A summer to grow and change. A summer of adventures that leaves them seeing themselves in new and larger ways.

A transformative summer.

You can have that, too – and you should. It’s as close as Élan!. Schedule a LEMONADE HOUR (mini-class or individual session) into your calendar right now – before the summer slips away.

Learn more…

Upcoming classes include:

• WHAT’S STOPPING YOU???
• Bouncing Back: how to help yourself or someone you love beat the blues
• New from A Space That’s You: creating a virtual Comfort Cabinet

Workshop details and registration links…

Here’s a great invention — and maybe the exact right opportunity for you!

With an Élan!PASS you can attend all the classes you want — all year long — for one very reasonable price! In fact, if you attend three single-session workshops, you’ll already come out ahead. But there’s no need to stop there! Go ahead and sign up for whatever catches your eye with your Élan!PASS!

Passes can be purchased online (links below) or by check.

• 3-Month Pass — $95
• 6-Month Pass — $160
• All-Year Pass — $300

2008. A new year, a new page.

It’s your true intention, not a list of resolutions, that will drive your choices as you move through a sea of situations in the upcoming year. What you choose to say and do, where you choose to place your energy — all depend on your deepest goals.

Join a class at Élan! to give yourself the breathing space you need to get clear about your true intentions for 2008. And make some powerful connections with other people in the process.

A SPECIAL GIFT JUST FOR YOU (or someone special)! — Register for two single-session workshops or for the Sea Change series and receive a complimentary gift card for a future single-session workshop! (Offer ends 1/7/2008)

Upcoming classes include:

• Intentionally You: create a vision for “living out loud” in 2008!
• Bouncing Back: how to help yourself or someone you love beat the blues
• Shaping a Space That’s You: transform a space in your home to make it truly yours
• Creating Sea Change in Your Life

Workshop details and registration links…

Last New Year’s Eve, I found myself at the piano after a 20-year absence. As a direct result, I am now faced with the largely self-inflicted terror of playing a Bach prelude at a recital.

The recital takes place in the beautiful chapel of a stately old mansion, one of the “seven castles” of Clifton — now a nursing home. Fortunately this means that much of the audience cannot hear. However, I cannot help but recall the debut of my younger daughter Marla’s choir at an Alzheimer’s unit when one of the residents yelled out angrily,

I believe he also threw something, but that could just be me embellishing.

And while even I can see the humor of being dangled out as unwilling bait to an audience that may lack the inhibition necessary to give a kind reception, I am alternately quaking and cursing at the prospect.

Still, this travesty (see definition below) occurs Saturday unless weather cooperates in my rescue with a blizzard.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
trav·es·ty [trav-uh-stee] noun, plural -ties, verb, -tied, -ty·ing.

1. a literary or artistic burlesque of a serious work or subject, characterized by grotesque or ludicrous incongruity of style, treatment, or subject matter.
2. A literary or artistic composition so inferior in quality as to be merely a grotesque imitation of its model.

It’s not that I can’t play. I’m competent. The piano has been part of me since the age of five – but life intruded, and although I have a sweet little spinet, obtained fifteen years ago by serendipity and delivered to my house by generous helpers, it had sat silent.

Last December 31, my eldest daughter Élise and friends Karen and Richard Floeckher came to celebrate New Year’s Eve at my house. I had known from Élise that Richard is a musicologist and philosopher, teaches piano and plays beautifully. Richard, Élise said, really cannot walk past a piano without wanting to play it – much the way I feel myself even though my actions would seem to indicate otherwise.

So, in the faint and hesitant hope that this might turn out to be true, I placed in plain sight next to the piano a pile of dog-eared books of wonderful arrangements for one piano, four hands. By 11:00 Richard had generously acquiesced in my ploy and we were happily ensconced in the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Fast forward through the recital last May where we played it, to the recital this Saturday where I am slated, despite my mutinous response, to play said Bach prelude – on my own.

My family and friends, Richard in particular, are (perhaps painfully) aware that I have been puzzling over – no, struggling over – this recital. Why on earth would I (or anyone!) choose to enter into a situation that causes so much seemingly unnecessary stress?

By last week, I’d even come up with my own definition:

re-ci’-tal: me trying to play something that others can do better in front of an audience that knows it

However, I have wanted very much to transcend that perspective. I hope that my thoughts about this will be of some use to you.

