11-06-2009
Dear Members:
It is with great pleasure that we turn our focus in this week’s Newsletter towards the theme of John’s new Finding Health class. We cannot encourage you enough to take this class. To this end, earlier this week on the Members’ area, we have posted a new video of John giving a public talk that is very different than any previous talks.
https://www.bodytalksystem.com/member/fullnews.cfm?id=477
In John’s latest version of An Introduction to BodyTalk, he takes a new approach towards describing BodyTalk and its foundations. Understandably, listening to this talk is a must for all of us Members because it revolutionizes the way BodyTalk is explained. From feedback already received, it is clear that the explanations John puts forward in this talk make the way we will be speaking about BodyTalk from now on extremely exciting – revolutionary really. To read some of the feedback on the Members’ Forum, click here: https://www.bodytalksystem.com/member/forum/thread.cfm?threadid=12449
As you listen, you will observe the transformation in the way John explains and speaks about BodyTalk. The paradigm shift in his presentation of BodyTalk is that John no longer describes BodyTalk merely in terms of energy medicine.
For years, we have become accustomed to using the generic explanation, one used by so many alternative therapies, that BodyTalk is energy medicine. This byline made for a simple, one-size-fits-all definition of what we do. But using such a throw-away line to describe BodyTalk is far too much of a generalization. Essentially, as most of us have long realized, the term “energy medicine” falls short in communicating what BodyTalk is really all about.
The birth of John’s new class, Finding Health, marks a paradigm shift in consciousness for IBA in general. This is not just another exciting class with new things to learn. Finding Health is the platform for presenting BodyTalk to the public and to you all in a way that you have never experienced before. The new Introduction to BodyTalk video is a beautiful summation of key elements presented in Finding Health.
https://www.bodytalksystem.com/member/fullnews.cfm?id=477
John sees Finding Health as a way of defining and explaining BodyTalk simply yet profoundly. The description he uses to point to the essential nature of BodyTalk is that “BodyTalk is consciousness based healthcare.” John put together the new video in response to numerous requests from you for a detailed explanation so that you could understand the description better and be able to put it into your own words.
The most common feedback we have received so far from students who have taken Finding Health is that they feel it is the best course John teaches. For any one of us who has attended anything John teaches, that is, clearly, quite a testimonial!
Some of us have been privy to the conception of BodyTalk throughout all its evolutions and transformations. We have watched the processes John goes through with each new stage and the results are always enthralling; but, on a personal note, I have to say that I have never seen John quite as inspired by any class as he is by Finding Health.
As most of you know, John throws himself with gusto into all his classes, but even he admits that Finding Health is the class he enjoys teaching the most right now. He also considers Finding Health a vitally important class for all practitioners in any field of health care – one all health care providers should be attending and promoting.
Of course, what makes Finding Health such a powerful instrument in our own work is that it is open to the public. Finding Health is something you can invite and encourage your clients, family and friends to attend to better acquaint them with your work. We all know that clients benefit exponentially in accordance with the depth of understanding they have of what you are doing.
Finding Health has the potential of transforming the way practitioners, politicians, health care providers and laypeople in general view health and health care. We all know the potential of BodyTalk, but until now the way we have been presenting it has not distinguished it dramatically from other forms of alternative health care. This has been frustrating to most of us who have long realized that we are using something that, at its core, is very different from anything else out there. Finding Health and the synopsis on John’s new video portend shifting the tides on the way we put BodyTalk out into the world and in the way people are going to be receiving it in the future.
https://www.bodytalksystem.com/member/fullnews.cfm?id=477
As many of you will have noticed, this week we posted the dates and details of our upcoming Dallas Learning Forum on the web. Remember, these forums are very special events – a time not only to take a class from one of our top instructors, but a time in which to meet a wide cross section of Members and other practitioners. We will be giving more information on the make-up of the Learning Forums in our upcoming Newsletters.
As promised, we continue the introduction of our IBA staff – one per Newsletter – with Ryan Holt’s biography. Those of you who attended the Conference will remember him best as our resident fire dancer.
Another name, one you are all familiar with on the forums, is Tim Hall. Following on from his much praised article in our last Newsletter, this week Tim gives us some more insights into what Finding Health is about. With his usual aplomb, he also manages to put terms that befuddle many of us into simple, clear language.
Happy reading,
Esther
“If your symptoms go away, that’s your problem” Ida Rolf
It is natural to strive for more health and happiness, but being focused on specific short-term results can sabotage the real priority. Being free of unpleasant symptoms is certainly better than being plagued and burdened, but that isn’t the true state of well-being. Striving for results based on the elimination of symptoms is always a losing battle. The best case scenario is a person who lives life free of symptoms and dies quietly of old age. Did that person live well or die well?
