my inner bling : meeting martha

Meeting Martha Beck was an accident - a glorious freaking accident to which give my sister all the credit.

Two years ago in April 2013 I had the incredible privilege to attend a Wayfinder's Workshop in San Luis Obispo, California that was to be formatted on Martha's book entitled "Finding You Way In A Wild New World". It was the first book I had ever read cover to cover - back to back; The first time my eyes gobbled as if at a Renaissance feast of turkey drumsticks and massive steins of mead, the second time through (dashing Kola's hopes for some frisbee time), way more discerningly, my inner geek may or may not have adorned the entire book with color coded post-it notes.

expensive & non-refundable

So, it made sense that I suggest this workshop to my sister as a trip we might want to consider to which she agreed with surprising swiftness. I didn't say, "Reallllly?" or "WOW" or "Are you SURE?". To offer even a whiff of doubt would have tipped the scales towards sanity and practical and logic and boring and safe.

In the process, what I have learned about expensive AND non-refundable workshops is that they have a decisively acute ability to:

1. Sift the wheat from the chaff.

2. Expedite brief, sharp yet temporary twinges of buyers remorse mainly occurring at 2 a.m.while staring at the shadows on the popcorn ceiling.

3. Make one muster the courage to go it alone after sister calls back to say, "What? It's $umpty ump PER PERSON?

And...you know what? That was a great thing mostly because if we had gone together the insular quality that is borne in traveling with a friend prevents the courage that must be summoned to step into the great unknown.

That and I know they would have all liked her better.

asking for signs

The day after I booked my space, even though it was a non-refundable workshop, I was still desperately looking for clues to determine if I was the wheat. Certainly, there must have been sooommme way that I could have found a replacement? So what else to do than ask the Universe for a sign.

"Throw me a bone. " I issued. "Should I go?"

I trundled off on my early February morning walking of the dog. A grey and bleak Wednesday morning that leaves nothing up for surprises as the landscape falls flat around every corner. Not more than half way down the hill, only 5 minutes into my walk, there on the side of the road was the jaw bone of a deer. "Oh, that's too easy. Gimme something better Universe!", I brazenly requested.

As we continued on our way to the bottom of the hill Peder, the domestic refuse god, roared around the bend in his massive white chariot and came to a an abrupt halt before us. He leaned out his window and with his long grey hair pulled neatly back into a pony tail and his pearly white, omniscient smile - just like that - he handed me - or more precisely, handed me to hand to Kola, a shimmering, gravy glazed dog bone - which effectively rendered me as wheat. "I'm going." I whispered to myself and immediately began to giggle and fret.

my bad-ass self

In my former life before children, I used to wear a knife and marlin spike on my belt. I look back on my days as a cook and first mate on board the schooners off the coast of Maine and reminisce about the bad-ass self, lost now in the needs that are conjured within the confines of four walls and a roof. I used to sculpt in limestone quarries in the South of France and make a point of enrolling abroad for junior year in schools where I'd be a solo agent. I'd travel with a backpack across Europe and sleep in train stations in Budapest. I worked at the Wren Cafe in London, as an Au Pair in Germany and sailed from Maine to South America in open ocean and back.

Barefoot.

But for the past 15 years I have ridden in the passenger seat eclipsed by my husband's stories of death defying heroism flying through turbulence, wind shear and unruly passengers. Acquaintances sit captivated even at the experiences of him waiting for late shuttle buses back to the employee parking lot.

Why doesn't anyone want to hear about the story of how I finally got that stubborn stain out with Oxy-Clean? Or the time I had to MacGuyver school lunches from Mother Hubbard's cupboard with a Swiss Army Knife and a piece of string?

I'll tell you why not.

Because laundry and school lunches can tame anyone into a corpse.

coming back to life

When one finds themselves nearly dead, I recommend traveling solo to anywhere that offers in-flight snacks. Hence, my strategy to travel to California involved a great deal of holding my breath and peaking periodically through my fingers.

Not prone to stuttering prior to this adventure, there I stood as any corpse attempting to come back to life would do, trying to speak it messy fits and spurts as though at some point I may have survived blunt trauma to the head. The Delta host stood there motionless as his eyes widened, baffled with amazement and concern. Clarence took one look at my olive green with black monogram L.L. Bean bag, large enough to carry two, child-sized stow-away's and pointed me towards the line two feet to my left.

