Hosting Lessons from the Field – Dancing with Design Flow in Brazil

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

How many of us have had the opportunity to enter into hosting a day or a training (Art of Hosting style) without any design for the day, completely sensing into what is needed in the moment and fluidly dancing with five other hosts with offerings to meet what was emerging in the field moment by moment? How would you meet that invitation? Excitement? Trepidation? Both and anything in between?

It is one thing to do this on your own or with one other person as Bob Wing and I did last summer in work we’d been invited into that turned into Hosting Ceremony. It is a whole other thing to do it with a new hosting team constellation of six of us on the third and last day of working together – in this case for the first Warrior of the Heart training completed in Brazil in January 2012.

Warrior of the Heart is the work of Toke Moeller and Bob Wing coming out of many opportunities they had to jam together combining Art of Hosting and Aikido practices and principles. Playing together they imagined Warrior of the Heart training into being. I’d participated in a couple of Warrior of the Heart trainings – on Bowen Island in August 2010 and then at Windhorse Farm in Nova Scotia just this last October, 2011 with my 9 year old son. I’d also had the chance to work with Bob where Warrior of the Heart became a component of the Art of Hosting training we were delivering.

In September 2011, after the Art of Hosting training in Porto Alegre, Brazil that I’d been co-hosting, Thomas Ufer, Najara Thamiz and I sat down with Jose Bueno and crafted an invitation to Bob and Toke to bring Warrior of the Heart to Brazil for the first time to seed the field for more and build the ground for the amazing expansion of the Art of Hosting and social change movements happening there.

Working with a larger hosting team for a training the two of them were used to offering on their own invited Bob and Toke to some new learning edges. They invited the rest of us to go there right along with them. There was already a huge reservoir of trust in our hosting field even before we began. We built on it during our preparation and hosting time together. On our last day, it was Toke who invited us into the dance of hosting together without an agreed to advance plan.

I felt in me my own skepticism at the invitation which arrived after morning practice, before breakfast, where we had actually invoked this flow already. I really wasn’t sure how it would work and whether we would all find our own place to play in this day – but I was willing to step into the challenge – because with this team there was nothing to lose and lots to gain.

As the six of us stood in a tight circle on the stone patio outside the training building, a staff was in the centre with the challenge of who would take it first and offer something to the group to begin our day. Silence. A deep collective breath or two. I could feel the tremble in me. Another breath and then I reached for the staff.

I had been preparing during our time together to do a teach with the sword – in this case the wooden representation of the sword – a bokken. Bob had been coaching me. Perhaps because I was preparing to step into the challenge of a teach on something I was still very much learning myself, I had taken Bob’s feedback and coaching in in a whole new way, embodying the teaching and the sword movements with more fluidity and confidence than I ever remembered feeling. I had been preparing for a teach and this was apparently the moment it would be offered.

I started the teach – the four directions – and forgot how to do the step to turn from one direction to another. Without being hard on myself, I asked Bob to step in and help — and he did because he had my back. All six of us had each other’s backs and none of us needed to shine or take up too much space and yet we were all invited to offer our brilliance when we felt the call.

It was the beginning of a rich dance that included all six of us throughout the day. The experience was playful and fun and ended with a touching and powerful ceremony.

Raising the Sword in the Warrior of the Heart (Brazil 2012) Closing Circle

The willingness to let go of control and design flowed into the Brazil Stewards Gathering that followed the Warrior of the Heart – in its own way and to its own degree because, of course, the team and the circumstances were different. But the fluidity of the dance was just as hesitant and joyful in its own way.

I’ve been reflecting on what makes this kind of dance possible? One is definitely trust in the individuals and the collective of the team – knowing that each individual is there to serve the good of the whole and with no need to shine on an individual basis – although, as I mentioned above, of course each person does shine because of the gifts they have to offer in service of the whole.

A sense of knowing when what I have to offer as an individual is exactly what is needed now. This is a complete dance with the subtle energies, with intuitive capacity. The courage to offer it when it is called. A certain level of trust or confidence in my own skills and abilities. A willingness to let other people shine in their mastery or even in their apprenticeship.

It takes a certain level of maturity in each individual, the team and even in the field.

Would I want to completely free flow it every time? I don’t think so. Every situation requires us to be tuned into what is wanting and needing to happen. Different situations will call out different things. And many situations invite a free flowing of design and offerings to different degrees. I and we are already practiced with working with emergence. Practicing to this degree honed my skill and my sensing capacity and invited me into new levels of mastery. It is embodied in a new way. It will always be with me – and with each of us.

Having had the opportunity to host immediately after this experience, I know it’s in me in a new way and for that I am grateful. Looking forward to the next opportunity to dance in the ultimate emergent design – and to all the other variations of that that will show up along the way. Thanks Toke for the invitation and to Thomas, Narjara, Jose and Bob for being willing to dance the beautiful dance that shifted the shape of my hosting experience to new depth.

