Halo, Ahalan, Shalom, An-nyong, Sa-wat-dee!

The emails have been coming in asking when I am holding another international retreat and others have been asking when I am going to be holding another workshop in the States because they are afraid of international travel at this time. So, I thought it might be appropriate to talk about the benefits of travel in this month’s newsletter.

The virtues of travel have long been touted, and we are all familiar with the clichés. Travel broadens the mind, dissolves dogma, rattles the cage, and challenges one’s fears of meeting strangers. It can be romantic, life-threatening, enlightening, liberating, toxic to weak relationships, invigorating to the strong. Travel can also be tedious or hypnotic, exhilarating, exhausting or addictive. It is expensive because it’s short-lived, cheap because the traveler is forever rewarded with memory and story. You wish you were home, you wish you never had to go home. All of these things are true at different times, and if you are lucky you may well experience each of them on the same trip.

I have found that travel opens one up and warms one’s heart to people different from us, people we may have felt an initial distaste for. To grow as a human being, you must take risks. As a wise friend once said to me, The only sin in life is to be stuck." Risks imply motion, and travel is the most obvious and direct way for us to engage in such motion, all of which might be summed up by another quote, this one from 13th century philosopher and poet Rumi: "Travel brings power and love back into your life."

And of course, risk itself is an entirely relative and misunderstood concept. We all "know" that the odds of dying in a car crash close to home are greater than those of flying. We all know the odds of dying from heart failure or cancer are greater than the odds of dying from rebel gunshots or the bite of a poisonous snake. And yet we constantly deceive ourselves and end up taking dreadful risks with health and safety close to home, eschewing the "risks" of foreign travel and denying ourselves the rewards.

Isn’t it time you once again found yourself wide-eyed with wonder and curiosity?

So without further ado, check out the upcoming retreats and workshops that I will be leading with other guest speakers in the coming months. And until next time... Remember, we build the road and the road builds us.

Your Soul Blazer,

Lisa Haisha
Composing a Life

What is Soul Blazing?

THE KEY IS ONE SOUL TALKING TO ANOTHER UNFETTERED BY THE CONSTRAINTS OF OUR MINDS OR OUR PERSONALITIES. WHEN THAT DIALOGUE IS ALLOWED TO OCCUR, THE POSSIBILITIES FOR GROWTH ARE ENDLESS!

Rachel Kann

I was introduced to the very charming LA Weekly Award-winning Rachel Kann at the Temple Bar in Santa Monica. Known for being a "verse smuggler" of sorts, Rachel is full of life and a force in the poetry world. She has made it her goal to explode poetry out of the coffeehouse and into the big wide world, bringing her words and passionate performances to stages as disparate as Disney Concert Hall, Royce Hall, and California Plaza in Los Angeles, The San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts, and the Vans Warped Tour, to name a few. She is equally at home and a favorite at small-scale poetry landmarks such as the Nuyorican Poets' Café, Beyond Baroque, and The Green Mill. What is unusual about Rachel is that I found her poetry to be so creative with her choice of words rich with pain, angst, and challenges but when speaking with her, she is a sweet, warm and very approachable person.

She enjoys in working within the confines of page poetry, spoken word and hip hop, and then breaking down those boundaries to do something genuinely different, all the while laughing in the face of tired old gender roles. Rachel brings forth her poetry either solo, with her co-lab:ORATION musicians, or with the DaKah 70-piece Hip Hop Orchestra. She has toured nationally and in Europe and Canada, collaborating with beatboxers like Rahzel (The Roots), MC Squared, Joshua Silverstein, and Kid Beyond, and appearing with Sage Francis, Mike Watt, Tre (Pharcyde), Nikka Costa, Kim Hill, Medusa, Antipop Consortium, Sole (anticon), Alias (anticon), and more.

For those of you interested in her work and to read her poetry, you can visit her website listed below to see where she is sharing her gift of words and if for some reason it is difficult for you to go to her, she will come to you though her Cd's: "PoeTTrY MOUTH;" "word to the WHY?S" and her latest, "ptomemaeic complex," and numerous poetry compilation cds.

booking@inspirachel.com
mail@inspirachel.com
www.inspirachel.com

In Hindu mythology an Avatar is a spirit guide and helper, and that's what we call our monthly selection of a person or organization whose mission is to assist individuals and companies on a higher level than most, and whose skills and talents we believe will make your life easier and happier. They will give you the room and support to grow into your life's work.

Nicholas Cooper

I met Nick last November at the Costa Rica Retreat we lead together with two others. We saw each other at the LAX airport before boarding but said few words. My first impression was that he was a sexy, no-bullshit kind-of-guy. When we arrived in Costa Rica and made our first stop at a local restaurant with the other retreat leaders and founders, Bart Baggett and Tina Castaldi and crew, we happened to be sitting next to each other and connected immediately.

