Angela Deutschmann Newsletter
August 2010
Hi everyone
The last few weeks have been full of fun, with media interviews,
speaking events and travel. I’m excited and encouraged to see how many
more people are open to choosing joy, considering new possibilities and
working with themselves than ever before. I urge you to bring these
values to public movements like Lead
SA and Madiba Day. ‘Standing up for your country’ and ‘giving back’
needn’t take the form of anything stereotypical or even overly
nationalistic. Use these initiatives simply to express your own values
more powerfully in the context in which you live or work. On that note,
congratulations to Bongi for winning the complimentary reading for her
sharing her Madiba Day contribution.
I’m also delighted to have made available my first ebook: ‘Parenting
Lightly – the Five Pillars of Raising Children with Joy’. The
introduction is included for you below and, if you’d like to purchase
the complete book, you can do so for R55 from our online store. This
book does not examine parenting techniques but, more importantly, a
fundamental parenting philosophy. It invites you to be truly available
to your child rather than internally enslaved to an idea of who they are
supposed to become or what kind of parent you’re supposed to be. I have
also turned this approach into a talk if any of you / your networks
would be interested.
To me, the two most revolutionary concepts that have arisen from my
readings in the last three years are, firstly, that the purpose of life
is Joy and, secondly, that we don’t climb to the next level of
existence, we surrender to it. It is the latter that is beautifully
introduced in the
July
Insights From the Edge. Entitled ‘The Fall’, this teaching begins
with a visualisation and goes on to explain that if we make life a
process of continually loosening our identity, we will always be
evolving and will experience ourselves as ageless. You can subscribe to
Insights From the Edge or buy the teachings on a once-off basis from our
online store.
Here’s the line-up of workshops for the new few months. You can find out
more about them by clicking through to our website, contacting Garrick
or reading the details below:
JoyBoard Evening – a revealing, creative evening focused on
recognising your joy, on Tuesday 17 August
Jump – an intimate, intense weekend to break through what contains you.
24 – 26 September
Embody – a weekend workshop to fall
in love with your body forever. 12 – 14 November
I’d like to extend a special welcome to this community to many of the
Girls’ Schools’ Principals, who I had the privilege of addressing at
their annual conference last week. It’s inspiring to see that the people
taking care of girls education in South Africa are so enthusiastic about
personal growth and self-esteem. Thank you for the wonderful work you
are doing.
Those folk in the Durban district please see below details of my trip in
late August. Anyone in the Nelspruit area who would like a reading or
coaching session can also contact Garrick ASAP to book for the 12 / 13
August.
Much love
Angela
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Upcoming Events
Blurbs about Durbs
If you’re in the Durban area, come and join us for one of the
following events in late August by
booking with Garrick.
Shadow Workshop (Click to
find out more)
Thursday 26 August
7pm
10A Fairway Drive Salt Rock
R250.00 pp
JoyMap Workshop (Click to find out
more)
Saturday 27 August
9am to 4pm
10A Fairway Drive Salt Rock
R700.00 pp
Readings and Coaching Sessions (see above)
Thursday 26 and Friday 27 August
10A Fairway Drive Salt Rock
Joy Board Evening – a lovely New Year’s gift to yourself or a friend
The value of my Joy Board process (previously called Vision Board)
lies in its ability to access insight from your right brain – using
silence, images and guided visualisation. You will not just be pasting
pictures on a board of what you think you want - you will be engaging
with the gems of awareness from that seldom-used, delicious field of
your imagination. In this way, your board might tell you a few things
about what you want in 2010 that you don’t yet know you know.
Each person attending will receive a personal reading of their board
from Angela.
Date: Tuesday 17 August 2010
Time: 7pm to 10pm
Venue: 42 Tyrone Avenue, Parkview
Cost: R250.00 per person payable in advance. Includes tea, coffee and
all materials. Minimum 6 participants, maximum 10.
To book: Contact Garrick at +27844608667 or
admin@angeladeutschmann.com
PS – In this month’s Oprah magazine Martha Beck writes about the value of this particular kind of vision boarding.
