[Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you thank you very much for for coming out um and braving the weather uh to be with me I'm always excited to have the opportunity to to be able to speak um informally um outside of the ASA room which where there's a different energy and a different expectation um my guess is the one thing that many of you in this room would be interested in hearing me speak about is the work that I do with offat into the world and my commitment to service um in regards to how it impacts us both on a national level and as on an international level and how you all can ultimately get involved um this work is very very important to me and it's the only thing at this point in my life that truly makes sense it's really that now what after I'd been doing yoga for a while and I've been doing yoga since I was 19 and now I'm 44 so it's uh 25 years and many of those years yoga was really about me my health my life my happiness my commitments how it's going to improve my relationships and I don't want to Discount that as not being an invaluable part of the process it was but there there was a point where something shifted where suddenly in my heart I couldn't help but think that it's not such so much about how yoga is supposed to change me but it's how I'm supposed to use this practice to help to change and impact the world and that Revelation wasn't even scary it just seemed so organic and natural it's like of course that's what this is all about yoga is about integration it's about holism and this understanding that everything is interdependent upon the whole it's Union

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and the yoga practice taught me tools I don't want to say taught it teaches me tools that I have a choice to apply in the conflicts and the crisis that are within my life uh sometimes I choose to apply them sometimes I choose not to um and when I choose not to apply the tools um Havoc gets wrecked and people are angry and I got to say a lot of I'm sorries but when I do apply the tools um I'm able to take responsibility for all aspects of my life and there was a point where um I realized that I had these tools that I could deal with my conflict I could deal with my crisis um that I was happier and that I was healthier and that I was more excited about the experience of my experiences within my life even if those experiences were challenging or even downright bad that there were still an this this belief that everything is unfolding exactly the way it's supposed to and that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be and that my soul is transforming with each experience and then I'm actually magnetizing certain experience expences to me not because I'm being punished or because I'm bad but because I'm being initiated into another level of understanding and there was a point where I thought well what do I do with this light it just seemed wrong to contain the Joy inside my own heart and it was like oh right we're supposed to share that this is what yoga is all about and as I began to evolve a little bit more on the path and started to look outside of my life and my relationships and at the world in its totality um I couldn't help but think that it was so obvious why the conflicts were arising the way that they are including war and violence and all the things that we're doing to our uh environment and even more personal uh heartbreaks uh which is such a a not a great word to use for what I'm about to say but for things like rape or illiteracy uh or poverty everything that's happening out in the world is happening because there is this perpetuated sense of Separation it really comes down to that that we are existing upon this planet as if there is an other including with our Earth as if the Earth is disconnected from us um so there's a me and a you a us and a them and it became really apparent to me that uh what's happening out there is not being done to us we're creating it because it's a manifestation of our Collective thoughts as a global family as long as we keep perpetuating this idea that there separation we're going to keep manifesting this level of uh dysfunction and so it comes back to the yoga and then this is it's kind of a it's both exciting and it's also a bummer because I realize that if I really want to create peace and I do you know we embody this for too short of a time and when I say this I mean Spirit um and every one of us in this room are so utterly blessed the fact that we get to have this conversation right now is a privilege that we get to sit around and say what is truth what is God to whom will I serve how will I show up how will I heal this is a luxury that I never want to take for granted because I have seen firsthand how most people in this world have to exist and they they exist trying to survive they exist in in in pain and loss and suffering and in things that none of us in this room will ever I hopefully ever have to experience and so when I recognize that reality um what I realize is that if I want to change what's existing out there this sense of Separation the first course of action is I've got to change what's in my own heart meaning I've got to do the work on me to transform the places in myself where I'm disconnected from another because if I'm living in that limited belief that there's a me and a you then I'm a part of that problem so if I want to heal that the real work of action the real course starts right within and it's so hard I would much rather point my fingers at our leaders and say you need to behave differently so that we can have a happier healthier Planet etc etc but it's not working obviously a lot of our leaders they don't have the tools