Scott Barnett's Dinner

Although I twitter infrequently I am delighted by the people I meet and the amazing work they do in their contributions to  Mindfulness. One of those paths I recently followed was started by  Karin R. Lawson, Psy. D. who is on the team at Institute for Girls’ Development located in Pasadena, CA.  Karin works with and is supervised by the Institute’s founder,  Melissa Johnson, Ph.D.

At Karin’s Twitter site she shared the location of a series of Mindfulness & Relaxation Podcasts she did at UC Davis with Christy Hofsess. They are located near the bottom of the  CAPS page.

Karin also shared a link to The Center for Mindful Eating (TCME).

The Center for Mindful Eating (TCME). TCME is a forum for professionals across all disciplines interested in developing, deepening and understanding the value and importance of mindful eating. TCME provides a wide variety of resources and training for those seeking up-to-date information about mindful eating practices, research, and education.

Mindful eating has the powerful potential to transform people’s relationship to food and eating, to improve overall health, body image, relationships and self-esteem. Mindful eating involves many components such as:

• learning to make choices in beginning or ending a meal based on awareness of hunger and satiety cues;

• learning to identify personal triggers for mindless eating, such as emotions, social pressures, or certain foods;

• valuing quality over quantity of what you’re eating;

• appreciating the sensual, as well as the nourishing, capacity of food;

• feeling deep gratitude that may come from appreciating and experiencing food

Mindful eating draws substantially on the use of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness helps focus our attention and awareness on the present moment, which in turn, helps us disengage from habitual, unsatisfying and unskillful habits and behaviors. Engaging in mindful eating meditation practices on a regular basis can help us discover a far more satisfying relationship to food and eating than we ever imagined or experienced before. A different kind of nourishment often emerges, the kind that offers satisfaction on a very deep emotional level.

Over the past 25 years, mindfulness practices, in general, have been shown to have a positive impact on many areas of psychological and physical health, including stress, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and heart disease.   More recently, evidence is building that validates the benefits of mindful eating for treatment of the obesity as well as binge eating disorders. The benefits of mindful eating are not restricted to physical and emotional health improvements; they can also impact one’s entire life, through a better sense of balance and well-being.

The Center for Mindful Eating does not promote one single approach to mindful eating. We are committed to dialogue, support, sharing ideas, clinical experience and research.

You’ll want to download a copy of the PDF on The Principles of Mindful Eating.  They have a collection of  articles of interest on Mindful Eating.  Some good meditative reflection on Mindfulness Practices around food and eating.

There are several MP3 program recordings that can be downloaded. Others are available to members.  If you are working with others around Mindful Eating or are using your eating to increase your Mindfulness, it would be worth joining to support the good work that the TCME is doing and also to benefit from all they have to share.

You’ll want to look at their page on Engaging The Sacred where you can download  Verses for Eating Mindfully, by Thich Nhat Han. There is also an article by TCME president Jean Kristeller, PhD regarding wisdom and mindful eating.
Mindful Eating and Wisdom, J. Kristeller PhD

I was just friended by psychologist Frank Wood in Facebook and came across something he shared yesterday that I thought would be worth sharing regarding Mindfulness. Frank along with fellow psychologist and Mindfulness practitioner Richard Sears have teamed up to create The Mindfulness Project

Below is a letter from MBA Co-Founder, Isaiah Seret to the Los Angeles Chief of Police regarding the challenges young people face today. MBA is the Mind Body Awareness Project. The MBA project has developed a unique mental training program consisting of mindfulness meditation and emotional intelligence exercises designed to strengthen youth’s minds, relieve their toxic stress, and build their ability to make better decisions.

Research has shown that there are benefits of mindfulness meditation, especially in the area of chronic disease management. The MBA was one of the first to bring this cost-effective rehabilitation service into a classroom setting. Customized for an urban youth population and delivered by our extremely dynamic instructors in a language and framework relevant to their lives, these programs have been successful in helping teens to develop empathy, gain impulse control, and equipping them with the tools they need to live meaningful lives.

The letter reads …

Dear Sir –

The young people in high schools today, especially those considered ‘at-risk’, face many challenges. Whether it is the major challenges of broken or abusive families, coping with poverty while everyone on the TV seems to be a millionaire, unplanned pregnancies and babies, or the slightly more minor challenges, like self image, trying to fit in, keep friends, be attractive and deal with all the cruelties that occur in their everyday drama, it is undeniable that these kids face difficult life issues at a very young age. While many of these challenges are often unavoidable, it is unfortunate that these young people do not have better tools to cope with these challenges in a healthy way.

