Trip to America part 3

The public speaking workshop I done on Saturday was very interesting. The teacher  was An 88 year old man called Joe Gifford. He has done alot in his life from what I know, from being a dance coreographer to working with famous conductors. His life energy and passion for a man his age is truly inspiring.He is also a student of Andrews, that is why he does these workshops for  nothing here in Foxhollow.

We started with doing gentle stretches combined with breathing practices to loosen ourselves off. It was a sort of combination of yoga and chi gong moves. Then we were asked to communicate between each other non verbally using only hand and body movements combined with intentionality and different kinds of energys i.e anger, love.

We then moved onto each individual having a turn to speak while the rest of the class watched. Joe would then offer each individual advice on what they can improve on. He pointed out that we all have habits that are ingrained into the body, and that these habits reflect our physcological conditioning. One guy kept on moving his head when he spoke and another womans  eybrows would not stop going up and down. When he pointed these out to people and made other adjustments it was amazing to see  people change.

He told me how to stand properly, slow down and look at everybody and connect with them. On thing he emphasized alot is the need for spontanaity, to know ones material and then to throw it away and enter the unknown!
When I was speaking I was very consciously allowing my mind to fall away and to trust the stillness, Therby  allowing a greater force of consciousness to work in me.

The group energy of the workshop was priceless, the whole time it was infused with a medatative current that was like a whirlpool that just wanted to suck you deeper and deeper!!

On Sunday mornings the whole revolution does a long practice called an absolute relationship to life. It is a combination of chanting and meditation that last around 4 hours.
After eating  lunch in silence we then split off into men and womans groups. In the mens group we were engaging with what is the relationship between collective and individual development. The core students were saying that they have been meeting together in this way for around a month since Andrew asked them to,  the meetings were fantastic, but for Evolution to move forward the collective development has to have an impact on individual development e.g physical practice, meditation practice, etc.
I was sitting in the meeting just trying to feel into what everybody was saying because sometimes it was not clear in my consciousness, but that is the whole aim of evolution is to constantly move to higher and higher understandings of  what is possible.

After the meeting I read an article in the new WIE magazine in which Andrew Cohen interviews Frank Zane about self mastery. Frank Zane is an ex world champion body builder who is 65 years old. This guy also plays 5 musical instruments mediates every day writes books etc. Then it occured to me that the revolutionary creative potential that can be harnessed in the mens meetings can then be used to move your own personal edge forward in many lines of development i.e musical, physical etc. By setting your self personal goals.I knew this before but I think I seen it at a deeper level than I had before.

I am very excited about this because it is pointing toward a seemless intergration between the inner, outer individual and collective development!!

So I have set myself a few new personal goals(very exciting)

I will keep you posted!