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Archives for June 2022

What’s My Impact?

June 13, 2022 By Julia Menard Leave a Comment



The class on Leading With Resilience that I just finished teaching for the Centre for Leadership at the Justice Institute of BC has been a very inspiring two days.
 
The format of the class included online reflective posts and journaling, so I was privileged with reading leader’s thoughts on the particular topics on hand.
 
One theme that emerged was the number of people who mentioned the importance of how we impact the lives of others. As I reflect on that theme, I realize giving people permission to give us feedback about how we impact them is important. Most people don’t want to tell us how we impact them. They are often afraid they will “hurt our feelings” or perhaps they just couldn’t be bothered or perhaps it doesn’t seem appropriate.
 
So, people need encouragement, and sometimes they need to be asked directly, to let us know what our impact is on them.  
 
I am reminded of a conversation I had with a new friend who teaches in a personal development program called PSI Seminars. This person shared that in her program, people ask each other about how they are showing up and impacting each other. This takes courage to do at first, but inspired by what she said, I asked her right away if she’d be willing to share what impact or impression I had on her.
 
Of course, she was game! 
 
She said, to her, I showed up like the Michelin man. She said I can present as a very big force yet there is a part of me inside that is afraid to shine, to grow to fit into the whole of the Michelin man.
 
What an intriguing piece of feedback!
 
In an odd way, that was both a compliment and frightening! It was a compliment, as what I took from her share of her perception of me, is that I’m bigger than I am allowing myself to be. That is wonderful and hopeful and points to another growth opportunity.
 
What was frightening was, am I showing up to other people that way too? Unless I start asking more people how I show up for them, I don’t have the data to know if this is a perception I need to inquiry into myself about.
 
Given the poem my friend Cathtryn Lecorre read this morning in her online kundalini class, I’d say many of us probably relate to the idea that we are not showing up as big or as bright as we could be. She read Marianne Williamson’s poem that begins with:
 
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
 
What an empowering thought that perhaps if we ask others what impact or impression we may be leaving them with, that we might be able to increase our positive impact in the world!

Our Global Food System is About to Collapse

June 13, 2022 By Julia Menard Leave a Comment



George Monbiot is someone I have a lot of respect for. In the April issue of HEN, I spoke about his recently released book, Regenesis, on food systems, their collapse and his vision for a regenerated food system.

So it was with great interest that I read his recent Guardian article where he gives a summary, in a way, of his whole book.

According to Monbiot’s research, our global food has become less diverse, with only four crops accounting for almost 60% of all the calories grown by farmers. Those four crops are wheat, rice, maize and soy. Furthermore, their production is now highly concentrated in a handful of nations, including Russia and the Ukraine. This “Global Standard Diet” is grown by “Global Standard Farms” which are supplied by the same corporations with the same packages of seed, chemicals and machinery, and therefore vulnerable to the same environmental shocks.

After studying his subject thoroughly, Monbiot tells us that we urgently need to diversify away from global food production, both geographically and in terms of crops and farming techniques. We need to break the grip of massive corporations and to produce food and strengthen an entirely different means of food production.

That vision is what inspired me to be part of creating our original local Food security group in my ‘hood and it pleases me that we have a fairly strong network of people here who know about food growing. That doesn’t mean we will necessarily escape the consequences of this global system food collapse, but local food production is more important now than ever and we can see the starts of these more local systems everywhere.

“I believe we can create a truly humane, sustainable, and health food production system without killing any animals. I imagine a revolution in veganic agriculture in which small farmers grow a variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes, all fertilized with vegetable sources.” … Gene Baur

Feeling Blessed

June 13, 2022 By Julia Menard Leave a Comment

I just finished teaching a class about resilience. It was for leaders and supervisors and designed by the Centre for Leadership at the Justice Institute of BC.

One of the gifts of teaching this class was the opportunity to see how I can control my own heart rate and what it feels like when I am doing it. One of the perks of the job was being about to use a type of biofeedback machine, called an EmWave2, from the HeartMath Institute.

Some of you might have had an experience of biofeedback training – where a computer shows you how your heart rate or breathing is doing. This particular machine measures the intervals between heartbeats. None of our hearts beat at exactly the same length of time or space between beats. They vary. That variation is called “Heart Rate Variability.” That’s what the EmWave 2 measures.

It looks like a reading on an EKG machine – blips on a screen. What you see at the top of this post is a screenshot of my HRV. It was taken this morning from my computer, when I deliberately changed my breathing and focused on pleasurable, loving thoughts.

I’ve never had the experience before of being able to see so immediately how changing my breathing and my thoughts could bring my heart into quick coherence. It was very empowering!

I’m feeling the effects of it now even as I type this and remember the state I was in.

How it works is you hook your finger or earlobe to a small sensor pad which plugs into a small machine that plugs into your computer.  Then a computer program pops up that is reflected on my screenshot above. That shows your heart beats and little graphs showing your heart rate variability going from being in the “red” to “blue” to “green.”

I must confess, since getting this little machine a few days ago, I was staring to get competitive with myself – I wanted to get 100% green!

Until this morning, I had gotten as far as about 93% green. I would slow down my breathing, and then put one hand on my heart and the other on my belly and finally start to think happy thoughts. I would either think of things I loved (like people in my life) or imagine energy circulating in my body. I’ve received training in many energy modalities, including Reiki, Qi Gong and Kundalini yoga, so imagining energy circulating throughout and around my body was easy.

This morning, I sat down with the machine, before class started. I was talking with the assistant who helps me with the online class and we were testing the machine and the screen sharing to make sure everything was working. Imagine my surprise when I started the breathing and the good thoughts and then my heart rate moved immediately into that 100% zone.

I could hardly believe it – except – my body sensations told me so. My 100% score was reflected in how I was feeling. I could see how my heart rate variability was large and so very even – like waves. I recognized that feeling of when I am in “the zone” and a tiny bit dreamy. The state felt pleasurable and expansive.

The odd thing is I didn’t do anything that different other than I had put myself into that state before turning on the machine. Then, watching the machine and knowing I was putting myself in that state deliberately, put me in that state even more.

The cool thing is I can put myself in that state right now. Stop. Focus on my heart. Slow my breathing down. Think lovely thoughts.  One minute of this…Ahhh. So good!

Try it!

I feel so grateful I had a chance to play with the EmWave2 machine and that I now know in my body what it feels like to shift into that zone. Thank you to the Justice Institute of BC for offering such training in Resiliency for Leaders. Thank you to the wonderful assistants, who helped make the class happen – one of whom, Anastasia, was with me the whole time. Thank you too to the designer of that curriculum who thought up this lovely exercise.

I feel blessed.

“My mother told me I was blessed and I have always taken her word for it.” … Duke Ellington

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