A Letter from Donna

Hello! We’re well into 2008 and I want to welcome you to this website. The numerology significance of 2008 is number one, meaning it is the start of a new era, the first year of a new cycle… whatever that might mean for you. What are you moving toward in your own life? Are you putting your energy and view in the direction you want to go? These are some of the questions I’m considering in my own life and work.

It really feels as though I am walking through a new doorway and I’m not yet sure what is on the other side. I’m excited about the new book that Marlena and I co-authored: Simply Being – a reflective practice guide for helping professionals. See our website www.reflectivepresence.com for more information about that. We started to write that book several years ago, and put it aside to work on other projects. Marlena wrote her book on Body-Centered Coaching and completed a set of cd’s to go with that. I finished working on my book on the Practice of Loving Presence, inspired by the work of Ron Kurtz and Hakomi. With the help of my dear friend and colleague, Flint Sparks (www.flintsparks.com) we have just presented the book for publication and hope to have news about that very soon.

Here is one piece of news for those of you who enjoy my little booklets, including Yabbut Rabbit, Wonderchild, Creative Selfishness, Getting Unstressed, and Creative Responses to Change. My books will soon be available to download as e-books, with the accompanying cd’s available as MP3 files. The first of these will be Remembering Wholeness: InSight Methods. Stay tuned for more information about that on www.reflectivepresence.com.

I have also resumed working on a couples version of the Triangle Effect, or Family Triangles (Seeing Your Life Through New Eyes) and am hoping to have that ready soon for publication. The original book will be relevant for a long time and this version about relationships is designed to complement the original book that I co-authored with Paul Brenner MD. That process using Triangles (I’m calling it The Triangle Effect) is continuing to amaze me with its simplicity and power to reveal the roots of our self-image, relationship issues, and emotional needs. I look forward to more opportunities to teach and share that with people around the world.

Traveling to teach Hakomi around the world continues to take up the majority of my time, but I am now creating a little more space and time at home.  In hopes of more and more time in Kamloops, I have opened my office again, which I am sharing with Susin Shaler, a Feldenkrais practitioner, and my colleague and co-author, Marlena Field (www.bodymindspiritcoaching.com). We are located at the Body Mind Center 635 Victoria St. in Kamloops B.C. I particularly enjoy working with couples who want to be more consciously loving and less reactive in their relationship.

In fact, I like to work with anyone who is willing to look at themselves using applied mindfulness to find out how they can become happier and more fulfilled. My approach is informed by the Hakomi Method, by mindfulness and applied Buddhism, by the Triangle Effect, and by everything else I’ve learned from the many inspiring teachers and mentors I’ve been fortunate to have in my life.

Listening to a cd of a talk by Angeles Arrien the other day, I was reminded of the aspiration I have had for some time now to move continually from reactivity to creativity, from a view of separateness to one of unity, from us-them thinking to social wisdom and peacemaking. While in Japan last spring, I had discussions with my Japanese Hakomi friends about this vision of peacemaking using some of the Hakomi relational skills and the loving presence state of mind.

We thought about finding a name for a project based on this vision and I asked them how to say “oneness” or “unity” in Japanese. They told me there is no such word in their language, but there is a word for non-duality… and that word is fuji.

I loved it! Fuji brings that serene mountain to mind, and the aesthetic beauty of Japanese culture. It now represents, for me, an idea for bringing to the groups I work with an experience of social intelligence, of community, of peacemaking in a relational and practical sense. There is always at least one challenging arena for walking my talk in this vision, and I hope I can meet it successfully and compassionately.

So these are some of the new directions I see myself moving in. Some of the wonderful experiences I look forward to this year include the Heart of Meditation retreat at Hui Ho’olana in Molokai Hawaii, with Flint Sparks. This will be the ninth year in a row for this retreat, which fills up now a year in advance. In 2009, this retreat will be held in April. This year it is in June, right after the most exciting event of the year for me which is the wedding of my son Luc and his girlfriend Kristy… wa-hoo!

Wishing you all the best for 2008. Thanks for looking in and please know that you are welcome at any time. I hope to add some new articles and pieces for your interest every month or so. Thank you!