This is a free excerpt from the Ambassador Connecting course.

In these exercises, Guardian Alliance Faculty member Simon Paul Sutton will share with you some essential strategies for powerful Public Speaking.

Notice that every aspect of his lessons are part of the education here, from the way he introduces things he’s about to talk about, to the way he embodies each of the practices…

Refining your Speaking

Pacing and the power of creating space

Communication mastery is not about being fast, it is about being effective. We don’t gain anything by going too fast, except the potential to lose our audience. The single most important way to control the flow of information is to control the flow of breath. Breathing more slowly and deeply will slow down our communication process, and also create more time to think. This means we have greater control over the delivery of our message, helping it to land more effectively.

Eliminate Fillers

Get rid of all the umms, well’s, you know’s, and likes. All of these words and phrases weaken the impact of our message. These fillers can be difficult to weed out of our vocabulary, but doing so will vastly improve our overall power as a communicator.

Practice: In moments when you would normally use a filler word, simply come back to the breath and allow yourself to breathe and center while you prepare your next sentence. You will be surprised by the respect you receive from this simple practice.

 Ready for more techniques for powerful communication?

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Whatever our personal dream happens to be, whether it is fame, fortune, family, or simply inner peace, achieving our vision almost always requires that we learn how to effectively communicate it to others. Here’s some examples of people with big dreams, who manifested those visions through Public Speaking:

• Martin Luther King Jr. ignited a social revolution and new human rights policies through his speeches.
• Steve Jobs sold the world on the magic of Apple through his product presentations.
• Socrates was considered one of the greatest orators of Greece, and his philosophy still dominates many of our ideas to this day.
• John F. Kennedy moved a nation towards a more global perspective of human service.
• Countless TEDx speakers have gained huge audiences simply through short presentations on their personal visions.

While many of us are comfortable sharing our great ideas with our closest friends, how many of us have had the courage to stand in front of a crowd and speak our dreams out loud? Finding this courage is a deep personal process, and we explore every aspect of that transformation in the Ambassador Connecting course

Yet there are also some simple skills and strategies that can ignite our power when speaking in front of others…

This is a free excerpt from the Healer Opening course.

When life is challenging and we struggle with physical, emotional or mental difficulties Healers are those who feel a deep current of purpose to provide aid and assistance. Healers help to restore and strengthen each person they work with so that they might return to or reach their state of highest potential.

In Ancient times this practice was only passed down through a direct lineage, from Teacher to Disciple. This is a powerful standing meditation to fuse your energy with the inner power of Earth and Heaven, to cleanse the self, and create a sacred healing space from which to practice. David Beaudry learned this practice from Grand Master Jerry Alan Johnson during his medical qigong training.

The original practice is called:

“The 1-10 Meditation and 3 Invocations.”

The first invocation is to cleanse the ego. The second invocation is to cleanse the space and create a sanctuary to heal and practice. The third invocation is to overflow your physical, energetic, and spiritual bodies with Universal Energy, and the Presence of God (Infinite Eternal).

David Beaudry will guide you through the entire process, but know that it is your heart and sincerity that activates the true potential of this practice. So if you don’t resonate with the languaging of the 3 invocations, please make it your own by using words that have meaning to your heart and soul.

In this video David uses hand seals, which you will learn more about in Mastery Ring Two, an advanced series of courses in the Guardian Alliance. This can be a distraction in the beginning so for now simply allow your body to move naturally to fully feel each activation.

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Awakening the Healer: David’s Story

Use your Heart as your guide

It was a Tuesday night of my senior year of college football, the first day of full practice after I scored the game-winning touchdown the weekend before. I felt overly confident and proud that night, like I was special somehow for my athleticism. During a tackling drill I juked left, then spun right and in that moment felt my cleat stick into the thick grass on the side of the practice field. I heard a pop in my right knee and fell to the ground in agony. I was in agony not only because it was extremely painful (it was), but because the countless hours of hard work that I had spent to prepare for my senior year began flashing through my mind. The thought of this being the last time I ever played football broke my heart. It felt unfair. I was angry, bitter and sad and I fell into a dark depression. All of my dreams and visions crushed in a moment. I knew it was a bad injury, but little did I realize that my soul had written this story into existence just a couple weeks prior.

