Angela Deutschmann Newsletter
September 2011
Hi everyone
The last few months have been somewhat tumultuous for most folk I know, including myself. I see many of the structures around us on which we have become dependent (governments, financial systems, homes, relationships, identities, employment) beginning to wobble or downright fall to the ground, leaving us with the choice of crumbling with them, or cultivating fluid identities that are no longer dependent on the presence, or state of health, of the structures we previously thought we needed.
Even if we make the second choice and set about re-imagining ourselves and our lives, we can still feel stretched and challenged to the hilt by this process. I am currently working with many clients who are describing themselves as overwhelmed and exhausted (think ‘rabbit in the headlights’ meets ‘energiser-bunny with no batteries’).
While there’s no value in avoiding what needs to be faced in our everyday circumstances, I am becoming increasingly aware of how vital it is to also have ‘fundamental rest’. This is a concept brought up in the July Insights From the Edge and it means resting on a fundamental (i.e. identity) level, which is not simply sleeping, leisure or ‘me time’. I am taking this kind of rest so seriously for myself and my clients that I would like to offer you two mechanisms for introducing it into your own life:
1. A complimentary copy of the July Insights From the Edge in which you will learn what fundamental rest means, the four prerequisites for allowing it and the powerful benefits (most importantly, self-love!) of practicing this regularly. The reading also makes clear why and exactly how your ego will resist rest and includes a practical system for starting out. This is an audio file, a full-length transcription and a worksheet and can be downloaded here:
http://www.box.net/shared/uljsjspe9glj456zojl0
2. A Silent Retreat, which I will be offering at Boondocks for the first time on 22 – 24 October. On this Retreat I will offer an introduction to Fundamental Rest, after which you will have the opportunity to be in utter silence from Friday 5pm till Sunday 11am.
My Bull’s Eye below is called The Body-Love Paradox and its’ written for those who find themselves somewhere between ‘I love myself the way I am’ and ‘Do plastic surgeons take credit cards?’.It will also introduce you to two of the main principles on which we run Embody – a workshop for those whose hearts are big enough to fall in love with their bodies. This is a crucial aspect of life and self to take care of, or how many more possibilities will you cover up or beach holidays will you dread? The final two Embody workshops of the year are in November and December.
In December (9-11) is also our popular year-end Re-Treat for
graduates of Embody or JUMP. This is a relaxed weekend of excellent
conversation, much laughter, beautiful food and a variety of personal
growth processes and talks from which to choose. There are details below
of all the above workshops as well my final Advanced Shadow Workshop
of
the year. I only ever work with very small groups so please book soon if
you want to ensure a spot.
And, speaking of the end of the year (already!), I’m delighted to
announce that we will be offering the 2012 Group Reading at Boondocks
this year on 31 December. Join us at 2pm for refreshments, a reading
about what 2012 offers us and a chat with Angela, for R200.00. You will
also have access to a recording of that reading. If you’d like to stay
the night, we will offer you all of the above plus a moonlight labyrinth
walk and bed and breakfast for R550.00.
Lastly, in honour of the gorgeous Spring feeling (at least here in the
Southern hemisphere!) and the new gusto it usually brings, I’d like to
make available to our mailing list members the following specials valid
between 15 September and 15 October:
• Readings at R550.00 (instead of R650.00) and
• Transcribing of your reading (old or new) at R120.00 (instead of
R300.00)
Please quote the password ‘Spring-Cleaning Fever’ when you book
Much love
Angela
Find me
@ :
twitter
Facebook
BLOG
Upcoming Events
Summer Weekend Workshops!
Silent Retreat 22-24 October Boondocks Mountain Lodge R 1 300.00 Self-Catering
An introduction to the concept of Fundamental Rest (including defenses you can expect to encounter), followed by absolute solitude and silence between Friday 5pm and Sunday 11am.