Like all people, each and every one of them is caught up in a constant search and struggle to feel content. In order to achieve this, many of these teens essentially try to un-plug their minds from their problems. The main way to un-plug for the majority of these kids is by ‘getting high’, which comes with a whole string of secondary problems. Getting high can be achieved through many methods, not just drugs. Physical and mental violence allows one to ‘get higher’ than the person they abuse, and hustling to make money, legal or illegal, can give one a ‘higher status’. There are many ways to get high, healthy ones too, but essentially by getting high, these kids are able to rise up out of, or at least get away from, their primary problems.

When talking with these kids, however, you will not hear them say that they are trying to escape from their pain. They are usually not that self-aware. They know what they like and they know what they don’t like, and they will tell you. You will hear something like, ‘I like to kick it with my friends, get high, or whatever.’

This ‘whatever’ attitude has another side. It is the statement ‘whatever’ that can express their ambivalence towards everything they don’t like. ‘Whatever’ is how today’s youth express their extreme apathy towards teachers (and other adults) that cannot relate to them, and classrooms and institution that do not engage their interests. Breaking through this ‘whatever’ is the educator’s biggest challenge.

An Anecdote –

Upon introducing a meditation class at the Mission High School health fair, I was blown away by the degree to which these kids were disengaged. After teaching in Juvenile Halls, were there is at least an attentive audience due to an extreme lack of alternative stimulation, the kids I faced in high school were basically looking at me with one question. What can you do for me in this second? They assumed, ‘nothing’.

I ended up doing an exercise where I wrote on the board two words. ‘Like’ and ‘dislike’. I asked them to tell me all the things they liked, and all the things they did not, without holding back. Their faces lit up, they looked at me instead of away from me, and started calling out various things that I proceeded to write on the board. At the end, we did an exercise in which we concentrated on each side, first ‘dislike’ and then ‘like’ for about 30 seconds each. ‘Like’ made them feel good, relaxed, content, excited and ‘dislike’ made them angry, tense, and sad. In doing this, they immediately saw the power of thoughts over their body and mind. They were introduced to the power of their mind. However, this exercise revealed something different to me. It revealed that these kids have interests, passions, and inspirations, and that they yearn for an environment in which they can express them. We as educators need to tap into this, honor their yearning and offer them healthy ways to both express it, and along the way, become more self-aware. The self-awareness holds the key to knowing who we are and dealing with life’s challenges in a healthy way.

Best Wishes –

Isaiah Seret
Board of Directors
The Mind Body Awareness Project

In southern Ohio, The Mindfulness Project, founded by Richard Sears and Frank Wood seeks to accomplish a similar mission of supporting teens in an effort to instill long-term goal is to bring hope and power to young people in order to help them find real freedom. To learn more about our work in mindfulness, please contact us.

Frank Wood is a licensed psychologist in Cincinnati Ohio. My contact information is 513-381-6611 or info@greatercincinnatipsyhologyassociates.com

Here is a list of Mindfulness Education Programs by state and by program. You can read more from Frank at his blog: Brief Therapy Works.

This is shared with you from a fellow Vistage Chair and friend: Dwight Frindt

Ready for 2010? First, complete 2009.

It’s the time of year when many of us conduct annual rituals that may include everything from strategic planning sessions for business to making New Year’s resolutions or setting Bold Goals for 2010 and beyond. We’ve found any such process to be much harder to do when we haven’t completed and let go of the past. It’s very difficult, (impossible?), to really move forward when we are carting the past along with us. The process of letting go can include changing your attitude and perceptions about what the economy did to you, to digging very deep and letting go of some of the childhood stuff that shapes your life.

On the fun end of the spectrum, we have for many years put flip chart paper all over our walls when we have a New Year’s Eve party with a simple question on each, such as “What did I start and not complete?” or “What did I accomplish that I haven’t been acknowledged for?” or “What did I screw up that I didn’t get caught for?” Guests write on the charts all evening with colored markers and sometimes get even more creative with a touch of artistic display as well. On a number of occasions we have taken them all down at midnight and symbolically burned them.

On a business note, we just completed a week of group meetings with our executive clients where we passed out an exercise with questions for them to fill out and discuss that explored accomplishments and failures in their businesses, practice of leadership, and lives. One of my favorites is “What must I communicate to be complete with 2009 and to whom?”

