Newsletter
March 2009
Hi everyone
It’s been fascinating to me in the last few weeks to see how, in the midst of global economic downturn and other expressions of upheaval, there are some people (and businesses) thriving. Firstly, that shows me that there’s actually nothing ‘real’ out there, purely our subjective experience of it and secondly, it raises the question of what permissions allow us to thrive within uncertainty? These five permissions are the ones that I have noticed to be most successful in creating joy from chaos:
Allowing myself to be wrong (maybe the world doesn’t work the way I
thought; maybe I’m not ‘meant’ to do this, maybe I don’t know the answer
to this etc)
Allowing myself to be flexible (this wasn’t my plan and that’s ok)
Allowing myself to let go (of ideas, stuff, approval, people etc)
Allowing myself to soften or release the stronghold of identity (I’m not
a fixed and narrow personality, but a vast, dynamic being who can choose
new responses)
Allowing myself to find joy in my becoming, and not only my doing
We play with many of these on the workshop Jump, which I will be introducing later in the year. Being flexible also applies to the ideas and practices we have about God and spirituality, which has prompted me to write the Bull’s Eye below entitled Move Over Meditation.
This month, I invite you to join me for a relationship talk called Separate Togetherness – creating a model of partnership that supports freedom and the development of the whole self. The talk will introduce some of the concepts on which the October workshop is based. We’re also offering a group reading in Johannesburg in March and there is one more spot on Embody for someone who wishes to radically change the way they inhabit, love and listen to their body. Sue Fuller-Good will once again offer her amazing body-reading skill as part of this workshop. At the same time as Embody, Sue and stunt man Ellis Levin will run a separate process at Boondocks called Brilliant Freedom, which uses wild animals, the bush and physical adventure to break through barriers to extreme freedom of the body. You cannot do both workshops simultaneously, though each of us will contribute on each other’s workshop to give both sets of participants maximum value. More details below.
We will shortly be sending out a flyer about some Inspirational Breathwork events offered by Dutch teacher Joost Maijvis. I don’t use this newsletter for advertising, other than when I have personally experienced something that has really moved me and which I would love for you to benefit from as well. Doing an Inspirational Breath Workshop was one of the highlights of 2008 for me and I’m delighted that Joost will be back in Jo’burg from 1 – 5 May.
My bank account number and type has changed, please read your event confirmation emails carefully and edit your beneficiary details accordingly. Thank you.
Much love to all of you for a momentous, miraculous, meaningful March. Garrick and I will be on holiday from 9 to 15 March and won’t be taking calls or answering emails until we’re back on Monday 16th.
Love
Angela
Please visit my Blog
here.
Johannesburg
Personal Readings and Spiritual Coaching Sessions
A personal, or couple’s, reading is a session where I channel insight from your higher self about what is most dominant in your ‘field’ at that time. This can include patterns you are holding, some of your life themes, blockages in your body, the particular cycle you are in at the time or what thought patterns may be holding you back from feeling free. Usually there is an opportunity to ask specific questions if you wish to, but the reading will take on a particular direction or set of themes right from the start. The energy of these conversations is gentle, incredibly loving yet also full of humour and practical suggestions.
Time required: 1 to 1.5 hours
Cost: R550.00 in office hours
A spiritual coaching session does not involve direct channelling. It is an opportunity for you to bring specific issues to the session, perhaps those that came up in a previous reading but not necessarily, and to work with my questions and ideas on these. I don’t follow a specific coaching methodology and will work with what comes up in the moment using discussion or physical movement or conscious dreaming or anything else that can move you forward. A warning: I’ve been heard to say ‘I couldn’t give a damn about your success…I’m only interested in your Joy’!
Time required: 50 minutes
Cost: R350.00
Please contact Garrick if you are interested in booking one of these sessions in Johannesburg, Cape Town or White River. A waiting period of 5 to 7 weeks can be expected.
Contact Garrick on +27844608667 or via email.
Group Reading
You can download the latest group readings from our website to hear the kind of insight that is available in that environment. The February reading spoke about the significant changes afoot and some tools that can be used to work with these, such as the power of permission. Group readings usually convey a tremendous amount of information in a short space of time – I like to think of them as the espresso of my work – and are mostly attuned to what the particular members of the group or broader humanity are experiencing at the time. They are affordable and a good way to introduce newcomers to the beauty and value of channelling. There is often an opportunity to ask a personal question.
The cost of attending a group reading will remain unchanged at R100.00 for the third year running so that these events are as accessible as possible. Please note, however, that this is an attendance fee and the right to sell or distribute the information remains with Travelling Light.