they still function in this idea that success is power and if for there to be power over there needs to be power under and that means separation and so when I look at the yoga Community I'm kind of freaked out in a way because he I can't believe that I get to be a part of this community I don't know what I did in another life to deserve this I don't know what you all did uh either but we get right now in our lives to be a part of a broader conversation that is all about inclusivity the opposite of Separation we are almost we're being schooled and we've been being schooled now for years some of us in this room me 25 years um there's no reason I should be practicing yoga it's just not part of my culture it was certainly not a part of my upbringing there's no reason for many of you in this room to have been attracted to this practice yet like myself I bet for a lot of you when you walked into your first yoga class it was like someone was speaking to your soul it was like someone was reminding you of something that you knew in your heart but had never been able to AR articulate that was my experience and for me this feels very very karmic that somehow we are being provided very interesting and mystical information that is preparing us cleansing us so that we can help show up in the world and re-educate our children and engage in our community and do what needs to be done in order to create this broader sense of change that I'm talking about it kind of freaks me out both the responsibility of it and how organic and natural it all seems to be playing out out do you have a sense of what I'm saying in your own lives yeah um so with that the yoga practice provides these tools so that we can see a bigger picture and what this picture is is that we are here to learn what love is it's somat samati is Enlightenment it's it's the Bliss it's that uh the ultimate unification and in our very limited language it's love to learn what love is we also have to learn what love is not and this is part of the challenge of what it is to be alive in the World our hearts get broken people we love will die things will happen that are incomprehensible to our soul yet all of these experiences also teach us compassion and understanding and patience and provides us the wisdom that allows for empathy and empathy is what's going to change this planet so if I don't love me and my journey how am I going to love yours or yours or yours if I'm judging me and end my journey that I'm going to slaughter you I'm going to judge you and I'm certainly going to take you down because you're going to expose things that I can't stand in myself so I'm going to have to reject you because I'm rejecting me the yoga teaches us how to really look at the fullness of The Human Experience and celebrate All That is revealed as ultimately holy and necessary for the evolution of each of our individual souls and when we can begin to heal this what happens is we start to look at our relationships in a very different way the bad things that happen we start to recognize that maybe on a human level there's it's a an ego level it's a challenge but our soul bring it on our soul wants these experience it's hungry for it because the soul recognizes it's these limited beliefs that we're embodying that's keeping us from ourselves from each other and from God so our soul wants all the experiences that are going to trigger our deepest fears or our deepest wounds yoga brings all of this to the surface and it does it because because there's no separation everything we think feel or experience has an effect on our physical body our body remembers everything so even though our heads might be able to reconcile events we we're very logical and reasonable we can approach things through our five senses our bodies still hold on to the trauma of the three-year-old the the loss of the six-year-old the grief of the 12-year-old the Heartbreak of the 16-year-old and so and so and so so that emotion rage and and unresolved grief or guilt those emotions are vibration and those vibrations have no place else to go but back into the body and it manifests as stress tension and anxiety tension stress and anxiety affects all of the systems of our body especially our immune and our neurological and it leaves us available to both Illness but more importantly depression so if I don't feel good physically or emotionally how can I be present to you to you to you how can I look at my experiences as Divine so when you come into my life and I magnetize a relationship that exposes the piece of me that feels I can still be rejected I'm going to blame it on you and I'm going to say to the universe I am a victim therefore I'm going to keep magnetizing this until I understand that you're not another that you and I came together to do very deep spiritual work both of us that you are my teacher and it's the Divinity and the relationship that was meant to expose the places within myself that are disconnected so when I can recognize who you truly are I can heal when I can heal I can remember that we're actually United and when I have that recognition the planet begins to heal this is the work that we all have to do and it is a bummer it's so much easier to blame you when I don't feel good this is what I was taught my mom taught it to me my grandmother taught it to me etc etc etc this is what's in our culture you're wrong I'm right in yoga it doesn't work that way spirit's saying really because I think that God might like love you as much as God loves me and I think that you're here here to heal in the same way I'm supposed to and that both of us are meant to transcend our fears therefore what happens between us although it feels personal is ultimately