EMBODY 18 - 20 November and 2 – 4 December Boondocks Mountain Lodge R 5 800.00 Single Room Fully Catered
An intimate and courageous workshop designed to release you into radical acceptance and deep conversation with your body. Maximum 7 people. For more see http://angeladeutschmann.com/workshops/embody.htm.
Graduates Re-Treat 9-11 December Boondocks Mountain Lodge R 3 150.00 Fully Catered
For Embody and JUMP graduates only, a weekend full of new growth activities and talks, socializing with amazing human beings, playing, laughing, rest and stillness. All processes optional. If you are a graduate please contact Angela to find out more.
Advanced Shadow Work
This is a full-day, intimate workshop for those who have completed the Introductory Shadow Workshop and already have a grasp of the concept and its value. We will explore your family and cultural shadow, confront your judgments and shame and have some fun with your resistances and infatuations! Please book soon as the workshop is restricted to a small number of people.
Date: Saturday 24 September 2011
Time: 10am to 5pm
Venue: 50 Athlone Avenue, Parkview
Cost: R700.00 per person payable in advance.
To book: Contact Garrick at 0844608667 or
admin@angeladeutschmann.com.
For more information and personal stories on my own shadow work you can read the articles “Vampires and Vultures’, ‘From Holy to Wholly’ and ‘My R10 000.00 Shadow’ on my blog http://angeladeutschmann.wordpress.com or on my Public Facebook Page
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:
‘My Embody experience is best described when I think of the story of
Beauty and the Beast! How the beast needed to find the love for who he
was before he physically transformed into the gorgeous prince. I can
truly appreciate what Embody puts on the table in terms of concepts and
processes. Having my life structured in such a way where I am required
to be constantly intellectual in all that I do and how I approach left
me disconnected from my body and my basic right to FEEL as God / My Soul
/ Higher Power intended.
Looking back my journey at Embody, I realise how I needed to shave the
layers away to start feeling again. How I needed to cut away the
restraints and allow for all that was great within me to naturally
surface to the light to be experienced and integrate into my
consciousness. No amount of positive thinking, visualisation or any
intellectual approach could have leaped me forward as Embody allowed me
to be. FEELING, being PRESENT in my own skin and AWARE of my body's
voice was all I needed. I had to learn to step into pain, shame and at
some points even hatred! But that is the beauty of life as I realised on
Embody. You feel that pain / shame / fear / hatred and then transmute
and so you make space for greatness and all that is good! Amen!
I am reminded what it feels like to be safe, vulnerable and loved
through my eyes! Reminded how playing big, taking risks and plunging in
enables the sweet bliss of freedom and lightness to find a sweet spot in
my life. Because after all, when we working with the soul and our
bodies, the people that really matter will see my beauty. Thank you to
Angela, Shaun and my Fellow Embody Graduates! I have been gifted with
love and a new level of "being" to operate from. Amazed when one is not
weighed down with the intellectual clutter picked up along the way in
life, how perspective, inspired action, focus and just feeling with
every cell makes one BURN with ALIVENESS and BLISS. I am grateful that I
was able to step into my "beast" and found my "beauty" that I can now go
forward and strengthen’. Brynmore, Management Consultant
You can also read more about this pioneering process, including stories
from graduates, at Embody Workshop
Next Embody:
Date: Friday 18 - Sunday 20 November 2011 and Friday 2 - 4
December 2011. 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
Spiritual Growth Clubs
‘Having worked with Angela this past year has been an amazing
experience. I use the word experience as through her processes and
methodology I have been able to move from the intellectualising and the
cognitive awareness that I used to deal with life and actually start to
feel, emote and engage totally differently and live the aspect of
“Experience trumps Awareness”. It has been an amazing journey for me to
get to this place, it is through her brilliant application of Ontology
that has made this possible. Getting to this point has added huge value
to not only my life but has taken my coaching to a whole new level.