Once airborne I was forced to interact again with a flight attendant who had a similar response as that of Clarence. But to my defense, because corpses don't have great facial muscle control meant that my drink request sounded more like the grunt from a cave dwelling soccer mom. She looked at me and I looked at her and from her tray of assorted snacks she pointed two inches to her right, I nodded and she handed me the peanuts.

I'm certain that the whole travel aspect may have been part of Martha's diabolical plot to destabilize all the participants. So, even if I had in fact been selected by the accident-gods as an initiate wheat, the chances that I may die of hyperventilation before I actually arrived were likely. Honestly, this type of Hero's Journey should have it's own Facebook and Instagram account.

wtf?

Fast forward past car rental and three hours on the I-5 from San Fran to SLO and I skittered into my hotel room to bust a move towards the remedy I knew as the only portable tonic and full facet repair kit. I dug out my yoga mat for a fix of Mindful Movement and all was (nearly) well with the world.

Afterwards, the out-loud conversation I had with myself went something like this, "WTF Julie? You had better get your shit together or you are going to miss out on the immensity of this expensive and non-refundable workshop!"

And then the most surprising thing happened. A whisper of a question materialized that sounded gentle and concise. "Why are you here?" And my response was equally clear as though I had been put under a hypnotic trance, "I'm here to learn how to channel my energy in order to silently communicate with horses and therefore improve my non-verbal communication skills with people." It quickly dawned on me that unless I harnessed this energy I might very likely trample everyone right out of the gate.

The next question that came across with the same clarity was, "If you were a horse, how would you like to be approached?", and this was my very own imaginary bridle and tether with which I was able to regain my bad-ass composure and join the workshop, confident that I wasn't going to betray myself with an egregious load of of irresponsible energy.

meeting martha

At 4 p.m. the next day 24 other 2 a.m.ceiling-staring Wheats and I sat mesmerized with the opening sequence of Martha Beck and her CEO Bridgette Boudreau. Just for the record, Martha was much taller than I had envisioned. She kept a calm, intelligent somewhat aloof demeanor that required her new initiate Wayfinders to join up to the flow of content she began to convey.

I venture to guess that, similar to myself, prior to the workshop initiation, they had done a little energy grooming themselves. What I noticed was that they were decidedly, almost incongruently, nonchalant - the same way my daughter's soccer coach instructs the offense to swallow the exuberance of making the goal as though they had been there before. And then I realized, in order to make their energies smaller they were wearing their bridles and tethers too the same way that a comedian restrains her energy in delivering a joke; the ultimate gracious and challenging gesture, to allow her audience get 100% of the benefit.

"Heavy as a ~~stone~~ sweaty armpit, light as a feather..."

Right out of the gate Martha's deft observation skills and finely tuned energy perception was in rapid collation mode. As the workshop progressed she taught while also silently compiling information on each one of us, inadvertently inputting data on my ferociously sweaty pits.

As it so happened, Martha volunteered me to participate in a demonstration to delineate the power of the mind. There I sat in a folding chair surrounded by three other standing Wayfinders with Martha to my left. Two participants placed two fingers under each of my bent knees, Martha and Koelle under each of my sweaty armpits (unprecedented mortification). She then requested that I direct my mind towards joyous experiences. (Oh. MY. God. Really?) Yet, once fully immersed in this head space, the next thing you know, I was raised high above their heads - my nose nearly embedded in the acoustic tiles above.

This was the first indication of how meeting Martha was facilitating the meeting of myself.

the big picture

Later the next day at Martha's North Star Ranch, with two days of journaling and building our Wayfinderesque knowledge base, we tried out some of our new "technologies of magic" with the horses. Some with terrific success and some without.

I happened to be without.

After lunch all of us congregated at the big arena to join up with The Big Picture; That of silently communicating with each other, humans and horses alike, in order to accomplish the task of getting three horses into a central pen. The trained Equus coaches made this look like a piece of cake and so I thought to myself, based on the previous day's success - we got this.

After a brief explanation Abby, Kerry, Lisa and myself stood up to claim our stand and stepped forth into the arena of crazy ass horses.

I used this action as personal symbolism to claim my power and to step into the unfamiliar with courage and conviction. However, within the first 15 minutes I inadvertently cornered a black stallion to the point that the whites of he and Clarence's souls met; The only place the horse wanted to go was up and OUT.