Divine so when we can go into ourselves and heal these relationships and heal the trauma that's within us we look at the world in a very different way when I meet trauma I'm not afraid of it I can empathize with it I can get it and I can also recognize that everyone's got their own path and their own uh timeline of healing therefore I have to stay non-judgmental stay on my side of the street and love love love love and take responsibility for what that means to me that's what yoga is all about so I can sit here and talk about it or I can actually do something doing something is when my yoga is really challenged it's easy to stay home and again explain how the world can be this Utopia it's harder than when I have to go out into the world and I am confronted by things that are un unimaginable and I have to love even then and I have to trust even then the work I do in the world often puts me in environments where they're around at risk youth that seems to be for whatever reason my my uh specialty thanks Spirit um and I get to be in environments where there is an enormous amount of trauma and there's also an enormous amount of Oppression I work with adolescent prostitutes and uh my judgment doesn't come towards the prostitutes of course it comes towards pimps that's my I have a very hard time staying in my Center when I am in the presence of someone who is exploited children in the way that I know that they have I have to love even then I have to forgive even then otherwise I continue this perpetuation of Separation that is the disease of the world when I can look at even a pimp and recognize with a breath that their response to the world is a manifestation of their own unresolved trauma and the lack of tools that they have been given because of their own the Injustice that's been done to their own souls and because of the abuse that's been done to their their own Spirits through their family or their Community when I can hold that in my heart I can have a different level of communication that doesn't mean I don't get to go home and cry and scream and and say all sorts of very unspiritual un uh yogic things I have to otherwise my anger will stay in my body and it'll find other ways probably in my relationship to reveal itself yoga is a practice of cleansing ourselves Body Mind and Spirit every single day so that we can show up with out reactivity in our Center and coming from Total love and joy um this is the idea of Enlightenment that we're working towards to suggest that any one of us is going to be enlightened in this lifetime is you know probably um an unrealistic ideal because it's a long-term process but empowerment can happen this moment and empowerment happens when we can stand in the presence of humanity and say yes I see you I get you because I see myself and I love you regardless of the journey that you have to take instead I'm actually going to celebrate you and if you going down means that you get to be uplifted I pray you go down today and I pray you stay there and I will love you in the process that to me is what empowerment is all about and knowing that before I can hold that space for you I got to do it for me first I've got to hold that same Sacred Space with as much joy and appreciation so to me that this is all this work and it was a lot of work and it did not happen in one night for 5 years it was just extra chaturangas and I would rip up my m for shasana salute the teacher before she started om shaying and uh and then something shifted and for another five years it was very emotional very dramatic and then something shifted and it moved from the individual to the collective and that's really where the birth of of theat into the world came from which was my desire to want to unite the yoga Community um and to encourage you all to take what it is that you're learning on the mat and be active in engaging in a conversation of transformation that's not just simply dialogue it's activated through leadership encouraging your community to come together to create projects for social change as well as environmental um change as well and encourage people to find out what is your passion my passion of course is is is HIV AIDS is sex trafficking is gay rights uh is environmental issues that's the thing that those are the injustices that break my heart but it might not break your heart or yours yours might be domestic violence yours might be related to cancer because perhaps that's something that was impacted within your own family yours might be educational yours might be political off M into the world wants to help to give you the tools to do the first the personal work dealing with your own trauma um your own limited beliefs some of the considerations in your own head that aren't yet integrated we need to do that first and then off the mat helps to support the more practic IAL skills on how to take that passion into action so that you can take that purpose and activate it in your local community and our vision is uh is to unify there's 20 30 million people in the United States doing yoga we're spending over5 billion dollars a year on yoga related products we're an altruistic affluent educated taxpaying voting community so statistics say um but if that's true that's true we're also incredibly powerful and where we place our dollar where we place our votes can be very impactful not necessarily because business cares about uh our ideals or because our government cares about our ideals but they do care about our money and they do care about our vote and so if we were to find a way to unify where we got to work together at all these individual communities throughout the entire United States and the world we're able to come together and resource