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Economically, especially for those living here in Ireland, 2010 will be remembered as a tough year. For Ireland we saw the demise of the Celtic Tiger and worse (although I do not quite concur) the appearance of the IMF in late November. The gloom was pervasive and the collective mood dour.

In January 2010 I started my new business. Lime Trees Road LTD.  Many lamented me as mad. I have however had my first full year of trading and thankfully I have generated enough income for my own accountant to be content. I am grateful for the continued support of four wonderful corporate clients and many individuals as well. 

 
There are other things too for which I am proud and satisfied. I completed a one year course on Coaching Excellence in Organisations and in that year learnt a whole lot about myself and others in the process. I made friends, Birgit and Roger being the closest. I came away a little wiser (hopefully) and more respectful of learning styles.

 
The year saw me reconnecting with old friends, friends whom I had been very close to but with whom I had lost touch for years. Sam, Gonzalo and Katushka know their place in my heart.

I joined a new Organisation Axialent as an adjunct faculty member, a grandiose title yes but a fabulous opportunity to learn and practice with a bunch of people whom I admire. Martin, Noel, Leanne and Karen became new friends last year.

My niece married in August and I got to be part of the ritual. The event happened in Cork which only served to remind me of the wonderful summer holidays I passed with a Grandmother I adored. That one day surfaced a body of memories that I will treasure forever.

I travelled extensively over the course of the last year visiting old and new places for work and pleasure. Barcelona was by far my favourite destination this year. I am grateful to my Sister for bringing me there and indulging my taste in things beautiful. The W hotel was a treat and it proved to be magical. Sting will never be the same! 

 
I spent my Birthday with my favourite people in Brussels, Sebastian, Julien and Emilie are simply the best nephews and niece an aunt could want.

November and December were two months that proved Ireland can have snow, deluges of the stuff. The months proved cold and scary. I spent three hours trying to drive a distance that should only have taken me 15 minutes in a blizzard of snow. How things change.

As I sit here writing on the 1st day of the New Year I can reflect and say that for me 2010 was a very positive year and I am truly grateful.

Recently I was in an organisation where I was providing team coaching as a management intervention. I was struck by how uncomfortable the management team were with their own performance management system and their individual application of performance management as a concept and skill.

Effective management requires a range of skills and many in today’s corporate life are not equipped with a complete set; building effective teams, evoking commitment, listening, managing morale, coping with breakdowns, managing customer satisfaction, planning effectively, developing shared standards, modelling presence, taking initiative and not being reactive.

In would appear that leadership and management thinking is still a mystery.  Witness the plethora of books on the topic, the social media boards dedicated to understanding leadership and management thinking and the educational courses that continue to pop up to support this arena.
There is no doubt that organisations have done an enormous  amount of work to clarify their vision and values with attendant mission statements and objectives. What are less evident are clear committed standards of excellence, dedicated labs for practice and well designed programmes to support and aid learning that allows for recurrent practice. 

As a student of the Institute for Generative Leadership where I was studying Coaching Excellence in Organisations in 2009, we were made aware of the top ten organisational mistakes that scupper success; these observations have been collated over a period of thirty years by Bob Dunham, CEO of the Institute for Generative Leadership. Curiously these mistakes while seemingly simply are alive and well in many organisations today!

1. Not listening only speaking at your people engenders staff resentment and a lack of morale
2. Indulging in over-commitment; producing a staff that cannot say “no” results in overwork, underachievement and “dead heroes”.
3.Being Blinded by the numbers; the numbers do not comprise the whole picture yet get prioritised over the actions that generate the numbers such as valuable offers, impeccable co-ordination, customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
4. Fuzzy around commitments; a lack of standards for generating and managing commitments produce waste and resignation.
5. The customer comes last; allowing your people to work on tasks without being cognisant of the reaction of customers kills customer satisfaction
6. Not holding others accountable; accountability is a skill and a conversation.  Many avoid the latter or do not know how to have it. This skill requires calm, centeredness being grounded with the facts. It also predisposes a disposition of care, to help others succeed.
7.  Fear and loathing of Performance Evaluation; Speaking honestly and directly is also a skill and requires courage. Avoiding these conversations is negligible and damning of corporate learning.
8. Teams in name only
9. Inability to build trust and cope with distrust.
10.  No clear game plan.

