Our application review team is having a great time reviewing the applications that have come in for the July Boot Camp. We’ll be introducing you to some of our participants in the coming weeks. Very inspiring entrepreneurs, musicians, artists, activists, educators, students and more.

Last fall I shot several hours of video in the studio, in part as a footage for an introductory DVD, and in part to generate some clips for the web. Incredibly bright lights, no script and no audience made the footage best for some short web clips, which we intend to integrate into our Visionary Mind Shifts Course. Here’s a short clip below.

Josh Pasmore’s Bold Action

What follows is a bold action taken by recent VisionForce Boot Camp graduate, Josh Pasmore, a visionary entrepreneur building a green community in Bend Oregon. The process that Josh summarizes is a powerful way for having *anyone* feel profoundly seen and honored in your presence. And it’s a gateway to building incredible alliances with people in your life. Great work Josh. Bold action, indeed. Thanks for the vid!

If you're interested in being one of the 40 world-changers at our upcoming VisionForce Boot Camp, you'll want to listen to this audio recording of a recent conference call.

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Deborah York, the original yoga instructor at our VisionForce Boot Camps and in many ways a “mother” and co-creator of the VisionForce work, will be introducing a new addition to our Boot Camps: Breath and Body Foundation – a 3-hour yoga workshop on the first day, prior to the evening Reception and Orientation sessions.

For years now, Deborah has been standing for deeper integration of mind, body and spirit inside our trainings. She sees how much more present and open participants are able to be, once they first establish a powerful relationship with their body, posture, emotions and breathing.

The entire Breath and Body Foundation workshop is available (yet optional) for everyone, without an additional charge, and is highly recommended.

Participants will learn and practice:

1. The Ujjai Breath – Learn how to control your life force by bringing more oxygen into your body on the inhalations and increasing your circulation in a way that purifies your body by breathing out toxins and stress. Learn to use this form of breathing to experience a profound sense of peace, clarity of thinking and alertness. You’ll feel more alive, energized and youthful–perhaps even blissful.

2. The Breath of Fire – How to use this form of breathing to move beyond the mental and physical resistance and tension brought on by pain or discomfort. This is also a tool to increase your energy and clear your mind.

3. Powerful Posture – How we stand and sit has a direct effect on our energy and the way we feel about ourselves. Practice ways of standing and sitting that generate new levels of confidence and power. Posture also effects your body’s ability to have all the organs work at their maximum efficiency, and prevents you from becoming tired during hours of sitting at the Boot Camp. With good posture habits, you stay younger and healthier.

4. Proper Alignment – Learning proper alignment for each of the yoga poses has your practice be more effective and transformative. Most importantly, proper alignment ensures safety. You will experience the power of each pose as your bones and muscles are in their natural alignment, freeing up any blocks that could be preventing your life force from circulating throughout your body.

5. Personal Modifications – We will be able to address any specific needs or limitations that you may have and show you modifications that has your practice be more fun and effective and safe.

6. What Is Yoga? Look at what yoga is and what yoga is not. Discover yoga as a way of honoring the body as a temple. Learn how to nurture, trust and listen to your body’s wisdom.

7. Yoga As Metaphor Who we are being on the mat can be a way of reflecting how we show up in our lives and in our relationships with self and others.

8. How To Witness Yoga enhances your ability to concentrate and focus on one thing at a time. You will learn how to be more present in the moment, and how to witness your thoughts, feelings and emotions without judging them. Learn what it means to physically and metaphorically open your heart to compassion, acceptance and willingness to respond to the call to honor your highest values in the moment.

9. Yoga As Meditation – Yoga awakens you to higher guidance and/or intuition. Your emotions calm as the chatter of the mind slows, permitting greater insight and discernment.

10. The Mind-Body-Spirit Connection You will experience yoga as a means to feel connected with your body, mind and spirit. You you feel more whole, complete, peaceful and contented.

Yoga and conscious breathing is also practiced for the next three mornings, and to a lesser extent in the next three afternoons. Yoga is an integral part of the VisionForce Boot Camp experience for conscious leaders who are up to creating positive change in the world.

Here is a partial audio recording from one of our Boot Camp application support calls, May 12, 2007. The audio quality is not to great, but hopefully this helps those who have thus far been unable to attend one of our conference calls, and are curious about interested in applying to the VisionForce Boot Camp.

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Visionaries and entrepreneurs are often fiercely independent, very self-reliant and uncompromising in their thinking and their lives. A major characteristic of the VisionForce work is how it powerfully restores and builds more of our natural autonomy in thought and action—a great value in a world that still conditions us to follow and conform in so many ways. Thought leaders such as Ayn Rand, individualist extraordinaire, were instrumental in restoring my own sense of power in my 20s, and my faith in our potential to live as visionary creators.

While the VisionForce work is so powerful for relationships, having been started largely from working to bring my own family back together, in many ways I have been a life-long loner and individualist. That mentality has in many ways suited me well in the research and development of this work, I suppose, but it has been a huge liability in my thinking since starting the VisionForce business.

Many of our Boot Camp graduates have been encouraging us to focus locally in Austin, rather than focus globally through the internet, as we have primarily been doing. Only recently and gradually have I been heeding that advice. Earlier this year, I was stunned to learn of two visionary organizations that are building amazing communities for entrepreneurs right here in Austin (FLOW and Bootstrap).

It was at a FLOW meeting that I met a visionary Austin woman named Brandi Clark. Brandi, head of the Austin Eco-Network. Brandi attended our last Boot Camp, and could not believe that most people in Austin did not know about us, or that we were not an integral part of the other communities and organizations here. She has since joined our staff, committed help us take our business to the next level locally over the next 4 months.

Through Brandi, I’ve finally begun to get to know this great town. I’ve lived in Austin 15 years now, and always considered it a special place, but only recently have I considered Austin “my community.”

Over the last few weeks, I had the fortune of learning about three other local Austin organizations that are doing great things for Austin entrepreneurs: Big Austin, the Austin Independent Business Alliance and American YouthWorks.

Austin seems to be emerging as a perfect breeding ground for entrepreneurs and visionaries. There’s nowhere we’d rather be.