Hosting Lessons from the Field – Inviting Innovators and Pioneers in Health Care

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

It is just the beginning of 2012 and already the year has been rich in hosting lessons from the field, diving deep into new levels of awareness around hosting subtleties. It began in Utah early in the month, hosting Healthier Health Care Systems Now with Tenneson Woolf, Steve Ryman and Marc Parnes.

Marc Parnes

Marc, who is a physician, gynaecologist and host from Columbus Ohio, started us off on day 2 with a story intended to set the tone and challenge of the day. He told of what was to be a routine surgery he was doing on a woman. When he opened her up and looked inside, what he saw not only surprised him, it alarmed him. Things that were not supposed to be stuck together were. He could not see the path for the surgery. He was not able to see his way. He did not know how to proceed with the surgery as he stared at this jumble of internal organs.

All eyes were on him as he then he stood up in our circle. We could feel the anxiety of that moment. Standing there, Marc planted his feet shoulder width apart, just like he did on the day of the surgery, to ground himself. As he closed his eyes, he described doing exactly this as he stood beside the woman on his operating table. Then, with his eyes closed, he reached into the woman and began to feel his way around, searching with his hands for the openings he could not see with his eyes.

When he finished, he knew what to do. He opened his eyes. He could now calmly begin the surgery, having expanded his vision of what was possible by “seeing” with other senses. The surgery was successful.

There was a collective sigh of relief in our circle.

We began to reflect on what Marc’s story had to do with innovation in health care, what it had to do with hosting.

After coming through the first day, we checked in as a host team and invited the voices of others who showed up to participate in the design process. We tracked our day around purpose and intention. We felt good about the design and flow of the day and we felt we had challenged people beautifully in our opening circle on day 1 by asking them to speak to the pioneer and innovator inside of them that had responded to the invitation, but not to speak too deeply to their work, promising that would come later. We sensed that though the day had been good, something was missing. With reflection, we realized we were still on the ground of old territory and familiar conversation, not the new conversations we had invited people into.

The invitation was to be in a different conversation about health care. The challenge for this group was to move into what would be a new conversation for each of them. This amazing group of individuals carry in them irrepressible dreams for healthcare systems that thrive; for simplicity that doesn’t deny the complexity, yet responds well to it. They continue to have high hopes for healthier healthcare despite having been in many, many conversations about shifting the systems within which they work and play. Those who responded to the HHS call were already innovators and pioneers in health care. Maybe the new conversation was not a collective conversation about a new global vision about health care but was about individual systems of influence and what was at the edges of their own learning that might be new territory.

Our challenge, as a hosting team, we realized, was in making sure we really did travel to new territory – not an easy challenge given the experience of the people who came.

We continually scanned what we knew that could invite people into new territory. We brought play into our process – a beautifully renewed learning edge. Collaborative play, allowing us to see and experience our learning beyond the cognitive or intellect. Then, through reflection, seeing our patterns in work and relationship in whole new ways. Allowing inspiration to enter in.

At the end of day two, despite traveling much ground in the day, there was still a sense of restlessness in our hosting team that took awhile to fully sense into. Something edgy. Something still not quite arrived at.

Checking in as a host team and, like the day before, with others interested in our design process, we recognized that we were happy with our design and the flow of the two days. We briefly wondered if we should be satisfied with where we were and consider how to enter and close our last day well. Yet there was something we still had not quite arrived at. Something about the new conversation we hadn’t quite dug into.

We reflected on what we knew from our Art of Hosting experiences that would push the edges of where we were. If we were looking for a groan zone or acupuncture point in our process, normally we would look to a point in day two. But this timing did not show up in day two. Were we willing to push our own learning and hosting to bring in something even more edgy in the morning of day three?

We knew we would not get to where we wanted to go through another conversational or intellectual process. We decided to invite this group of physicians, health care administrators and others into a guided visualization process, to invite them to explore their own future journey in healthier health care now. Following the visualization, we invited them into drawing or illustrating some representation of their experience in the visualization process, followed by a conversation with a partner to really dive into this experience in depth.

The experience was intense and provocative. It shifted the shape of some individuals. It shifted the shape of our gathering. It broke the pattern of the old and invited a new pattern. The World Cafe that followed was amazing. It was sparky. Ideas flowed quickly. There was a new quality that had entered into our space.

Once we saw it, experienced it, we could name it. We had shifted from conversations that came from the head to conversations that now came from a deeper place. The conversations were now embodied. People began to look at their own path and their own systems of influence rather than at points of the system too far beyond their own systems of influence to have any real impact. We were in new territory. We observed that embodiment shifted the conversation to deeper and more meaningful places.

As a hosting team we agreed to continue to push the edges of this group, knowing we still had a whole day ahead of us, even though if we had planned a visualization process, we would likely have planned it for the end of day two. But sensing where we were, knowing what we were aiming for, keeping our essential calling questions close, we pursued our purpose and intention. We continued to host potential right up to the moment of preparing to close our circle.