My favorite professor Fran Grace asked us to write a paper about our first spiritual experience, so I wrote about spirituality through football. At the end of my paper I said to God, “I am excited to see what my next passion in life will be once I am done playing football.” I even wrote a poem about my passion for God and Awakening and handed that in along with my paper.

Then the world that I knew crumbled. My injury brought me through a “dark night of the soul.” I asked for this and God responded faster than I expected. It wasn’t until years later that could see my knee injury as a blessing in disguise.

I had torn the ACL in my right knee and was given a “medical red shirt”, meaning I could return to play one more season the following year. In the midst of the tragedy and pain this felt like a ray of hope in the dark. I took my time to rehab, meditate, pray and regain my strength to become clear on my purpose before rushing back. My dream was to become a professional football player, and all of the logical signs were pointing to returning for another year. I asked for divine guidance and I prayed with all my heart. “Please give me a sign and let me know if football is still a part of my path or if it’s time to let it go.” Soon it became crystal clear: I had learned all the life lessons I could from football and it was time to move on.

I followed my heart and instead of playing my final year I took a leap into the unknown. I spent a semester abroad, studying psychology in Vienna, Austria. I was looking for my next spiritual awakening and I trusted that my heart would be able to see and recognize it. My eyes opened to the possibilities of a new life and my consciousness was expanded more than I could have ever imagined. I now look back on this challenging time with tremendous gratitude. I can see how each person and event in my life has played a crucial and pivotal role in my divine unfolding.

My path transformed from the way of the Warrior to the way of the Healer.

I have since been teaching, leading workshops and personally training people for the last ten years on the healing power of movement, breath, qigong, and nutrition.

If you are having trouble making a tough life choice, if you feel like life just dealt you a bad card, reframe it.

This is Your Challenge

Reconnect deeply to your soul and ask for guidance instead of being a victim and blaming life or someone else. Ask and you shall receive. It might not appear the way you think it will or should, but know that there are resources, people, teachers and loving guides waiting just on the other side to help you. All you have to do is ask and be ready to listen so you can take action when the signs come.In the Guardian Alliance, we created a space called the Healer’s Temple, where healers from around the world gather together to share stories, insights, and healing experiences with each other. It’s open to all attendees of the Healer Opening course.

Journal: Write your story

Take time to reflect on your life.

What has your path of healing been? What events stick out that made you who you are today? What blessings in disguise are ready to be fully awakened and integrated? Take time to free flow and write your heart out. If you are unsure of what your deepest gifts to give are, you will find it in your story. It is the thread of your direct experiences that gives you the transmissive power to share your gifts and hold space for others’ healing.

Accept all that you are now as enough and trust the teachers, masters, and courses will come in perfect timing as you align with your soul calling. You don’t become a healer, you merely become a more open vessel and container for which Spirit/God/Universal Energy to flow through.

Ready for more transformational Healing practices?

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They say that “life is not easy.” At the same time, they say “what you believe is what you get.” Yet even when we hold the belief, “life is easy,” and chant this mantra every day, challenges still come to us… Why?

This is a free excerpt from the Wizard Awakening course.

In this practice, we will apply a Geometric Form often used in Magic to help focus and organize our thoughts and ideas.

We will see that through simply by prioritizing our thoughts and arranging them in a clear and organized format, we can gain insights into their inherent gifts and relationships. We can see how our thoughts intersect, and at times, divine our subconscious needs and inherent intentions.

Secrets in Circles

Practice Transcript and Additional Instructions

Draw a circle.

This is your container. Imagine that this is your mind. Now begin to draw a small icon, write a word, or write a phrase in the circle for each thing that is on your mind. Just put in whatever pops in there. What was that you needed to remind yourself of? What’s important that’s on your mind right now? Oh right, that, and that, and that…

You might need a bigger circle.

After you have put at least five things in this first circle, draw another circle with some space around it nearby. Now draw a five-pointed star in your new circle.

Pick five of the “most important” things you put in the first circle. Ask yourself the following questions, in consideration of those five important things:

1. Which one needs my immediate attention and action?
2. Which one needs my consideration or research?
3. Which one needs my acceptance and appreciation?
4. Which one needs my communication and expression?
5. Which one will bring me greater awareness and consciousness?

Now starting at the far right point of the five-pointed star (pentagram) in the second circle, write down each of your five important things in order of relevance to the questions above, clockwise around the circle.

