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Cynthia Loy Darst: Inside, Outside, All Around Your Life

Alfred DePew
Mar 7th, 2010

Cynthia and colleague Yuri Morikawa teaching in Japan

Cynthia Loy Darst knows a lot about roles. Which stands to reason. She used to be a professional actress. In fact, it was when she was studying theatre, that she discovered the seeds of what was to become the day-long workshop she’s bringing to Vancouver on Friday, March 12th

A Master Certified Coach and senior leader for the Center for Right Relationship, Darst created Inside, Outside, All Around Your Life to give people a chance to explore how they want to occupy the various roles they play in their lives.

“It’s designed for anyone who’s curious about what it is to be human,” she says. “Professional coaches and therapists have gotten bucket loads, as well as people to whom personal growth is new. It’s for anyone who is willing to play. And it’s a fun introduction into relationship coaching.”

Backstage at the Olympics: Jeff and Aly Pain Are Going for the Gold in Marriage

Alfred DePew
Feb 22nd, 2010

It’s tough being an Olympic athlete. It’s even tougher being married to one. In fact, Aly Pain has asked her husband Jeff, Canadian Silver Medalist Skeleton racer, for a divorce more than once in the last several years.

And yet today, their marriage is stronger than ever.

“I’m a ridiculously stubborn person,” says Aly, a public speaker, trainer, and one of the first 70 systems coaches to be certified by the Center for Right Relationship. “I don’t walk away from much. I’ll do what it takes. And there’s an essence of our marriage—something bigger and stronger than us—that wasn’t done, that said: you’re supposed to be together.”

And together, Jeff and Aly Pain have written a book, The Business of Marriage and Medals, about what they’ve learned.

“All of our messes and successes over a 14 year period,” says Aly. “Everything we did wrong and what we did right—consciously or unconsciously—so we can be here today as a team.”

Martha Perkins and the Bowen Island Undercurrent

Alfred DePew
Feb 17th, 2010

Martha Perkins at the office

If you think not much happens on Bowen Island, you haven’t read their weekly newspaper: the Undercurrent.

There’s the full-day kindergarten starting up in September, work beginning on a new seven-foot wood sculpture to go in front of the library, not to mention the hundreds of islanders who lined up before dawn last Wednesday to cheer for the Olympic torch on its way to West Vancouver.

And if that’s not enough, you can find out how Dot Crookall earned his spot in the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 1965 and what happened when David Cameron gave his wife a rock for Valentine’s Day. Well, you actually had to tune into the CBC’s Vinyl Café to find out how that story ended.

But it was the Undercurrent that let you know it would be on the air.

“This is what I thrive on,” says the Undercurrent’s new editor, Martha Perkins. “Time with people. I’m in the office, and somebody drops by with a classified, a pair of lost glasses, a source of new information. Feeling connected to what I spend so much of my day doing. It’s important to me.”

Inside the Chocolate Factory in Time for Valentine's Day

Alfred DePew
Feb 5th, 2010

Glenn Knowles: Where the Gem Chocolate Magic Happens

We head right to the kitchen, where the chocolate is heating, then cooling, and reheating, a process which, Glenn Knowles explains, “breaks down sugar and fat molecules,” reforming, then bonding them, which  “gives the snap and shine of tempered chocolate.”

Snap and shine indeed! In fact, these chocolates are so beautiful, that people are reluctant to eat them at first. They want to sit and look at them a while.

“My whole concept is an experience, not just eating chocolate,” says Knowles. “An experience that includes how they look, how they’re packaged, how they smell, and then the flavour. It’s not about eating a whole box in one sitting.”

I watch as he pours the chocolate into shell molds and jiggles the tray to remove the air bubbles. Then he scrapes the excess chocolate off the bottom of the mold and puts the tray aside to let the chocolate set for a couple of hours.

Next, Knowles turns to making ganache fillings—fruit peel, tea, or spices in cream, which he heats, then cools to allow the flavour to infuse.

This Writer’s Life: The Practice of Fiction

Alfred DePew
Jan 31st, 2010

"The Faulkner Portable" by Gary Bridgman

Novelist Carolyn Chute used to say that she spent eight hours a day talking to little people who weren’t there. Fellow writers in the audience would laugh—a little nervously. Because of course the little people are there. And they don’t go away—until we give them voice and a chance to make a mess of their very own lives and—who knows?—maybe even a chance to redeem themselves.

That’s what keeps us writing. We want to find out what happens next.

The novella I’m working on began with a voice in my head. A character was beginning to tell me her story. I couldn’t figure out where she lived, so I ignored her because I was at work on something else. But she persisted, and when I made my first trip to Quebec City, I realized she lived there. Everywhere I went, I found her story emerging—so fast and so vividly, that I had to drop what I was writing and attend to these places she had lived and worked.