It isn’t over until it’s over. We know that. I have often heard it said in a hosting team. And this time we lived it fully with a trust in each other, in what we were sensing and our willingness to flow with what was there. Even as I write this, it is hard to describe the exact edge we were on or the truth of our experience. But I’ve been reflecting on it a lot. These reflections flowed into the last couple of weeks in Brazil, during Warrior of the Heart and a local Art of Hosting stewarding gathering, where we danced with flow to the most amazing degree – letting go of design to sense into what was alive and needed in any given moment. More reflections on that later.

For now, the richness of the host team learning in Utah stays with me, embodied in my own experience in the best of ways. I feel myself growing my capacity in hosting in the most delightful of ways, brought out by those I have the privilege to host with. This year has started off so rich in learning, it makes me deeply curious for what the rest of 2012 will bring.

Healthier Health Care – Now! A Little Taste of What’s Cooking

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

We wondered what would happen if we invited friends from across North America to convene in Salt Lake City, Utah around the question of Healthier Health Care Systems Now? We were amazed. We began by sharing who we are – the innovator and pioneer in us that compelled us to come to this conversation. Then we shared the exciting work we are engaged in. We talked about the “system” and discovered “it” was never A system and “it” was not about health. We moved from talking about systemic issues that felt as philosophical as we know they are real and moved into embodying the conversation, coming from a place of deep connection to ourselves, each other and the work that continues to call us in the worlds we work and travel in. The insights, themes and cool learning are just beginning to percolate for each of us. More, much more, is cooking.

It was beginning to cook before we even arrived in Salt Lake City. We discovered healthier health care was such a compelling question people went to great lengths to get there. Some initially said no and then found a way to come. Others felt the question so urgently they used vacation days and airmiles to get there. One person even crowd funded her flight.

Twenty-six of us arrived on January 11, 2012 – physicians, naturopaths, other practitioners, administrators and consultants from heath, public health, dentistry, acute and long term care from Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta, Ohio, Minnesota, Winsconsin, Illinois, Texas, Oregan, Washington and Utah. Everyone an innovator or pioneer already working diligently on shifting the shape of health care within their spheres of influence. We all brought stories of change and deep and compelling questions. We made instant connections that inspire us to go deeper and to keep at it.

This will continue to simmer and cook for quite some time to come. I will have more to share here about this conversation at the beginning of 2012, curious to see how it might grow as we convene a community of practice for those who were there, those who wanted to be and couldn’t make it and those who begin to find their way to this particular conversation in their own way.

You can find snippets of harvest on Twitter by searching #HHSUtah. Thanks to Amanda Fenton, who was with us from afar, for stepping in and compiling our tweets @Storify.

I offer here a little taste of a quick and fun harvest at the end of day 2 as we went around our circle and each of us added a line to the unfolding story of our journey together. I didn’t catch every word, but it will give you some small essence of the experience, recognizing some references are very specific to our experience, and it will have to tide you over til the next post.

“There were a bunch of hooligans in a house by the mountain. They thought of themselves as pioneers, radically re-engineering, brought together by living systems that taught them how to transfer what they are learning and experiencing into what they are doing now – open to possibility. In sharing, they saw new connections and unique opportunities. They described them as opportunities to change and blow shit up. These hooligans had so much to think about, they sat in circle, played, visualized and created on many levels a new vision of what they were yearning for – simplicity, wellness, with open heart toward the future to bring this new narrative to everyone. Envisioning systems that bring forth vision and health, letting go of the old to release into timeless universe. They pondered next action. In the middle, they went deep into the cellar to share unique fonts and forms of creativity. They came together to discuss the topic but it was more than the sum of its parts – human nature – own beauty, higher power and purpose run in each of them and each other with gratitude, although we do fear discovering in horror on FB the shaking moments, with brains exploding in chaos, guerrilla gardening and permaculture parties. But then, a pause for reflection and even more to emerge. Finished. No shame. Amazing thing, working hard to create something different.. but in the end, they were different, a community – and in their differences they found their common humanity from which to go back to the places they came renewed, reinvigorated, inspired to innovate on!”

With gratitude to all who were there, all who held the rim of this gathering from afar and specifically to my fellow hosts Tenneson Woolf, Steve Ryman and Marc Parnes for an experience that will be long remembered, in a gathering where the new narrative of health was activated, the field of innovation in health care where we meet was amplified and shifting the shape of health care in our spheres of influence has been accelerated.

Contemplating and Celebrating Turning 50!

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

2012 seems like an auspicious year to be 50 – for me anyway. For the last 3 years or so I have been saying I am almost 50, unlike some who fear that round number of age and wish they were sneaking their way backward, I find myself boldly and excitedly walking my way into it. Which makes me smile and even giggle a little bit.

