Lonliness and social networks

I was reading an NPR article that someone sent me today and this quote caught my eye. Speaking about social networks the author quoted 25 year old May Wilkerson:

"What that means is that you have contact with many, many more people, but each of those relationships takes up a little bit less of your life. That fragmentation of the social world creates a lot of loneliness."

I often find myself on Facebook wondering what I am looking for from that experience, and feeling that it doesn't bring me much satisfaction. I do think all these social networking sites have a purpose, but when they become the end in themselves, especially for long periods of time each day, I think the side effects include a lot of mental confusion and clutter, and perhaps some emotional emptiness. After catching myself on Facebook for a while, I will go take a walk, or exercise, or go to the beach, and it feels so much better than staring at the computer screen.

The article that this came from is actually about sexual encounters replacing dating, and can be found here.

YES! Video

Here is a video I made recently with a friend of mine.

Last month, 5 teachers including myself, taught 180 kids at an inner-city school in Los Angeles, the Youth Empowerment Seminar (YES!).

I think these testimonials are wonderful.


See a larger size at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpO5-skgDM0

Risk

On Saturday I witnessed an amazing event put on by a handful of our local Art of Living youth volunteers called Trashy LA.

About 150 people came out to see recycled art, listen to music, eat some vegetarian food, and learn some breathing techniques, all as a fundraiser for our YES! high school programs, teaching breathing techniques and life-skills to inner-city kids.

The atmosphere was really nice. It felt like the attendees, the vast majority of whom had never met any of us or one another, were very comfortable with one another. You could just walk up to strangers and start talking about important things without much effort. So for me, whether or not this event leads to other measures of success, the atmosphere of belongingness we created, exemplified the purpose of the work we do.

So risk...

An event like this has lots of risk. What if you lose money? What if the event sucks, and the friends or artists or food vendors you invited think you wasted their time and money?

I have seen with lots of events like this that its a lot easier to stand on the sidelines where its safe, and to even be critical while you're there. It takes courage to throw yourself into an uncertain situation, and with hard work and a little faith, to plow ahead and hope for the best.

None of us know how to succeed until we try something, and its this willingness to fail, to risk something important, that separates those who create in life, and those who just watch. So for those that took a risk, I applaud you. You know the feeling of success, something those who just stand by in a safe place can never know.

Dont get (as) sick

Teaching these past two weeks in an inner city high school has taken a toll on my system. So I want to share my favorite remedy.

My first Art of Living teacher, Mark Ball, once showed me a recipe for staying healthy that I use to this day; every time I feel sickness coming on.

• Take a piece of ginger about the size of your thumb, peel, and chop.
• Boil the ginger in a medium to large covered pot on a low boil for about an hour. It will reduce a bit and become much more potent.
• At some point (I havent found the timing to make much difference) squeeze in a full lemon.
• When its done boiling pour into a cup and add a fair amount of honey
• (Variations using black pepper and other ingredients exist, however, ginger, lemon, and honey taste intense enough by themselves, and seem to work just as well for me.)
  

The key seems to be to catch the sickness early. For me its a raw feeling in the back of my throat. If I drink this tonic as soon as I feel the symptoms, I am able to keep the worst effects of the sickness away. In the 7 years since I learned this trick, I have only been really sick a couple of times.

Teaching breathing to 120 inner city kids

The past two weeks has been educational, exhausting, and very satisfying.

For the first time in a few years, I am teaching the Art of Living YES! course in a high school. What makes it even crazier, is that its a pretty tough inner city school and we are teaching 180 kids over a period of three weeks, four courses a day.

I should mention that this particular high school is not as rough either in terms of student behavior or administrative support as others I have seen. Its a newer school, and the administration is amazingly supportive. That said, the kids at this school have really tough circumstances. Two of my students have been expelled in just these two weeks (two that I know of), and others have experienced disasters during this period that would shut any of us down. One of my students had two friends shot and a third who killed himself over a girl, all in one week.

Ok, so those are the circumstances. But the really interesting part is seeing the evolution of these students in this short time. I am really amazed at how powerful the transformation in people's level of openness can be in such a short period of time.

If I was asked to do yoga and breathing techniques in college, I am sure I would have been a lot of trouble for the teacher, and initially most of these kids were resistant. However, even the most challenging of the 6 periods was completely silent last week when we did our breathing. Its fun to watch the teachers stare out at their kids resting peacefully in class, something most of them have probably never seen in years of teaching.

One of my favorite things about teaching these kids is the occasional profound insight one of them will share. When they say things like "I felt like all my troubles were gone," or "I have ADD but I was able to be still for that whole meditation," or when I watch a group of kids that 10 minutes earlier were doing everything in their power to look cool and tough, just sinking into a deep and peaceful rest where they have nothing to worry about, I know I have the best job in the world.

New Blog

Lately I have been contributing to, and creating blogs for teams and organizations that I am a part of.

Here is my personal blog for those that want to see what is going on in my world.

I hope to come up with some interesting anecdotes from my life, as well as some commentary on things I am experiencing, reading about, seeing in the world, and so on.

Hope it informs and/or entertains.

Thanks for coming by.