we could be a community that can imp imp this world in ways that are unimaginable especially if our underlying value is unification if that's the thing that Roots us then no matter what we do whether it's focusing on the UN um the world excuse me the planet or on education or on politics it's all about unification and Consciousness and respect I can't help but feel the impact that we can have and so off the mat into the world does just that it helps to bring the these communities together helps to establish leadership in the different communities and then helps to uh support the different Visions or projects that are coming up and we have a variety of ways to do that and at the end of this actually I'll say it now uh you can go speak with uh Claire uh and get some information on off theat into theor or go to off theat intothe world.org and find out about our leadership trainings and the different ways that you can get involved in your own Community um we have yoga and action groups where we give you a Critic um where you can gather your own groups it's over seven weeks you meet for three hours once a week and at the end of the seven weeks you through consensus you come up with a project that's based on the needs of your community and we help you through that process um we also have What's called the save a challenge and this has been our way to really model the challenges that we're asking you to go through in terms of community but on kind of a broader scale um and this is off the mats project and we've raised over $2 million in the last three years and what it is is we challenge you guys to go back to your local community to raise $20,000 each year we focus on a different culture in need and unfortunately there's a lot of cultures to focus on WE focused on Cambodia South Africa Uganda and this year we're going to commit our attention on toah Haiti and for those of you who can raise the $20,000 you get to come with me this year to Haiti and get to see where the money is being spent and you get to have an experience working with grassroot organizations out in the field and the money is going to it's not again not our needs we're going and finding out what do you what does this culture need what is happening and what's going to best support the evolution and the healing of the culture and each year not everyone raises the 20,000 so 500 here 10,000 here you don't get to go unless you raise the 20,000 but it's not about the the raising the 20 it's not the 20,000 it's the process of taking on a role of leadership and learning how to work with community that really is the jewel of this project all that money goes into a big pot and all of that money is used to support the different efforts so we have felt that this is really an effective way to Rally the community and we have projects that happen not just internationally we also have a project in the United States called the empowered youth initiative and we focus uh just a few months ago we worked with um at risk youth in Los Angeles focusing on the inner city gang system uh the prison system and the gangs and worked with a lot of artists that are working with gang members helping them to learn through the arts different forms of communication and also a process of healing um that has been unavailable to them and this is a project that we want to roll out uh in the US as well so it's working it's happening and a lot of you all are already doing amazing projects also and we're not trying to reinvent the wheel we're trying to find out who's already doing something phenomenal who has interesting resources some of you is in this room right now your service in the world is to raise your children mindfully and as consciously as possible and you you don't have time to jump on a plane and go to Haiti but you might have time to go to a donation only yoga class you might have time to stuff an envelope here and there or to make a phone call on the behalf of someone else or to hand someone 20 bucks because they're going to come with me to to Haiti or to whatever country we're focusing on there are different levels of Engagement depending on where you're at in your life so don't get in your head like well I can't do it now because you can do something and help make this yoga make sense um take it off the mat and out into the world where it really is critical and I really do believe that it's people like me and people like you who are so privileged to be able to do what we do to begin to activate and engage in a conversation of transformation because this is what is going to change the planet peace is not just possible it's inevitable if we are unified Devastation destruction violence and war is inevitable if we stay separate so the choice is really ours and so far the choice we've been making hasn't been working and everything including the way that the planet is is evolving today is a sure manifestation that our choices have been inadequate so let's let's shift it but start here and the first thing you need to do is to look at your relationships and ask yourself are you living as if there is an other and already I know the answer is yes because you're human so of course it is so make that commitment begin the process of healing and I know each and every one of you in this room have a great story and there's someone in this room right now that's thinking yeah but meaning like you don't know my story Sean and forgiveness no yes yes there is no yeah but everything happens exactly the way it's supposed to in order for the individual soul to transform in the mystical practice there's no right wrong good or bad there is just experience and then the opportunity for transformation you can choose love or you can