From 2005 to 2009 I was in a period of great upheaval and transition. After saying repeatedly over those years I was in transition I began to wonder if that cycle would ever complete itself. Then, in 2009 on the heels of a one day vision quest in Gold Lake Colorado and then the first Shamanic Convergence in Nova Scotia, I began to sense the transition process had shifted into a more gentle unfolding process and that I had given birth to the second half of my life, complete with the articulation of a personal purpose statement: from this place of deep rootedness to my spiritual lineages, I boldly bring my healing gifts to the shifting shape of the world and the regeneration of its people. It is a statement that 2 years later still resonates deeply for me even as I grow less sure of what exactly it means.

This was also a period of time when I began to embrace gifts of awareness of the non-physical or subtle realms – and began to feel deeply embraced by non-physical entities – guides, guardians, angels. As a person who lived a very ordinary experience of the physical world up to my late 30s, this was an area I had always believed in and felt could be accessed — but by other people, certainly not by me. My journey brought teachers and mentors to me and took me to places where the existence and substance of the subtle realms and my ability to connect with them became undeniable. It has been a significant part of the rebirthing process and will be a growing part of the journey forward. A few years ago, one of my teachers said this is a time when there is a growing need for and a growing number of people who can walk with one foot in the physical world and one in the non-physical world – with greater ease, seamlessness and ordinariness.

If I gave birth to the second half of my life through that lengthy transition period, now I feel like I am beginning the Fool‘s Journey all over again, dancing the dance of possibility with time and space as a playground. In the Gateway to the Divine Tarot (my favourite at the moment), the Fool is pictured drifting high above the Earth, implying an unearthly aspect to him, with innate wisdom that lies outside the ordinary and mundane realms. The Fool is both emptiness and infinity, bringing movement, change and fresh starts. The path is waiting but the full course of it cannot be seen.

I have been experiencing a sense of anticipation as I approach 50. When I was a child, even a teenager, maybe even a young adult, 50 seemed both a long way off and old, not the launching pad for something new. I’m not sure what 50 is supposed to feel like. It is half a century after all. In the millennia of life this is such a short period of time. I don’t feel old, I feel strangely and beautifully ageless and more and more like age as a number doesn’t matter. What matters is how we approach life and journey, what we are willing and able to embrace and how well we can surrender into the greater forces lighting our path.

Maybe I don’t feel old now because, in the first half of my life, I have often felt older than my years. This was partly through taking on lots of responsibility and finding myself in leadership positions at very young ages. While not feeling old now, I do feel like an elder in some ways. Steward might be a better word. I think of it as elder in the journey – this current physical journey in the world, but also in the sense of my soul journey and the vast expanses of eras I have traveled to be here, right now in this time. To be 50 in 2012. Did I plan that?

A lot of attention has been paid to 2012 – the year the Mayan calendar ends. Some have interpreted this to mean the year the world – or civilization – ends. It may well be the end of much of what we do know or how we have lived but I doubt it is the end of the planet. Likely it is the end of age old patterns, the end of blindly bringing destruction to our ecological systems, the end of allowing only a few voices to dominate. I am of the view that the Arab spring and the Occupy Movement are manifestations of the deeper shift that is already happening in the world, the trending to a greater level of awakeness in the world. A time of returning to greater consciousness that there is far more beyond the physical vessels our spirits inhabit and far more alive in this world than just the plants and animals, just what we can physically see. Maybe it is a time when our sight and awareness will collectively expand again so we can live with a greater sense of the sacred in every place and every one – including in us.

I am aware of this journey in me and of me in this journey. I am aware of a vast array of conversations I am with people in many places in the world where this is true. Of a greater hunger for deeper dives, greater understanding, more meaningful work, love and relationship in new and deeper ways and beyond only the intimate love relationship.

Perhaps we will look back on this time in a decade or so and see what a harbinger of change it really is. I’m certain I will look back on my journey and affirm what I know and sense as I move into 50. This is a time for me to break old, limiting patterns, to step more fully into what is mine to do, to completely embrace my purposeful path and live into all that has been on my own edges for awhile. It is the year I will publish my first book, Embracing the Stranger in Me: A Journey to Open Heartedness and begin writing the second book – its companion guide.

There is such a sense of newness on my horizon of 50 and of joyous celebration. I may have unconsciously created an association between turning 50 and embracing life in the fullness of all it has to offer. I have been growing into it for sure in the last couple of years as I have discovered falling in love everyday, have found joy as the baseline of my experience rather than as the exceptional state and have stepped into more conscious awareness of the experience I am living in any given moment. I have been growing my experience of and relationship with the non-physical world and particularly my own guides, guardians and angels.

I didn’t really have a plan for my life up to this point. If I did, it wouldn’t likely have included the things that have shown up. I wouldn’t have imagined I’d be divorced once, let alone twice. While I would have expected to have children, I wouldn’t necessarily have anticipated the quality of relationship that has emerged and been present throughout their growing up years – with them and their friends. I couldn’t have imagined the most amazing people who have shown up in my life and those that have shown me pathways, caused me to grow or reflected back to me qualities I have been invited to embrace – the delightful and profound, the challenging and mundane.

