I am excited to invite you to join me for a once-in-a-lifetime experience: “Maya 2012: Transformation at the Source” — an international conference and global gathering at Chichen-Itza on December 13-22, 2012. When I was invited to be one of the presenters with Power Place Tours, I jumped at the opportunity. They are the best when it comes to group tours to sacred sites. With so much to share, I asked Teri Weiss from Power Place Tours to speak with me about this amazing trip. You can listen to our call here. I also asked Eden Sky, an authority on the Mayan Calendar, to share her wisdom about this fast-approaching, most amazing and transformative time for humanity. So where will you be to celebrate? I hope you decide to join me, Jeff and other like-minds who will come together. Learn more and then reserve your spot.

Photo credit: Kyle Simourd

I went to bed last night thinking about what I would do if this was the last day of my life. I was quite entertained at what came out, in this order:

1. Be in the snow… lot’s of it. (I am.)
2. Wake up, lay in bed and pray watching the snow fall. (I did.)
3. Have a coffee with chocolate. (I did.)
4. Think of all the people I love and am grateful for. (I did.)
5. Have apple pie, cherry pie and banana cream and coconut cream pie. (Not yet.)
6. Sip a cosmo with my guy and gaze into his eyes as we remember our love. (I will.)
7. Go for a walk in the snow and listen to God. (I will.)
8. Answer all the messages of love from people celebrating my birth. (I am.)
9. Read my new favorite book, “The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope” by Allan J. Hamilton. (I did.) 
10. Take a bubble bath in a big tub. (I did.)
11. Know that my life has been grand, and that I am exactly where I am suppose to be. (I do.)

I love surprises and I love snow. And last night, I got both! Jeff surprised me by taking me to a restaurant where a table full of my girlfriends were waiting for me to celebrate my 61st birthday. It was wonderful and unreal. 

As we left the restaurant around midnight, it was like entering a winter wonderland. Pure bliss. Snow makes my heart melt and open like nothing else, except for dogs! Perhaps the best part of the night was driving home… we never made it. Cars were stuck all over, making it impossible to get to our house. So back we went into the city and were lucky enough to get a hotel. 

This morning, the rain washed away my snow! But I’m not worried because I’ll be heading to Whistler soon for my birthday. Jeff will ski and we’ll spend some good husband-and-wife time together. Best of all, I get be in the snow and do some writing. 

I’m finishing the Nia 52 Moves Training Guide and loving every moment of this process. I finally feel that all the depth of Nia is finding its place, and I can’t wait to share the language of Nia in this way. Texas is the first 52 training… maybe it will snow! 

Humans are tuned for relationship. The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears, and nostrils—all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of otherness. This landscape of shadowed voices, these feathered bodies and antlers and tumbling streams—these breathing shapes out family, the beings with whom we are engaged, with whom we struggle, and suffer and celebrate. For the largest part of our species’ existence, humans have negotiated relationships with every aspect of the sensuous surroundings, exchanging possibilities with every flapping form, with each textured surface and shivering entity that we happen to focus on. All could speak, articulating in gesture and whistle and sigh a shifting web of meanings that we felt on our skin or inhaled through our nostrils or focused with our listening ears, and to which we replied—whether with sounds, or through movements, or minute shifts in mood. The color of the sky, the rush of the waves—every aspect of the earthly sensuous could draw us into a relationship fed with curiosity and spiced with danger. Every sound was a voice, every scrape or blunder was a meeting—with Thunder, with Oak, with Dragonfly. And from all of these relationships our collective sensibilities were nourished. We need to know the textures, the rhythms and tastes of the bodily world, and to distinguish readily between such tastes and those of our own invention. Direct sensuous reality, in all its more-than-human mystery, remains the sole solid touchstone for an experiential world now inundated with electronically-generated vistas and engineered pleasures; in in regular contact with the tangible ground and sky can we learn to orient and to navigate in the multiple dimensions that now claim us.

It’s January. I love it and I hate it. In one month I let go of things that no longer serve me, and with great enthusiasm, I commit to taking on new challenges – to be better, do better and to heal. I am a sensation scientist, and I am dedicated to researching sensation.

This year I’ve decided to take on the challenge to research a whole new kind of pleasure by paying attention to the things I put in my mouth. I’m cleaning myself up from the inside out, and I have my friend, Dr. Lissa Rankin, to thank.

Yes, I am committing to a juice cleanse! It’s three weeks long, and I’m hoping I have the strength to follow through. Here’s my plan: During week one, I’ll detox and reclaim the integrity I know my body naturally has waiting for me to embrace and enjoy. In week two, I’ll cleanse and get back to the feel-good, “I love my body and life” sensation. I seem to have lost it with all the celebration, champagne, and good food from the holidays! During week three, I’ll re-enter my life, hopefully with more awareness and new knowledge, having discovered what works for me – my body and my life. I’ll get cleaner, stronger, healthier, and connected to my new sensation of pleasure. I’ll look truth in the face and maybe come a bit closer to taking on even more responsibility for my health and well-being. 

Am I afraid I won’t follow through? Yes. But I have to stop thinking exercise will do it all – it won’t. And any time I begin to waver, I must go back to the conversation I had with Dr. Rankin. During our talk, she told me how she changed her body and life by changing her relationship with food. She shared her personal story in the most intimate, honest, and as always, real way. I think you’ll love it!  