Next Group Reading in Johannesburg
Date: Sunday 22 March 2009
Time: 4pm to 5.30pm
Venue: Northside Lodge, 31 Knox Street, Waverley
Cost: R100.00 pp
To book contact Garrick +2784 460 8667 or via email
Transformation Game
The Transformation Game was designed at the renowned Findhorn Retreat and is a wonderful way to play out your life. You can find new perspectives, test out your intuition and receive divine feedback – all while playing a board game. Garrick and I offer facilitated Transformation Game Evenings by request for groups of 4 to 8 people. A lovely and lively evening for bookclubs, or groups of colleagues and friends.
Available on request.
JoyMap Workshop
In my experience, most New Year’s resolutions or any kind of goal-setting exercises, are likely to fail for two reasons: Firstly, they are usually based on what you think you should do, rather than what you deeply want to do. In other words, the goals are set only from your head. Failure to sustain these resolutions breeds a sense of self-recrimination, your esteem drops and a cycle of subtle disappointment begins. Secondly, even when your goals are truly aligned with your joy, they may be unrealistic and difficult to integrate into your life as it is now. Why not do it differently in 2009 and begin to sculpt your life – practically - from joy?
I have designed a number of unusual, innovative processes to assist you to see what you really want from the year and to find real, creative and achievable ways to integrate this into your current life with nothing needing to change.
One participant’s experience:
"Being the OCD personality type, I am constantly making lists and working towards “goals” and setting new year’s resolutions throughout the year, because how else can a person exist…. Ha ha – I found a delicious way yesterday…I spent the day with Angela, a friend and wise woman, and started learning about me and what I am passionate about as opposed to what I think or believe I have to be passionate about…
The word goal didn’t even enter my mind and yet I have these BIG dreams that I announced yesterday and have started towards them…not because I have to, but because I cannot wait any longer …
I would love for you all to experience this joy and excitement…Go on, give it a bash – the way you look at your life for the next year will astound you!"
Juanene Frydman, Life Coach and Facilitator, InnerI Consulting
Durban
Date: Saturday 7 March 2009
Time: 9am to 4pm
Venue; Breathing Space
Cost: R650.00 per person (includes all materials and teas, please bring
a light lunch)
Minimum 5 Maximum 10
Johannesburg
Date: Saturday 23 May 2009
Time: 9am to 4pm
Venue; Northside Lodge, 31 Knox Street, Waverley
Cost: R650.00 per person (includes all materials and teas, please bring
a light lunch)
Minimum 5 Maximum 10
To book contact Garrick +2784 460 8667 or via email
Separate Togetherness
I work with a number of couples in my practice and friendship circles that are looking for new ways of having intimate partnerships - ones which are based on ‘wild love’ and real (not token) freedom rather than the more typical model of co-dependency and ‘blaming, shaming or taming’ (Gill Edwards). But there are few role models of such partnerships and most of us default to what we learned in our own childhood homes, especially when we are tired, overwhelmed or scared.
I will be presenting both a seminar and a workshop on Separate Togetherness. The seminar will introduce some new questions and possibilities about partnership and I will share some of what has come up in readings about this. Anyone may come to the seminar – whether they wish to do the workshop or not.
Separate Togetherness Seminar
Date: Friday 20 March 2009
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Northside Lodge, 31 Knox Street, Waverley
Cost: R100 pp, R170 for couples
To book: Contact Garrick at +27844608667 or email
Cape Town
Personal Readings and Coaching Sessions
Monday 2nd to Thursday 5th February 2009
If you would like a personal reading or coaching session in this time, please contact Garrick via email or at +2784 460 8667.
White River
Personal Readings and Coaching Sessions
Contact Garrick on +2784 460 8667 or via email.
EMBODY
A workshop for those whose hearts are big enough to fall in love with their bodies
‘My weekend at Boondocks, carrying out the EMBODY workshop was more than life-changing. Each process allowed me to take a step forward towards my own divine beauty. Never have I felt so free in all 34years of existence on this earth. Every step I took was magical and it unlocked a new aspect of deep understanding to the questions I have always asked regarding my body. WHY is my body the way it is? Never will I need to ask that question again. I have discovered my new best friend (my body). The miracles have continued into my everyday life and GRATITUDE is the only word that comes to mind when I think of my weekend at Boondocks’ – Tracy (34)
‘First of all, I feel that my shoulders have opened up so much more and I feel so strong- actually a customer even asked me today... which made me smile. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to shed that last part of shame I had been carrying with me for so long...’ – Gunter (31)
‘Thank you, for a once in a life time experience. I feel like a totally different person, and I hold my Body in a new light. I feel as though I am enveloped in a glow. Maybe that’s a sign of actually getting younger. There is no sign of any pain. - Ina (65)
The previous Embody Workshop yielded some miraculous and dramatic shifts in participants’ relationships to self-esteem, eating, exercise, sexuality, pain, relationships and awareness of life purpose. To read more about this pioneering process, including more stories from graduates, please click here.