It occurred to me a few nights ago that as someone with a certain nostalgia around baseball, I choose very pointedly to attend the minor league games of the Dayton Dragons, having no interest whatsoever in the Cincinnati Reds. Yet the Reds clearly play with a higher level of competence and, perhaps, innate ability.

What I realized is that my pleasure in watching is not about perfection – there’s no definition for that in sports, really. It’s actually about feeling a part of a game for which I have a natural fondness, as the players act in the moment, and take joy in both the physical delivery of the strategy and in the results. It’s about feeling inspired by the efforts of each of those young men to come together as a team and move fluidly to achieve a result. It’s about their personal strength as they learn to recover in the space of a blink from their mistakes. It’s about each of their reasons for being there, their stories, their efforts to gain mastery in an area of importance to them. It is much the same joy and inspiration I take in my daughter Marla’s beautiful singing.

It seemed to me then that this is the power of The Recital.

A recital is about the journey of each of us and how that journey has brought us into the room –

–and here is why my path has brought me here – first, to Richard’s studio, a powerful space that he creates with his person and his knowledge and his love of musical sound; and then, to the recitals he painstakingly arranges for his students:

I think I was offered this intensive retreat in my own story so that I could reclaim:

• the piano, my seat in front of it, my fingers speaking through the keys
• the right to be taught without being harmed
• the right take joy in something without being brilliant at it
• the right to be joyfully imperfect, less than gifted, my right to simply be and to play and to have fun – without being judged either by myself or by anyone else. As my friend Ed pointed out, it is perhaps not without reason that it is called “playing.”

A recital is about sharing your very best when your very best is unremarkable, and being able to feel spectacular about having come so far and take pleasure in exercising your capacity to learn. And, as Ed said, maybe performing is about trusting others to receive us generously and to even be enchanted by our presence and by our effort, by our sharing a part of our hearts.

Perhaps it’s about the unique joys inherent in being a student of something. Not a master, not a performer – but the fascination and awe and utter delight that one experiences by entering into the vastness of a foreign and complex world accompanied by an inspired and inspiring guide who knows it well. The freedom, the license, to be a novice. What a gift! And yet, it is a gift that requires a more solid core than the gift of having innate genius for something.

It is about understanding that joy and perfection are not intertwined other than to take joy in the fact that we are perfect in our imperfection.

It’s about actually living the belief that “Imperfect trumps Undone” and allowing this experience of that principle to flow into other important areas of your life.

It is about distinguishing between the tension that naturally exists when there is but a single opportunity to deliver something you value to others – and the anxiety that painfully results from a perceived threat to self if it is not delivered in the way that you wish. It is about successfully dissolving that anxiety by finally comprehending that there is no true threat – and by doing so, making the space for fun. It is about knowing, once and for all, that no matter what happens, I’m going to be okay – with me.

It is about the guts and struggle of doing this.

And perhaps it isn’t reclaiming until it’s done publicly. Perhaps none of this can be accomplished in one’s own company. As Karen brilliantly observed last night, you can’t “sin boldly” alone in your room.

Too, it is about taking the risk of rejection that is implicit in offering a gift of oneself –

So, here is what I would like to offer as my own path crosses other paths, something of mine that I would like to share some small way on Saturday – and with you, now:

I would like to share with you my love of the notes

and my joy in touching the keys, in making the sound;

I would like to invite you into that joy.

Perhaps my doing so will give you permission to play (or work) at something yourself; perhaps just pleasure in the sound — or vicarious pleasure in my attempt to take notes on a page and approximate an ideal –

It occurs to me that something doesn’t have to be flawless to be entertaining. The music of Bach certainly stands on its own, even in my hands, as does the personality of the one through whom it (more or less) flows. Perhaps this is part of what Richard meant when he said that a performance (if one is willing to “sin boldly”) can have flaws and still have grace and elegance. I think how often I have hung on to a beautiful recording that has some skips in it while putting aside its bland, but unscratched, twin. So, perhaps on one level or another, I will be able to be entertaining after all.

To bring these pieces together within the space of this recital, these beliefs about life and accomplishment and personal worth – and love, is what I wish to do. It is this, and not perfection in the notes, that will denote success for me; it is a powerful shift, in short, sea change.