Being overly focused on results, symptoms and comparative health is living for the grave. We’ve been training ourselves how to die, and in the process, we’ve forgotten how to live. Where is the balance between the experience of wanting to feel good and the knowledge that life consists of ups and downs? How can we reconcile wanting to make a difference with hearing that it is best not to care whether we or our clients get better?
The first step is to acknowledge that we do have a sense of concern for the client’s or our own situation and that our heart goes out accordingly. At the sensitive feeling level of the heart, we want all problems to end right now and for us all to live happy and free and for every desire to would be instantly fulfilled if all unpleasant symptoms immediately ceased.
And then there is the mind, which is capable of understanding laws of action and reaction, harmony and disruption, dharma and dishonesty and resistance to change amid constant change. The mind’s practicality operates through these very laws. It functions in opposites and distinguishes between the ideal and the actual.
Of course, the mind can believe that it cares for others just as it can believe it doesn’t care at all. Similarly, the heart can pretend to know what’s best, but its compassion is indiscriminate. A person or system without heart is powerless; yet a heart-centered approach rushes in with reckless abandon. BodyTalk is transcendent to both mind and heart by being consciousness-based.
When our boundaries are all mixed up, our actions can’t help but defend our misguided love and confusion. Unraveling this mess is critical, and thus the Parama Life Science courses are of utmost importance. BreakThrough and FreeFall are heart-oriented. MindScape and Parama Philosophy are more mental. BodyTalk works through the body, where it all comes together, and we are the soul.
As I’m sure many of you have experienced, this conflict can be an overwhelming experience and can even render us frozen. Our hearts and minds are in a stand-off. Both can fully justify their position, yet they are torn, and now neither can act. This is a state of suspension that can be mild or so crippling that the session cannot even commence.
It is in this state that we have the opportunity to realize that we are helpless unto ourselves. There is nowhere to turn, but to yield fully to the innate wisdom within. We no longer need to justify or reconcile caring and not caring because it has become a secondary consideration. The primary factor is staying in tune with our innate wisdom and remaining in the zone by following our intuitive sense of priority.
To the degree that our surrender is complete, innate is more clear, and the session or situation is as effortless. As we take one step towards innate, it steps towards us. Innate would say, “I am to you as you are to me.” Facilitation is automatic and settles in to become so familiar that we feel that we aren’t even doing anything, even though we clearly are. Involvement is one-pointed, and secondary concerns work themselves out as beneficial side effects.
This is freedom in action. Not only are we untouched by the results, but we are untouched by the practice itself. Success and rejection have taken a back seat to being led by universal consciousness. The idea isn’t to renounce actions, pretend we are doing nothing or be apathetic towards our chosen endeavor. The idea is to acknowledge our split self and let it divide. From that division, emerges pure consciousness.
Consciousness itself is the home of innate and we are invited in when mind and heart agree to disagree. Neither side is wrong, and, in fact the more we honor our own inner natures of duty and compassion, opposing as they may be, the more centered and dynamic we are. Power is inherent in the intelligence of innate. When perspective is gained and we can relax into it, this overwhelming frozen state is the silence before the symphony.
Does it make sense to practice a priority-based system in a results-based business?
Let go and engage completely in the session and in life. As this understanding deepens by the regular experience of it, surrender becomes complete. Reservations and doubt diminish as does concern for results, payment or praise. The goal beyond results is the complete union of heart and mind, linked by innate universal wisdom, and you are that wisdom.
by Tim Hall
Hello my name is Ashley. I was born and raised right here in Sarasota, Florida. During my elementary and middles school years, I participated in Classical Ballet, Jazz and Modern dance for 7 years at the Sarasota Ballet of Florida institute. During high school, I continued my involvement with the arts and participated in the Visual Arts Program for four years and studied Art. In 2005 I attended the Sarasota School for Massage Therapy and became a Licensed Massage Therapist. In 2007 I traveled to Thailand to expand my love for massage therapy and gained insight to Thai Massage therapy techniques.
Many of you know me as the voice you hear when you call into the IBA. Over the years, I’ve cross trained in many areas of the office; however, my primary role is that of an Administrative Assistant/Receptionist. Within this role, my primary responsibilities include, handling Instructor Application processing (BAT, CBI, BrThr, MS, AdvCBI, SrCBI Etc), processing registrations for seminars, and responding to related emails. I also assist in coordinating seminars for John and Esther Veltheim, learning forums, conferences and other IBA functions and serve as backup in shipping and invoicing.
You can contact me at ashley@bodytalksystem.com.