I also would never have imagined that a country like Brazil would play such a central role in my life and journey or that I would be at this point in my life and surrounded by the most amazing young leaders from Brazil and here that I get to play with, learn from and with and journey with. Yay for what I do not know and cannot see. And for the increasing courage and grace that allows me to embrace what is wanting to show up.

The invitation into 50 gives me shivers in the most delightful and shimmering kinds of ways. The invitation into deeper levels of trust, forgiveness, curiosity and joy are apparent. This invitation is flirting at the edges of 50, waiting to see my response. Like the first half of my life, it will be filled with the imperfections of life, of me in my human journey, ambivalent at times, sad at other times, anger more freely expressed when it shows up in my experience but in better and more life affirming ways, like other emotional experiences that are not joy and love dissipating quickly because of the freedom of expression in healthy ways. There will still be days when it is challenging to walk the path, days when my own inner judge will be alive and vociferous, days when I do not know what to do or make choices that will somehow feel wrong. It is a human experience I am living, after all, that we all live.

However, I have come too far to go back. Have I come far enough to fully surrender and embrace all that is waiting for me here on the edge of 50? It seems that is part of what I will discover as I begin the Fool’s Journey anew. I begin with child like curiosity and playfulness and anticipation. I begin with joy brimming over the top. I look forward to seeing where and how your path intersects mine and I am eternally grateful for the path, people and circumstances that have brought me here to the edge of what’s next. 50, here I come. Are you ready for me?

Tis the Season of Joy — And Sorrow

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

The holiday season is an amplifier. It is often a time of great celebration and joy as family members and friends gather together in gift giving and meal sharing. It is also a time of great sorrow for many as reconstituted families find new patterns of gathering and as many of us feel the absence of loved ones who are elsewhere, may have departed, are sick or dying or in long term care facilities or simply no longer a part of our lives. And it can be overwhelming and stressful as we strive for perfection in a season that often already demands a lot of us and where expectations run high – the ones we have of ourselves and of others.

It is impossible to live life and not have our fair share of joy, sadness and stress. Simple little delights often bring the joy. A particular Christmas song. Lights. Tree trimming. Christmas celebrations. Buying someone that perfect little something – or creating it. Traditions that are meaningful. Conversations that are as delicious as the traditional holiday fixings. Lovely memories.

The things that make the heart sing are a beautiful thing. The things that make the spirit sad are harder to acknowledge. Absences seem to be one of the most significant contributors to sadness at this particular time of year. The absence of loved ones. It is an experience I know. We all do.

One example in my life: my mother is in long term care with dementia. She’s been there now for three and a half years. Since May, seven months ago, we have been told she could leave us any day. Some small part of her still inhabits her physical body while most of her is having a different kind of experience that is beyond my knowing at the moment.

She has been absent from our family Christmas celebrations the last two years physically and to varying degrees cognitively for longer than that. A week or so ago, I was in a shopping mall. Something in a store caught my eye. I was hit with a wave of missing my mother – really for the first time. This woman loved Christmas and loved opening presents so much it happened so fast it was over almost before it began – until we found ways to slow the process down. My mom was always like a kid at Christmas when it came to presents – until she forgot what to do with a present, forgot what it was or even how to open it.

We all have these kinds of stories.

Some of us have stories of being in relationships that are not fulfilling, meaningful or relevant anymore. Some of us are no longer in relationships and carry sadness or regret as a result. Some of us are in relationships with loved ones who live far away from us. This is a season that brings nostalgia about better times and brings heightened awareness of what is not working. It shines a light on the imperfections of our lives and relationships. It brings loneliness even as we are surrounded by people and festivities.

In a season that is “supposed” to be joyful, we don’t always know how to handle the emotions and times that are not. When we try to suppress them, we just drive them underground for awhile. They will resurface when an opening shows. There is nothing wrong with surrendering into our sadness long enough to acknowledge it. If it continues to overwhelm us deeply maybe we will need help to come out of it, but for most of us, surrendering into and acknowledging our own emotional turmoil, allows release.

There is nothing wrong with tears. Truly, there isn’t. Although many of us believe there is. We apologize for our tears. Like we are somehow weak and maybe imperfect because we cry – especially when we cry in front of other people. But tears are releasing and healing and an indicator of our experience. How much more beautiful it could be if we stopped apologizing for tears and let ourselves be in our experience and even have it witnessed by other people. In the event it makes others uncomfortable, other people’s uncomfortablenss with our tears is not our responsibility. And for most people who witness, it is also freeing for them.

As we allow ourselves to move through our own experience, we create more space for joy and delight to show up faster in our experience. Staying in our sadness will not fill the absences, will not bring back people no longer here or bring people to us who are far away. And most of those absent, would not want us to be lost in our sadness but would want us to celebrate the joy and vibrancy of life. Even if they wouldn’t, our soul is inviting us to celebrate the vibrancy of life.

Another thing that detracts from the vibrancy of life is the stress of trying to make the perfect holiday – on top of so many other things that need tending – children, parents, work, life and death. Very little of this stops just because it also happens to be Christmas and we now also need to shop, bake, decorate, wrap gifts, go to Christmas concerts and Christmas parties.

