The text discusses the importance of reintroducing a holistic body-mind-spirit approach in the EDI and LDI programs at Sheer Leadership Center. Originally implemented in 1987, this approach included elements like aikido, centering, yoga, and the big three—exercise, rest/sleep, and nutrition. The goal is to integrate these practices through brief instructional videos, homework, and short activities in coaching sessions, making them a core part of the organization’s brand and providing a unique, enriching experience for participants.
Transcript
This one is very, very important to me. It is really close to my soul. When, in 1987, I put that first Eddie together for Bert Van Dyke, it was, I don’t know. I don’t know that I thought about it with an intention. It just happened. It just came out that this was going to be a body-mind-spirit experience. And that’s why I had this run. I had my Olympic marathon friend, Don Kardong, who took bronze in the Montreal Olympics in the marathon, on the team. I had a nutritionist from the newspaper who came in during a lunch to show the person, to show them how to eat off of a menu in a hotel. Nutrition-wise, we did centering. I had my yoga teacher, Ali Rubin. My assistant also had her own yoga studio. So, the whole team, and that was one of the branding aspects. That’s what I think we’ve dropped and lost. I want to bring that back. In fact, I wish we had a reputation for every time you do something with these folks from Sheer Leadership Center, there’s a body-mind-spirit component in it, even a workshop. You know, it would be really great if we did fun stuff like stretching or whatever, nothing woo-woo.
But just so that people, when they walked away, would go, “Oh, that was different. Nobody does that anymore.” So I’m looking at this now with you. How do we reintroduce, or if they’re already there, how do we help them blossom, these whole body-mind-spirit dimensions? This is where I’m headed with this one for you today. What are the dimensions? Well, the first thing we did was aikido. Ellen Stapenhorst introduced me to aikido many years ago. That was in from the beginning. But since meeting you, it’s become much more central back. It’s kind of back in my life again as a philosophy. How the heck do we do it online? I don’t have an idea. I mean, since we’re not actually trying to teach people to be aikidokas, but what about the philosophy? So I’m thinking maybe you and Pierce each make a video, or I want you two guys to figure out how we could have a brief element in this. Maybe it’s homework. Maybe it’s a video that they watch between the sessions. There are lots of possibilities. So what do we do about aikido centering? Now, this is one that we could do.
I do it off and on in my ideas. Now I just want to become more intentional about it. So if this is one that we can do, let’s just do it. We can use the breath. We can use parts of the body. There are different ways. So I’m hoping that a couple of you who are really drawn to centering will get together and make a brief video showing us all the four or five different ways that quick centering can be done, like 2 or 3 minutes. So it’s not a half-hour guided imagery meditation, but something brief that can happen fairly quickly. This is one I really want to happen in every single online EDI that we do, and LDI if we can. Yoga is something that is possible to do. In the early days of the EDI, because I was active at the yoga ashram, you can do the six basic movements of the spine sitting in your chair. So why not introduce this early on in one and say, let’s take five minutes right now, guys. Let’s just take five minutes.
I want to show you how you can get your body to be flexible and blah, blah, blah. I think this is something we should experiment with. And then finally, there are the big three that have been in the LDI recently: exercise, rest, sleep activity, and nutrition. Those big three. Sleep is one. I think a conversation about sleep with people in the EDI is very important. We can give it as homework after one of the coaching sessions. I mean, there are eight coaching sessions. Somewhere in the middle, maybe number one or number two, we could certainly give people some homework to take a look at sleep and then be ready to come back with a check-in. It’s really cool. We’re going to have eight check-ins and eight check-outs to do stuff like this. Maybe the same thing happens here with exercise, and somewhere in the middle, we do nutrition. I never told Natalia this because her photographs are so fabulous. But in Virginia, when a cow did its business in a field, we called it a cow pie. The first time I saw it, it looked like a cow pie with sesame seeds on it.
Anyway, let’s get these three things embedded in the EDI. Let’s give some thought to when they should be. I don’t think everything should be the same for each Eddie. Like I said, sometimes we’ll spend the first two sessions and never even get to question one. So this is the whole point. You have eight two-hour coaching sessions and seven blocks of time between those to do stuff. So let’s get the physical, body-mind-spirit dimension back into the program. That’s very important. I really want that to be a part of our brand, not just in the EDI, but in the other work that we do. I think those of you, like Carol, Misha, AG, who were there for the Nestea thing, even when we worked with the OE team, we did some of this stuff with them. I would really like to find safe ways to bring that back so that it becomes part of our brand. Okay, great. Take care.