In looking at the above I am minded of the fact that for years we have prioritised “being right” over “being curious”. Our educational systems reward exam success and knowledge over learning. It is not surprising then that the very skills that promote effective leadership are not cultivated from an early age.  Personal mastery is not something that is widely appreciated or even lauded.

 
From Socrates (469-399) to modern management theory as we know it, all insist on Leadership with the right skills and attitude for business sustainability.  People matter, mastery counts.

An HBR study in 2010 on Leadership mistakes concluded that leaders fail because they exhibit the following behaviours; Self interest, betraying trust, being certain, not living their values, being inauthentic, being over enamoured with their own vision, arrogance, acting too fast, insufficient self reflection.

How  come so many organisations are still struggling with this conundrum? 
I would love to hear your thoughts.

Part of our remit as coaches is to ask powerful questions. We often get paralysed by the anxiety this requirement produces especially for beginner coaches. There are several question frameworks that coaches can deploy or stick to in their coaching conversations for results.

Recently I was struck by a post on LinkedIn that asked coaches for their favourite questions. It was illuminating and also very informative because as is usual with these postings the explanations given are always more telling. There were similarities and themes that shaped some of the dialogue, most were attempting to allow the coached go deeper and resource the answer for him/her.

 
One of my favourite and often quite humbling question is “what are you assuming by that” It is a question Nancy Kline poses in her six question framework in “a time to think.” It is often employed as a way to unlock a person from their own self limiting beliefs. 

In a recent coaching session with a client with whom I had asked this question several times I found myself asking the question of him again only to have him use the same question for one of his subordinates. It was quite an interesting moment of reflection to witness. The client was in essence wondering what his own people’s limiting beliefs might be in working for him.

Other questions I love include questions to ascertain responsibility and in particular unconditional responsibility a value I share with all of my clients. The question “in the face of that challenge what could you have done differently”  is often very provocative and rewarding as well. I have yet to pose this question where a client does not concede that his actions could have contributed to the confusion that reigned and where some learning is possible.

 
One of the strengths of an ontological coach is the ability to separate facts from the story we wrap around facts. Our interpretations that sometimes we live as truth. The ability to ask the question “is that an assessment or an assertion” often has the effect of stopping the client from anesthetising himself against action. When a client realises that it his story and his story is malleable great ease ensues.

The question “what do you want” is often really appreciated as well. As individuals we can often get gripped by what we do not want in our lives but forget to ask ourselves what we do want. This question prevents the continuous downward spiral that often accompanies dwelling on what we do not want in life.  

 
I am mindful not to ask the “why” question too often or at all if possible. Some coaches can use this question with aplomb. My face reveals a judgemental stance that I chose not to employ.  Why is an oft used question to reveal beliefs. It has value but it has to be asked with a sense of curiousity otherwise it can produce defensiveness in another.
Simple questions do however have a real role to play in coaching sessions; when? What else? How? Tell me more? And? And a really powerful one, what’s possible? These all give room for the coached to think for themselves, for deep introspection, to have some space and ultimately dig for a response from within. 

 
One of my all time favourites from “The work” by Byron Katie….is “what would you be without that thought?

The Work is a simple yet powerful process of inquiry that teaches you to identify and question the thoughts that cause suffering. It’s a way to understand what’s hurting you, and to address the cause of your problems with clarity.

Powerful questions are one skill deployed by coaches and their power is as much to do with the timing of the question, the presence of the coach and the trusted relationship created between the coach and the client.

What is your powerful question?

As coaches and leadership development consultants we pride ourselves in helping others understand the efficacy of giving and receiving feedback. I am often quoted as saying feedback is a gift and people are starved of feedback especially in organisational life.

It is interesting then to note my own defensiveness with regard to feedback especially when it comes out of nowhere or is a complete surprise.

I was recently asked to be a guest speaker for a large publically quoted group who were interested in understanding more about leadership development and in particular Executive Coaching.

worked hard to illicit from the client what would make for an interesting engagement and to determine where the audience was with respect to their own leadership style and levels of self awareness.

Armed with my information I set about not to tell but to share some developments pertaining to coaching and how it might support the leadership cadre of the company concerned.

