The Search
BrainWork: An Owner’s Guide to getting the most from your most useful workplace tool
Brain Rewirement - Reinventing Your Self for Second Adulthood
Maintaining Daily Reserves
Living the Richly Contextual Life
Base Camp – A Symposium on Compassion, Community and Cooking
Pivot Pods™ - A Space for Asking Pivotal QUESTions
Legends of the Lamed Vav – A Myth of Compassion for Our Times
The Search
A variety of offerings facilitated by Coach Minx in conjunction with philosopher and scholar Lable Braun
Minx and Lable are creating a toolset – teleseminars, in-person retreats, books, articles, recorded materials, and (perhaps their greatest innovation) Pivot Pods – to support the Questor in The Search
All creatures in the universe – from atoms to stars, from cells to minds – are on a Search, seeking that one state of Being in which they are in perfect Harmony with the state of Being of everything else that exists. On this point two great ways of knowing, science and spirituality, are in perfect agreement.
Rationality/Intellect and Insight/Spirit also agree that, because of the dynamic nature of our universe, the point of Harmony can be approached, perhaps momentarily attained, but never permanently maintained. Because the essence of the universe is change, were we to find that perfect point of Harmony, things would shift and we would need to, once again, find the Harmony in our new situation. Thus, the Search always continues, always requiring us to Pivot out of what was once bliss, in search of our Harmony once again. The Search is not an event. It is a way of Being.
Minx Boren and Lable Braun are creating “The Search” as a container for a series of creative initiatives to support Questing Minds in their Search for the Pivot Points in their lives which require taking a new direction towards achieving the Harmony that all Beings so deeply desire. If you feel that what once worked in your life no longer seems to do so, if you feel content but nevertheless restless, if you are happy but secretly know that you were meant for terribly-wonderful adventures, or if your are hungry for the company of other minds with whom to explore life’s most profound Quest-ions, then come join us on The Search.
For more information e-mail minx@coachminx.com or lablebraun@hotmail.com
BrainWork: An Owner’s Guide to getting the most from your most useful workplace tool
We expect every key piece of equipment in our lives, especially our work lives, to come with an owner’s guide. Yet most of us have little idea of how our own brain works. The human brain is the most sophisticated information gathering and processing system on Earth, and yet it often acts in surprising ways. Our tyrant of a rational mind tends to think it is in control, but our rationality is often surprised by our own decisions and behavior because many other aspects of our brain are faster and more ingrained than our logical processing. Learning to harness the full power of our brains, including our extra-rational faculties, is a powerful tool in becoming more effective while relieving stress. New insights are daily coming to light on how our brains function when presented with the challenges we find in the modern workplace. Yet this information has largely not made the transition from the halls of academia into today’s workplace. In this richly informative and highly entertaining offering, Lable Braun and Minx Boren share recent insights gathered from the forefront of cognitive science, and how this new way of understanding the brain will form the competitive advantage for individuals and organizations in the Age of the Knowledge Worker.
"I felt the workshop on the brain was informative, enjoyable and practical. Everyone could identify with some aspect of the discussions and could take something with them to apply at a later time. Everyone commented very positively on the day weeks later. You and Lable did an excellent job, and time just flew by very quickly."
Dr. Maria M. Vallejo
Lake Worth Campus Provost
Palm Beach State College
Brain Rewirement – Reinventing Your Self for Second Adulthood
Unleashing the Full Power of Your Wisdom
Nothing is as disorienting as shifting from one phase of our lives to the next. Each time we turn the page and enter a new chapter of our story, we need to build new goals, new tools, and even new or expanded identities. The limiting concept to our ability to meet this challenge as we age is the mistaken belief that our brains are no longer adaptable. Science now tells us that the brain at every age is far more plastic than we thought possible.
We take our brains for granted, expecting them to rise to every occasion and effortlessly adapt to every changing landscape. The truth is that, to maximize brain health and potential, we need to pay attention to the changes within and around us and reinvent ourselves accordingly. Yes we can teach maturing brains new tricks but first we need to be aware of how our brain functions and deals with shifting circumstances. Learning to harness our brainpower is an indispensable tool in staying effective and engaged throughout our lives. Join Minx and Lable to find out about some of the latest discoveries in brain science and their applications for enhancing the quality of your life.
Stress Less in Stressful World
No matter how hard we push ourselves, we expect our brains to function efficiently and effectively at all times and in all circumstances. Unfortunately, in our fast-paced work environments we all too often put our brains into overload and then find ourselves tense, exhausted, and unable to think clearly. Learning why and how to build and maintain energy reserves is an essential strategy for becoming more effective while relieving stress Through a deeper awareness of what recent research has shown about the ways our brains both serve and sabotage us, and what we can do about it, you will discover strategies to positively impact the quality of your life as well as your productivity.