Some things could be left undone or done a little short of perfection. How many cookies do you really need to bake? How many presents do you really need to buy? What if you boiled it down to the one or two essential elements that seem the most dear to you? For me, it is gingerbread houses. I make the house parts. I thought about buying them one Christmas but realized how much a part of me is in this tradition – because I love to bake and love the delight of the gingerbread house process from start to finish. Most of the rest of it I can let go – especially in my experience of reconstituted families. When and how things happen is a matter for conversation and joint decision making that usually extends beyond my immediate family.

Tis the season of amplification. What is joyful is more so, what is sad is more so, what is stressful is more so. Tis also the season of reflection and remembering. And maybe most important of all, let it be the season of self-care – because, in that, we shift and grow our capacity to embrace the joy, delight and imperfections of being human that are completely available to us in the season of amplification.

Hosting Ceremony

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

What happens when what you are called into host is not actually what you’ve been called into host and every thing you think you know or have to offer of value is not what is needed? When knowledge and experience of methods, processes, theories and frameworks, though asked for, is not what will actually serve the situation or community you are hosting?

These questions, alive and vibrant, were lived into this past week in Membertou, a First Nations Community in Nova Scotia, that a team of us had been invited to, as part of an emerging leadership program for youth, to offer a three day Art of Hosting and Warrior of the Heart training. We were invited by Pawa Haiyupis from the National Centre for First Nations Governance and a team at Membertou to contribute to a program Pawa has been envisioning for 10 years, since attending her first Open Space Technology session. We were to work with youth, elders and members of the Governance Committee.

When the Canadian Government cut funding to the NCFNG in the middle of the four week emerging leadership program the plan was thrown into chaos and the shape of our time together shifted frequently and rapidly. Would there even be an AoH/WoH training and, if so, how many days and with whom? Financial and energetic support was invited from a circle of eagles from around the world and from the larger Art of Hosting community to fund expenses and to be at our backs as we hosted this work, the hosting team clearly called to be in it no matter the circumstance.

The hosting team – Bob Wing, Pawa, Sarah MacLaren, Ryan, myself and one other – convened on the beach at Mira Gut to begin our check-in in ceremony and with a little Warrior of the Heart. Sense of spirit was strong with us and blood memories were being activated. We asked for guidance from Creator in this work.

We did all the usual preparation for a training, including cracking our overall design and the design for day one.

Then we entered day one. We knew as soon as we entered the space that we needed to be prepared to let go of much of what we planned as we waited the arrival of elders to begin our time together with a pipe ceremony. The pipe ceremony was beautiful and powerful, inviting spirit and Creator to guide our path. It had the full attention of everyone in the room no matter their age.

We followed it with Warrior of the Heart and, yes, a teaching on the chaordic path and some time in triad conversations. In this day, we became aware of some disruptions in the field. At the end of this day, we met with the full hosting and calling team and explored what people were sensing and what their concerns were. We did a little teaching on divergence and convergence for this team. We invited all questions and all concerns and also celebrated a little bit the successes of the day. We left feeling a bit of convergence in this team and a willingness to be open to what wanted to happen the next day.

Dinner with an elder showed us that what wanted to happen the next day was ceremony and, specifically a sacred fire. We all knew it was the right thing and in that moment the hosting team stopped designing process and shifted the most completely and fully I have ever experienced into hosting what wanted and needed to happen in this field and this community. It wasn’t process, methods, frameworks. It was ceremony. Ceremony in service of this community, hosted by the elders. Ceremony to activate blood memories. We trusted we would know in the moments following ceremony what else could be offered that would serve the community and the intention of this work well and we knew absolutely we were working with the principles of spaciousness and simplicity.

Host team check-ins are always an integral part of any Art of Hosting training and usually serve the design process. In some ways, they became the design process. Deep check in. Clearing and understanding our field. Strong pull to meditation and other ceremony morning and night to keep intention and presence clear and strong.

We know we were hosted in ceremony by this beautiful community. We know we also hosted, but exactly what is a little less clear. We know something happened in this community that would not have happened if we had not been there. We know something happened in us – individually and collectively – that would not have happened if we had not been there.

I find myself in contemplation of ceremony and the guidance of Creator. I find myself in a deeper exploration of the non-physical world and the allowing of my gifts to emerge and flourish with new knowing and fuller surrender to what wants to be guided through me. In the letting go of expectations and any need to show “expertise” in this group and this community, I know we were more fully available in the co-hosting and co-creating of the space. Sometimes simply being allows things to emerge that might not otherwise. I am wondering how that informs all my hosting work and feel the invitation to work more and more from this place of surrender, trust and “just” holding space.

As Pawa said, “the teachings are still percolating and the brew smells delicious. More to report on as the teachings are digested.”
A deep bow to the community, the team and the field that held us so well in this journey.

Corridor of the Dying or Something Else?

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

It is such a small leap for me I don’t know why it never occurred to me before.

