I am so excited to announce that my New Parent Coaching page has officially been launched!

I’m even more excited to be offering a 30-minute COMPLIMENTARY Back to School coaching consult which will provide you with one of my three educational secrets to identifying your child’s greatest strengths, and much much more!

If you’re interested in learning how you can…

√  Stop running on fumes and pushing yourself relentlessly
√  Clearly identify your strengths
√  Reconnect your mind & body
√  Get in touch with your purpose and passion
√  Become clear about your wants and needs
√  Remove limitations and obstacles
√  Overcome your fears and doubts
√  Uncover hidden resources to make your life easier
√  Creat specific action steps to solve your problems and reach your goals

Then simply visit my website soon, answer the six short questions at the bottom of the page, and I will contact you to set up your Complimentary 30-minute Consult! 

With warmth and blessings!

Joy

©2010 Conscious Joy Coaching. All Rights Reserved.

If so, stay tuned for my new and exciting Parent Coaching program coming in July!

Warm blessings,
Joy

©2010 Conscious Joy Coaching. All Rights Reserved.

That’s all it took  for us to feel re-balanced and re-centered; beautiful natural surroundings, along with a good hike, the sound of the wind blowing in the canyons, and the running water.  It’s so simple really, although at times it seems so hard to remember the simplicity. 

It was a good reminder that we create our own reality, and that we constantly have a choice of how we want to be and feel in each moment! 

Yesterday we chose blissfulness and that is my new daily intention, to choose blissfulness!

I wish you all blessings and bliss today!

Warmly,
Joy

ps. Although photos really don’t capture the magic of a place, they’re still beautiful to look at! : )  Enjoy!

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©2010 Conscious Joy Coaching. All Rights Reserved.

Joyce Mills and I returned from Marrakech one week ago tomorrow, and what an incredible experience it was!

The first part of our adventure began when we arrived at London, Heathrow and waited for 6 hours for our Royal Air Moroc flight which was meant to stop in Casablanca and then go directly on to Marrakech.  After being grounded for 2 hours in the Royal Air Moroc plane, we finally took off for Casablanca.  The 3 hour flight was very nice, however, rather than stay on the plane like we were originally told, we had to disembark in Casablanca; but not before waiting 1 & 1/2 more hours just to get off of the plane.  It was then that our real Moroccan adventure began! 

Although with Joyce’s little French we were able to say hello and thank you to many people in the airport, and meet a really nice Greek pilot who helped us get through the document and immigration line, we were still unable to get any relevant information regarding our flight to Marrakech.  We eventually learned that our flight had been cancelled with no explanation. 

So after hooking up and hitching a ride with an English tour group, we finally arrived in Marrakech 6 hours later and were safe in bed at 6am.  All in all it only took us 1 day & 1/2 to get to Marrakech from Phoenix, all the while keeping a playful adventurous attitude, knowing that nothing was as it seemed.

After sleeping through the entire first day of the conference, I awoke just in time for the Moroccan Gala.  The food and the people were wonderful! 

Joyce’s first presentation entitled, “Inspiring Children to Soar: Planting the Seeds and Reaping the Harvest,” was on Wednesday the 19th of May, and she was amazing!  My presentation followed on Thursday the 20th, (also my father’s birthday: )

I so enjoyed presenting how I have implemented the StoryPlay® model in the classroom and I loved how well it and I was received by an Internation audience. 

Joyce also presented the 4 day post conference and I was again able to experience for myself the impactful self-empowerment that occurs though story, metaphor, play, and the reconnection to my strengths and my Imaginal Discs. 

I am so deeply grateful to Joyce for all of her time, dedication and love, as well as for her trust in me to present her wonderfully creative and strength based model called StoryPlay®.

Before I go I want to give a quick note of thanks and gratitude to Monika Jephcott , the president of Play Therapy Internation (PTI), and her husband Jeff for organizing such an amazing Congress.  

