Why talk so openly?

A Warrior of Light shares with others what he knows of the path.

Anyone who gives help also receives helps and needs to teach what he has learned. That is why he sits by the fire and recounts his day on the battlefield.

A friend whispers: “Why talk so openly about your strategy? Don’t you realize that, by doing so, you run the risk of sharing your conquests with others?”
The Warrior merely smiles and says nothing. He knows that is, at the end of his journey, he arrives to find an empty paradise, his struggle will have been a waste of time.

Source: Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

Tomorrow is Winter Solstice! In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice occurs either December 21 or 22, when the sun shines directly over the tropic of Capricorn; the summer solstice occurs either June 20 or 21, when the sun shines directly over the tropic of Cancer. In the Southern Hemisphere, the winter and summer solstices are reversed. The winter solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The sun appears at its lowest point in the sky, and its noontime elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the solstice.

Chaos and Open Space - Chaos and Learning

Chaos represents the growth point in any system. Chaos creates the Open Space in which the new can emerge. Obviously there are no guarantees here, for chaos can equally mark the end - in fact is always does. The central question is not about the ending, but rather the possibility of new beginning. Chaos may therefore be the essential precondition for all that is the truly new. No chaos, nothing new.

Gregory Bateson teaches us that the perception of difference is the essence of learning. Or in hos words, learning occurs when we notice "differences that make a difference." This deceptively simple phrase takes us in interesting directions, for it suggests, in the present context, that the function of chaos is to create the conditions in which real learning can take place.

Chaos creates the differences that make a difference, through which we learn.

Source: Harrison Owen
Photo

Session 3 of the Genuine Contact Program en français

Greetings from Val David Quebec where Marquis Bureau and I are facilitating Session 3 of the Genuine Contact Program en français - La résolution de conflits interculturels. We have three participants - making five with Marquis and I.

We decided that it was important to offer the course and maintain the energy of moving the course forward even with small numbers. There is much interest for the work of Genuine Contact in the francophone community - and for the second time we have not attracted any English speaking participants, something we will evaluate after we offer Organizational Health and Balance in May.

With three participants Marquis and I are participating when we want to have the group work in pairs. When he is in the role of facilitator, I participate and vice versa. I am of course at my learning edge because my French is at only an intermediate level and I have few opportunities to practice. I find the best way for me is to listen with my heart rather than my head.....When I worry too much about translating my ego is very active and I think of my self and my next words. So, I am practicing presence with deep listening - which is good because for those of you who know me, I usually have a LOT to say when I am speaking English.....and my learning about self and others is deep.

The great news is that all of the participants took the WPPF course in October. While we are not teaching WPPF, some of the ahas and questions are allowing deeper exploration of WPPF principles and we are of course giving them another experience of WPPF that is not a mix of facilitating and then teaching about the method.

One of the explorations/discussions of this morning was about hopes and fears....that how when we invite the whole person by welcoming their fears, we can prevent conflict....and when the environment does not welcome the fears up front, that the conflict will emerge later or it supports conflict.
I love the learning that I have when I facilitate these workshops.....a great way to go deeper myself.

We did the Genuine Contact yoga this morning - the eagle, which causes me to think of all of you around the world.

Have a great day everyone.

Michelle

Traditional Learning Forms

Having students/learners pay attention to their body as a source of feedback about their level of comfort and helping them learn to breathe properly from the belly will help to reduce the stress that can be produced when dealing with controversial topics or listening to a painful retelling of personal narratives. Our bodies are constantly processing our experiences. In Traditional pedagogical forms, paying attention to our physical reality will help us learn and carry wisdom which our "minds" may not be "conscious." This is reflected in many Traditional healing and learning methods, which are meditative, ritual-based and earth-based.

Our next workshop

Source : Fyre Jean Graveline
Photo : www.sxc.hu/photo/536381

Genuine Contact Way of Learning: Learning from Experience

Our teaching model is rooted in experience. The platform design for the model is Whole Person Process Facilitation. The reality of learning from experience is embedded in ancestral worldviews from which our model evolves.

Weil and McGill define "experiential education" as the process whereby people, individually and in association with others, engage in direct encounter and then purposefully reflect upon, validate, transform, give personal meaning to and seek to integrate their different ways of knowing" (1989:248). This definition underscores the idea of direct encounter as a necessary base for experiential learning. Our model allows for integration of different ways of knowing. It allows the learner to use more of his or her senses to learn, which reinforces the understanding that learning comes many sources - including oneself - not only from the formal theory promoted by experts.

An experiential and embodied approach to teaching and learning can help learners re-awaken the knowledge that their bodies are continuously giving them feedback. An experiential and embodied approach to facilitating, leading or managing can have the same impact.

Griffin reaffirms: "Our bodies reflect our emotions: anxiety becomes tense shoulder muscles or knots in the stomach; embarrassment turns into blush on the cheeks. Sometimes we feel the bodily reaction without having noticed the emotion. Sometimes we ignore the emotion, sometimes we deny it or repress it. The body knows it is there, however, and expresses it in some way". (1988:115)

Source: Fyre Jean Graveline
Photo: www.sxc.hu/photo/1019278

The Cicrle, a teaching space

One of the things I really loved about teaching in the interior is that I had an outside teaching space. So we used to do Circle on the ground, outside, underneath this big tree. I would really like to be able to teach Circle that way again. There's something missing in Circle when we have to sit in a box to do it! When we can't be sitting out on the ground, with the beautiful sky over our heads and the grass on our bums, the birds singing, and feel the sense of interconnectedness to all of creation, as we are there, because that's what brings the power to Circle.

Source: Fyre Jean Graveline

The Path of the Wheel

As a Traditional teacher, I recognize that I am my own healing/learning journey. As I tell my own stories and follow the path of the Wheel in each teaching section, I pay attention to my own process so that I relearn and re-experience the Model each time it is produced. I do not approach teaching as an exercise in pedagogical transmission; rather, I embody and transmit my experience as a guide - as one familiar with the process, having previously undertaken it. As a teacher, I do not stand apart from but am an integral part of the process.

Source : Fyre Jean Graveline, Circle Works
Graphic : Medecine Wheel Tool, Genuine Contact Program

Learning: doing what you've never done before

Learning doesn't take place in the absence of mistakes. Leaders are simply great learners. They have, to begin with, a great sense of humility about their own sense of skills and abilities, and many leaders, despite what may objectively be "extraordinary" achievements are loath to attribute them to some extraordinary competency on their part. Think about which people in your organization are the most likely to voluntarily sign up and participate in leadership development programs.

The only way people can learn is by doing what they've never done before. Those who do only what they already know how to do never learn anything new. Promoting learning requires building in a tolerance for error and a framework for forgiveness.

Source: James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
Photo: Marquis Bureau, Virginia Beach