I went to visit my mother this weekend. She has had dementia for more years than we know and she has been in long term care for almost three. Awhile ago I wrote about only understanding her journey from a soul perspective. This is becoming more true for me as she gets nearer to her transition.

During this visit, I sat on her bed with her, maintaining physical touch the whole time I was there. When she looked at me and we held eye contact, she smiled and even laughed. So did I. Sometimes with my tears also flowing. The rest of the time, I watched her lift her head to look very intently at things I could not see all around her room. It is clear to me that spirit in gathering although less clear to me when she will finally decide to let go of her physical body, but likely soon. We, her family, are becoming more ready as we walk this path her.

To get to the dementia ward in what everyone in the town calls “the Home”, you enter the front door of the building, walk a short corridor past the administration offices and enter through an electronically locked door into the main residential part of the building. You then have to walk down a long corridor to get to the dementia ward, behind yet another locked door.

As you enter the residential part of the building, you come upon people – old people and in some cases, really old people – sitting in wheel chairs or chairs – just sitting there for the most part, most nodding off. Those are the ones well enough to be sitting up. As you go down the corridor, bedrooms are on either side and in most of them someone is lying on a bed, oblivious to the rest of the world. Sleeping, snoring, unaware. And, as good as this place is – and I do believe it is one of the best, it smells of old people waiting to die, sometimes less so, sometimes more so. It is a hard corridor to walk with regularity, know the shape of these people’s lives have shifted so dramatically.

I have always thought of these people as waiting to die. We all know the only way people come out of long term care is in a coffin. This is where some of our population go to die – when their loved ones can no longer take care of them and, believe me, that is not an easy decision.

For some reason, with this visit with my mom, I had a little revelation and I don’t know why it never occurred to me before, but I’m glad it has now because it expands my awareness of what else just might be going on in these corridors.

My spiritual journey over the last dozen years or so has shown me pathways to altered consciousness, to spirit journeying, to spirit guides, angels and other entities. I am aware that it is possible to “travel” in dream states – sleeping and waking – and that much good and healing work can happen in these states of altered awareness and consciousness.

As I sat with my mother and observed her looking at that which she could see and I couldn’t, I all of a sudden became aware that her physical body might be old and weak and her brain injured, as they say at the Home, but her spirit or soul is strong. I began to wonder just where, how far and how often she may have been journeying while her physical body slept and that thought took me to all those sleeping bodies throughout the whole facility and a curiosity about where some of those souls might be journeying to while their physical bodies sleep. I’m sure some of them may well be wrestling with their own demons, so to speak, but whose to say that most of them aren’t off doing much needed soul work in ordinary and non-ordinary reality.

Then I could feel a bubble of light surrounding this Home. The notion that these beautiful souls might be making contributions to the world that most of us cannot see or understand made my own spirit more joyful. And now I hold my mother’s journey with an added degree of lightness and joy which I have no doubt she feels. She is journeying well and will continue to do so, I have no doubt. She is a great teacher for me. And I love her and she know that.

Play is an Attitude

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

I am becoming more and more serious about play – as an attitude as much or more than as an activity. These days I’m reflecting a lot on the Law of Attraction, abundance, energy, flow and what blocks flow. I have been soaking up Abraham-Hicks and their teachings on the Law of Attraction.

Things like worry, stress, fear, negativity, seriousness of character all get in the way of attracting what you want in your life – anything that constricts the essence of who you are slows down the manifestation of what you want. Anything that gives relief – laughter, joy, love, delight, hope, fun, playfulness – all fuel a vibration that attracts to you what you want to manifest, contributing to expansiveness.

There was a time, a long time ago, that I used to have fun and be fun to be around. Wherever I was, there inevitably was laughter. And somehow, when I was distracted by the seriousness of life, running a business, being in relationship, raising children, my natural joie d’vivre slipped away until all that was left was this grave seriousness, worry, fear and strain. My world and my energy became more and more constricted and flow was blocked off.

One day, I noticed. I looked up and looked around and I noticed I was all seriousness, intensity and negativity and lacked any sense of joyfulness or play in my life. Couldn’t even really remember the last time I had laughed out loud or had any sense of fun. How had that happened? Little bit by little bit the shape of my life had unintentionally and, in some ways, unwillingly, shifted. I was deep in my own shadow.

That day, that observance, marked the beginning of a long road back to joy. I was blown away by habitual patterns, belief systems that locked me into seriousness and the impact of the voice of my inner judge. I learned about the voracity of my inner judge by working through the book Soul Without Shame, learning how to identify and disempower it. While it still shows up, it has less impact for much less time. I have learned about understanding my emotions as a guide to my experience and as an inner guidance system.

Over the last few years I have been picking away at of the things that have constricted my energy and constricted flow in my life. I have been opening up to a greater sense of expansiveness and to taking risks and this has been accelerating.

