
- That personal mastery is the primary component of achieving a life worth living
"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power." -Lao Tzu
How To Find The Path To True Love
How To Find The Path To True Love
In this workshop, we will draw on our personal experiences and some of Polly’s favorite poetry to respond to the question: What is love, anyway? Differentiating love from desire, romance, attachment bonds, and idealization, we have a clearer sense of whether we are truly loving our partners, children, parents and friends or whether we are in an unconscious identification or enmeshment that results in one of us feeling used, cheated or erased.
Through mindfulness exercises and “virtual dreaming,” we will explore our inner world of love, loss and discovery in reading and writing together.
"Polly Young-Eisendrath illuminates love as a path—not a goal—of self and mutual discovery that goes to the very heart of our nature." -Barry Magid
We need to dance … dancing is food for the soul, ‘it’s silent poetry.’
Studies show that dancing is not only good for your physical health it also has an impact on your emotional center and generally enhances your mood and mental well-being when you move your body.
Specifically there are three elements in dancing that will improve your mind and body health:
When you engage in things that are social, physical and cognitive you will improve your brain. A recent study led by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine revealed that dancing reduced stress, depression, the risk of dementia and increases serotonin, energy, flexibility, strength balance and endurance.
In addition to the health benefits…dancing is so much fun….you feel so good after! So grab a friend and COME OUT AND PLAY … COME MOVE YOUR BODY, improve your mind and dance away your worries! This ZUMBA dance class promises to give you a mood boost, increase your vigor and make you happy.
We will do dances that are fun and can be done by anyone… remember, everyone can dance. Whether you’re a total dance novice or an experienced mover, you’ll learn new Zumba, Indian and Hip-Hop dance moves. Above all, we want to make sure you have major fun!
The one-of-a-kind class will be lead by the great Venezuelan dance master, Samuel Salazar. Sam is a Zumba Fitness instructor at the world renowned ALVIN AILEY Dance Center in New York City. His classes are attended by numerous celebrities including Beyonce Knowles and her sister Solange.
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” – Freidrich Nietzsche