Unaccustomed to the ways of all things horse, I was not fluent in reading their body language. After I backed off and gave him space the black stallion made a couple more laps around the arena. Our multiple failed attempts to coral these horses yielded only increased frustration and ineffectiveness. The harder we tried the harder we failed. The harder we failed and more frustrated we became the more the horses stopped listening and went on their merry, wild way, the black stallion rapturously barreling down in my direction.

My near-trampling was averted by following my inclination to move out of his way but, judging by the gasps from the gallery, my 50/50 choice to move over to the boards of the arena, was not the the correct one. My decision to have moved so close to the boards in connection with the velocity at which the horse was galloping had brought me closer into harms way than I had understood. Only with ensuing explanation were we all made aware how to learn from this mistake. Little did I know my life flashed before everyone else's eyes as I just stood there and held my breath.

We eventually achieved moderate success but my individual performance left a lot to be desired. The four of us joined in the center of the arena and embraced more out of bonding through shared adversity than of celebration.

And once we exited the arena physically unscathed, two of us were given a talkin' to. The big picture was illuminated by Bridgette and Diane Hunter as they explained that with horses, as with people, it's essential to harness your energy and always maintain a loving connection with your heart. If that connection is lost, everything is lost. Horses and people simply don't maintain the silent link of captivation and cooperation once the heart centered space gets consumed by fear, doubt and frustration. But the real issue remained with my big energy and that of another woman in the ring. Our two flustered and frustrated energies, feeding off one another and the horses, rendered the group's energy ineffective. Because our yang energy was so prevalent, horses in the next field responded,(ego smack down), by running away. It was a prompt delivery of the foreshadowed, otherworldly conversation in my hotel room the first night in SLO; You must be responsible for your energy Julie or you might trample everyone out of the gate. The black stallion and neighboring horses mimicked my exact words of two days prior.

taming or developing the flame?

Just like Vegemite, yang energy is best in infinitesimally small doses. "A little goes a long way." Bridgette explained. Which is kinda like asking a Tsunami if it might want to consider delivering it's intended volume of water in liter sized bottles - desalinated with a twist of lemon, please. This experience was an amazing illustration to hold myself responsible for maintaining a constant connection to my heart-centered space in conjunction with taming my flame.

In order to be effective personally and professionally making sure to wear my figurative bridle and harness will be essential. My yang tendencies have the capacity to create tremendous change if I can harness myself in mind, heart, body, voice and soul. Where as for a more yin type personality the challenge is to muster enough fire to build up enough steam to let the surplus energy drive one forward. It's equally challenging to tame or develop the flame but requires different tools and knowledge customized to your default projection.

Adam the grounding wire

Before leaving the ranch Martha shared with us that this was the very first time that her son with Down's Syndrome, Adam, requested to sit among us. Having been born into self-mastery of his own energy his presence in stillness and silence ebbed and flowed between all of us like threads woven in a loom. As we said our goodbyes that day on the ranch, Martha oversaw the inroads her son had made and the Rock Star status he had achieved. Reflecting on that hug we exchanged reunited me then and continues to even now with that high-heart centered space that only one who is a true grounding wire can facilitate. Adam looked at each one of us with these illuminated eyes as though he was seeing through the lens of God. After that embrace I just wanted one more chance to leap back into that ring to demonstrate the connection I now completely understood.

the last day

On the last day of the workshop, before I took the red eye back to the dregs of the east coast, we spent a few hours reviewing our intentions that we had set on the first day. What each of us had learned individually and as a group where immeasurable. Martha reflected with concise and constructive feedback tailored for each and every one of us. What she told me I will never forget and am only now, 21 months later, ready to implement. Suffice to say that this year's word, ADVENTURE, will bring me closer to a bigger life than I ever knew I'd wanted.

At the conclusion I collected my belongings, found my book for Martha to sign was getting ready to stand in line when I felt a decisive tap on my right shoulder.

Martha had made her way to me.

Trying to keep my cool and harness my emotion, I whipped out a necklace that I had made for her and proceeded to explain the impact of one of her quotes has had on my life. It was this quote that indirectly brought the JewelTree Chakra Series into manifestation.

"Whenever life brings you to a crossroads from the tiniest to the most immense

go towards love and not away from fear."

Without hesitation she fastened her new heart chakra necklace around her neck, signed my book and I floated home feeling complete, adventurous and seen in a way I never have been seen before. My bad-ass self was back and infused with memories and lessons to last a lifetime.

By meeting Martha I met the best version of myself.