choose fear either way you're not going to do this wrong you're just going to have to keep magnetizing the thing that you are uh uh suggesting so if you're suggesting fear you're going to have to keep manifesting it if you suggest love that's what you manifest and so stand in the presence of what your challenge is and say yes to the opportunity to grow and hopefully have the strength choose love when I'm in the midst of a challenge and believe me I am all the time my biggest challenge of late was having watched my father die and that was horrible but we all have to go through it and un and it happened in the right time frame you know dad daughter that's the way it's supposed to happen tell that to the 10-year-old inside myself my 10-year-old doesn't respond that way my 44 year-old was like had cancer let's let's walk this one through my 10-year-old I want my 67-year-old father here now so my shadow came up in this process so I had to really stand in the presence of everything that I'm talking about and still recognize that we cannot bypass life you can't so no matter how spiritual we get to be challenges will still show up and we still got to walk towards it and say show me make me love even bigger make me forgive even big bigger make my heart open even more not in spite of it but because of it and when we can do that suddenly this life makes sense and whether we're on the planet for one year or 67 years we can just say thank you God for making this mine so in a single breath uh that's really what I want to offer you and and my hope that when you leave uh wonderlust this weekend that you go home inspired to want to be more impactful in your world and don't just let life happen to you but be really intentional about your contribution like I had said earlier we embody these Spirits for too short of a time to take a single moment for granted and each and every one of us have a very strong purpose and that purpose is to love so the question is how will you love how will you show up how will you share it how will you open to it will you embrace it will you accept it will you allow it to penetrate every cell within your body and let this life be transformative and good even though it could be raw even though it will bring you to your knees let it still be profoundly good and that's all up to each and every one of you and and me um to stand in the process of this journey so I think that's all I want to say about this I'm sure someone's going to give me a sign of like uh so with that do you have any questions any any thoughts um from me uh about everything that I've just mentioned or any questions about off theat I'm curious after you leave the country and the next year you focus on another area do you have a followup plan on um yeah we have a lot of uh um we stay very much in in engagement with the uh all the organizations that we've worked with uh follow through on the money and all of that the thing is we are in partnership with organizations that have long-term vision and have already had a past history in the culture so basically what's happening is we they propose to us a project and we fund that project so there's always people in place that are watching for the evolution of it so we don't have to micromanage that we have to pay attention to what their ethics are of course so we vet very very carefully all the organizations that we work with and they're both us run organizations Canada run organizations as well as organizations that are overseas but they have to have been there already for a while and uh we have to be able to kind of uh uh be able to uh see their course of evolution on top of that though this year it happened for the first time we had a group we had brought a group with us to camb uh Uganda then two people from that group brought people from their Community back and went to the same places helped to fund different smaller projects and then reported back to us from the ground exactly what was happening where they thought that there was some issues that we needed to pay attention to and where things were really evolving wonderfully so we do have um uh uh this is part of our organization is to make sure that we don't lose touch with what's happening anyone else have any questions what percent of of your donated dollars go to Administration very very little because the the money that we use for administration uh very often you'll see me on an ad uh for different products and I don't see any of that money personally like for example you'll see a product here at wonderlust hide uh has a halter that says often add into the world uh on the butt and uh the money the percentage of the money that we get for that goes to off the mat to pay for administration so anytime you see me or any members of the organization in alignment with a product the money from that product goes to fund the organization itself we don't take grants not at this point at least because we don't want to be bolded to any organization telling us how we need to spend the money so the majority of our money comes from uh uh cause related marketing it comes from our parent organization called the engage Network and maybe CLA you can help me exactly it doesn't go towards Administration a percentage of the money that we raise from the save a challenge maybe it's 10% comes H to use for the empowered youth initiative and the other National Organ initiatives that we have on the ground so essentially it's 100% of the money that's being used that we raise goes towards the different projects um but 90 85 or 90% will go overseas and the rest of it will stay in the US so we can focus on projects here as well um but the money for administration is getting utilized um by cause related