Horseback Riding

Here are some fun videos of riding horses.

May 2005 - Wellness Expos

May is always a super busy, work-oriented month for me.

Over Memorial Day weekend each year is the Sun Valley Mountain Wellness Festival. We get world-renowned speakers in and this is my third year participating. And it’s my first year lecturing! It is quite an honor to be asked to present here and I wanted to get everything just right….(yes, that IS a problem sometimes!)



I also am always in the Hands on Hall. Here, I can do mini-sessions with people about 20 minutes in length. They tell me what’s going on and I do work on them AND give them one Energy Tool to practice (You NEVER get away with me just doing all the work!! I want to empower you to learn to do it yourself!!). These sessions are great to give people insight into what's been going on in their life and help them get re-directed.

I saw over 40 people in two days – talk about being busy!! It is so great to be able to give people the one-on-one attention, but needless to say I’m usually pretty whipped by the time it’s done.

The lecture went AWESOMELY! I had an overflowing room, with folks standing along the walls and sitting on the floor. The topic was “Get Real, Grow Strong and Live Free” and the lecture was fun – people laughed and cried and I felt blessed to share with them what I know of energy and using it in their lives.



Afterwards, I was followed by a dozen folks to my booth for more information and more mini-sessions. Again, a blessing to meet all the wonderful people who are on the journey of self-discovery.

Many of them joined me in the workshop that I presented on Monday. In three hours I gave them an overview of how energy works, taught them two critical Energy Tools and we discussed one of the Guiding Forces in the universe - the principles of possibility and probability.

Together, the lecture and workshop are what I call "The Quick Start Energy Program". They enable anyone to jump into this sometimes scary, sometimes wierd, sometimes New Agey field and cut throught that mumble-jumble to start really using it.

Maybe I didn't mention it before but that is one of my goals in all this. Energy is not something you have to believe in. You don't need certain religious or spiritual beliefs. Energy just is.

My goal is to take this whole field of energy and get it out of the realm of the New Age or alternative and take it mainstream. I want to give it back to EVERYONE so we can all benefit from it. That is my mission and goal - to give energy and the knowledge of using it for a better life back to each and every one of you!

How does that sound?

April 2005 - The Unmemorable Month

To be honest, when I think of April, I kind of go blank. Hmmmm, as a month it must not have been too memorable.

Generally we have to catch up after being gone for a week, get in some last minute skiing and start thinking about summer.

From a work standpoint, I was prepping for the Sun Valley Mountain Wellness Festival. I was going to be giving a lecture and workshop that year (which are available here as the Quick Start Energy Program). Soooo, I was busy putting those together too.

If I remember anything earth-shattering, I’ll add it later…In the meantime, here's a picture from up north of where we live. They're the Boulder Mountains - aren't they great?

March 2005-Spring Break in the Desert

Every March is when we starting getting antsy for spring break. My husband Tod is a school social worker at the local middle school and gets a week off at the end of each March. I plan my schedule to make sure we can enjoy it together.

This year the trip is to Moab, Utah. It's about a 9 hour drive from where we live and we spend the week before packing our stuff so we can leave on Friday when school lets out.

Here's a picture of us while we're there:

In Moab, we met one of Tod’s best friends from when he lived in Jackson, Wyoming – Dave Many.

Tod and Dave spent the days climbing – here’s a picture of Tod on this bizarre pinnacle formation:


While they climbed, I hiked and meditated in the desert with our dogs – Taku and Annie. Here’s a picture of Annie just hangin’ in the desert…our Toyota pickup truck is behind her. Our dogs are like our children to us – they sleep in our beds, eat expensive raw dog food and generally are spoiled. I couldn’t live without them.



We usually travel in the truck because it has room for all of our gear – climbing, hiking, camping AND the dogs. We sleep in a tent with the “kids” – and then cook on a two burner Coleman gas stove on the pickup tailgate. A cooler stores our cold food, a rubbermaid for the rest, and a 5 gallon water jug keeps us refreshed.

We spent the first couple days in a camp ground east of Moab, then spent a night in the hotel in town when it snowed! After that, we drove south out some random dirt roads into government property – BLM – and just found the most majestic solitutude all for ourselves.



I LOVE being outside in places like this. It fills me up to have no plans for a change…to take naps in the morning, meditate over lunch, knit a sock for an hour, then hike into hidden desert grottos for a few hours to find a special tree or rock to sit quietly next to – feeling its warmth and wisdom permeate my body, mind and soul. Seeking and sometimes finding a gem of guidance, but regardless coming back home to myself in a way I’d forgotten.

Anyway, that’s why spring break is so special to me. Do you build anything like this in for yourself? Even if it is just a regular Saturday and Sunday you should really try getting everyone else out of the house and just having a day to do nothing except the little things that come to you – to experience the joy and pleasure of deeply living in the moment and accepting whatever surfaces.

Your entire being will thank you.

February 2005-Skate Ski Heaven

Ok, so in February where I live we...hey wait - have I told you about where I live yet? Maybe I should start with that, huh?

I live in Hailey, Idaho. It's about 10 miles south of the famous Ketchum/Sun Valley, Idaho - world reknown for its celebrities and skiing. If you read those mags at the grocery store checkout counter, Hailey is home to Bruce Willis and Demi Moore while other big names like Tom Hanks live up north.

My only claim to fame around seeing celebrities is Bruce Willis once at a local coffee shop. I'm sure I've seen more but most of the time they don't look like they do in movies. Plus, since I don't watch TV I couldn't identify most of them anyway!!

I want to share a funny story with you though. When I first moved to the Valley I worked part time at a health food store, specializing in nutritional supplements. A guy comes in to place a special order.

Doing what we normally do, I ask him for his name (Steve Miller) and phone number.

