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.
MP3 File
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.
A young visionary in Hawaii has a vision of a green, sustainable, conscious community that can be a beacon for other communities around the world. Imagine–communities that work for everyone and with everyone. Is it possible? Many believe that our global community will only heal itself when we first ascribe to a local cohesiveness that bridges divisiveness at home in our families and local communities. From that foundation, many believe, we can build a world that really works… but will it work?
Recently, one such community has emerged as an example of such a vision, showing what is possible when people unite with a common vision to create sustainable and evolving communities that work for and with everyone.
Keith Kavisic, a recent VisionForce Boot Camp graduate (pictured playing his guitar at the Boot Camp Dinner of Honor (and, yes, that’s sparkling cider!)) is spearheading a project in Hawaii known as The Green Source Community. “We are committed to creating this project into a blueprint for community cohesion, cultural appreciation, social responsibility and local economic development,” states Keith. “You are that change you see in the world! Evolution starts here.”
So what does Keith have to say about his experience with VisionForce, “VisionForce broke through the glass ceiling that I had been tapping at for years! Unlocking the tools necessary to walk with honor in every step of life…In addition, this connection provided a team of visionaries for life to move forward in our collective stand for humanity!…If we all live to these standards we begin to change the world instantly! Through the bold actions taken immediately after attending [Boot Camp] I see the light at the end of the change and know that I am and will stand in the face of everything for humanity! As a community leader in Hawaii, I will take these tools and utilize the resources to put sustainable models of economic development and incorporate the sacredness into the infrastructure of life.”
The more Keith and those in the Green Source Community stand for their vision, the more they find themselves living in the vision and the more the vision becomes reality. Rising up to “be the change” is often not an easy task to undertake. As Keith said, however, “I see the light at the end of the change.” Oftentimes when we step out to walk the journey of our vision we step out with nothing more than faith in ourselves and our vision, and trust that we shall see the day where our vision comes into fruition as Keith’s has.
“We are always looking to join forces with all of you visionaries and creators standing for humanity,” says Keith. “If you would like to come to Hawai’i and Stand with us as we create GreenSource and Globe Oasis this community model of sustainable change, contact us.”
If you are interested in Keith’s project or would like to support the Green Source Community, you can visit him on zaadz and learn more about the Community and Keith.
At one of our Boot Camps for world changers in 2004, a young Turkish man realized he stood for social justice. He would go on to describe it as far more than an intellectual insight–it was a deeply emotional, physical and spiritual realization for him. Through his being, he felt called to stand for social justice, and a vision was born.
Within months after that event, he founded 20/20 MultiMedia and began sharing his vision for giving a voice to conscious hip hop artists, who could use their medium for positive change. A few years later, a feature-length documentary starring some of the biggest names in hip hop is about to be released internationally–it’s a visionary film with a powerful message and a call for hip hop artists to stand and own their power to bring about positive change.
This man’s name is Emjed Hammas, his company is 20/20 MultiMedia, and his film is Business As Usual: The Exploitation of Hip Hop. Check out his web site here: www.2020multimedia.net The trailer for the documentary can be found under ‘Projects.’
Positive revolutionaries, authors, musicians, change agents, educators, artists, activists, entrepreneurs, parents, students, CEOs–those who attend Boot Camp tend to become so deeply connected to their values, that they take a stand for what matters most. And a vision is born–a vision, which calls them into heroic action, a vision which demands their personal evolution. They become shaped by their stand and their vision, and their relationships, companies and communities are transformed.
The world needs visionaries now. VisionForce, through our One Million Visionaries campaign, is searching for the most impassioned, conscious agents of change we can find to attend our upcoming “boot camp for world changers” in Austin, TX, July 18-22. Those who are ready to face everything and avoid nothing to stand for humanity for 5 days should apply.
Scholarships are available through our portal on Zaadz.
Here is the first of several videos we’ll be sharing from the March 2007 VisionForce Boot Camp.