Now consider this circle, the important things, and their arrangement. Notice how they connect, interacting based on their position adjacent to each other, or across a line from each other. Through geometry, the complex tangle of your mind has now become a clear roadmap and guide to manifesting what you’re holding on the inside.

How does this work?

We are fractals, holographic interfaces connected to and patterned in concert with the structure of spacetime itself. Information is already stored within us in beautiful interconnected patterns. These patterns form the amazing structure of your body, as well as the dynamics of the electromagnetic and quantum vacuum field around you.

The information is already arranged in geometries, and it is being served up by our minds in a way that is directly consistent with our current experiential situation. This might sound miraculous, but it’s what allows us to read, write, catch a ball, run…basically it’s how we do anything.

I write a sentence here. You read it, and your brain serves up the meaning and implication of my words. It may also make associations, reminding you of old connections that are harmonically or geometrically consistent with your current thoughts. Our entire mental universe can be conceived of as a space filling geometric lattice that is totally interconnected, arranged in an architecture of our own making.

The implications of this are extremely significant to the study and application of our minds.

When we consciously begin to utilize geometry to organize the information in our consciousness, we discover that all of our perceptions of reality can be neatly organized at every level. In fact, they already are, but we must deeply consider each aspect of our experience to understand the natural patterns in this organization.

The Unified Harmonic Matrix by Adam Apollo is one example of how a Universal framework can be developed for the organization of experiences, concepts, inherent properties, and awareness itself.

Adam Apollo will be focusing a full course on this framework at some point in 2015.

Through coming to understand that there are certain geometries that have a natural association with certain properties in the Universe, we become capable of using these geometries to consciously organize things in your awareness in a way that makes them energetically coherent.

Coherence is a property of resonance, in which a series of resonant vibrational structures form a unified whole. Since your ideas and thoughts are resonant vibrational structures, bringing them into coherence enables them to synchronize and harmonize in Union.

Explore an introduction to the Unified Harmonic Matrix

This Unification of our thoughts is what builds Visions.

Visions are the architecture of our dreams becoming reality. Constructed of our insights, realizations, energy, and understanding, our Visions reflect the architecture of what we can create in this world. They are the medium of our Missions, the current of our Destiny.

Accelerated Manifestation

At this point in this exploration, you may be wondering how we are going to apply this in our everyday lives. Consider this:

• When a master designer goes to build a house, what do you think they are doing?
• When an entrepreneur lays out the plan for a business, what faculties are they using to design that business?

It is the same essential faculty of the mind that we are cultivating here. This training is clearing the way for accelerated manifestation on a very practical level. Your ability to direct your own mind and to work with the fractal geometry of your mind are the anchor for your success.

Try applying this technique to the five things you want to create most right now!

Once you put your symbols around the Pentagram, put the paper in a place where you will see it every day, and consciously review each element you are creating… You might start to notice things start moving in the direction to bring you closer to those things you want to create immediately, or it may take a few days.

Stay focused, and the doors will begin opening, either showing you the way to manifest what you want, or simply drop it in your lap!

Ready for more Magical Training?

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This is a free excerpt from the Weaver Unfolding course.

People who have no reference experiences for success in a new area often have a hard time stepping into their confidence. There are entire industries that have sprung up simply around developing confidence, from personal coaching, to self help books, to beauty products, all intend to make an individual feel better about themselves. The ironic truth is, that confidence has very little to do with anything external.

The Root word of confidence is ‘to confide’. What does it mean to confide? To confide in someone is to be fully honest, open with, and trusting in. Confidence is your ability to confide in yourself and the world; it is an extension of trust that who and what you are is inherently good. Confidence actually springs out of a deep rapport you build with yourself.

Confidence is a state of mind in which you cease declaring your own unworthiness and begin accepting EXACTLY who and what you are-including your perceived limitations! Confidence begins the moment you become comfortable with everything you might potentially lack and still decide that you are ok.

Consider:

• Business people who are confident are not afraid of failure, even though it may occur
• People seeking a lover are confident because they are not afraid of rejection
• People who are confident in their relationships are confident because they are not afraid of being hurt.

Confidence is a state of mind that grows out of radical self acceptance no matter what happens. So begin by being willing to take the view that you are fundamentally good. It is simply a state of mind that flows out of a simple truth:

I am comfortable with myself, regardless of what I might lack.

