January, 2005 Work from Within Newsletter
Dear friends, colleagues, and clients,
I am elated to share with you my new venture, Work from Within. I offer coaching, workshops, and telecourses to help people in career and life transformation, from the inside out.
I welcome you to the inaugural edition of Working from Within, a monthly newsletter with ideas and insights to help you integrate your body, mind, and spirit. May it support you in whatever work, career, or whatever change you desire.
Susan Bernstein, MBA MA
Founder, Work from Within In this issue.
In This Issue...
Feature Article: What does it mean to Work from Within?
Upcoming Events Being, Incorporated
Explore This
Thanks
Feature Article: What does it mean to Work from Within?
About six months ago, I had been through an exhausting six-day process of thinking up hundreds of possible names for this new venture. What name, I wondered, would integrate my business expertise with my recently completed masters degree in body-centered psychology? I had pushed and pushed to find a catchy company name. On day six, I consciously decided to take a break from all the mental effort. My old, familiar, forceful self wanted to keep pushing - it wanted to require a name to arise, immediately! But my peaceful inner voice told me, "Enough. Rest. Take a break." So I surrendered to that guidance.
Amazingly, that very same night, I dreamt that I was in a panic about how to develop a name for my business. In the dream, a new friend walked up to me, tapped me on the shoulder and spoke to me as though he was reminding me of something obvious. "You know, you could work from within," he said. I bolted up from the dream, wrote the phrase Work from Within, and that's how the name originated.
I felt lifted and exuberant to receive words that so perfectly matched what I want to offer clients. The process of arriving at those words also felt perfect.
From early childhood, we are constantly bombarded with messages to trust our mental processes over our body wisdom. You may have heard: "Think about it!" "Use your brains!" "Enough with the gut feelings - what's the right answer?" My goal is to help people re-awaken their bodies and unify the energy of the body, mind, and spirit. Our bodies allow us to move, to feel, to jump, to grasp, to reach, to extend, to envision. We can touch, taste, smell, hear, and see our world. But so often, we pay almost exclusive homage to our brains, excluding our gut intuition and the wisdom our hearts. The good news is that it is fun and easy to tune into the inner messages available from every part of our body.
In the face of career and life transitions, my intention is to give clients the tools to find their way through change. Rather than providing a lot of external assessments or advice, I help clients to learn about their preferences, needs, abilities, skills, desires, and abilities by guiding them to find their direction from within.
In addition to talking to clients about change, I help them to embody the changes they want. While each session varies, a client might move around, breathe intentionally, pay attention to body sensations, or make a gesture to encompass feelings.
Does this sound scary, strange, or surprising to you? Good! We are more apt to learn when we break out of our usual patterns and find ourselves faced with novelty. The Work from Within approach to change is novel! And it is designed to help you gently but powerfully break through blocks and transform your visions into reality. So, what does this process look like? As a simple example, imagine that you are feeling 'stuck' in your career. In a session, you might be encouraged to actually feel that stuck place - in your body. This could mean scanning your body to feel the stuck places and describe them.
So you might talk about how your shoulders feel tight and pulled down to the left. Or perhaps you might take a posture that represents stuck. You could refine the posture to express your stuckness as accurately as possible.
Our bodies often contain metaphors for what needs to change. So, as you sense your stuckness, perhaps you would also experience - in your body - how you want to shift. What you discover from this moving exploration literally informs your change. By changing your form, you can find new formations, patterns, and ways of being.
Have you ever been working on a document and sensed that the ideas were not flowing? Maybe you got up from your desk and took a walk, and faced the task with renewed energy? By moving, we activate areas in our brain that open up our creativity. As you directly experience the Work from Within principles, you can more directly experience a shift in your energy and open up new avenues for creativity, self-expression, and direction.
I hope you're intrigued about Work From Within. Let's enter into a personal dialogue about these ideas. I encourage you to email me (SBernstein@WorkFromWithin.com) with your questions and thoughts. I will happily respond, generally within 24 to 48 hours, and we can explore what it means to Work from Within.