Insights from the Edge – NEW
Each month Angela makes available a full-length teaching on a topic
pertinent to humanity at the time. The topics cover a range of aspects
about the human condition from health, money and parenting to personal
and collective evolution. The insights are radical, yet gentle; profound
yet surprisingly practical, and attract interested readers from all over
the world.
Insights from the Edge will inspire you, challenge you and equip you to
live in the middle of the risky, new and wild place that is Joy.
To subscribe to Option 1 for 12 months costs R 1000.00. Once a month you
will receive a link to a brand new reading and transcription.
To subscribe to Option 2 costs R 1 400.00. Once a month you will receive
a link to a brand new reading, transcription PLUS some notes on how to
apply the reading to your life.
You can also purchase the products above on a once-off basis for R200
and R250.00 respectively from our online store. All of the above can be
paid for by credit card from our store.
Click here for a free sample or to sign up.
Previous Insights From the Edge
March 2010: ‘The Walk of Life’ – an interactive
visualisation offering 23 new, insightful perspectives on how we choose,
listen and live on a daily basis
April 2010: ‘The Art of Surrender’ - explains clearly
what surrender is and isn’t, lists the Four Steps to Surrender as well
as its magnificent effects: stillness, grace and being in the middle of
the flow of love.
May 2010: ‘Living Lightly’ - more than just inviting us
to recognise that in a state of play we are more receptive to learning,
creativity, risk and imagination, this teaching takes the notion of
lightness right to the cliff-edge when it asks whether we will play our
big roles in life better or worse after putting down our ‘backpack full
of rocks’ (burdens).
June 2010: ‘Celebrating the Question’ calls on us to
value our questions as the mechanism for forward movement and to be
careful of overvaluing answers / solutions as well as the providers of
answers / solutions i.e. our teachers. The reading also raises the
question of whether the purpose of life is to achieve something and
explains clearly the three effects of being motivated by a destination,
rather than a deepening.
JUMP - NEW
Since 2008 I have closed off yearly Spiritual Growth Clubs by
offering the group an intense ‘letting go’ weekend at Boondocks Mountain
Lodge and Labyrinth just outside Barberton in Mpumalanga. In September
2010 Jump will available to anyone who is willing to look honestly at
what they allow to contain them (relationships, fear, attachment to a
role, guilt about others and low self esteem amongst others) and break a
pattern. The processes are intimate and completely customized to the
needs of the very small group.
Using the magnificent stone labyrinth, outdoor and indoor experiences,
large and small group work, and a great deal of intuitive guidance,
Garrick and I will create for you a context in which to look at your
fears and Jump off your own personal edge into joy. We love it!
Next Jump:
Date: Friday 24 – Sunday 26 September 2010. Please book soon
Venue: Boondocks Mountain Lodge, between Nelspruit and Barberton
Cost: R 5 800.00 includes full accommodation, delicious meals, 30 hours
of personalised input from two expert facilitators and exclusive use of
this magnificent lodge and labyrinth for a maximum of 8 participants.
25% secures your place, payment plans available
To book: Contact Garrick at +27844608667 or Jump Booking
Embody
You can download a free talk about
Embody from our website, which speaks of the origin and philosophy
of the process, and answers lots of questions.
The Embody workshop is the result of my personal pain about my body. For
years I was so confident, sure and present in my mind and spirituality
and at the same time, so ashamed, disconnected and undeveloped in my
body. I opened up all this pain and transformed it into an exceptionally
powerful and unique workshop that puts you back in touch, in
conversation and in love with your body even if you haven’t been there
for years.
Our bodies, like everything else, are communicators to us. They
communicate our divinity, in an immediate, uncomplicated manner. Our
bodies are as profound a source of wisdom to us as our minds and
spirits. They are faithfully attuned to our highest path, even though we
are ashamed of them, hate them and, more often that not, attempt to
control their expression.