If you are brave enough to fully see and listen to your own body, compassionate enough to accept the bodies of others and wild enough to fall unconditionally in love with your physicality – forever - then I invite you to Embody.
27 – 29 March 2009
Boondocks Mountain Lodge, between Nelspruit and Barberton
R 5 800.00 includes full accommodation, delicious meals and exclusive
use of this magnificent lodge and labyrinth
As of 3 March 2009, there is one place left on this workshop.
Contact Garrick at +27844608667 or via email.
At the same time as Embody, Sue Fuller-Good and Ellis Levin are offering a workshop in the bush at Boondocks called Brilliant Freedom.
Brilliant Freedom is a workshop that works on the physical side of you to bring harmony in your body, soul and mind.
It takes place on a glorious game farm, Boondocks and uses connection with nature, wild animals and being one with the earth to assist facilitator and healer Sue Fuller-Good to help you to break through any physical or mental limitations to a place of total confidence and trust in yourself and your body. Sue Fuller-Good is a physiotherapist and has a deep understanding of the body and of the energy system. She will coach you and coax you as you break through the prison bars of your self held beliefs about your body and what you can do with it.
This workshop will enable you to have a wilderness adventure (sleeping under the stars on the land and eating food prepared by your own hands far from the comfort of a kitchen) with facilitation and support. It is a spiritual journey which involves a lot of one on one coaching as well as healing. It takes advantage of the power of group learning as well and because it is experiential it will create cellular shifting and not intellectual learning. In addition to the physical challenges and excitement and Sue’s constant coaching, you will have assistance and input from Angela Deutschmann, who offers insight and teaching obtained from her chanelled readings and coaching. Sue and Angela have worked together before with awesome results, each coming from their own very different perspective to create a fusion of understanding. On top of this, flying instructor, stunt pilot and extreme sports man Ellis Levin will be there to encourage you and share his expertise with you. He will draw on his life experience in walking through his own fears as he gently guides you to walk through yours. This team and this setting will provide the ideal space for you to break through and find joy in your physicality. Don’t hesitate to book your place on this life changing journey.
Date: Friday 27 - 29 March 2009
Venue: Boondocks Game farm and heritage site.
Cost: Special introductory offer of R3900 until the 15th of March 2009.
Hereafter the cost will be R5 800.
This includes all of the food and all the equipment you will need (except for your backpack and sleeping bag). We will have full use of the entire farm, Boondocks and a chance to walk its awesome labyrinth. The cost also includes reasonable ongoing email support post workshop to assist you as you embody the changes fully.
To Book: Contact Lila on +2711 463 0229 or admin@bodybrilliance.co.za . The workshop is restricted to 12 people and already has some attendants so please book soon. 25% deposit secures your booking.
Separate Togetherness
I work with a number of couples in my practice and friendship circles that are looking for new ways of having intimate partnerships - ones which are based on ‘wild love’ and real (not token) freedom rather than the more typical model of co-dependency and ‘blaming, shaming or taming’ (Gill Edwards). But there are few role models of such partnerships and most of us default to what we learned in our own childhood homes, especially when we are tired, overwhelmed or scared.
I will be presenting both a seminar and a workshop on Separate Togetherness. The seminar will introduce some new questions and possibilities about partnership and I will share some of what has come up in readings about this. Anyone may come to the seminar – whether they wish to do the workshop or not.
Separate Togetherness Workshop
The Separate Togetherness workshop is for 10 people (5 couples) who are committed to their own joy and to creating a relationship which truly supports that.
I am not taking a purely theoretical approach but will instead build what I have learnt about healthy partnerships into processes focussed on the real-life gifts and challenges of the relationships in the room. Garrick and I will also share our own experiences of partnership and what we are discovering about being separately together.
This workshop will require honesty, courage and commitment, and will therefore deliver life-changing results. It is not specifically intended for relationships in trouble, but rather for couples who value their partnership enough to want to work on and deepen it.
Follow-up support after the workshop will be available
Separate Togetherness Workshop
Date: Next workshop: Friday 2 October – Sunday 4 October 2009
Venue: Boondocks Mountain Lodge, between Nelspruit and Barberton
Cost: R 8 500.00 per couple includes workshop, full accommodation,
delicious meals and exclusive use of this magnificent lodge and
labyrinth.
Maximum 5 and minimum 3 couples. Please book soon
To book: Contact Garrick at +27844608667 or email
Durban
Talk on Life Purpose
Wednesday 4 March 2009
7.30pm
Breathing Space
Personal Readings or Coaching Sessions
Thursday 5 and Friday 6 March
FULL
JoyMap Process
Saturday 7 March 2009
9am to 4pm
Breathing Space
R650.00 per person
To book for any of these please contact Garrick at +27844608667 or email
Bulls Eye
March 2009
Move over Meditation
Before I get drawn and quartered by devotees of the peaceful practice of meditation (or is that an oxymoron?), allow me to share some observations of myself and my clients, which have lead me to question some of the presumptions and prescriptions surrounding meditation as a spiritual tool.