A few of the highlights from the executive discussions included discoveries of attachments participants did not realize were holding them back, people around them who they had failed to acknowledge, and places where they were not leading by example. For a couple of clients who have transitioned into the next phase of life after full-time CEO work,they discovered that there is not much useful and generally accepted language in our culture to describe someone who is no longer working full-time and yet intends to offer a contribution. This opened up an exploration of advisor, teacher, mentor, sage, and wisdom roles.

We also were reminded that for many folks the holidays can include a lot of upset, ranging form anxiety around gift giving and office party attendance to remembrances of lost loved ones or unhappy childhood experiences related to the holidays. The latter is fertile ground for completion work, of course.

One of the participants in our completion work summed up the experience of working with the exercise as “transition/transformation is a lot of work!” If you are intending to be powerful in 2010, have big goals, and produce great results, we highly recommend you spend the next couple of weeks completing and letting go of 2009, (and earlier if you need to), in order to create fertile ground for your 2010 vision to come alive.
If you would like to try our exercise format we have included it here as a free download.

Wishing you a happy ending to your 2009 and a fabulous 2010!

Armon Kamesar was a friend. He was proud that his major in college was Animal Husbandry. It was something that he used throughout his life in his commitment to others and to doing the right thing.  He is missed.

I will always remember our walk-and-talks in the early ’80’s. Armon truly lived his life. Music, Jazz, the theatre, good dining, travel, family, and life were lived to the fullest. Armon was always up for a challenge and spoke his truth.  While he is missed, I know along with so many others we are mindful of his absence and grateful that he touched our lives. He lives on in our hearts, thoughts, and memories.

Community leader dies

Dec 23, 2009

Armon E. Kamesar, 7328 Country Club Drive of La Jolla, died on Dec. 11 of congestive heart failure.

Kamesar was actively involved in public service, including serving as president of the San Diego Food Bank in the early 1970s, a board member of Neighborhood House, president of the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library, chairman of Citizens Oversight Board of the California Highway Patrol and chairman of the Audit Committee of the San Diego Employees Retirement System from 2007-08. He also served as chairman of the Federal Emergency Management Administration for San Diego, dedicated to providing emergency food and shelter to those in need.

Born in 1927 in Milwaukee, Wis., he graduated from Oklahoma A&M then joined his father’s meat packing business as a cattle buyer in the Chicago Stock Yards.

In the 1960s, he joined the stock brokerage firm Loewi & Co, managing the branch office for the North Shore suburbs of Milwaukee. In 1970, he and his family moved to Jamaica, West Indies, to own and operate a small hotel in Sign, Jamaica.

He moved to La Jolla in 1973 where he founded American States Leasing, later taking it public. For the last 35 years, he was involved with Vistage International, serving as chairman of several groups, and working with more than 60 CEOs as mentor, facilitator and coach.

He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Barbara, son Adam and five grandchildren. His son Daniel predeceased him. A memorial gathering will be held Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010, 2 p.m. at the Faculty Club at UCSD

.

These are some of the people along with Bob Nourse who were touched.

Photo by tochis

I have the pleasure of working with Karen Sothers since the turn of the century.  Karen teaches the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) and masterfully and mindfully guides patients and participants at the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine (SCIM) through Yoga. Her practice and teaching ability has impacted all those whose lives she has touched. I am pleased to be numbered among them.

Here is a short meditation to guide you over the holidays:

Mountain Meditation
by
Karen Sothers, M.Ed.
Like a mountain that just “sits” unmoved and undisturbed by changes in weather and seasons, you can embody the same stillness and calmness during challenging times. Allow the mountain to remind you of the resiliency that resides within you.

1: Find a comfortable and quiet place to sit with your back straight.

2: Close your eyes and take three deep and slow breaths.

3: Continue breathing slowly – in and out – from the base of your spine and into your heart.

4: As you breathe in, imagine you are breathing in the strength and resiliency of a mountain.

5: As you breathe out, imagine you can weather any storm.

6: Repeat this breath cycle for 10 minutes or more.

Allow distracting thoughts or sounds to be a reminder to come back to the meditation. Set a timer so that you don’t clock-watch.

The Running Shoe Debate: How Barefoot Runners are Shaping the Shoe Industry

By Tyghe Trimble in April 22, 2009 edition of Popular Mechanics

http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/sports/4314401.html

Debate is taking a stance that one’s ideas are correct and the other side’s are wrong. Discussion comes from the same derivation at concussion and percussion: A hitting up against. In a discussion one is attempting to persuade the other side that their position is wrong and they need to change their mind. Often both sides agree to disagree.