Dr. Rankin is one of my favorite women. You may remember her as the author of the fabulous book, “What’s Up Down There? Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend.” Dr. Rankin also happens to be the founder of OwningPink.com, the amazing online resource where she shares her Pink Medicine Revolutionary ideas. She was even recently listed on the Huffington Post’s Top 16 Health Experts to Follow On Twitter. Yeah, this girl has it going on.

Dr. Rankin is smart, creative and bold – a true mover and shaker. I personally love movers and shakers because they create real change, and I love change. I listen to Lissa because she’s dedicated to healthy change. We’re both healers who are interested in the kind of health that includes our body, our relationships, our sex life, our thoughts, our attitudes, our feelings, and oh yes, the food we put I our mouth.

And we walk our talk. We know that to help others, you first have to heal yourself­. We love to rock the world and we do it consciously. (I’ve always believed if you can rock a baby to sleep you can rock people awake!)

This is exactly why I’m committed to making 2012 the year I say, “yes” to a whole new kind of pleasure. I’m going to clean up my food act a bit more, clean out, and reconnect to a new sensation of pleasure. I know I hold in my body the sensation of heaven on earth, bliss, and euphoria. It’s all there for me, and it’s all in me. All I have to do is start, and you can too.

Yes, I might still sabotage myself and make an unhealthy choice or decision by having the second glass of wine or eating the cake. But I’ll do it less and less because the buck stops here, with me, now. This time I’m going to follow through because I’m not alone. I have Dr. Rankin, my relationship to my body, my dedication to becoming a Sensation Scientist, and my commitment to being a role model to you.

If you feel inspired to join me on my juice fast, start from the inside and work your way out. Sign up before you change your mind! 

Curious and have lots of questions floating in your head? Want to know more? There’s a one-time call that happened today, January 17, 2012 that you can listen to here. 

I love syncronisity. Here I am working on my “Awakening the New Feminine Spirit” book and workshop for 2012, and I come across two posts from two of my favorite women, Mama Gena and Lissa Rankin. I got so excited I wanted to share it with all my girl friends. Watch and enjoy the magic of women sharing their knowledge, inspiring the world, coming together, hanging out, and growing and transforming with greatness and pleasure. It’s amazing this woman tribe thing we get to be a part of. How lucky are the Nia men who get a glimpse of our world?! It rocks.

The Shocking Truth About Your Health (TEDxFiDiWomen talk by Lissa Rankin)

Total Permission to Say Yes to Life (from Mama Gena)

Heal Yourself, Heal the World (with Lissa Rankin)

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Stacey Hall, who is a long-time Nia student and teacher. She also happens to be the creator of Chi-To-Be! Read on to learn about her wonderful book, program and movement.

Debbie Rosas) What is Chi-To-Be?

Stacey Hall) Chi-To-Be! is the process of aligning one’s intentions to activate one’s intuition to attract all one desires with velocity and ease!

Chi-To-Be! is more than a book, audio program and a coaching program - it is MOVEMENT away from the depression that has engulfed so many people who feel disappointed and let down by organizational systems that they expected would “take care” of them.

Chi-To-Be! is a MOVEMENT towards self-intentions, self-empowerment, self-upliftment and self-fulfillment.  

DR) What inspired you to create Chi-To-Be?

SH) Having reached a point of complete physical, emotional, and mental depletion in 2005, I declared, “I want to learn how to heal my heart and then help others to heal their hearts.” Those words launched a six-year journey of self-discovery. Today, having brought myself back from a life-threatening illness, I understand all too well the toll that dealing with financial and emotional stress takes in depleting one’s strength and diminishing one’s sense of personal power.  

Inside my book, you will discover the same tips and processes I used to regenerate my energy and wellness to bring my life back into balance. These simple, practical and economical tips (called “Energy Surges”) will support you in tapping deeper into your own abundant well of inner energy reserves to find a plentiful supply of personal power from which to continually re-generate and sustain your passion and drive for achieving your dreams and goals… especially the ONE goal that may seem the most out-of-reach and yet is the one most desired. I call this ultimate goal the “B-All” (as in the “Be-All, End-All”).

Read More

One of my favorite people (AKA the “Queen of Pleasure”) will be in Denmark on October 29th for a live event dedicated to unleashing your full-throttle power and life force. This event marks the first time Mama Gena has taught outside the U.S. Sign up now to receive the juicy details and get free access to a 12-video feminine leadership jumpstart kit. 

I’m always humbled by the power of this work. It’s one thing to create something; it’s another to practice it. This week, I have the opportunity to learn from Nia Trainer Ken Gilbert. It’s not that I haven’t learned from Ken before, it’s just that this week, I’ve allowed myself to slip into beginner’s mind. 

I’m hearing, seeing and sensing Nia in a different way – more deeply, intimately and personally. What makes this week especially rich is that the White Belt Training group is small with only 11 women. It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to teach to a small group like when I first started offering Nia trainings. In the beginning, we limited each training to only four people. 

When Jeff came to work, he said: “You have to think bigger.” And we did. Now it’s common to have 20-50 people, seekers who are dedicated to learning how to live and be in their bodies in a Nia training. Still, I wonder where Nia would be if every teacher remembered to return back to beginner’s mind, to be a student and to learn from the work while making sure to deliver the promise. I think things would be different.