Empirical research and personal experience certainly seem to indicate that no technique we know of (yet) can beat meditation for combating stress, training the mind and, in some cases, creating the conditions for blissful union with self, or the all that is. I’m not refuting that at all. Meditation may well be the quintessential tool for centre-ing and raising awareness; it’s just not the only one. And that little distinction can be the key to freeing up your spiritual life immeasurably.
Many people I’ve met carry significant guilt or worry about their meditation practice, or the lack thereof. It features on every to-do list they have and yet does not ever seem to become fully integrated into their daily life. The result? They get very heavy about the fact that they’re not getting light. Mmmm…
Of course this guilt feeds their heaviness and makes them feel like meditating the way a hippo might feel like taking a spinning class. He’d rather lie down and eat, which is precisely what many of them do. When we tell ourselves that we just can’t do this meditation thing (today), we tend to abandon a spiritual practice all together instead of exploring other possibilities of connecting with our divinity when meditation isn’t happening.
It’s a bit like me and exercise. In my head, exercise = running for 20 to 30 minutes three to four times a week. When I can’t, or don’t want, to do that then I do nothing at all. Sometimes for months! Some part of me, quite rightly, rebels against such a narrow, externally-taught range of exercise which is seldom very much fun. And because I have an ‘all or nothing’ idea about exercise, this leaves me high and dry. Or fat and flat, as the case may be.
Now that I see this, I teach myself and clients (especially in the Embody and Joymap processes) to recognise lots of different and creative ways in which we might get some exercise / love / international travel or whatever else gives us joy. Exactly the same is true of a spiritual practice. If your idea of speaking and listening to your divinity consists only of meditation, then you are at the mercy of the time, energy, conditions and inclination to meditate and if you don’t do it (and I can guarantee you that sometimes you won’t) then you’ll probably do nothing at all.
Why not expand your range of spiritual tools to give yourself a bigger menu from which to choose? Make sure that at least one of the options does not require money, at least one of the options does not require a long stretch of free time, at least one of the options doesn’t require you to be well / peaceful / high energy so that you don’t cop out of your spiritual practice just because on any given day those things aren’t there.
Of course you can be meditative while washing the dishes, driving to work or watching a Barney video (apparently) so the art of meditation can be practiced at any moment of your day, but that’s not only what I mean. Sometimes, loud or wild activity (which would seem anything other than meditative) also has the effect of bringing you back to your centre, clearing out the stuck emotions you might be carrying and clearing the path for the flow of divinity to move through you, well, loudly and wildly.
Over and above meditation, these are some of the things on my list of spiritual practices:
Putting my iPod on shuffle and listening deeply to the first three or four songs that come up. Inevitably, these raise a valuable emotion or insight for me, even if they do leave me crying in public places.
Dancing freely by myself for the pure purpose of expressing how I am feeling (i.e. not for showing my cool moves or getting sexy). For me this is one of the most effective, accessible and easy forms of letting go.
Writing and drawing in my journal.
Making love.
Talking or sending emails to specific friends with whom intimate sharing is the order of the day.
Being on aeroplanes. I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but in aeroplanes I’m immediately filled with a vast peacefulness and creativity. I step off them as if I’ve ohm-ed for hours. An expensive form of meditation but great for Voyager miles…
Laughing. It’s irrelevant whether I’m laughing at my (big and strong) son dressed in pantyhose and doing ballet to ‘Hier Kommie Bokke’ (really) or at reruns of the Friends series, something about laughing in itself makes me lighter, less stressed and more open to possibilities. A very good replacement, or precursor, to meditation on the days you feel particularly down or heavy.
Bringing people to mind with whom I’m having difficulty and forgiving them (which is really forgiving myself and my own projected qualities).
Doing something I’m not good at. This weekend I played Wii Golf. You might not think that has spiritual benefits, but because this is so far off the list of things that I’m naturally good at, it did wonders for allowing me to laugh at myself and, in doing so, shrink my ego. Which is, after all, the purpose of meditation.
Your list will be different and, in actual fact, it’s not the activities themselves that create the value, it’s the permission behind them. If you can give permission to many more things than just meditation to be part of your spiritual practice, then you will fling open the doors of possibility and find yourself connecting to truth and divinity in the most unlikely situations. I’m sure Meditation would be proud.
© Angela Deutschmann. This article may be freely circulated as long as it is attributed to the author and not used for financial gain
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