Upcoming Events
Fantastic Future Work-outs, Every Friday in January
Create a fantastic new career life for yourself in 2005 with complementary 'fantastic future' "workouts" -- conference calls on the four Fridays in January where you integrate your mind, body, and spirit to achieve the career life you really want.
This is a unique workout - no sweat or heavy lifting involved, just powering up and motivating your professional and personal potential, from the inside out. In addition to feeling energized, you will learn powerful techniques to create what you want, from whatever your starting point.
Friday, January 7. 12-1 pm PST
Workout 1: Energizing a Vision of Your Future
Clarify what you want from your career, and build a daily practice to turn your vision into reality.
Friday, January 14, 12-1 pm PST
Workout 2: Move Towards Your Vision
Experiment with new ways of moving towards your vision, using simple yet powerful body-centered awareness processes.
Friday, January 21, 12-1 pm PST
Workout 3: Melting Away Fears
Learn ways to transform the energy of fear into powerful fuel for your vision
Friday, January 28, 12-1 pm PST
Workout 4: Make Space for New Possibilities
Go beyond what you already think about how to transform your career. Open up new possibilities for sources of assistance through the power of serendipity.
For more information, and to sign up, go to http://www.workfromwithin.com/teleclasses.html
Friday, January 28, 2005
Presentation at the Relationship Coaching Institute, Silicon Valley
Moved to Connect: Enhanced Relationships through Body Awareness
- Do you ever get first-date jitters that make you feel anxious?
- Do you believe you are supposed to make eye contact with others, but wonder how to do it?
- Have you ever been attracted to someone, but find you feel awkward as soon as you get near them?
Relationships can bring up lots of feelings and confusing sensations. Through a blend of engaging activities and stories, you will learn and practice simple techniques for relating more easily to others using the vitality of your six senses. Find out how working from within - from your internal awareness - can help you to form a meaningful relationship with a date or a life partner.
Time: 8 pm - 10 pm
Location: Dale Carnegie Institute, 274 E. Hamilton Ave., Campbell, CA. 95008. For directions, see http://www.rcisv.org/friday.html#directions
Cost: $15
For more information, go to http://www.workfromwithin.com/teleclasses.html or contact Carol Daly (408) 261-3332 ext. 4; or email carol@RCISV.org
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Informing Your Next Career or Life Move
Time: 10 am - 5 pm
Location: Upaya Center, Oakland, 478 Santa Clara Avenue, Suite 200, Oakland, CA 94610
In the midst of career or life transition, how do you inform your next move? Bring a problem, 'stuck place', or frustration in your professional or personal life -- one you hope to change. Using a series of playful and experiential activities, we will explore the intuitive voice within each of us. By attuning to your body -- through movement, breath, gesture, metaphor, imagery, and sound -- you can gain clarity about what calls to you and discover your own wisdom about how to respond. You will leave the workshop with a set of tools and practices you can use anytime you want to tune into your intuition.
Cost: $69, includes materials and light snacks. Pay in full before February 7 and receive a 1-hour coaching session after the workshop. The workshop fills fast and is limited to 12 participants.
Being, Incorporated - Beginnings
In each issue, I will share with you a principle from the Work from Within process, designed to help you be more in your body, mind, and spirit - in-corp-orated.
Since this is the first issue of Working from Within, it seems only fitting that we look at beginnings and getting started. So, what are you starting? Searching for a new job? Starting afresh in a new city? Adding a new client? Creating a new product or service?
We can look at beginnings in many ways. Every beginning also marks an ending, a letting go. While we may be able to see what we are reaching for next, this is not always the case. And then, ultimately, we reach out and grab hold of something new.
We often use the expression 'taking initiative' to describe the energy we use to start something fresh. I invite you to consider a new beginning you face. How are you approaching it? What happens to you when you simply consider starting something new? When it is time to let go of the old, how do you react? Just notice.
Thanks
My sincere thanks my friends, family, colleagues, clients, and readers for all your support. I am honored and humbled at the ways in which you have touched my life. I hope this newsletter touches, energizes, and inspires you.
© 2005, Susan L. Bernstein, MBA MA You are welcome and invited to share this newsletter, in its entirety. However, to excerpt or duplicate the text or ideas, please request written permission in advance and provide proper attribution. Thank you.
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