Spending time with the group each month and ending off with our own
tailor-made Jump workshop has been invaluable to me on so many levels
and has given me a lucid indication of where my Joy lies. I have had a
profound shift based directly on the workshop and know that choices that
I have made in the days, weeks and month following the workshop have
been done with clarity and certainty that they not only add my Joy but I
am liberated to follow and commit to it.’ Gavin, Ontological Coach
An increasing number of people are committing themselves to conscious,
responsible and empowered living. The number and variety of spiritual
workshops and therapies attest to this. Yet, more is required to
manifest awareness in action than just a once-off intervention. Personal
transformation is a dynamic and ongoing process and requires consistent
integration and support, whether that is in the form of honest feedback,
access to new knowledge or motivation. Often we attempt, or feel we are
forced, to pursue our spiritual development in isolation. Besides the
fact that this reinforces a consciousness of separation, it can also
leave us blinkered to our own stumbling blocks or gifts or next steps.
My popular Spiritual Growth Clubs provide a rare opportunity to walk
your personal path in fellowship with like-minded people who are open to
learning, sharing and growing as much as you are. They also come with
expert facilitation and access to all the new insight with which I work.
Contact Garrick to register for a 2011 group (Johannesburg only) or to learn more.
‘It has been very difficult to put into words how best to describe my experience in a Growth Club. The Growth Club provided me with a safe and respectful space to express my deepest pain and emotions - a place to be real, raw and authentic. Through this year long process I was able to grow, to shift, to gain such huge awareness about myself, learning to trust myself, to respect and honour my intuition and to fully experience the rawest of emotions that I would ordinarily never have had the space to do so. Angela’s exceptionally respectful and honouring approach is hugely appreciated and her gentleness and beauty permeates in everything. I thank her for giving me the cushion to "land safely" through the year and my Jump process and to gain inner strength and depth. I value the privilege of having been given this blessing to learn and grow with her. A very privileged Club to be in. Thank you’ Ilana, owner Magical Moments
Insights From the Edge - For Continuous Self-Teaching
Each month I make 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 1 000.00. 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.
Insights From the Edge in the second half of 2011:
The July 2011 Insights From the Edge teaching examines the concept and practice of ‘Fundamental Rest’. You will learn what fundamental rest means, the four prerequisites for allowing it and the powerful benefits (most importantly, self-love!) of practicing this regularly. The reading also makes clear why and exactly how your ego will resist rest and includes a practical system for starting out.
The August 2011 Insights From the Edge, ‘Game of Life’, invites us to position life as a game and explains the essential qualities shared by both. This reading includes important teachings on competitiveness, mortality, goals and whether or not money is a reward for living your biggest life.
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. R700.00 after-hours (All readings booked
and paid for in the month of September will be discounted to R550.00.)
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. R700.00 after-hours (All readings booked
and paid for in the month of September will be discounted to R550.00.)
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.
It is also available to have a coaching session over
Skype.
Parenting Lightly
I’m delighted to have made available my first ebook: ‘Parenting Lightly – the Five Pillars of Raising Children with Joy’, which can be purchased for R55 via email. 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.
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 R300.00 per box set
Bull’s Eye
September 2011
The Body-Love Paradox
On any given day in your life, I bet you receive the message – subtly or blatantly, once or many times - that your body needs improvement. In one form or another – whether it is to do with your weight, your ageing, your fitness, your style, your energy-levels, your six-pack, your health or the whiteness of your teeth – it is a generally accepted (and money-making) notion that your body should be better than it is now.
Those of us so-inclined absorb these ‘should’ messages from:
• The conversations and behaviour of people around us
• Images in the media
• Experts (doctors, dieticians, medical aids, gyms, supplement-sellers
etc)
The perfection of the body is a time-and-culture-specific obsession that we have accepted as normal, even healthy. Yet, interestingly, with more focus, information and resources than ever before directed at ‘health and wellness’ (which is often, more accurately, about perfection and control), we are more out of balance and unhealthy as a culture than probably ever before.