In a dialogue one shares their assumptions and makes visible what was invisible regarding one’s position. Discussions create a cycle of waste. Dialogues can create a cycle of value where a side has a thesis and the other side their anti-thesis; and together being open to possibilities they create a synthesis that takes both sides beyond where their perceptions were stuck and into new areas of possibilities.

My theory holds that between the age of 3 and 10 we were running so fast we lost our balance and fell forward ripping skin from knees, elbows, palm of our hands and about one out of 40 hit their chin and needed from 3 to 10 stitches. That one time learning experience changed the way we walk because of the fear created from that one time falling experience. For others who may not have had that fall, we are fast learners and walk the way our parents do or others who we most admire. Most people have never thought about how they run, let alone if they are walking properly or if there is a better way of walking.

I will be interested as shoe companies and barefooters dialogue (See Running Barefoot with Ken Bob, Barefoot Ted, or check out Rob Raux’s Shodless or Jessie Lee & Michael Sandler’s RunBare.com) and we think of runners through the eyes of evolutionary biology and the work of Dan Lieberman.  We may all have something to learn by linking our neuroplasticity together with running form.  Maybe we’ll be able to attain an atavistic perspective that can teach homo-runnicus-like-hellacus how to once again run like our earliest ancestors.

In a dialogue we may return to the future where Genus homo  reclaims his/her sapiens and by running properly for long distances get over our psychosclerosis…harding of the head…that believes the way one runs can’t be further developed, corrected, and improved.

In a debate often we are speaking or getting ready to speak. In a dialogue we listen to all the other side is saying and then we speak. It is interesting that hidden within the word listen is the word: silent. Also interesting is the Greek word from which we get “Therapist” actually means: to attend or listen to. So maybe we need to listen to our feet that have been running for several million years and give them some therapy.  Maybe without shoes or a minimalist mindset regarding shoes we might be able to come up with something shoes us, shows us, and teaches us how to walk and run properly. Enter Pose Method of Running and ChiRunning and Barefoot Running. Enter a group of people like Dan Lieberman asking and then answering some questions about endurance running (ER) from an evolutionary biology perspective. What we can learn from the bones of our ancestors? For me this is where the foot bone is connected to the head bone.

And what were you thinking about on your run today?

Had a lengthy, informative, and enlightening phone conversation with Dan Lieberman, from Harvard’s Department of Evolutionary Biology. We weren’t able to link schedules for a run. For both of us family and friends came first during this Thanksgiving holiday in Boston. So the phone had to do.

After speaking with Dan I am excited about the tipping point of barefoot/minimalist shoe running. Put together  McDougall’s Born to Run, the research from Dan Lieberman and the training of forefoot landing by Pose Method and ChiRunning and the curiosity and enthusiasm of  runners becoming experiments of one, and you see the worldview of runners and walkers changing regarding what they put or don’t put on their feet. You can obtain  PDFs of Dan’s Research at his website

The day will come sooner than I thought.  I was certain that the thick soled running shoes of shoe companies would be around another generation or three.

Before the running boom of the 70’s thanks in part to Ken Cooper’s Aerobic Training, the standard running shoes were leather bottomed and thin-with little or no cushion….none would be appropriate. With the boom and shoes created by the likes of Bill Bowerman’s waffle shoe bottoms and then the minimalist running shoes from Addidas and Puma,  running shoes of the early 70’s were thin soled.

That began to change when most injuries were attributed to poor biomechanics or one’s running shoes.  This change in shoe structure was to supposedly minimize running injuries. Over the past 30 years you saw the development of every possible type shoe to correct every possible type of foot issue. Just look at the MBT’s rocker soled shoes. After talking with Dan who lived among the Masai, my take is that MBT has done a magnificent job of marketing its shoe. I have a few friends who swear by them. I just keep quiet. Steven Robbins, MD and a small group of people in the early 90’s began questioning the structure of running shoes calling them more hazardous than helpful to the runner, saying they caused more injuries than then cured.  More a voice crying in the wilderness, but a voice that a growing number of people heard.