It is not us who are meant to shape our bodies, it is our bodies which
are meant to shape us
If you are brave enough to fully see and own your own body,
compassionate enough to accept the bodies of others and wild enough to
fall unconditionally in love with your body – forever - then I invite
you to Embody.
One participant’s experience:
‘Wow what an experience, what a journey!
When my friend mentioned embody to me I knew instantly this was
something my soul was calling for. I was tired of controlling my weight
and quite frankly I was no longer getting even the temporary successes.
I could not have imagined what was in store for me. The processes were
so powerful, the environment was supportive and beautiful. Angela’s
guidance, and the group’s support helped me go through stuff that I had
hidden somewhere in my mind not realizing how it was contributing to my
habits of not honoring myself and in particular my body. I got insights
on how this cascaded to other areas of my life and how I limited my joy.
Some of processes were such fun, I have not danced so much in a long
time and laughed so much.
I now have a renewed sense of identity and beauty. I feel energetic,
light and my mind is sharp, work flows and I feel much more productive
and present in my activities.
I got a complement from a neighbor who had not seen me for a couple of
weeks on how beautiful I looked and were it not for the lines that she
could see on my face she said, she would have thought I had plastic
surgery.
Oh! Hubby is just too happy to have his wife relaxed and joyful. He says
anytime I wish to go for another Embody he will sponsor!
I now have the dance teacher’s number to call this afternoon and the
name of the shop to buy my dancing shoes.' Xoli
Embody allowed me to release and let go of past anger, shame and blame; issues which I didn’t even know I was holding onto. My life post-embody has been a shedding of protective walls and defences...intense, real yet exciting. Getting in touch with my body had allowed me to let go of the safety of my mind and intellect; and reconnect with my emotion, passion and creativity. Deirdre
You can also read more about this pioneering process, including stories from graduates, at Embody Workshop
Next Embody:
Date: Friday 12 - Sunday 14 November 2010. Please book soon to
make sure you get your place
Venue: Boondocks Mountain Lodge, between Nelspruit and Barberton
Cost: R 5 800.00 includes full accommodation, delicious meals, 30 hours
of personalised input from two expert facilitators and exclusive use of
this magnificent lodge and labyrinth
Payment plans available
To book: Contact Garrick at +27844608667 or
admin@angeladeutschmann.com
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: R650.00 in office hours. R700 after-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: R500.00
A baby blessing, which can be done at a baby shower or as a regular reading, is a conversation with an unborn child. They are normally shorter than an hour, though this depends very much on the chattiness of the child. Best time to have one is between 20 and 35 weeks pregnant.
Time required: 1 hour
Cost: R650.00 in office hours. R700 after-hours
Please contact Garrick if you are interested in booking a distance
reading or a one-on-one session in Johannesburg, Cape Town,
Bloemfontein or White River.
As of January 2010 it will be available to have a coaching session over
Skype.
Bird Cards
For those interested in joining my fascination and work with Jane Toerien’s Bird Cards (www.birdcards.net) I am now stocking these myself and you’re welcome to contact Garrick to purchase them at R250.00 per box set (Exclusive Books sells them for over R300.00 when you can get them and they are R931.00 on Kalahari).
Parenting Lightly
“God be with the mother.
As she carried her child may she carry her soul.
As her child was born, may she give birth and life and form to her own,
higher truth.
As she nourished and protected her child may she nourish and protect her
inner life and her independence.
For her soul shall be her most painful birth, her most difficult child
and the dearest sister to her other children.”
Michael Leunig, from ‘When I Talk to You’
Introduction to Parenting Lightly
Before we begin to explore Parenting Lightly, I want to acknowledge just the fact that you are reading this. Granting permission to see something new is always the first, and most arduous, step and you’ve already taken it. It interests me that often, and paradoxically, we find it most difficult to learn, or receive help, in the areas that matter most to us. We don’t blink at enrolling for a cookery course or subscribing to an entertainment newsletter, but asking for help in being a spouse, or parent, or becoming spiritually mature feels much more exposed and risky, perhaps not only because they are traditionally more private spaces but also because the stakes seem so high. So, strangely, we tend to be more isolated, less receptive and less open to learning in precisely the areas where our highest values may be involved. That’s why I urge you not to take for granted that fact that you are willing to read this and to consider a fundamental re-questioning of the very personal and frighteningly important aspect of your parenting - particularly from someone who’s not holding herself up as having succeeded at it. I’m learning all the time - as we all do for the duration of our parenting journey – but, through the work I do, I have come across some wonderful understandings about the basic nature of parenting that I will offer here.