I cannot see the value in wholeheartedly prostrating yourself to anyone else’s opinions, society’s (fickle) aesthetics or the ever-changing knowledge of experts. To do so not only disempowers you, it also drives a wedge between your mind and the real, natural desires of your body.
It’s very hard to tune in to your body’s natural tastes, built-in
balancing signals, unique sexual expression and its own preferences for
movement when you are privileging the external conversation (i.e. the
one that OTHER PEOPLE are having about your body) over the internal
conversation. This internal conversation with your body (which some
really lucky people seem to just do naturally, though I am not one of
them) is where you receive the signals about being full or hungry, which
specific foods would most light you up at any moment, how your system
wants to move at any given time, where and how much stress you are
carrying, whether or not you are truly attracted to somebody or
something and so on. Vital information! Yet almost impossible to
decipher while we place so much stock on the externally-focused
comparison between where we are and where we ‘should’ be.
In the light of this overwhelming and shaming bombardment of ‘should’
messages, I really do understand (and have gone there myself) the
impulse to go right the other way and say ‘screw you’ to all the ideals,
rules and social conventions about how we should eat, exercise and look.
Resist the shallowness, love yourself the way you are and all that.
Alternative messages, like these below, are finding an increasingly bigger voice and more appreciative audience, the more the rules about bodies get shoved down our throats:
• All bodies are beautiful the way they are
• It doesn’t matter what you look like, who you are is more important
• Fat is a feminist issue
• Beauty is a subjective and political idea used to keep people (esp
women) ashamed and powerless
I happen to believe all the above statements, and I can’t think of much that is more boring than spending the majority of my energy, thoughts, money and time on my looks.
However (and it’s a big however), I also cannot just dismiss the imbalance and suffering that comes from emotional eating, addictions, and a deep-seated resistance to movement. If your pain is showing up in your body, this is not simply something to accept and pretend is all about society’s shallowness.
That leaves us (as a commitment to truth inevitably does) facing a paradox:
Do I love my body just the way it is OR
Do I get going to improve it?
The only answer to this paradox (and you’ll have to stretch past your left brain for a minute), is ‘yes’. To both.
I recognise that these two options appear to be contradictory and mutually exclusive, but that is only a problem to the intellect. Seriously. The heart, spirit and body can all happily accept and make use of contradiction which, in this case, means that it is quite possible to choose love and real gratitude for every inch of your current body, while also daring yourself to get real and tell the full truth about why, how and what we eat, drink, snort, rest, have sex, touch, exercise and all the other marvellous pleasures and possibilities a body has.
So many of our thoughts and habits related to our bodies are in shadow, in shame, and are secrets that only we (and maybe our housemates) know. We keep our bodies covered up, ensuring that they are both despised and fetishised at the same time. This is why, on Embody, we work actively with inter alia these two principles:
1. Only that which is fully seen can be fully loved and
2. You can only transform that which you love (not hate!)
Most of the time we try to run our lives on exactly the opposite principles of these two (admittedly, startling) truths, but Embody (my signature body-love workshop) works the other way round. In a spirit of gentleness, respect and courage we encourage you to let yourself be heard and seen and, insodoing, uncover the truths that your body is speaking on your behalf: what it is grieving or raging against or desiring or holding onto on your behalf.
Through this process you can reach a quiet and consistent peace, forgiving (and perhaps even celebrating!) your body for where it’s at. But this acceptance doesn’t mean you give yourself license to eat mindlessly, ignore your natural pleasure in moving or pretend that all your choices make you happy! The fundamental difference is that you now make new decisions, not because you abhore what you are, but because you are committed to your own joy.
Only from this place, followed by a set of new, consistent choices,
can you take your body to different (and sustainable) levels of energy,
play, grace and strength.
©Angela Deutschmann 2011
Angela’s radical EMBODY workshop runs twice more in 2011 on 18-20 November and 2 – 4 December. For more information see http://angeladeutschmann.com/workshops/embody.htm
For more newsletters please visit our
Archive.
To sign up for our newsletter please
click here.