After the work was prepared, the speech delivered and I had left for my return journey I felt pretty confident that I had engaged with my audience and that my story was well received. Wrong? My talk bombed. I was told later by my potential client that the audience had failed to see the relevance of my offer and regrettably for me would not be entertaining the notion of coaching anytime soon. I was aghast.

In retrospect I have learned. I have done a considerable amount of introspection since and realise that the time I spent and the work I did is not all in vain. I have to revisit my story and make it compelling, irresistible, thought provoking and leave my audience curious, not deadened by information.
 In starting out, we think or at least I think, I have to rely on my intellectual credibility to convey my message. I forget that my presence and confidence as a business women and coach is what my clients are buying. They want to know that what I offer will resolve some of their leadership angst.

There was learning for me too in the actual process of receiving the feedback

Any criticism can be hard to accept. But surprise feedback — criticism that seems to come from nowhere, about an issue we haven’t perceived ourselves — is the hardest. We’re far more likely to be defensive.
Because it’s not just about admitting, it’s about perceiving. Before we can accept something, we have to become aware of it.  The criticism or feedback I received to my speech completely blindsided me. I had no idea people would react the way they did, no sense that I was not hitting their sweet spot.

That kind of feedback exposes you to yourself, which is why it is both tremendously unsettling and exceptionally valuable. It’s also why our defensiveness is so predictable and so counterproductive. The things we most need to hear are often the things we defend against hearing the most.

I was delighted then to come accross a blog posted by Peter Bergmann in the HBR. Like me he opined the difficulty of receiving feedback that comes from left field. His tips for receiving feeback are provided below; He suggests; 

“To take in surprise criticism more productively, we need a game plan. As you listen to the criticism and your adrenaline starts to flow, pause, take a deep breath, and:

Look beyond your feelings. We call it constructive criticism and it usually is. But it can also feel painful, destabilizing, and personal. Notice, and acknowledge — to yourself — your feelings of hurt, anger, embarrassment, insufficiency, and anything else that arises. Recognize the feelings — label them even — and then put them aside so the noise doesn’t crowd out your hearing.

Look beyond their delivery. Feedback is hard to give, and the person offering criticism may not be skilled at doing it well. Even if the feedback is delivered poorly, it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable and insightful. Not everything will be communicated in “I” statements, focused on behaviors, and shared with compassion. Avoid confusing the package with the message.

Listen, and don’t agree or disagree. Just collect the data. If you let go of the need to respond, you’ll reduce your defensiveness and give yourself space to really listen. Criticism is useful information about how someone else perceives you. Make sure you fully get it.
That means asking questions to further explore what you’re being told. Probe, solicit examples, play the devil’s advocate, pushing the criticism back on itself, in the spirit of understanding it more fully.”
Later, with some distance, decide what you want to do. Data rarely forces action, it merely informs it. Recognizing that the decision, and power, to change is up to you will help you stay open.

Once you’ve got some time, space, and grounding, think about what you heard — what the data is telling you — and make choices about if, what, and how, you want to change.

Sometimes, you’ll choose to change your behavior.
But sometimes, you’ll decide not to change your behavior. That perhaps, you’re better off staying the same and changing your surroundings or your clients.

Criticism can be an incredible gift, a field guide for acting with impact in the world. All we need is enough patience and presence to hear it.

As a practitioner I am fascinated by the discipline of coaching. In training for my accreditation and in pursuing my own personal development I have experienced it to work for me. Does it work for others and does it work in a way that is measurable?

Interestingly Coaching has emerged from a synthesis of many fields including training, adult learning, consulting, change management, the human potential movement, and psychology and systems science. Each of these fields has their own models and approaches to coaching. The various schools of thought agree on little, except that “coaching works,” and that more of it should be done.

There is no widely accepted theoretical framework that explains why we need it, how it actually works and how to do it better. Much has been written but we are still in question.

I am a huge fan of Nancy Kline and her thinking environment approach. Her methodology is quizzically simple but provocative.  She is adamant, although her language would not be so fierce, that if you set up the right environment and give people the space and attention to think for themselves uninterrupted ( a crucial element!) great ideas emerge.  Nancy has identified 10 behaviours that comprise a system called the “thinking environment”.

 It is a model that dramatically improves the way people think and thus how they live and work. The ten components or behaviours include; Attention, Incisive Questions, Equality, Appreciation, Ease, Encouragement, Feelings, Information, Place and Diversity. This to me is an example of a form of non-directive coaching that I espouse and chose to follow.