I write them down, look at him blankly and say "Thanks, is that all?".

Now I notice that he looks nervous. The friend with him is getting agitated and I'm thinking "What is up with these guys anyway?".

He starts to leave the store, then he stops and turns around. Then he turns away, then turns back and blurts out at me-- "No, I'm STEVE MILLER (pause) - of the band."

Again, I just nod at him and say "That's great". I mean, I like his music and all but what was he looking for?

At this point, he starts to explain. Apparently he's had problems in the past with groupies (obviously, I am not one of them) getting his phone number and harrassing him.

And a light bulb goes off in my head and I say "Ohhhhhh".

I prompty erased his number from our special order pad, he felt better and I was a tad bit more educated about the highly successful and very normal-looking people surrounding me.

Ok, back to February. LOTS of skiing. It's the big Nordic Ski Race known as the Boulder Mountain Tour. Our house is packed with two couples, two toddlers and one of their friends. They ski 30 km over mixed terrain. I haven't done it yet (that sounds WAAAY too long to me right now), but enjoy cheering on my friends from the sidelines with my cowbells.

And for the rest of the month, I just went out and toured on my skis for fun!

January 2005-The Beginning Got Bigger

Ok, the first of the month last year I made a commitment to myself and my business. I was going to go to the next level - professionally by defining what it was that I actually did and then creating the system out of it. I redesigned the website and learned to program flash to make it happen....hmmm, I guess that's work, huh! Personally it was by taking better care of myself by eating healthier, actually cooking and playing with the pups more.

We had a great snow year so for fun I skate skiied a bunch with my husband. We also got some great turns in the backcountry in. I snowboard so I hike up the mountain with my snowboard on my back and then but my little skis on my back, along with my poles, and then I jump on my board and head down. Lots of fresh powder in beautiful terrain. I'll try to get pictures of us doing it this year.

The highlight, as is the highlight every January, was my birthday!! I turned 35. I was born on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr. and Joan of Arc. I used to think that made me destined for great things, but know I realize that hey - these guys were martyrs too and that isn't my idea of a good time. So perhaps I will be so lucky as to combine my desire to help change society for the better with my spiritual and mystical inclinations (the best of King and Arc), blazing my own path of betterment and getting to live a long life too.

Anyway, back to the party: I'd post a picture but it was just too scary. We did a disco murder mystery with costumes REQUIRED! My husband wore a carpet on his chest underneath a Neale Diamond shirt (think silver, think shiny, think blinding - actually you wanted to be blinded by this) and leather pants. Both of these treasures he picked up at the local Sun Valley/Ketchum thrift store: the Goldmine. Alas, I wore a silver sequined tube top with shiny silver hip hugger pants with that beautiful bell bottom flare. The makeup was blue eyeshadow and the old Farah Fawsett hairdo. On the radio - DISCO baby!

The murder mystery game was ok - too scripted for my taste - but, I came to find out that I was the one who had done it and that wasn't too bad! The food was swiss cheese and chocolate fondues. And the special treat was my birthday cake - the same as our wedding cake (just not as big - only 12 folks were over).

A wonderful month and exciting way to start the new year! I could hardly wait for February.

The Is No Such Thing As Balance

I've been reading about the 80/20 principle lately (in addition to game theory and chaos theory) and have been struck by something big....

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BALANCE.

All those books talking about living in balance, finding balance, etc., etc. (hmmm, this probably includes something I've written or talked about at some point! How humbling...) are based on some kind of fantasy...not on observable data from the world around us.

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN IS DYNAMIC.

That means it is constantly flowing, moving, shifting - like a river or the earth's crusts or a dirt particle picked up in one place and gently landing hundreds of miles away.

As a matter of course, things don't sit still for very long and any balance point becomes something we get to visit, but not live in.

Think the changing cycles of seasons, of aging, think....

Now this doesn't mean that we have to feel "unbalanced" or out of sorts, overwhelmed, etc.

We've made balance an unrealistic goal and being out of it some kind of dirty word that implies we're not enlightened nor will we ever be (which really, as far as I'm concerned is just fine - enlightenment is mainly the destination of a desperate ego, not a stable self.)

Being out of balance simply implies there's movement, and just like chaos theory says - that even in chaos we can find some level of predictable order when we zoom in the microscope close enough.

Now the 80/20 principle takes this even further. It suggests that instead of 50% of your hard labor producing 50% of your results, happiness, etc....that it is more like 20% of your efforts produce 80% of the results. This is in economics, business, personal growth, computer design, you name it.

So there is no balance between how hard you work and the benefits you reap.

The inputs don't equal the outputs.

There is no BALANCE between the effort you put in and the outcome that happens. (that's because only a little of what you do creates MOST of what you experience) see more on that next week too.

How does all this affect your daily life? This is the key question for me in all matters of great ideas - how can it be applied to ACTUALLY make a difference in how you live your life?

First - Stop trying to attain balance - you won't get there and you definitely won't be able to stay there

Second - Watch for the kind of movement you're in - what the current cycle for you is...is the energy moving forward or pushing you backward? Does it feel stagnant and painful or is it gently uplifting? Just notice and don't judge.

Our experience here is dynamic, fluid and WILL cycle no matter how hard you try to cling to the cupboard by your fingernails....you WILL get yanked off and thrown around the merry-go-round a couple times just to mix things up a bit and see what happens...

Third - Accept the movement you're in by shifting your energy. Neutralize your physical, emotional and mental reactions to the space you're in.

Fourth - Prepare for the next cycle you want to create. In chaos theory we find that the beginning conditions are important. Yep, that's right. You can create your reality (at most about 70% of it but we'll discuss that in another posting). So start figuring out what you want to create, start getting your energy aligned with it, and you've set yourself up to finish the current cycle well and create the next one even better.