The application process for the July 18-22 VisionForce Boot Camp has just opened. Those whose complete applications are accepted by the Early Application Deadline of May 14 may save $300 on registration.
Moderates in the Middle East are standing for peace with the OneVoice Movement. Watch the video.
Rather than OV just uniting moderates to stand together, I imagine they are also reaching out to individuals in extremist movements. The VisionForce work is especially applicable in situations that call for strategies beyond compromise, and this is one such situation.
So deeply are we inspired by the OneVoice movement, that VisionForce has committed to make 12 VisionForce Boot Camp Scholarships available to active OneVoice participants from Israel and Palestine over the course of the next year.
The VisionForce trainings are perfect for individuals and groups looking for the expanded levels of courage, compassion and vision needed to create a world that works for everyone. VisionForce’s simple, powerful diagrams and processes provide access to the levels of vision that make deep communication, collaboration and creation possible.
Many visionary Zaadzsters showed up to our March 2007 Vision Force Boot Camp for visionary change agents to kick start our One Million Visionaries campaign! Pictured above are some of the crew. (notice the Zaadz Tees being sported by Keith, Mary and Ronin.
Other Zaadzsters pictured are Deborah, Joseph, Jordan, Shawn, Audrey, Carl, Brandi, Michael, John, Jim, Tom, Koray, Margalo, OT, myself, and… who am I missing?
Zaadzsters in attendance not pictured include Michael, …
For more photos from this Boot Camp, go here.
by a recent Boot Camp participant
For many people, the word “Boot Camp” evokes images of some military officer barking orders to a military recruit, forcing him or her to submit to grueling and even demeaning demonstrations of strength and submission to authority. This is NOT what the Vision Force Boot Camp is about. The Vision Force Boot Camp is a committed journey through the jungle that surrounds and has overgrown our inner light and direction, so that we may recover true, impassioned and powerful inner authority, and reawaken and recognize it in others.
The 4-day Vision Force Boot Camp is a demanding and transformative experience that brings us back into realignment with our inner vision and re-establishes the Visionary Core at the center of our being, energizing bold, inspired action. With an exercise program starting at 5:20 a.m., an hour-long yoga session, superlative food, and day-long transformative sessions, the Boot Camp experience is one that brings participants into profound and physical recognition of what it feels like to live in honor of one’s vision. Evenings and/or mornings spent in silence allow us to integrate each day’s learning and transformation profoundly,
Entrepreneur, Visionary, Social Activist, Healer, Parent, Spouse, Sibling, Son and Daughter–How many roles do we engage in and how many do we live out wholeheartedly? Many of us, as we approach our thirties, and then advance into our forties, fifties, and onwards, feel so compromised that our connection to the passion, vision, and connection that drove us during our younger years seems all but lost. We attribute this to “age” and fail to recognize that it is this very compromise that ages us. We forget those elders whom we have known, seen or heard who stayed vital and inspiring to the end. We indulge the fantasy and justification that they somehow were made of “different stuff” than that which we are made of. We slowly, but surely, begin compromising our vision, our passion, and our honor. Our culture does not simply justify this compromise, so do many of our families. The very nature of our institutions of education, governance, and employment require it of us. Parents, teachers, and mentors encourage us to “be realistic,” “to grow up,” and welcome us into the fellowship of those who have turned their backs on exceptional excellence, to settle for life in a milling, mumbling, grumbling herd of those who decided to fit in, find their place (without that place ever really being theirs), adapt – and who eventually find themselves leading familiar, comfortable but-not-quite-cozy lives in that “quiet desperation” that Henry David Thoreau so pointedly spoke of from the shores of Walden Pond. Our lives become enfolded in a narrative that justifies our compromise. We disconnect us from the passion and vision which resides at our core.
Participants in the Vision Force Boot Camp repeatedly describe this event and the subsequent unfolding as “the most powerful event in their life.” What happens in Vision Force that changes people’s lives?