Who am I?
I am a writer, speaker and teacher on matters of personal and
spiritual growth. In particular, my work is focused on encouraging and
enabling people to choose Joy as a way of being, and my methods are
intuitive, challenging and intimate. I am a mother of two young boys –
Joshua is five and Daniel is three – so, like many like of you, I am
fitting in my passion (this book) between dressing and feeding, reading
stories and (in my case) playing pirate-pirate.
Over the last six years I’ve learnt from thousands of clients in
workshops, growth clubs, coaching sessions and readings that the purpose
of existence is Joy and that it requires a tremendous amount of courage
to live that. I will raise the notion of Joy often in this book though
in particular I will focus on how to parent with Joy (as opposed to
heaviness, hope or even responsibility).
Where are you parenting from?
In this book I want to look not at how you parent, but at where you parent from. I want to look at the baseline belief system that governs your parenting, because all the choices that you make, from nutrition to routine to discipline, will flow from your deepest beliefs about what it means to be a parent and your relationship to yourself in that role.
It would be worthwhile to close this book for a few moments
and answer these questions:
• What does it mean to me to be a parent?
• What am I expecting of myself in this role?
• What exactly am I responsible for, in relation to my children? Be
specific.
• What will tell me I am getting it right?
• What will tell me I am getting it wrong?
For example, does being a parent of a child mean for you that you are
responsible for that child? If so, what exactly are you responsible for
– that your children live a long life, that they don’t hurt themselves,
that they are moral, that they treat people well, that they are healthy,
that they are happy? Do you feel that it is your job to produce a good
citizen, a mentally well adult, a balanced, independent, intelligent
individual? Do you think you can get that right?
It is these, most fundamental, questions, that I don’t see being asked
very often. Techniques of parenting are offered to us ad nauseum but we
don’t pay much attention to our underlying, often unconscious,
philosophy of parenting. This is the level on which we need to focus and
where we need to respect ourselves deeply in order to parent practically
in a similar way. Simply trying to master disciplinary, teaching or
communication techniques that you absorb from experts around you -
whether they are friends, parents, or authors - without knowing very
clearly your own deep approach to parenting is a considerable waste of
effort not to mention a diversion from facing the truth of things.
Parenting Lightly is a book, and an approach, focused singularly on
attending to your philosophy of parenting: where you parent from.
The ‘Being Good’ model
The dominant and acceptable parenting model when I was growing up,
and certainly before that, was of trying to raise ‘good’ children.
Father Christmas came to good boys and girls, mothers discussed whether
their children were good babies or not and, as a child, we got the
message loudly and clearly that we would be well-rewarded in every
sphere for being good (which largely meant doing what an adult told you
to do without questioning, and doing it well). The idea that the purpose
of life was to be good in general and to become especially good at
something in particular, was so rife that it wasn’t even noticed let
alone questioned (and sometimes still isn’t). Furthermore, being good
was largely considered our responsibility, not our parents’. In short,
most of the messaging we got was ‘you need to make our experience of you
nice’.
When we did do that, we were heaped with praise and external reward.
When we didn’t, we quickly got labelled as naughty or rebellious and -
usually to our detriment, became strongly identified with those labels
and presumed that they described our inherent personality
To put it simply: being raised to be good has produced rebellious,
under-achieving adults (still trying to displease) or, the opposite and
equally sad effect, producing A-type, over-giving adults (still trying
to please). A number of therapists owe their livelihood to the fact that
many of us were raised with the idea that the highest way to be was good
and realised somewhere along the road that this was a limiting,
inaccurate and inauthentic way to live. A huge part of my ongoing
journey is letting go of trying to please or impress people and instead
showing up truthfully, because I was just so well rewarded for being
good as a child. On the other hand, other people I know got the message
that they were never good enough as children, and they have displayed
similar difficulty in setting themselves free into their passions.
