The beta is still very much underway. We have three more sections ahead of us, and I’m excited about where we’re headed next. What is changing is that the first section, Foundations, is getting close to being ready for public release. The feedback you’ve provided has helped me refine the content, improve the exercises, and make the experience stronger than it was when we started. As I continue building and testing the remaining sections with this group, Foundations will soon become available for purchase as a standalone section within the classroom. New participants will be able to begin with those first five modules while we continue developing and refining the rest of the framework together. As First Wave members, you’ll continue to have access to the beta process and upcoming sections as we move through them. You’ll also continue to play an important role in shaping what this becomes through your feedback and experience. My goal has never been to create a course people watch once and forget. I’m building practical tools that can be returned to again and again, and your insights are helping make that possible. Thank you for being part of this process. What we’re creating together is already better because of your willingness to engage with it, test it, question it, and share what you’re discovering along the way.

The more I think about Leigh Ankrum’s lecture, the more I find myself curious about one idea in particular. Birth may be the first way the body learns stress. Long before we have words, beliefs, or stories about ourselves, we have an experience. Pressure.Change.Uncertainty.Movement. For the first time, the environment we’ve known begins to shift. Something is ending, and something new is beginning. Leigh invited us to consider the possibility that birth is more than a physical event. It may also be our first experience of navigating challenge and transition. What caught my attention is how closely this mirrors something I’ve been exploring in emotional surfing. We spend so much of our lives trying to understand our experiences. We analyze them, explain them, and create stories about them. Understanding has value, but it often comes later. Experience comes first. Before we understand stress, we experience it. Before we understand fear, we experience it. Before we understand change, uncertainty, loss, or pressure, we experience them. The body experiences long before the mind understands. It made me wonder. When pressure shows up in my life today, am I experiencing it or am I immediately trying to understand it? Am I feeling what is actually happening, or am I racing ahead to explain it? I’m not suggesting that birth determines our future. Life is far more complex than that. But I am fascinated by the possibility that the body may learn something in those earliest moments that echoes throughout a lifetime. Maybe some of our responses to stress aren’t decisions at all. Maybe they’re patterns. And maybe awareness gives us the opportunity to notice those patterns and respond differently. This was only one small piece of a much larger lecture, and I’ll be sharing a few more ideas that caught my attention over the coming days. Because shining was never about having all the answers. Maybe it begins when we become willing to experience life before rushing to understand it.

Please check Marco Polo. I’ve sent you a message about our next zoom call. Did they start the last week of the five weeks for the first session of five modules.

If you missed the zoom call and are in the first wave the link is in the first wave classroom. I didn’t get all of it, but we got the last 50 minutes. Click the link that says Zoom calls and it’s the second one.

I am going thru the first session of the first wave, 5 modules and I think it is almost ready to launch the Beta. If you replied wave earlier and I somehow missed you let me know. We have a nice number of 12. I will schedule a zoom call for us to go over the agreements and how I will be rolling out each session. I am thinking of a saturday morning call. Not a long call, but I want you all to see who is in the Beta testing and please get Marco Polo. I know another app, but this one is great. It is like being in a group video chat, but you watch it at your own pace. Skool does not have a way for group chats, at least not that I am aware of. So stay tune we are going to start rolling in the next two weeks! Did I say that outloud?! lol