Living the Richly Contextual Life
The richness in life comes from experiencing all its amazing and varied con-Textures. On our Search, we cannot afford to become trapped in a velvet cage. As Edward Albee so keenly observed in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”, the progression is “Good. Better. Best. Bested.” Life will change, whether we want it to or not.
Creating a Way of Being that optimizes the Harmony in your life means being able to recognize and adapt to the Context-Changes that signal that you have reached a Pivot Point in your Search. As much as you may like the road you have been traveling, as familiar as you may have become with its landmarks and idiosyncrasies, as competent as you may be at living your life as it was – when a Context-Change occurs, when the circumstances of your life are altered, it’s time to Pivot. It does you no good to be supremely competent at living a life that no longer exists or at least no longer serves you.
Base Camp – A Symposium on Compassion, Community and Cooking
Does the word “symposium” make you yawn, dredging up images of endless lectures on dry topics of purely intellectual import? That wasn’t always the case. Symposium is derived from the ancient Greek for “drinking party”, a convivial gathering of friends to relax, discuss, and enjoy each other’s company. Because of the quality of the minds that attended such “cocktail parties”, the ancient symposia resulted in insights into the human condition that still thrill and engage us more than 2,500 years later.
The academic world has been trying to duplicate those results with symposia that are based purely on rational gymnastics, linguistic aerobics, and intellectual formalism – but, in more than two millennia, this has produced nothing that compares to those ancient drinking parties. It’s time to go back to the good old symposia. (Well, maybe the drinking will be optional, but the party atmosphere is definitely a must.)
Coach Minx, Inc. is very pleased to invite you to a symposium with Minx Boren and Lable Braun in the Classic sense – a gathering of fellow-searchers to form a community, if only for a week-end (or beyond), to engage the heart, mind, and body in an examination of some of the key issues of how we live our best lives in these modern times.
Why do we call it Base Camp? Base Camp is where we are brought back to our most essential Selfs and are prepared for the difficult and rewarding journey that is our quest of continually reclaiming authorship of our own lives. For a journey as demanding as this one, we will need to travel light, discarding old beliefs and habits that might be encumbering us.
We will also need to know how to find sustenance (for our heads, our hearts, AND our bodies) along the way. That is why this symposium will focus on compassion, community, and cooking – all of which are sources for nourishment and support on our life-journeys.
It is traditional when offering a modern symposium to offer a precise agenda for the sessions. Agendas, however, are not traditional for parties. Minx and Lable will provide a framework and support-structure for the participants to take the conversations where they want to go. Each session of Base Camp will be as unique as those who come and participate. This will truly be your Base Camp. To say any more would be like trying to parse a poem.
Will the conversations at this symposium still be discussed 2,500 years from now? Possibly not. But perhaps they will. At the very least, you will emerge with your spirit refreshed, your soul nourished, and your heart in community with a wonderful group of fellow-seekers of the richly contextual life.
Update: we did our first Base Camp in NC and it was a wonderful success. Click here to see some pictures.
Pivot Pods™ - A Space for Asking Pivotal QUESTions
Our universe is a constantly changing dynamic whole. Surviving and thriving depend on being able to recognize and respond to Pivot Points, those moments in time when we sense that something either in our immediate environment or in the larger world has shifted somehow and that, in order to remain effective, it is necessary to adapt to the way things are NOW.
Pivot Pods are based on the understanding that we as humans are relational by nature. It is how our brains are wired. And there is an undeniable wisdom and power inherent in a group of thoughtful people willing to continually explore and pursue what really matters. Yet in our fast paced techno-efficient world we spend less and less time in deep and meaningful dialogue. What gives the Pivot Pod its power is the lens of the Quest-ion. Questions focus our attention and give us access to new ways of seeing the way things are while envisioning what might be possible at any given moment in time.
Legends of the Lamed Vav – A Myth of Compassion for Our Times
There is an ancient Judaic Legend of the Lamed Vav, which seeks to integrate the natural Compassion of the Soul with the need for a Civilized System of Justice. With the advance of Civilization, it seems that we have lost touch with Nature in general, and with the Compassionate Nature that dramatic scientific breakthroughs are telling us is hard-wired into our brains. In our hyper-civilized modern world the balanced scales have tilted dramatically (but not irretrievably) towards a context of Just-ifiable Self-interest just-ified by the cynical world-view that everyone else is out only for their Self-interest as well. It's time for a return of the Lamed Vav.
Minx Boren will read a selection from Lable Braun's work-in-progress, "Legends of the Lamed Vav". Then she and the author will facilitate a discussion of what it could mean for our lives and for the world if we could live in the context that we are Compassionate beings, and so, potentially, is everyone else.