The assumption and the general belief told to me when I questioned heel striking that running was natural. You’re suppose to land heel first. I stopped counting the coaches and others who continually told me that everyone knows how to run. They would share their belief that one could not change the running form and style of the individual as it was natural. They would add that if a coach did, then they were probably messing up what was natural for that person. When it came to running for the general population, I was told over ad over again that coaching wasn’t necessary. Somehow  it was overlooked that in swimming, biking, skating, golf, football, baseball, tennis, crew and every other sport including track and field and…marathons, that they all have coaches.

With the popularity of barefoot/minimalist running developing over the past few years, we are in for an interesting run of events. Something, like I said several years ago, that would not happen in my life time…is happening.

When you know something is right for you and you question the status quo, you are confronted by the critics, the nay-sayers, the doubters, the belittlers. So you just keep sharing a perspective that you know from experience is correct for you and makes sense. Science is now backing up what  a small core group of coaches and researchers have said all along. There is a correct way to run and the proof is in the running.

Fred Wilts, Percy Cerutty,  and Arthur Lydiard  are a few of the coaches  who were so moved and moved me.  These are Coaches who look at proper running form. Add the science of evolutionary biology to “homo runnicus like hellicus” and Dan Lieberman was so moved.  The early adopter Ken Bob Saxon was so moved and all his atavistic Barefooters have also been so moved. Nicholas Romanov, his family and the Pose Method coaches have been so moved. Danny and Katherine Dreyer and their ChiRunning and ChiWalking coaches have been so moved. They’re  good company and align with my convictions and teachings: there is a most efficient way to run…and it is available to every human that is able to run.

Special thanks go to a hero of heroes, Abebe Bikila, who in 1960 showed the world by winning the Olympic Marathon in Rome taking off his shoes around mile one or two and running the rest of the way barefoot. Here he is four years later in Toyko with shoes this time but as smooth and effortless.

“If you can imagine how it feels to have a fluid, light, balanced body, free of pain, stiffness and at ease with itself and earth’s gravitational field, then you will understand the goals of Structural Integration.”
– Ida P. Rolf Ph.D.

Jim Haselmaier wrote me inquiring about Rolfing as he had been a Rolfer at a party in his home town of Fort Collins.  The picture and quote above come from Ben Hanawalt’s web site.

Here is my response regarding my 30 years of working with my Rolfer, Victor Geberin, and a monthly reminder of being mindful of how I hold my body properly and how easy it is for me and for all of us to slip into mindlessness about moving.  This is where I suggest that you revisit the Kalama Sutra of Buddha to remind yourself about teachers. Victor studied with Ida and traveled with her for about 10 years. He also was mentored during his graduate school years by Milton Erickson.

You will find some excellent exercises that he has put on YouTube and are on Victor’s video page. Victor besides having been a Zen practitioner from his college days, was also versed in Tai Chi and Qi Gong

Jim,

My Rolfer, Victor Geberin, has been working on me for 30 years.  I set up a monthly meeting with him for the coming year and continue to go back for helping me continue the awareness of correct posture and movement.  With his help and my unending curiosity of getting my movement corrected and dealing with the habits that I fall back into, e.g. tendency to lean on my elbows when seated at a table, there is always something that he checks out as he observes the way I am holding myself before we start a session.

Definitely Rolfing has been helpful to me especially the exercises that he has shared.  You can see many of these simple exercises that he has placed on YouTube at his MyRolfer video site

The caveat is that if you go in thinking that it’s something done to you as opposed to something to give you better body awareness so that you can practice it and make it part of your lifestyle, it’s probably a toss up if it will be helpful in the long run.

Had a great phone conversation with Dan Lieberman, head of the Harvard Dept. of Evolutionary Biology regarding the early development of us as runners.  Some great research will be coming out to emphasize more and more the barefoot or minimalist perspective of running without the excessive cushioning we’ve developed over the past 30+ years.  I think you’ll see shoes slowly adapting to what I’ve been saying along with Ken Saxon, Nicholas Romanov, Danny Dreyer and now popularized in Chris McDougall’s Born to Run.

Don’t know if you read: Never Know Your Impact but it was a nice validation of what I’ve been sharing for the past 25 years.  As we may have talked about, I was pretty certain that it would take 2 or 3 generations to get people cognizant of the ball/heel/ball perspective of proper running form and style.  Now I believe that it may happen in my life time…or what is left of it.

All the best to you and how are you healing?

Love, friendship and on the run,
Ozzie

Thanks to a dear friend, Jenn Sertl of Agility3R, for sharing this with me and the Vistage Chair community. Happy Thanksgiving.

