We have the potential, in Dialogue, to examine and re-examine both our beliefs and the stories of our life.

Dialogue begins as a “telling, and a listening.” Both parts, telling and listening, are deeply engaged in, by both participant and practitioner.

I often tell participants, “The hardest thing to learn is that your stories are not “true.” They are highly subjective myths created out of your remembered experience.”

Experiences, even the ‘bad’ ones, are neutral, until we judge them and tell ourselves a story about them.

Often, our stories take on a life of their own.

We get lost in the story we are telling ourselves, and soon we act “as if they are real.” The first insight, then, is to learn to listen to ourselves, and to truly hear the story we are telling ourselves.

This is not to minimize or deny the ‘bad’ events. It’s to dis-empower the event, and specifically its interpretation. We all need to come into this moment and to act from here; revisiting and blaming the past, while acting from within the “victim role” keeps us stuck.

In Dialogue, I mirror—I reflect back both the story, and its effect.

Participants develop “good ears” for their own dramas and sticking points. Rather than sitting in the middle of the story, the participant slips to the side, and learns to observe without judgement. From this place, other choices are made.

Participants learn to be in charge of their lives through both acceptance and transformative action.

Acceptance is the ongoing process of owning who I am and what I am doing. Not selectively, but “all of it.”

Many enter into the Dialogue process because something isn't working, and they want that something taken away, as if the behaviour or their choices is out of their control. This cannot work, because the situation or behaviour is the direct result of the choices the participant is making in the here and now.

Participants learn that:

• Acceptance means acknowledging that they have both the propensity and the habit of dealing with their issues in non-helpful ways.
• Once they stop blaming the past, others, or situations for where they are, who they are, and how they are acting acting, they can own the truth:
• Where I am right now is all about what I am doing. If I wish to be elsewhere, I need to acknowledge this, have a breath, and choose another direction.
• And then, I'll have to do this again, and again.

Transformative action is a self-directed activity, focussed on what you want and where you are heading.

The Open Palm Solutions process helps participants make elegant choices. Rather than reacting, they learn to respond with both flexibility and self-knowing. It soon becomes apparent that who you are is intimately tied to what you choose to do, and how you chose to relate to yourself and with your world.

The usefulness or validity of an action is always determined by the result. If it ain’t working, doing more of it isn’t going to work either.

Flexibility comes through the relentless pursuit of elegant solutions to the puzzles life presents.

Participants enter Dialogue lacking alternatives—they are fixed on a single story, one or two behaviours that get quite predictable undesirable results, and a firm belief that purpose of the Dialogue is to make what isn't working start to work.

Instead, we encourage dropping what does not work, and experimenting to find out what does.

Indeed, part of the “game of really living” is not becoming attached to anything, including our insights, behaviours, and patterns.

We become practical—we engage fully and completely, and watch to see the results. We shift as results become “bogged down,” and only repeat behaviours that work.

It is impossible to live life free of anxiety.

There is the anxiety that comes when deciding to shift one’s way of being – this is the anxiety of change, of pain, of growth. And, there is the anxiety of trying to stay the same –being in denial, pretending.

Anxiety is a feeling of tightness, coldness, and distance from self and others. Bodywork helps participants to get in touch with what they are actually feeling, how they are blocking themselves, and what it is like to shut down.

Using pressure and dialogue, bodywork opens the body’s blockages, allowing for the full flow of energy (Qi.) This shifting of energy results in freedom of movement, awareness of passion, and a clarity that comes from paying attention to the voice of the body.

As the blockages open, it becomes clear that much information has been “right there, unnoticed.” It’s a “just beneath the surface” data bank that we ignore at our peril. As we learn to work with our bodies, we discover how to live with intimacy, presence, and freedom.

The path to self-knowledge is a spiral.

Participants learn to, as Fritz Perls put it, “Go out of your mind, and come to your senses.” They learn to go inside and review what they are about, what they “know,” and what they are enacting. Together, we look for physical blocks, fears, and terrors. Participants discover how to reveal thoughts, feelings, fears, and joys, without explanation, excuse, or evasion.

Through bodywork, they devise ways to let down walls and let out the repressed material.

This dance involves getting in touch with who we are as physical beings, and to learn to express ourselves fully, without embarrassment—to own all of ourselves. The spiral aspect of this work is that our issues do not disappear. We revisit them throughout life. What does change is our perspective. It’s like walking up a spiral staircase—we revisit the same compass locations, but are father along (or higher up) the spiral.

Bodywork helps participants to meet and re-meet themselves, as they work through continual levels of self-knowing and acceptance. As the walk continues, more and more depth and clarity rises to the surface, and is integrated into the Participant’s self-view.

The beginning of wisdom is self-responsibility.

Participants learn to take full responsibility for their choices, decisions, and directions. Just as there is no one to compare myself to, there is no one is to blame for any choice I have ever made. I am where I am and I know what I know based solely upon what I have chosen to learn, to absorb, to assimilate and to find within myself.

In Zen, what is, is. What is right before your eyes is all that there is, and we got here step by step.

Elegant Dialogue is all about finding your place in this moment.

Self-responsibility has nothing to do with blame. Participants discover how landing in the here and now, dropping the stories, and simply being "OK" with themselves frees them to choose elegantly.

Once “everyone and everything is off the hook,” there is pure potential. Participants see that the only “bad” decision is to endlessly repeat what’s gotten them stuck in the first place. Through dialogue and exercises, Participants find new and brave approaches to being whole, accepting, intimate and direct.

My "I-am-ness" is limited only as I choose to limit myself.

If you identify with dualities—with “good / bad,” “right / wrong” lists, or if you limit yourself by letting other define you, your “I-am-ness” becomes a small, tight box. Through Dialogue and exercises in consciousness, Participants realize they are not nouns. Rather, they are verbs—living actions, ever-moving, ever changing.

The question, then, is this: how much of your “I-am-ing” are you willing to bring both into consciousness and into the world, and how fully and deeply will you choose to live?

Contentment is an inside job.

Because of our cultural training, we default to looking outside of ourselves for meaning, for completion, and for security. Self-knowing requires 100% commitment to the understanding that nothing outside of you controls you. How you are, and who you are, is always and only about you.

Discovering and living your own level of contentment is a principal goal of life.
You are all of you-body, mind, spirit, and energy.
This is your “known universe.” Through Dialogue, meditation, breath and bodywork, you will discover how to empower yourself, free your blocked energies and thoughts, and experience the freedom that fully releasing your passion, commitment and contentment brings.