I knew he was a vocal coach (and an artist) and I expressed to him that I could not sing to save my life; that I was tone deaf. He disagreed and said he has helped many overcome those limitations. He then began giving me a mini voice lesson and before I knew it, I was singing in the right key to a song he suggested and was leading. Our posse of about ten began to clap along enthusiastically. Right then and there, I knew Nick had a special gift. Rarely can I open up (especially with singing!) immediately like that in front of a stranger.

He has charisma to spare, a heart of gold and talent! Later, he taught us some dance steps and African dance moves. I was already very impressed by Nick at that stage, by day two. Then, as the week progressed, I heard him speak and watched him bring retreat participants on stage and work with them on psychological issues. He was always on target, and easily approachable. He teaches by never criticizing and by allowing the student to embrace his or her truth; to dig deep and find his or her authentic voice. I feel lucky to know Nick and to be able to call him my friend. For more about Nick and his coaching, please visit his website: www.thevocalcornerstore.com

Pat Byrne

Submitted by Randall McCormick

The business world and the financial markets is not the place one typically goes looking for heroes. Materialism, greed, and self-interest are qualities more associated with Wall Street and corporate America than big-heartedness, integrity and courage. Which is all the more reason why Patrick Byrne, CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, makes a particularly apt choice for this month’s hero. If ever the expression “Vox clamantis in deserto” (a voice crying out in the wilderness) were a propos, it is with Byrne’s virtual one-man crusade against the stock market manipulation and (particularly “naked shorting”) that he believes is rampant today and affects every one of us.

First, some background on this brilliant, fascinating man. Patrick Byrne came to the business world with a sterling pedigree: son of the billionaire founder of GEICO insurance company, Jack Byrne; his godfather and mentor was the legendary Warren Buffet, one of the world's most respected investors. But by his early twenties, standing 6 foot-three and 240 pounds, Pat Byrne was more interested in playing football and boxing as a heavyweight than following his brothers into Wall Street, and he became the black sheep of the family. Also intrigued by Eastern philosophy, he majored in it at Dartmouth and then spent a year studying Chinese at Beijing University.

At age 22, he was confronted by his greatest challenge when he was diagnosed with seminoma, or what he calls "cancer of everything." Told he was unlikely to live, Byrne nevertheless beat the odds and was declared cancer-free-only to suffer a recurrence a year later. This time he was told his chances of survival were virtually nil. And once again, Byrne beat it. Then, a year or so later, the cancer came back a third time. No more miracles, declared all his doctors; time to start making the funeral arrangements. But Byrne never doubted he would survive, and never quit-and somehow, miraculously, he beat the cancer for good. Astonishingly, only a short while later he rode his bike all the way from California to Florida to rebuild his strength, and then tossed the bike in the ocean. He enrolled in Stanford University, where he earned a Masters in Political Science, followed by a Masters in Philosophy at Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar, and finally by a PhD in Philosophy at Stanford.

Clearly, Pat Byrne is not a man who backs down from big challenges. Which brings us to his latest fight: against entrenched stock market manipulation on Wall Street. After founding Overstock.com in 1999 and rapidly turning it into one of the biggest forces in online retailing (and in the process winning Ernst & Young's 2003 Entrepreneur of the Year Award), Byrne came to suspect in 2005 that his company's stock was being attacked in a coordinated fashion by what he believed was a cabal of unscrupulous hedge fund operators working in league with corrupted market analysts and Wall Street reporters. Such market manipulation has been going on since the Twenties and earlier, but rare is the CEO of any large-cap company who has been willing to speak out publicly against it.

And speak out Byrne did—loudly and forcefully. For which he has been vilified and lampooned relentlessly by the complicit Wall Street media machine. But Byrne never backed down and continued speaking out against the manipulation that has hurt not only his company but thousands of other, usually small, companies in the United States, and to which the SEC has for too long turned a blind eye. And slowly but surely, the tide seems to have begun to turn. Byrne’s law-suit against some of the alleged manipulators was last week deemed to have merit to proceed by a California judge; the SEC is finally beginning to issue some subpoenas to suspect journalists; and even some US Congressmen have begun openly calling for inquiries into what the SEC grudgingly acknowledges is at least a $6 billion a day of stock market fraud designed to enrich a few at the expense of the rest of us.

Some say Wall Street can never be reformed and Byrne is tilting at windmills. When asked why he has undertaken such a Herculean task and subjected himself to so many personal attacks instead of quietly tending to his business like everyone else, Byrne responds that when he found out what was going on he simply had no choice. He had to act. Such courage and integrity is all too rare in the business world (or anywhere, for that matter), and makes Pat Byrne in my estimation a true hero. For more information on what Byrne calls his “Jihad” against naked shorting, and on other aspects of the growing grass-roots Market Reform Movement, please check out thesanitycheck.com. And spread the word!