Some people question how I can coach in a non-directive fashion, am I not employed for my experience and ideas? Not so and more importantly I believe coaching is not about me but about the brilliance of another. I do what I can to support my clients to think creatively for themselves without judgement.
I was heartened then to stumble across an article that was exploring a brain-based approach to coaching using neuroscience. It seems like this approach could support or give answers to my very approach to executive coaching.

First, every event that occurs in coaching is tied to activities in someone’s head. Second, a brain-based approach to coaching looks attractive when you think about it being tangible and physical.  It is interesting to be able to explain in scientific terms; why the brain needs coaches, but it is even more useful to know how coaching helps the brain improve its functioning.

This article was fascinating on so many levels! The author David Rock muses that change is hard but that the world needs change. He also opines that change requires more than just scant thought; it requires ongoing attention and a significant effort of will. There are several reasons why change is so hard, and they point to the need to provide additional resources to an individual who wants to successfully change in any way. Hence, brains need coaching.

According to the author there are many interesting and useful findings across neuroscience to help explain the value of coaching, but there are four main areas of scientific research that combine to form a central explanation of how coaching impacts the brain. These are the study of Attention, Reflection, Insight and Action, or ‘ARIA’ for short.
 

Attention, about which the author spends considerable time,  for the brain means “where you focus your attention you make connections” Jeff Swartz, Neuro Scientist, or what you focus on expands!

In scientific terms this is called the Quantum Zeno Effect. Where we choose to put our attention changes our brain and changes how we see and interact with the world. A very coaching concept but it would appear to be a very scientific one too.

On my own website for Lime Trees Road I claim that I support clients to be conscious and in choice. It would appear that giving and paying attention to a concern allows us to be more mindful and attentive to choice, free will if you wish.  Apparently, the brain allows us 0.2 seconds of free will to change our minds before we act on a thought already generated. Coaching can support  being  conscious of our thoughts and noticing more.

The other areas of the ARIA model include reflection, insight and action. David Rock explains that to solve competing dilemmas or issues on a personal or organisational level people need time to think, to reflect and to focus so that insights can percolate and swim to our levels of consciousness. Coaching supports these needs.

Nancy Kline has a methodology and David Rock has some scientific explanations to explain why “coaching works” both of which I love.

The title for this current blog came from a quote I stole from another post by my good friend Aboodi Shabi who is the European leader for the Newfield Network. He writes some very poetic and inspiring blogs for which I am grateful.

In his latest post he writes about the recent election in the UK and how he found himself confronted by his own prejustices in not wanting a right wing or left of right wing government. In the same breath he recognised the admiration he felt for two opposing parties able to compromise their entrenched positions to create a greater good and to be bigger than what they cared about. Aboodi inspired me to consider the notion of change and of compromise.

Recently I wrote about letting go and how difficult a phenomenon that can be for many of us. I also know that wanting difference but behaving in the same way is a slow grind towards insanity.

I have been reading the book Immunity to Change by Kegan and Lahey and am impressed by the rigour of their analysis and legitimacy of their approach. They contend that as humans we often want difference or change in our lives but because of some underlying assumptions we act out in ways that maintain our status quo.

In this book the authors provide a methodology for change. They suggest to the reader the need to rewire the nervous system and deliberately intervene with new practices or behaviours for sustainable change.

The first part requires deliberate noticing and observing of the behaviours that militate against our desire for change. Curiously in some encounters with clients the “one big thing” that would have the most impact on a person’s life was often suggested by a significant other.

The second step involves taking small steps at difference what the authors refer to as “research” by the client. They suggest behaviours that are conceivably small enough to not appear threatening and therefore not subject the nervous system to too much overload. They have several others recommendations but above all they insist on practice and recurrence.

This book reminded me of a coaching scenario I encountered recently. I was coaching someone who wanted to understand why she was rejected by her former employer and had no success with male relationships. She presented as fiercely independent and unwillingly to compromise her standards. We talked about her history and how her parents were very committed to success at all costs. It turns out she regarded all relationships as acquisitions and prizes rather than what they were human interactions about which compromise and growth are significant.

