And some unexpected developments.

The other day I got to interview the super-smart Pam Slim because she generously agreed to talk to my At the Kitchen Table group about what it means to be an intentional entrepreneur.

And about … oh, goodness all sorts of other stuff, because when Pam and I get together we go off on crazy, wonderful, loopy tangents.

It was fabulous.

You maybe remember (speaking of tangents) that we met while taking a class a few years ago (which is totally why you should take classes). Or that we roomed together at the madcap four-day slumber party that was SXSW.

I still adore her and am just generally the hugest gushing fan of everything she does. Her posts. Her coaching. Her terrific book. Her guest-blogging for the New York Freaking Times.

All of it.

She’s quick and insightful and kind and compassionate and a total goofball. Love. Pam.

But what I completely didn’t expect was that I was also going to get surprising and eye-opening results from interviewing her for my Kitchen-ers.

Bring on the weird stuff!

So I talked her into doing a little guided meditation thing with my group, because we’re all about the wacky.

And also because when she described it, we thought it sounded pretty cool.

The general idea was that you imagine yourself out on a stage looking out at your Right People. Kind of like internal market research.

And I’m already all, ack! A stage! I can’t be on a stage! Which is kind of funny, because I’ve been teaching since I was fourteen and yeah, I often teach on a stage. I even gave a lecture in German for goodness sakes from a stage at the Berlin Yoga Festival.

But my head forgets these things.

Luckily it was a very non-scary stage. Outdoors. This very smooth, organic space emerging. Not a look-at-me kind of space. More of a this is where we are gathering kind of space.

How weird is this.

You should really just hire Pam to walk you through this because I’m probably explaining it all wrong, but the general idea is that you notice who shows up to learn from you.

And then you discover what you have to say to them. And what they desperately need from you.

And I’m all, yeah yeah, I know what I teach and I know what my people need. It’s the safety thing and it’s the love thing and it’s the patterns thing. Nothing new for me here.

But that’s not at all what happened.

Here’s what happened.

I can see the stage that Pam is describing. I can feel it.

I get up onto the stage and I don’t teach anything.

I don’t say anything.

Instead, I start doing the Dance of Shiva. I start demonstrating the science of patterns.

How patterns work. How things are put together. How things come apart. How you take one thing and turn it into something else.

How some patterns are waiting to be transformed into something better … and how others are beautiful, organic parts of nature that just want to be acknowledged and appreciated.

I’m demonstrating what it is like to be right there with the hard stuff. I’m demonstrating what it is like to let things be hard because sometimes you need to dance around with the hard for a while.

And I’m demonstrating what it is like to let things be easy because sometimes they don’t need to be hard.

I’m demonstrating joy. I’m demonstrating power. I’m demonstrating change. Inspiration. Courage. Connection. Safety. Shelter. Daring. Flying.

It’s amazing. And everyone gets it. They get what I’m trying to teach through not teaching.

And then I find out what they need from me.

It’s not really any of the stuff I think they need from me.

Pam asks:

“What are your people hungry for?”

I get two words. Both of them in Hebrew.

Seder.

This is order.

But it’s also more than that. It’s an ordering which contains elements of structure and pattern and right relationship.

Shalva

This is … hmmm, kind of a combination of peace and calm and contentment. It’s something deeply enveloping and comforting. There is a lot of grace to it.

Seder and Shalva. The relief that comes from finding the order in the chaos. And the chaos in the order. Because there is freedom in both of them.

Wow. Crazy.

Not that this necessarily needs to mean anything to the people who have gathered around my teaching. Just that I know more about the qualities my people want to receive.

I have nothing more to say about that other than that it was ridiculously awesome.

And that the very next day a thing happened! A thing!

Well, an unusual opportunity came up and I grabbed it. And now I get to announce it. This is so crazy. And so great. Whee!

ANNOUNCEMENT! Excitement! Exclamation points! San Francisco!

So it turns out (as of right now) that my duck and I are teaching a three hour workshop in San Francisco.

Three hours of “work through your stucknesses with Dance of Shiva and Havi-inspired wackiness” magic. And of course, some hot buttered epiphanies because yay, epiphanies.

It’s really, really, really soon. Really soon.

Sunday, July 12 from 2:30 – 5:30 p.m.

The important things to know:

• There is only room for ten people. We might even have to close it at eight.
• My workshops sell out very quickly.
• It’s in the Castro. Details, directions and possible ride-share info when you sign up.
• It’s going to be outrageously great. Admittedly, it’s not an entire weekend in North Carolina, but still, we can do a hell of a lot of destuckifying in three hours.

Oh, and one more thing:

Please do NOT mention this directly to my gentleman friend if you know him because I found a way to fly him out there on a surprise vacation at the same time and he totally doesn’t know we’re going and I might even get away with this because he’s really busy this week and hasn’t been on my blog. Whew.

The rest of the details are here.

Take a look because Selma and I would love to be able to hang out with you in person and do wackiness and have breakthroughs.

And yeah, there’s also a coupon thing-ey (reduced rate) for my blog readers because I adore you guys madly and you make my work worth doing.

[EDIT: Sorry, sorry, sorry — sold out already. I think in just under 30 hours. Next time will try to do something bigger or at least give more advanced notice?]

I need to go jump up and down now.

So I will leave you with this.

I’m super excited. About Pam. About my new vision. About this weird, wonderful thing that just unfolded. About getting to maybe see some of you in person and do this work together.

–> Here’s the link: https://fluentself.com//san-francisco

Wheeeee!

That is all.

Talk tomorrow.