marketing and I'm hopeful it'll always be that way you know as long as someone wants to strap Lyra on my butt uh that did not sound right at all but but that's what it takes um as long as I can keep uh the support of the community supporting off the mat in these ways it allows us to be self- sustaining and this is very important um so we can take the money that we raise and put it outward how did you decide that 10% 90% I Always Feel Like We Do there's a lot of um organizations that concentrate on what's going out there in the world and there is a lot of tragedy out there that LE help but there's also quite a bit obviously you mentioned some of it right here in the US and it always seems to be shifted from for for out of the US charity I'll explain that and that's a really interesting question um one is if you've ever gone overseas unfortunately the amount of trauma that exists especially amongst young people in our third world countries far outweighs in terms of what's Happening Here in the United States if in terms of poverty sexual abuse illiteracy um lack of opportunity not to suggest for one second that there are not pockets in the United States that don't mirror what's happening overseas but in the grander scheme of things it's huge what's happening overseas and and um uh especially uh uh especially the uh the amount of sexual abuse that I see just on that level but on the other level it is sadly very hard for me to and this as I'm hoping this is going to change it was very easy for me to sell Africa and Cambodia and Haiti than it was for me to sell Los Angeles I couldn't get people to get involved it wasn't that we didn't want to it was just there was no interest there and so I hear this all the time well what about the people in in in our own backyard what are you doing about the people in your own backyard and I'm thinking what are you doing about the people in your own backyard my plat full and uh but this comes back to me a lot uh it's a lot of well what are you going to do and so off the mat to really get this going we needed it to be dramatic we needed there to be stories and Cambodia is a good story South Africa is a good story Uganda we chose cultures where there's a story that we can tell to help to get people to empathize people don't know what's going on in the in the streets in the streets of Los Angeles it's it's a world that's hidden not just Los Angeles it's Detroit it's New York it's Miami it's everywhere um but we couldn't get people to get involved it took a few years to create legitimacy in this organization before we could do the empowered youth initiative and it was a beautiful we beta tested it this year um I hate those words but uh within the organization we beta tested and it was a success so finally people are starting to understand that we are needed everywhere and so we're going to be shifting our model a little bit doing more projects hopefully we're going to take the empowered youth initiative into a different city every single year and focus on on some of the grassroot efforts that local organizations are already doing and help fund them and bring you all in so that you can go to Detroit and see what's happening with the gangs there so that you can go into New York and and understand some of the healing practices that are happening around domestic violence or what's working or not working within the shelter system we also want to focus on the environment that's another another thing that's very important in the yoga community and one of our future SAA challenges are going to is going to be I think the Nicaraguan rainforest so that that's out there so it's one little thing at a time um our intention though with the trainings and with the yoga and action groups is to create small circles within the United States that are focusing on local projects that impact things that are important to you you're not interested in Los Angeles I am because that's my backyard but you're interested in wherever you're from so is your community so we want to train you to do what I'm doing here in Witchita or wherever you're from and harness the you're not from Witchita are you that would have just been weird uh so that you can harness your community so that we can then impact our our national uh uh needs and issues in a in a bigger way so what I'm hoping in the future is something like just let just what happened in um the what is the tornado Bel what is that called the Tornado Alley and all the Hideous Devastation that just happened to so many people in in our own backyard are their whole their dreams have been crushed they're starting from Beyond scratch can you imagine what would happen if something like that happened and there are thousands of circles throughout the United States where we off the mat can say okay here's the issue here are the organizations that we've already vetted that we know are doing great work we know the money is 100 % of the money that we donate is going to get to where it needs to get you guys trust us to have done that backend work we go out virally and say Here's the issue we've got two weeks to raise uh $250,000 that $250,000 is going to go towards these six organizations so they can do ABCD um here are the the suggested projects that we think you all should do go and then suddenly you all all out in your world you're attracting 50 100 250 people in your community but multiply that by the thousands of communities all that money all of that awareness going into a localized organization off the mat that you trust um hopefully you trust I mean believe me I'm so paranoid of my own Karma that like every single dollar is accounted for um so we would be able to mobilize the communities to focus on