Her interpretation by her own admission was skewed and she decided to reframe her interpretation and look to herself to become more yielding, willing to compromise and even share in the growth of any burgeoning relationship. She decided to accept the fragility and humaneness of people and put herself in that frame as well.

In essence she was willing to become something for which she was “not” as a way of getting what she really wanted; love.

We often assume and invariably are taught that compromise is weak and for the weak willed. This supposition often brings suffering. Many strive to be right over happy or minimally still in conversation and connected.

I am struck by how frequently we as humans will stick to our guns or refuse to concede a point in an argument when what is really at risk is the relationship. Compromise does not have to mean giving in or relinquishing in the heat of the moment but rather taking care of what we care about, which for many of us as was the case with my coaching client, is all about love.

It is simply delicious to mingle amongst the serious followers of James Joyce and Ulysses and marvel at the Edwardian Costumes they don for this auspicious occasion. Dublin was awash with revellers and extreme enthusiasts marking this annual fete.

Bloomsday is a commemoration observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and relive the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses.

Thursday, 16 June 1904 was the date of Joyce’s first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, when they walked to the Dublin urban village of Ringsend. Hardly an urban village now more, like a modern adjunct of a thriving metropolis!

I didn’t appreciate that Mr. Joyce was partial to gorgonzola sandwiches which apparently are still served at Davy Byrnes the local hostelry that was his second home.

Walking the streets of Dublin today and passing Davy Byrne’s, the infamous pub that is ubiquitous and synonymous with the June 16th celebrations it is hard not to be touched by the gaiety and frivolity of the events being celebrated.

The day involves a range of cultural activities including Ulysses readings and dramatisations, pub crawls and general merriment, much of it hosted by the James Joyce Centre in North Great George’s Street. Enthusiasts retrace Bloom’s route around Dublin via landmarks such as Davy Byrnes pub. Hard-core devotees have even been known to hold marathon readings of the entire Ulysses novel, some lasting up to 36 hours

There is something special about being associated with this great luminary even if only by way of a cultural discourse we share. That connectedness was obvious on the streets and in cafes in Dublin today. I cannot profess to have read much of James Joyce’s writing much less the tomb that is Ulysses but I do appreciate the greatness of the man and the cultural legacy he has gifted all of us especially us Dublin folk walking his same streets.

Words cannot quite capture the sense this day imparts but the emotion is definitely pride. There is something quite decadent too about stepping back in time to relive his stories and the stories of that period and to simply bask in the literary genius that he was. One could almost touch him and yet…

The claim that our emotions are basic determinants of what we can and cannot achieve in the domains of work, learning, relationships, sociability, spirituality, etc, etc is pertinent and important for those who are frustrated by getting the same results despite trying harder.

Raphael Echeverria, Ph.D makes this claim in his seminal paper on moods and emotions, a paper disseminated by The Newfield Network as part of the course material provided for their coaching students. Raphael Echeverria was a founding member of the Newfield Network and President of its international network he was also a student of Fernando Flores the man credited with inventing the term ontological coaching.

When we speak about our emotional life we can draw a distinction between two kinds of phenomena-moods and emotions. Emotions are produced whenever we experience a change in the flow of life. They are associated with what Newfield terms as breakdowns- i.e. an interruption in the transparency of life. Emotion is a distinction we make in language to refer to changes in our space of possibilities due to given events. Emotions are bound to certain events and we can normally pinpoint events that triggered them.

Moods are a different distinction. They are not specific and we normally cannot attribute them to particular event. They live in the background from which we act. This is an important statement because for many of us they become so familiar that we do not recognise them for what they are or for the significance they play in perpetuating the kind of results we get in life.

Another important distinguishing feature of moods is that they define a range of possibilities from which we will act rather than manifesting a different ranges of possibilities as happens with emotions after a triggering event. The point is that no matter where we are in life we human beings are always in a mood. Once in a particular mood we become what that mood allows us to be. This can be perplexing and frustrating in equal measure.

Are we damned by the mood we live? To a certain extent yes unless we deliberately intervene to shift the mood space and become a different observer of moods.

We have to first observe, become conscious and pay attention to the clues the domains of the body and language provide to assess our prevailing mood. We can for example observe the mood a person is living simply by paying attention to their posture. There is no innocence on our physical posture and the relationship between the body and the realm of moods is very strong.