Upcoming classes include: Bouncing Back: how to help yourself or someone you love beat the blues and Creating Sea Change in Your Life. Bring a friend or buy the package for special savings.

Workshop details and registration links…

Each day, we’re pulled in a hundred different directions. The din of the demands coming from the outside makes it hard to hear the guide on the inside. Call it energy, call it intuition – when that spark of knowing surfaces and you have the courage to act on it, sea change occurs.

How do you know when to pay attention?

Sometimes you just know – if you allow for it. When a thought or idea or feeling bubbles up out of nowhere and makes you draw a breath, stop and take notice. When it’s recurrent, feels urgent, exciting; when it captures your imagination and won’t let go. A thought that tickles you or puts a grin on your face, that feels like a bright little light that keeps softly flashing.

They’re easy to miss if you’re not scanning for them — but try not to miss them. They’re important parts of your emerging self.

They’re tragically easy to ignore — but attending to them means grabbing the opportunity to live fully.

“Sea change” signifies a profound transformation.

• It’s the shift in a relationship that happens when you trust yourself to say what you’re really thinking and feeling.
• It’s the change in your energy that occurs when you have the courage to turn down a request – and find that you are still loved.
• It’s the world that opens up to you when you have the courage to travel to a new place that’s beckoning you.

Following the energy, like traveling a path where you can only see the next three feet in front of you, creates sea change.

And that’s what Sea Change is about – tips and stories to help you follow your inklings about the tiny, eminently achievable shifts that result in amazing transformations in your life and relationships.

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Is there an example of sea change in your own life that you’d like to share? An quiet thought or dawning awareness that keeps tugging at your shirt tail? Your stories will find a soft place to land at the A Life That’s You blogspace. To add them, sign in here.

This was an unusually big stack, and the bag sat on the dining table in the morning room for a couple of weeks. Finally, anxious to clear off the table, I emptied the bag and tossed the books on the end table by the sofa. Comprised of a sofa and two chairs, this space had felt somehow unfinished, lacking character or a central message. With the addition of the books, suddenly it was cozier, more inviting. That the books were much-read and dog-eared only served to add to the warmth of the effect.

One of the themes of the new house is to live life as if it were an ongoing vacation. Its décor and location both make it the “vacation home” in our eyes. And the summer homes we’ve rented at the ocean often have shelves of paperbacks – jewels and discards, shared by past readers, waiting to be discovered by us, welcoming us to sink into the sofa and enter new worlds, connecting us to the visitors who had preceded us.

And that is the way I wanted the new house to make our guests feel. Because that was another theme – to create a place that invited others to join me, to enter.

And what else, I asked myself as I looked at the suddenly-cozier arrangement, does that?

Puzzles.

Jigsaw puzzles!

My childhood included hours of puzzling at my aunt and uncle’s Wisconsin home on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. My visits were weeks dedicated to playing – adults playing with children. The cares and responsibilities of daily life – jobs, running a household – were set aside by my aunt and my mother during this annual island of time. They sat on the floor and played cards with us – quadruple solitaire, spite & malice. When we were older, they taught us to play Mah Jongh with them. We had musical ensembles where I accompanied them on the piano as they on their violins alternated between serious effort and peals of laughter. At night we played scrabble.

And we worked puzzles. I was in awe of my aunt’s uncanny ability to pluck a single piece among hundreds and place it precisely where it fit.

But even beyond creating with my home an ongoing connection to such a positive experience from my childhood, solving jigsaw puzzles is a metaphor for my life and for my work as a therapist.

Each year, on my birthday and at Christmas, I choose a special gift for myself, just as I do for my children. It’s more of a hatching than a shopping process. An idea, amorphous at first, begins to consolidate. It goes through multiple renditions, each simpler than the last, as the extraneous elements are left behind and the pure notion emerges.

And so the puzzle table came to be. For my birthday, I purchased the coffee table that matches that end table where Cathy’s summer-reading books are stacked. My daughters and I looked through scores of jigsaw puzzles online to choose the first. My vision was of a puzzle always in the works on that coffee table, inviting people to sit down and add a piece.

Our first pick was a collage of seashells, reminiscent of our cherished trips to the ocean. Like all experienced puzzlers, we eagerly turned our energies to the frame, sorting other pieces by color as we went. Turning our heads for a moment, we were aghast to see Bailey, the puppy, chewing determinedly on a puzzle piece – and then another – scattering many more pieces to the floor.