different issues whether it was National or intern AAL like that and we would be able to be impactful in a very big way and again if we do that guess who's paying attention our Congressman our Senate our president are going to see who are these funky freaky people out there who are actually creating change suddenly they're going to be very interested in what we're interested in so this is what we're hopeful is going to happen that's going to unite our national community so we have a we've we've inhouse we talk about the shadow of activism a lot and what some of the projected judgments are going to be against us so that we can eventually answer some of those questions um so we're very aware of what both of what we're doing and what we're not yet doing um and you'll forgive us I hope of the mistakes we make because we will make many I personally have already made a a half a dozen that I'm not proud of but led me to have to address certain issues Within Myself and within the organization that allowed us to mature and now now we don't have to address those issues anymore because we become educated and that's what we're doing so I hope that in this process you'll support us maybe even there's people in this room who are lawyers or who have resources that we don't have that we well we have lawyers but we're hoping like you know free uh to help support us so that we can be more sustainable that are brighter than us that are smarter uh I know my talents I know Claire's I know Kell uh K's and suzan's and hollas all people that run off the mat but we also know where our limitations are and we're hoping that people like you come to the table and they're like okay we see the hole here this is what's missing this is what needs to happen and and join with us in some capacity um don't ask me to do more that I'm already doing come to me and say Here's what I'd like to do can you support me in that effort that's where I can say yes the other I think uh the that I can say yes let me help Empower you to do what needs to be done this is how we unify so thank you for that question one more one more okay A while ago I actually signed up website for offat and I had a very difficult time navigating as to exactly how F help like as an individual not necessarily as an organization I think for everyone in the room it would be helpful to try to figure out a way for us to actually get involved personally well again this it all depends on what your own needs are uh like a lot of people come to off the matat and will say to me we want to help what can we do and we're like I don't know what can you do you know like we don't we actually don't really need help within the offthat infrastructure we need you to take whatever talent you have and go out into your community and be fabulous at that and step into your leadership position um I'll tell we had this amazing woman I love to tell the story because she's should be mortified by this uh she's a a a doctor a therapist this is an educated woman uh who after doing the trainings and coming and getting involved in off the mat uh left me this very emotional message where she really believed that uh she was she was no longer in her in her calling and and and then needed to help off the mat and wanted to come and essentially stuff envelopes and answer phones and do like this low-level work within the organization and I called her back and said I are you I can't say it on on what I said you out of your effing mind you are a therapist you are a doctor you have invaluable resources let us help support you in using your talents to do what you're doing in a very different way and right now we're supporting her in creating a program on yoga and uh her passion is related to eating disorders and and body uh image issues and so we're helping her U formulate this uh curriculum to support this Vision I joke with her all the time I'm like you you want to come to my house and answer some phones doctor uh so we need to exploit in the best way the talents you already have so come to a training that's the best way come to a five-day training we have them four times a year so that you can do the inner work and then you can really explore some of the Shadow parts of your own uh some of your own issues related to activism and service and learn different skills by the end of the 5 days you usually have a very clear picture of what the next step is is um and that's really what happens it's in steps that's the best way to get involved at this point or get involved in either the the save a challenge or the empowered youth initiative those are the areas that we need you we don't need necessarily unless Claire tells me otherwise um the nine people that are now running off theat into the world we all know what our roles are and uh we hold that space what our jobs are is to find out what is your talent where are you from and what can you do uh to be of leadership and are you ready is your leadership coming from codependency is it coming from arrogant is it becoming because is it coming from because you want to fix the world if that's the case we probably would hold you back a little bit and watch you fight us you know we would want there's the shadow that's not the way you serve so these are the parts that why we wouldn't just Empower everyone to go out there we want to see what's the inner working this is what's going to make activism sustainable in the future is to know what is the shadow that's motivating your choices so reach reach out to offthat uh connect with with Claire or with Carrie Kelly and find out what are the different ways the Pathways in uh but it always will start with the training okay thank you thank you all very much thank you thank you [Music]