And, I have been learning about play and playfulness. When I’m leading workshops, playfulness hasn’t been my strong suit. I rely on other team members to bring that element. I bring depth and intensity of connection to group process and I do it well. What is being reawakened in me is the idea that play doesn’t have to be an action, it is an attitude that opens up or shifts energy in individuals and in groups and particularly in me. I have been observing how it galvanizes attention and curiosity in the best possible ways even in a room full of strangers.

I have witnessed the impact of play as an attitude in social settings, at home and in the work I do. It is infusing the relationships I have, and even chance encounters. Play as an attitude brings with it a greater capacity to risk putting myself out there more, risk being wrong, risk trying things that might not work, risk showcasing the imperfection of being human. It means the willingness to try without needing specific results to show up as proof of success. Everything then becomes a learning situation which, oddly enough, then contributes to breeding success – and in beautifully fun ways rather than with a seriousness that brings everything down.

Play as an attitude encompasses joy, delight and expansiveness. It opens up channels for Law of Attraction to work in favourable ways, bringing wanted things into being.

Now, I smile more even when I’m alone. I’m enjoying the expansiveness in my own vibrational frequency. I am more energetic, eager and focused. All because I am understanding play as an attitude. I can still be really serious about my work, the integrity of all my relationships and the responsibilities I hold. But when I infuse them with an attitude of play I bring alive two of my favourite rules – Rule 6a and 6b:

6a: Don’t take yourself so f—–g seriously!

6b: Don’t take other people so f—–g seriously!

These are two rules I have had to be reminded of often for a long time and now they are becoming integrated into my being along with the delightful attitude of play. What things can you bring an attitude of play to that would enable you to shift the shape of your experience?

Funerals, Families and A Family Story

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

I attended my uncle’s funeral today. He was 80 years old, lived a full life and had dementia and other health issues in recent years. His dying was not unexpected although death always brings some grief and sorrow.

My sorrow today, however, was not for my uncle. It was for my cousin who came into the church with his family, dressed in orange prison overalls, shackles on his hands and feet, followed by two guards. The sight was so jarring and so unexpected, tears sprang to my eyes as my heart broke open for him.

You might wonder what a man must have done to be brought to his father’s funeral in prison gear. I suspect it has more to do with him being a flight risk than a danger to the public, although, to be honest, I don’t know why he is in jail this time. His family has struggled with his path for some time and, understandably, don’t want to talk about it too much and they shouldn’t have to. He has been in trouble with the law on and off for the last twenty five years, not because he grew up on “the wrong side of the tracks” or because he had a terrible childhood or because he had a bad streak in him.

He is in trouble with the law because the part of his cognitive ability that helps him discern right from wrong, appropriate from inappropriate, ethical from in-ethical, was destroyed in his mid twenties when he suffered a brain aneurism that instantaneously changed the course of his life forever. It was a wonder he survived, many don’t, and survival came at a very high cost.

My sorrow is for a young man who lost any chance of living out his dreams or of living a normal life because he simply doesn’t know that walking out of store without paying for merchandise is wrong. My sorrow is for a person who, one day, had a whole life of promise ahead of him and the next was thrown into unimaginable complexity and chaos in a world that had no answers and no systems to truly support him. While I don’t know all the ins and outs of his story, I do know his family searched high and low and tried everything they could think of and then some to find a way to help him navigate his life, including having him live with them. He has been in and out of rehabilitation centres and programs as well as jail. Is it really true that the only place we have to house a person who’s had this kind of traumatic brain injury is in our jail system? That breaks my heart.

And, my heart breaks open for my cousin and the path he unexpectedly finds himself on. There is so much about him that is still quintessentially my cousin – he looks like himself, although he is now prematurely aged and hunched over. He has a wicked sense of humour. He knows all the people in his life. He just doesn’t know how to respond to events in his life. When his brother, someone he was very close to who kept a loving eye on him, died unexpectedly at a young age a few years after his aneurism, he went to see a neighbour and said, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.” And not from the perspective of the grief curve, but from the loss of this integral brain function.

Well, I know what I feel. I feel my heart breaking open for my cousin, his family, the wife and children he will never have, his unlived dreams and potential and the loss to all of us of a caring, responsible, delightful, contributing young man. I still think of him as young even though he is now in his late forties. My heart breaks open for this good person who has walked an unexpected path due to circumstances truly beyond his control that no one could have anticipated and which are, apparently, unfixable.

To see him makes me deeply grateful for the ability to intentionally shift the shape of my own path with levels of awareness no longer available to my cousin and leaves me feeling very humble. While I’ve thought about my cousin on and off over the years and have seen him at family funerals, seeing him walk into the church today in this way will stay forever etched in my memory and my heart will be forever open with love for this human being who is part of my family and a living example of the mystery of how our individual and inextricably linked soul journeys show up in this lifetime. Maybe if I can hold him in a field of love, even if he doesn’t know it, it will offer some ease and levity to the dark and difficult path that is his to walk. And, really, he is still just a young man.

ShapeShift

The shape of the world is shifting… embracing and being intentional about it

Category Archives: Stories