But there was no rage over this, no compulsion to throw the puzzle out and buy another. Bailey is just the youngest member of our family – and, as such, is part of the larger tapestry of our lives together. So she was duly educated, and dog repellent was added to our puzzling supplies – along with a plexiglass table topper, cut to size by me, with little rubber feet, to protect our work between times. With no way of knowing how many pieces were missing, we picked up what we could find – including two pulpy masses that had no picture left at all, the photo apparently being the tastiest part.

My younger daughter’s boyfriend and I finished that puzzle together the other night. Not a fan of puzzles previously, he was drawn in, and we enjoyed that same industrious and easy companionship that I remembered from the summers long ago. As we worked on it, we would often find ourselves searching for the one unique piece that would fill a particular space. I would find myself saying, ‘That may be one of the missing pieces, we may never find that one.’ And I would let it go, an acceptance of a finished product with missing pieces that were gone for good, but whose existence was not in question at all.

The finished puzzle lacks two pieces. In this way, it is utterly perfect, and I think we will leave it under the plexiglass for a while. Because the finished product is a story, a memory, a record – a work of art made perfect by the two windows of table showing through. As for the lost pieces eaten up by Bailey who appreciated their flavor but not their meaning, no matter. The rest of the puzzle tells exactly what they looked like.

We hear a lot these days about “passion.” Everywhere we look, it seems like someone is telling us to “find our passion,” to “follow our passion,” to “live passionately.” In the abstract, it sounds like wonderful advice, but certainly there are not few among us who are thinking, “Where am I even supposed to look?” or even: “I don’t think I have a great passion!”

But what if it isn’t so hard! What if deep down we already know where to find it – because it’s a part of us?

What if there is a way to go about this that makes sense, one that you can do?

In fact, “finding your passion” means connecting with what is deepest inside. It begins with finding yourself. It’s part of what I like to call The Marigold Theory. The idea is simple: When you drop a marigold seed into the soil, it is genetically coded to grow into a marigold. If you try to somehow coax it into becoming a Poppy, it will disappoint you and itself, and it may even die.

Likewise, we are each born with a unique set of potentials. How sad if the Marigolds among us spend their lives trying to be Poppies! Our task is to get back to that original seed and to create an environment where its potential can be realized, an environment where it can bloom.

Each of us has little sparks of energy that appear here and there throughout the day. Something that happens, an idea, or a thought kindles a reaction in us. We have a burst of energy around it. Pay attention and follow that energy! It comes directly from our core and inspires us into action. And – you guessed it! – action inspired from within is passion.

The opportunities are all around us. Sometimes they’re hiding in plain sight! Your passion is in that special charge that you feel when you’re doing something that you really love. It’s there in the way that there are some things that you always have energy for no matter how exhausted you are. It’s that natural high that you just sometimes get.

Those chances to pursue our own energy occur when we least expect them. One spring afternoon, while wandering with a friend through the shops of the historic town of Lebanon, Ohio, I fell in love with a miniature glass conservatory in the window of a beautiful little garden store. Enchanted with the possibilities from the moment I saw it, I knew I had to learn to build my own. It was a tantalizing thought that kept coming back. As so often happens when we aren’t afraid to follow our energy, the opportunity to learn presented itself unexpectedly a few months later.

When our attention is suddenly captured by a new idea or activity or object, there’s usually more to it than we initially realize. By following that energy and allowing it to perc, that unconscious element has an opportunity to unfold. Loose ends gel into a form that we may not understand immediately. For me, designing these miniature conservatories had many meanings. Far from being unfriendly spaces that exposed and made the inhabitants vulnerable as the old expression about “people in glass houses” suggests, each of these tiny greenhouses is a protective space, a life-affirming and nurturing environment supporting the plants within as they reach for the sky. Each fresh sheet of glass is a new opportunity with no limits, and it became evident that the process of creating fresh designs was a metaphor for developing a new and larger vision for my life. Many things have followed from that moment in Lebanon when I allowed myself to be guided by my energy.

Start by creating a trail of clues for yourself. Dedicate a small journal to jotting down those little things during the day that capture your attention. When you find one that you can pursue, don’t hesitate! You’ll be on the path to a whole new adventure and one step closer to creating a life you’ll love to wake up to!