These four videos by Faculty member Alexander Fairman cover the Key Mindsets and Attitudes we need to develop this comfort, and confidence:

The following videos will explain each one, and as you watch these, ask yourself how you can apply them in your current circumstances.

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We’ve all experienced the fear of embarrassment.

Growing up, everyone experiences some level of judgment from those that are different than them. Sometimes through bullying, this judgement becomes humiliation,  social anxiety, or sexual anxiety, and this experience is difficult to move through as we mature.

This is a free excerpt from the Warrior Activating course.

1. Relax

2. Suspend the Head

3. Sink and Separate the weight

4. Move from the Dan Tian

5. Beautify the Hands

These are the foundations for inner power in martial arts. In the Tai Chi Classics these five principles are described as movement being, “rooted in the feet, developed in the legs, directed by the waist, guided by the breath, and manifest in the hands.” In Qigong there are three things that will always unify your movement; posture, breath, and mind. This roots your physical body, energetic body and spiritual body.

1. Relax

This principle is the foundation for all the others and a key to developing martial power. “Relax” is the hub of the wheel through which all the other principles function. The Chinese character for this principle actually contains the meaning of “relax” and “sink.” In relaxing we want to let the weight of our bodies sink into the ground. Thinking of weight as a function of gravity helps us to recognize it as a dynamic force that penetrates into the ground. In Tai Chi and Qigong this force is known as our “root.” It is important to understand that “Relax” does not mean “Collapse.” The downward movement of the weight is balanced by an upward supportive energy that reaches up through the top of the head. An analogy would be to imagine a water fountain inside the body that sends water up through the top of the head. At the same time the water from the fountain is landing on the outside of the body and dripping down. When we “relax” we feel both the upward and downward movement.

2. Suspend the Head

The way we can most fully “relax” is to “yield” to the force of gravity by aligning our bodies with it. The way we do this is using the idea of a “plumb line” (a string with a weight attached to it so it hangs along the line of gravity). We imagine a string lifting us up from the top of the head and a small weight hanging from the tailbone. This image aligns the spine, allowing the weight of the body to drop along the line of gravity all the way through the feet into the ground.

3. Sink and Separate the Weight

Also called separate Yin and Yang/full and empty/substantial and insubstantial. As we move through the Tai Chi postures, we do so by shifting the weight from one leg to the other.  This is probably the most physically demanding aspect of Tai Chi. Standing on one leg, completely separating the weight will, over time, strengthen the legs. This strength in the legs brings confidence to our balance and our connection to the earth, allowing us to deepen the level of relaxation we experience in the upper body/torso. The large muscles in the legs are designed to take the weight of the body.

4. Move from the Waist – Lower Dan Tian

The waist in Tai Chi is considered the pelvis or hips, not the line above the hips where you might be fitted for a pair of pants.  All turning movement in T’ai Chi comes from the hips. We have a tendency to be overly oriented to our hands and with good reason. Throughout evolutionary history the opposable thumb has served us well. However, this concentration of our awareness on the hands contributes to the tension we experience in our neck and shoulders. We often act as if the body’s “steering wheel” is the chest and shoulders. In T’ai Chi it is the hips. Not only do we want the movement to be steered by the hips, but also we want the chest and shoulders to stay aligned with them. “Eyes, nose and navel” remain in alignment at all times. Imagine your navel center as the steering wheel and allow the energy to flow from your lower Dan Tian through your torso, arms and head when you move. Relaxing and turning from the hips integrates the upper and lower body in a unified movement.

5. Beautify the Hands

The wrist is the first of the “nine gates” in the body to relax and open. This is described as keeping the wrist straight from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. Again, this principle is closely linked to the principle of relax. Keeping the wrist straight softens and relaxes the entire arm. This facilitates the circulation all the way through the fingertips. The bent wrist acts in much the same way a fold in a garden hose restricts the flow of water through it. Keeping the wrist straight allows the movement of the legs and waist to manifest in the hands. This is described as keeping the wrist straight from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.

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Whether you are an avid Martial Arts practitioner, or a Warrior at Heart who loves to train, practice, and strengthen your body, you know that there is something almost magical that seems to separate Olympians and enthusiasts. The skills of great Master Martial Artists appear almost superhuman.

How did they develop those abilities?