I know they were disappointed that the participation count was much lower than it was meant to be due to an unexpected withdraw of support from UNICEF and Play Therapy Africa.  Both Monika and Jeff are dedicated to bringing treatment and healing to the children of the world by training professionals in Play Therapy world wide.  

They have recently spent much of their time and energy in Ethiopia following up on promises from UNICEF to provide “Child Friendly” schools and other programs only to recount thier visit with tears and heartbreak after witnessing the real goings on and happenings.  After listening to their horror stories I made a promise to myself that I would do my best to get the word out. 

Please if you are interested in learning more and taking action contact Monika, and she will discuss with you how to proceed.

Until next time!

Blessings and love,
Joy

ps. Please enjoy some of the photos from our trip!

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©2010 Conscious Joy Coaching. All Rights Reserved.

I’ll be presenting my first International workshop entitled: StoryPlay® in the Classroom: A multicultural model for helping children overcome obstacles to learning and achieving their goals.  I’m really looking forward to this new and exciting experience, and hope that it is the first of many to come! 

And what a place for this first presentation!  Marrakech is such an ancient and exotic city, and although my loving partner will not be with me, I am excited to explore and wander around all the different souks, or markets, of Marrakech, drink tea, and be introduced to a new and very flavorful culture!

So, until I return, have a wonderful 10 days exploring whatever world or worlds you find yourself in!

Love and blessings,
Joy

©2010 Conscious Joy Coaching. All Rights Reserved.

Close your eyes and imagine that your head has become infinite. Now there are no boundaries to it. It goes on and on and on and there is no boundary to it. Your head has become the whole cosmos, without any boundaries. If you can imagine this, suddenly thoughts will stop. If you can imagine your head as infinite, thinking will not be there. Thinking can exist only in a very narrow mind. The narrower it is, the better for thinking. The greater the mind, the less the thinking, and when the mind becomes total space, there is no thinking at all.

Try. And it will be good if you try from the head, because that is the base of all illness. Close your eyes, lie down on the ground or sit on a chair and relax. Just look within the head. Feel the walls of the head spreading, expanding. If you feel that it will be very staggering, then try it slowly. First think that your head has come to occupy the whole room. You will actually feel your skin touching the walls. You will feel the coolness of the walls that your skin is touching. You will feel the pressure.

Go on moving. Your head has gone beyond ― now the house has come within your head, then the whole town has come within your head. Go on spreading. Within three months, slowly, you can come to the point where the sun rises in your head, it starts moving in your head. Your head has become infinite. This will give you a deep freedom such as you have never known. And all the misery that belongs to this narrow mind will disappear. In such a state, Upanishadic seers could say, “aham brahmasmi” ― “I am the Divine, I am the Absolute.”

Osho: Excerpted from The Book of Secrets

©2010 Conscious Joy Coaching. All Rights Reserved.

This technique says don’t do anything with anxiety. Just be alert!

I will tell you one old anecdote about Bokuju, another Zen master. He lived alone in a cave, but during the day, or even in the night, he would sometimes say loudly, “Bokuju” — his own name, and then he would say, “Yes, I am here.” And no one else was there.
Then his disciples used to ask him, “Why are you calling ‘Bokuju’, your own name, and then saying, ‘Yes sir, I am here’?”
He said, “Whenever I get into thinking, I have to remember to be alert, and so I call my own name, ‘Bokuju.’ The moment I call ‘Bokuju’ and I say, ‘Yes sir, I am here,’ the thinking, the anxiety disappears.”
Then, in his last days, for two or three years, he never called “Bokuju,” his name, and never had to reply, “Yes sir, I am here.”
The disciples asked, “Master, now you never do this.”
So he said, “But now Bokuju is always there. He is always there, and there is no need. Before I used to miss him. Sometimes the anxiety would take me, cloud me all over, and Bokuju was not there. So I had to remember ‘Bokuju,’ and the anxiety would disappear….”

