Moi?
How ken winston caine spent his summer vacation...
I returned (in mid-2004) to full-time free-lance writing and research after a fascinating hiatus. In recent years I've:
· Established a solar-powered home on semi-wilderness land about 30 miles from downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico. (My second solar-powered wilderness home in northern New Mexico.)
· Served on the late Thomas Leonard's R&D team as he prepared to launch Coachville and the Schools of Coaching, now the world's largest professional coaching organization and largest coaching school, respectively. Had the pleasure of interacting weekly and sometimes daily with Thomas as he teased out the specifics of the first 20 or so courses.
· Led a 350-member team to develop and test a non-medical, but medically complementary, wellness coaching model. (Link tk) It helps individuals explore health-spirituality factors such as their personal, deepest needs, highest values, outlooks, environments, relationships, sense of purpose, support systems, sense of community, personal rituals, and more.
· Maintained a part-time coaching practice.
· Trained extensively in life coaching. (See schools.)
· Developed and delivered Simple Living workshops.
· Traveled widely around the western states in an RV for three months searching for the "perfect" wilderness land to purchase.
· Dealt successfully with a temporary health crisis.
· Served as managing editor of the Men's Health and spirituality book imprints for Rodale Inc.
· Authored, co-authored and contributed to books that have sold more than a million copies for Rodale.
Media background
Worked in various journalistic media since 1970--often in health and environmental reporting:
· Work and projects have won 21 awards--including the California Newspaper Publishers Association annual Best Writing and Best Features awards, and the Institute for Southern Studies annual Investigative Journalism Award.
· Largest newspaper worked for as a reporter and columnist was the Denver Rocky Mountain News. Favorite was the Ojai Valley News under owner Fred Volz. Scrappiest was the Star News under owners Lowell Blankfort and Rowland "Reb" Rebele.
· Have reported for newspapers in San Diego, Simi Valley, Ojai, Santa Barbara, El Paso, San Luis Obispo, Denver/Aspen, and Albuquerque-Santa Fe-Taos. Beats included: health, environment, urban planning, alternative health, education, government, theatre and the arts, the human potential movement, religion.
· For the last decade have focused creative efforts primarily on integrative healing research, writing and education. Greatest fascinations are with human potential and the incredible powers of consciousness, mind and will and desire--and sharing what I learn that proves helpful in plain, fun English.
Other
· Have studied alternative and holistic health, herbal medicine, and spirituality and health through a number of interesting schools and programs. The doctoral program at Clayton School of Natural Healing provided me with an in-depth insider's understanding and overview of holistic, alternative and complementary health approaches and qualifies me to write, counsel and teach about them. It did not make me a card-carrying True Believer. And it does not qualify me for medical licensing in 13 states which license resident medical-school-trained naturopaths. For a few years I was registered as a naturopathic doctor under the District of Columbia licensing act but saw no sense in maintaining that registration once I returned to New Mexico. I use my health training these days primarily to write and research and teach. I find the background immensely useful when I am digging into health and wellness issues, and talking with medical researchers and other health professionals.
· Being Santa Fe, New Mexico-area-based, I'm in an ideal location to cover issues and trends in the greater Southwest--the Four Corners states and California. Have motorhome, will travel.
· Am clerk of the approximately 100-members/attenders Santa Fe Friends Meeting (Quakers). "Clerk" basically is the manager/spiritual leader. The position is in some ways similar to that of a minister, but traditional, "unprogrammed" Quakers do not have a "minister," per se.
Really, every member and attender is equally a minister, though we rarely use that term. Quakers minister every day by their actions and by their spirit and by their words--by how they live their lives. They view the whole of life as sacred and seek to express their individual spirituality through what they value and what they honor and what they expend energy on.
While each Quaker--or Friend--seeks her own spiritual awareness and understanding, members as a whole share five "testimonies" (high principles around which they seek to orient their lives). Those are of: peace, simplicity, integrity, equality, and community (or sometimes referred to as "service").
During the weekly "silent worship" gathering, anyone may stand and, in about two minutes or less, offer a message that has arisen, by inspiration, from the silence. These are spontaneous messages of the heart and spirit and are not to be prepared in advance. Some weeks it is possible that no one will speak. Other weeks, several or many may. No two meetings are alike. And the clerk, thank goodness, is not expected to cook up and deliver a weekly "sermon."
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