Similarly the connection between moods and conversations or language is also very telling. Indeed the biologist Humberto Maturana noted that a conversation is not just a linguistic phenomenon but is a combination of two basic components –language and emotions.

This relationship is critical in helping us intervene in the design of a new mood space. If emotions and moods are predispositions for action is it not important to understand the mood you are living to see if it supports the kind of action you want in life? Easier said than done and I attest to that, but it is possible.

I know that as a kid I was very astute in determining the mood my parents were living in order to get what I wanted or to defer telling them something that I knew would contribute to a worse reaction. How come this knowledge eludes us for acting or intervening in our own mood space? The problem is that moods are often transparent to us. We can be swept along in a particular mood and somehow begin to believe that it is just the way things are or a function of the things that are happening out there beyond our control.

Raphael Echeverria makes the claim that with moods there is room for design. One way to change our range of possibilities and therefore our mood is through conversations. In fact in his paper Echeverria contributes some very definite guidelines for re-shaping our moods. He suggests;
a) Become an observer of moods, can you become proficient in identifying between the moods of Resentment, Resignation, Ambition and Acceptance?
b) On a lighter note we are not responsible for the mood we find ourselves in but we are responsible for staying in that mood
c) Listen to the stories you tell about yourself or your world
d) Listen too for the assessment that goes with your mood, how are you assessing the world, people around you, yourself, and your future? These questions will help you specify the mood you are in.
e) Build repertoires or courses of action that you can take to prevent a mood from taking hold
f) Choose the company you keep
g) Get physical, change your body posture or do some exercise
h) Sometimes we may need to intervene at the level of our biology if the language suggestions above do not help

In writing this piece I found it instructive to help me think of the various ways I can support my own mood change and intervene at the level of conversation or with my body for effect.

We cannot avoid moods but it is easy to forget that we live them and they often have us!

I have to declare that up until my learning with Newfield, the coach training company where I studied to become an ontological coach back in 2006, I had never understood or even heard of the concept to be centred or to be in centre.

Thanks to Newfield I now appreciate what this term means, I understand it but I still fall short in really experiencing it and embodying the practice of moving from centre.

Newfield embraces ontological coaching and as a result of that philosophical underpinning we spent a good proportion of the course experiencing the domain of the body. For many, myself included this is a wholly foreign territory but it serves as a good place to describe what it means to move from centre.

Our physiology or how the body codes and makes sense of the experiences it gets exposed to in life contributes to our having a plethora of triggered tendencies or reactions to events. This then gets transmuted into the language we then use to make sense of events which has a corresponding connection to the emotions and moods we then live.

We know intuitively that we cannot control everything that happens around us and the only control we can manifest is our reaction to events. Easier said than done!

Is being centered more of a physical state concerning center of gravity, natural posture and movement or is it also a state of mind made up of our philosophy, values, and spirituality? The human system is always searching for and trying to maintain homeostasis or balance. To be centered is to live in the immediate and ever changing balance of all these cooperating systems. Newfield would subscribe to that view and would urge congruence between the moods we live, the body we inhabit and the language we deploy from an authentic self.

The difficulty arises when we are presented with situations which we do not like or appreciate. We can be immediately pushed or pulled off centre, we are triggered. Being centered means to be balanced in this instant one hundred percent, taking in information without clouding it with expectations or fear. By taking in information and making creative, intuitive decisions informed by our “CENTER,” our true intent, our original self, we then actualize this intent through our decisions and our physical expressions. We complete the balance of centeredness by being responsible for our decisions and the actions we subsequently make.

As a novice and new to this notion I have experienced this condition, being in centre, when practicing yoga and lately in conversations with people where initially I was severely triggered. It is an immensely humbling experience and one where I imagine the emotion satisfaction is as good descriptor for the emotion that comes with being centred. It is very gratifying to think that you have spoken from a place of authenticity where your views are not coloured or tainted by immediate and sometimes obvious conditioned tendencies and that after the conversation you still feel whole.

I was similarly chuffed to hear my student’s remark in an essay they had to complete for me after a sales development programme I ran, that they would like to experience what is feels like to conduct sales meetings from a place of centeredness. They got the concept and more importantly the benefits of this heightened state and they are twenty years younger than me! Bravo.

If anyone has any further articles or comments to make on this concept or their experiences in achieving centeredness I would love to hear back.