Try your name. When you feel deep anxiety, just call your name — not “Bokuju” or any name, but your name — and then reply to it, “Yes sir, I am here,” and feel the difference. Anxiety will not be there. At least for a single moment you will have a glimpse beyond the clouds, and that glimpse can be deepened. Once you know that if you become alert anxiety is not there, it disappears; you have come to a deep knowing of your own self and the mechanism of inner working.

Osho: Excerpted from The Book of Secrets

©2010 Conscious Joy Coaching. All Rights Reserved.

Title: StoryPlay® in the Classroom: A multicultural model for helping children overcome obstacles to learning and achieving their goals
Location: Marrakech, Morocco
Link out: Click here
Description: The challenges and pressures that children face at school today are immense. These pressures are resulting more and more in the child’s lack of focus and motivation, increased stress and anxiety, as well as depression. In addition our children are more often than not forgetting about their natural inner strengths and resources, and are consequently losing in the struggle to maintain their creative authentic expression. This experiential workshop will provide participants with motivational StoryPlay® activities, which as a part of play therapy, will help children reconnect with their inner resources and potential, utilize their creativity, and build on their success;

* Life Story Puzzle – Draw symbols that identify you in all parts of your life, and then connect your piece to others to complete the puzzle.
* Identity Shield – Using crafts and drawings to identify who you are.
* Heart Happy Drawing – A drawing that makes your heart sing, as well as a mobile affirmation.

Love and Blessings,
Joy

Start Date: 2010-05-13
End Date: 2010-05-24

©2010 Conscious Joy Coaching. All Rights Reserved.

“Now it is mind-boggling.

“What can you do? The goose is too big; you cannot take it out unless you break the bottle, but that is not allowed. Or you can bring it out by killing it; then you don’t care whether it comes out alive or dead. That is not allowed either. “Day in, day out, the disciple meditates, finds no way, thinks this way and that way — but in fact there is no way. Tired, utterly exhausted, a sudden revelation…suddenly he understands that the master cannot be interested in the bottle and the goose; they must represent something else. The bottle is the mind, you are the goose…and with witnessing, it is possible. Without being in the mind, you can become identified with it so much that you start feeling you are in it!

“He runs to the master to say that the goose is out. And the master says, “You have understood it. Now keep it out. It has never been in.”

“If you go on struggling with the goose and the bottle, there is no way for you to solve it. It is the realization that, “It must represent something else; otherwise the master cannot give it to me. And what can it be?” — because the whole function between the master and the disciple, the whole business is about the mind and awareness.

“Awareness is the goose which is not in the bottle of the mind. But you are believing that it is in it and asking everyone how to get it out. And there are idiots who will help you, with techniques, to get out of it. I call them idiots because they have not understood the thing at all.

“The goose is out, has never been in, so the question of bringing it out does not arise.

“Mind is just a procession of thoughts passing in front of you on the screen of the brain. You are an observer. But you start getting identified with beautiful things — those are bribes. And once you get caught in the beautiful things you are also caught in the ugly things, because mind cannot exist without duality.

“Awareness cannot exist with duality, and mind cannot exist without duality.

“Awareness is non-dual, and mind is dual. So just watch. I don’t teach you any solutions. I teach you the solution: Just get back a little and watch. Create a distance between you and your mind.

“Whether it is good, beautiful, delicious, something that you would like to enjoy closely, or it is ugly — remain as far away as possible. Look at it just the way you look at a film….

“Identification is the root cause of your misery. And every identification is identification with the mind.

“Just step aside, let the mind pass.

“And soon you will be able to see that there is no problem at all — the goose is out. You don’t have to break the bottle, you don’t have to kill the goose either.”

Osho: Beyond Psychology, chapter 19

©2010 Conscious Joy Coaching. All Rights Reserved.

The following poem by Helen Steiner Rice is in my opinion a beautiful depiction for the coming Spring Equinox, which to me symbolizes the end of a dark cold winter and the liberation of light and rebirth. 

©2010 Conscious Joy Coaching. All Rights Reserved.