One does not just pay for Boot Camp and show up. There is an application process which screens applicants to see if they are suitable candidates for the experience – and to determine whether the Boot Camp experience can truly benefit them. The commitment and excellence of the candidates is as crucial as the high-level tools and transformative trainings that the Vision Force staff provide. Once accepted, there are teleconference calls where introductory concepts and their influence in our day-to-day lives are introduced. As I participated in the preparatory calls, I was impressed by the level of insight and compassion that was communicated by Michael Skye, Vision Force founder.
Eventually the day comes and we travel to Boot Camp, an experience whose richness defies description. Rather than one of those workshops where you join hundreds or thousands of other people in a huge room and then “partner off” to work on some abstract concepts, the Boot Camp is a direct, personal paradigm for growth. First of all, the group is comprised of up to 30 people and support staff. Every single application has been reviewed by the Boot Camp leader and an assigned Boot Camp ambassador. Every participant is embraced in his or her present circumstances, as well as in the vision and contribution that that person is standing for in the world. I remember my first evening at Boot Camp: the manner in which support staff welcomed me, alone, let me know that this was an extraordinary event.
The Boot Camp is a sacred space. There is safety, mutual respect, compassion, and confidentiality. There is also a call to excellence and being ready to step forward, at our choosing, to face how we hinder our own progress in wholehearted living and the feelings, thoughts and compromises that surround that. With awareness we discover and implement a new way of moving forward. Although the concepts presented are brilliant and profound, Boot Camp is not about learning brilliant theory. It is a step within, not only for the purpose of realization, but leading promptly to bold action. We learn about honor, not as some external criteria or conformity to an external moral code. We rediscover honor as a relationship to self, to this “I Am” that indwells beyond all of our self-descriptions and imagery. We experience honor as the essence of our nature and vitality, as that inner beingness which calls us to stand and step into our true nature and vision. We learn to recognize honor bodily, as the clear, physical sensation of vision embodied, literally, and through the senses. We learn about how the breakdown with this inner essence occurs, through compromise, through inner conflict, and the layers of narrative webs that the mind spins to protect itself from the truth of our compromise.
We embark on a transformative journey together, and deepen it day-by-day. We nurture our bodies through exercise, excellent nourishment and rest. We nurture our minds and our hearts through learning, through openness, through realization, readiness and courage, along with periods of silence. With every day of Boot Camp, we reconnect more fully with that inner luminosity that many of us left behind years and decades ago. Our vitality comes back into fullness. There are no doctrines to subscribe to, no leaders to follow – there is a knowing that reawakens as we realign with our true nature and rejoin Being.
On the fourth day, after the Boot Camp portion of our journey is completed, we integrate our learning in anticipation of reconnecting with loved ones, coworkers and the projects which we left behind just a few days before our amazing journey together. We realize the depths and heights to which we have journeyed together with the thirty-some other people in the room. Incredible, open-hearted and full friendships have been started. We recognize the amazing gift within that has been ours all along and which we have rediscovered – and learned to keep vital. It now lives fully within us, and shines as a bright beacon, guiding our steps forward in the face of any and all circumstances, towards our most brilliant and generous living adventure. As I step back into the world and a life of inspired engagement, I now know full well that I am the one that I have been waiting for my entire life – and that there is no other.
Following Boot Camp, there is support for integrating the work, for taking bold action to healing relationships and seeing our loved ones in honor of their unique adventures. Day by day the work unfolds, impediments are faced, vision grows from within and empowers that generative Will which is our key to transforming a culture of denial and compromise. Friendships grow with our fellow travelers. Lifelong relationships are restored, liberated and brought into fullness again.
We look back at the Vision Force Boot Camp experience with profound gratitude, not only to the Vision Force leaders, but to ourselves – for finally finding and then using the key which unlocks all of our gifts from the core of our being. What more can we wish, but to desire this same gift for others?
Everything here is made possible by our Patrons!