This video, featuring Brother David, a highly-respected Benedictine monk, author and spiritual leader, is a BLESSING to all those with “eyes to see and ears to hear.” Look, listen and be inspired by this powerful message on grateful living. gratefulness.org.

Laura Fine taught me what it means to have an Attitude of Gratitude. Appreciation has been shared by so many patients who have been part of the Healing Hearts and Lifestyle Change Program at Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine. These gifts have been shared so deeply by my family and friends over the years. Today I am mindful of the love of my family as Kip and I visit Erin & John, Allison & Takaki this Thanksgiving here in Boston.

I wanted to share the following blog from fellow Vistage Chair Mary Lore, author of multiple aware winning book: Managing Thought: How Do Your Thoughts Rule Your World.

Practicing Thankfulness…Even in Difficult Times
As we continue to experience difficult times, it may feel like a tough time to be thankful. Yet practicing thankfulness is one of the most powerful ways to bring about a change in our circumstances. During difficult times, we may find ourselves struggling with thoughts of fear, self-doubt, worry, anger and depression. Besides negatively impacting our health and vitality, these thoughts don’t move us in a direction that serves our purpose — in fact, they make matters worse.

One of the quickest and most powerful ways to create a change in our circumstances is to practice thinking thoughts of thankfulness. Thankfulness is one of the highest levels of consciousness, giving us the ability to see the myriad of possibilities, discover what we truly want, receive ideas on what to do next, and create and realize a vision for the future.

When you practice thankfulness, a physical and mental transformation occurs. Your brain begins perceiving even more to be thankful for. You find yourself focusing on your strengths. You’re smiling. Your spine straightens. The muscles in your face and neck relax and your breaths deepen. Your creative juices begin to flow and you get creative ideas on how to turn your situation around and move in a direction that inspires you.

Thankfulness takes practice, and just one of these practices brings dramatic improvement in our lives, our families, and our organizations.

1. List everything you are thankful for — in your life, career, family, relationships, your body and its functionality, your strengths and skills, your values and personality, your home. If you are a business, list everything you are thankful for with your customers, suppliers, investors, employees, the industry, and specific customers, suppliers, investors and employees. Be sure to find something to be thankful for with respect to what you may be most unhappy about. If we hold contempt for anything we wish to change, we actually block our ability to change it.

2. At the end of each day, work backward and think of everything you are thankful for from that day. Our spirits are lifted when we are appreciative of even the smallest things.

3. Take note of what you are thankful for throughout the day—before or after a conversation, a telephone call, a meeting or a new task, and be thankful for each experience.

4. When you catch yourself thinking a worry, self-doubt, anger or other self-defeating thought, take a deep breath, first exhaling deeply, and ask yourself “What can I be thankful for in this moment?”

5. See what happens!

©2009 Managing Thought. All rights reserved.

For more on this topic and how to manage your thoughts in everyday circumstances and how to deal with the challenges you face in practicing self-awareness and being on purpose, Click Here.

To you and to all those whose lives you touch, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving filled with gratitude, appreciation, and thankfulness being mindful of all life the world over.

This is especially true for a dear friend of mine, Mike Salomon. He was saved by a Sherpa climber who free climbed several hundred feet up an ice wall where Mike had dangled in an ice storm that left him unable to move up or down and near death. In gratitude for their bravery in saving his life, he has donated a percentage of his livelihood to assisting the village that nursed him back to health.

Dear Friends,

I am now in Lukla, in the Everest region. The satellite phone and everything else has failed me aat our adopted village of Sewangma.

I bought a new SIM card from some provider call Miro Mobile (it is GSM , not CDMA), Miro mobile has a tower at Lukla and one on Mt Everest base camp. I am on some kind of dail up satellite internet that is super slow.

I haven’t figured out how to use the new SIM card, but feel free to try it

The original school site and plan are a no go, but we have an orphanage school in Kathmandu that I think out client Anderson Construction will commit to (the school could be done in 2 weeks if he decides to fund it) and construction has started on the school trail rebuilding project in our adopted village of Sewangma. The kids are very excited.

I am be in Lukla for 2 days can can check email, so send me any question you have and put “LUKLA” in the front of the subject line.

I’ll be back in Kathmandu on the 27th/28th, so I will be much more reachable then. Might cut trip short and head back on Dec 5th. Might stay/ Might go to Japan .. Hard to say.

Thanks
Mike

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pamilne/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

“