I am not a writer of historical fiction, yet this character lived in a city I didn’t know at the end of World War II and spoke a language I speak poorly and read almost not at all.

Buffooning Around with Trilby Jeeves

Alfred DePew
Jan 17th, 2010

Imagine the Olympic Opening Ceremonies next month. Brass Bands. Flags a-flap from every nation. Battalions of buff and nubile bodies in Spandex. A Grand March of Ubermenschen, that would be the envy of Leni Riefenstahl.

Let the Games begin!

But wait! There’s some kind of disturbance, a scuffle perhaps. Security forces are quick to surround a small group of misshapen, clumsy people who seem incapable of marching in formation.

And they’re making noises that sound strangely like—flatulence! 

Are they Hobbits? Goblins? Trolls?

Nope. Just a gang of those pesky Buffoons, trained by Trilby Jeeves, who, after all, cannot be held responsible for what people do once they leave her workshops.

Buffoons have minds of their own. And most days, happily, they’re up to no good.

Julia James and The Mini-Retreat Solution

Alfred DePew
Jan 8th, 2010

Julia James holds a copy of her book

When Julia James was working on her Masters Thesis in Physical Geography at UBC, she noticed that most of her best ideas came to her when she got up to use the washroom. A different quality of thought was available when she wasn’t trying to think at all. She was aware of  “the bigger picture, concepts, a shift in perspective.”

Later, when she became a life coach, she noticed that her clients—busy professionals—almost never took breaks.

“They didn’t relax at all—they were so restless,” she says. “They were highly educated, excited and passionate about their careers, constantly going, and they’d lose their sense of direction—where they were headed in all this going.”

Which is often why they hired James as their coach in the first place.

Along with helping her clients to set and reach their goals, James began to suggest ways in which they could renew their energy right on the job.

She developed and produced a series of CDs to help her clients to relax, but, she says, “the step to actually using the tool was too big—so a how to book was needed to coach them through the steps to take that space and time to retreat in their day.”

Becoming Still

Alfred DePew
Jan 3rd, 2010

 

Let’s just say it’s not at the top of my agenda most days, which is why at Christmas I usually choose to make a retreat.

Chances are, if I had a regular sitting meditation practice, I wouldn’t need to take such drastic measures: booking the retreat, explaining to friends and business associates why I won’t be at their Christmas parties again this year, taking a bus to the ferry, the ferry to Vancouver Island, and a taxi to the retreat centre.

That’s the easy part. The hard part is living in my own skin for four days without the distractions I keep saying I want to escape.

Once they are nowhere to be found, distractions seem like a mighty good idea.

Who wants to face one’s failures and shortcomings? Who wants to face one’s loneliness and cravings?

And who the hell wants to listen to what goes on inside my head?

Eldership Circles

Alfred DePew
Dec 18th, 2009

Vicki McLeod

As supportive as her women’s group has been over the years, Vicki McLeod felt a need to extend her personal work into her professional life—and beyond. She also noticed that many of her colleagues and clients “were doing everything their MBAs taught them and the consultants told them, and it still wasn’t happening—things weren’t changing. Something else was needed.”

So McLeod, a local communications consultant and coach, started an Eldership Circle.

“I realized that if I was going to hold a space for change, I needed a place where I could do my inner work and be fully supported to take it out into the world. So I decided to put out a call.”

The group’s purpose is to create a space where women can help each other in “overcoming personal barriers and prejudices, [creating] conscious awareness of rank and privilege, and resolving inner conflict—all necessary to … heal our communities.” The circle is meant to go beyond personal growth and always points to service. It’s a place where personal development and social consciousness meet.

Barbara McAfee: Inciting Radical Aliveness Through Song

Alfred DePew
Dec 7th, 2009

Photo by Nancy Chakrin

Barbara McAfee teaches people to sing—sometimes as many as 1,500 at a time—from 50 different countries—in English—a round, no less—in about 20 minutes. At least that’s what she did at last year’s International Coach Federation Conference in Montreal. 

And she made it seem easy. 

So when I heard she was here in Vancouver presenting with management consultant and writer Meg Wheatley, I jumped at the chance to interview her.

“Meg talks. I sing,” says McAfee, laughing.

Over the last two years, she and Wheatley have been crisscrossing North America on a Women’s Leadership Revival Tour. When Wheatley first asked Barbara if she’d write the anthem and be the band, Barbara said, “You’d better not be kidding.” 

Meg wasn’t. And it happened.  

Late last month, Wheatley and McAfee were in Vancouver, conducting a two-day managers conference whose theme was the voice of leadership. 

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