The switch from trying to produce good children to trying to produce good parents
It’s less common these days for parents to hope above all else that
they produce good children. I’m relieved to hear people talking with
pride about the fact their kids are original or passionate or quirky.
But what I have also noticed is that it is now the parents who are
completely fraught with anxiety about how to be good, which is perhaps
not all that surprising considering this is how we were raised. There
must be thousands of how-to manuals on parenting that teach you how to
be a good parent from every perspective - stimulation, routine,
nutrition, emotional support, spiritual development and so on. We are no
longer focusing on how to raise good children, but we are obsessed with
trying to be good parents.
And the effect of that approach? As I observe myself and other parents
around me I am seeing many of us feeling tired, stressed, worried or
quietly (and guiltily) resentful of all we think we have to do to be
good parents. In a nutshell, most modern-day parents seem to be heavy,
which is the very predictable result of constantly trying to be good.
The Parenting Lightly approach
I would like to present a model that bypasses the notion of good
altogether and instead focuses on Joy. I would be delighted if we could
parent authentically and Joyfully, rather than under the pressure of
trying to be good providers, good listeners, good discipliners, good
cooks, good motivators, good role models – all at the same time! If the
approach of trying to be good didn’t work for raising children then it’s
also not going to work for being parents, and we can in fact expect a
backlash effect, evidence of which you may already see in your own life.
A lot of the parenting that we have become used to, and even what is
taught to us, is parenting from ego. This means some or all of the
following: parenting in order to produce a desired result in our
children, parenting in order to be seen a certain way by our family and
by our friends, or parenting from our pain. No matter how
well-intentioned, hard-working or controlled we may be, it is the place
from which we parent that becomes the result we experience.
If we are going to parent lightly, then it will need to be a version of
parenting that is from as little ego as possible. And this focuses on,
and certainly demands, a much bigger sort of parent, one who approaches
parenting from a sense of their own wholeness and not from a sense of
their own lack. To be that kind of parent you will need to be okay with
developing high levels of self-trust, vulnerability and internally
generated self-esteem.
For that reason, I also recognise that this approach will only be useful
to people who are psychologically healthy as well as interested in their
own personal growth.
If that sounds like you (ok, let’s make it somewhat psychologically
healthy…) and if the idea of parenting with lightness rather than with
heaviness sounds like your idea of heaven then let’s move on to the
nitty gritty.
How do I parent lightly?
It is of no use to you to take a list of methodologies, activities or
suggestions and try to apply them without first truly giving permission
to orientate yourself towards being a Joyful parent rather than a good
parent. Unless you really want to parent lightly (and believe that that
is the best path for us all), you never will and it’s no use wasting
energy on trying recommended techniques thereof.
That’s why this book does not offer suggestions on discipline, routine,
stimulation or any other facet of day-to-day parenting. Once you know
and respect your own parenting philosophy (which you can determine by
answering the five questions above) you will be more than equipped to
negotiate that terrain yourself.
Instead, this book will share the Five Pillars of Parenting Lightly.
These are five ideas to absorb, make peace with and allow into your
life, if light parenting is the way you wish to follow.
The Five Pillars of Parenting Lightly are:
1. You cannot get parenting right
2. You are not in charge of your children and how they turn out
3. Children absorb you, not what you teach them or give them
4. The greatest gift you can give your child is your Joy
5. Your primary responsibility is to grow yourself, not your child
Each of the subsequent chapters will explore one of these pillars in greater depth and give you the chance to let go of any heaviness you are carrying in relation to being a parent. If you can feel good about your fundamental approach to parenting, that positive mood will necessarily spill over into the practical details of your life with your children.
If you are interested in purchasing the complete Parenting Lightly eBook please visit our online store.
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