Dear SNS Colleagues, SNS-HT Youth Retreat Participants and Families!

Here are short synopses of the material covered by our SNS teachers (lead-learners), to serve as a mini-report of our ONEderful ONEness Weekend together. >From the feed-forward thus far, we individually and collectively agree that the three days together in Atlanta allowed us all to learn volumes from one another and shift to unimagined awareness. Together, we are living a next grandest version of the greatest vision of “US” as a new spiritual mini-community.

Love, Your SNS Family

P.S. Do please send us your feed-forward forms – completed by you and your children. Extra copy attached.

Christina Semple - Co-Director of SNS-Atlanta

Christina holds the program’s sacred space framework for the children in a host of quiet and powerful ways. During the retreat I had the wonderful opportunity to share my love for writing with the children. I read “Listen to the Musn'ts” a poem by my favorite children’s author Shel Silverstein and we had a discussion about the importance of reaching for your dreams in spite of nay-sayers. We played with words on magnets and created little stories with them. In the afternoons I conducted meditations that I created to calm them down after a busy, interactive morning and lunch. I particularly enjoyed making the lunches with them. Food is one of many ways to nourish children and to be able to help them and sit and eat with them is a simple treat that as an adult I always especially enjoy during our workshops and retreats. Another writing activity we all enjoyed was making birthday cards for a young child in Canada that one of our co-teachers met while at a similar conference in Victoria, British Columbia. He is ill with cancer and the children compassionately made several beautiful and inspiring birthday cards for him, wishing him well and a joyous birthday. I also participated and made an additional birthday card for my best friend!

Dr. Adrienne Sabir-Hudson

Sacred Space, The teens learned the joys of being heard in a variety of small circle action. Focus was on having a positive mind and heart, quiet meditation, creative visualization and circle time where they felt the joys within of these valuable life skills.

Darlene Galbreath

Dreamboarding-Visioning posters. SNS’ learning approach allows young people and adults to step into our dreams! Darlene brought magazines, crafts, pencils, marker and poster board and asked the children about their dreams, their loves and passions and everyone ---students and teachers-- alike created vision boards to show how to move into ways of bringing their dreams into everyday life true. The children took these posters home with them.

Hun-Seng Chao

Humanity’sTeam Education Committee, US Educational Resources

Hun-Seng volunteered to assist and support the children’s retreat. We honor her and welcome further Humanity’s Team + SNS Youth Retreats at other conferences across the globe!

Dr. Ann-Marie Chiasson

Dr. Anne Marie is an MD with a masters in public health (Johns Hopkins) and practices & teaches Energy Medicine at the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona (Andrew Weil's program). Dr. Ann-Marie interacted with retreatants for over an hour, exploring seeing finger, hand and arm-energies in an almost-dark room to closing eyes and feeling the intensity of a person getting close, to cleaning one another’s energies. Generating powerful group energies of health and well being refreshed each person, young and old alike, during Dr. Ann-Marie’s fun-filled hour.

Angel Carlton

From beginning to end, the experience I encountered at the Children’s Retreat in Atlanta was amazing. I had the opportunity to observe a wonderful example of the gifts SNS has to offer to children, parents and each Lead-learner. What impressed me the most were the children; their comfort level and natural bond with one another; as if they have known each other for years. Surely, this is a result of an environment that encourages each child to truly be themselves and honors each child as equal.

The interaction from the children was on a wisdom-level that I can only wish I had at their ages. I thoroughly enjoyed the “Intenders Circle” with Tony and was especially impressed with Luke as he defined the Law of Attraction. Another one of my favorite activities was making Mandalas with Gary and Helene. What a wonderful, meditative, therapeutic, exercise to calm the mind. I could not help but notice as I sat next to Max who did an incredible job intensively creating his Mandala; expressing himself through this art as the bright, vibrant, energetic and ultra-creative soul he is. I had the opportunity to see amazing gifts in all the children especially while creating our dream boards. My wish is that all their dreams come true and they continue to acknowledge their power and share their newfound wisdom whenever possible.

I was truly inspired being around such a wonderful group of like-spirited, like-minded people. Thanks to everyone involved, you have all touched my life and now I am bringing this wonderful learning experience to the youth of Dallas, Texas as the SNS continues to grow. After all, children are the light of the world; we must do everything we can to keep that light shining bright.

Master Young Hee

My work involves placing children in touch with their Whole Selves. My main work in this setting was focused on helping the children resonate with the idea of “exercise for the brain” as a means of integrating body/mind/spirit. I showed them that to create a Power Brain, the first step is to be happy, to enjoy themselves, and to enjoy being with others. We did the Power Brain Dance to help the children get connected with each other and have fun! We did many other exercises as well, including Body Tapping, for the children to open up their physical and energetic systems, so that they can become aware of themselves as a physical being and that their body is a “tool.” Through this exercise the children also learned that they are responsible for the health of their body and that their body is not “who they are,” but, rather, it is something they “have.” Children open themselves to such ideas very easily and very quickly when the demonstration of it is fun and immediately obvious, which it is in Body Tapping. We also did a short meditation, helping them become aware of even the air, to bring the energy into themselves and to carry the energy in their heart, breathing in the energy and honoring the quietness as a part of life’s wonder. At the end of the exercise period I let the children play with each other using a balloon. The game I devise helps them understand that life is not “all about me,” but that, when working as a team, we can create a wonderful outcome. The overall focus was to show the children that the more they create with happiness and joy, the more they create a Power Brain – that is, in adult terms, a brain that is healthy, vibrant, alive with fresh and positive ideas, open to new concepts and out-of-the-box solutions, and aware of all of life around them.

Neeta, Dave & Bharat Sanders

Our aim in life is to help the children re-member God and re-connect with their Higher Selves. We accomplish this through music, movement and meditation. Us and the children played, danced and sang with God and brought Divinity into our presence. We conducted a visualization meditation taking the children to a journey into space where they encountered aliens and felt a ONENESS with all of God's Creation and the Universe. They experienced God's beauty and wonder, and embraced Mother Earth by sending love and light to her creating a sense of peace and unity throughout the Universe. The children felt enlightened, awakened and elated after their glorious experience. We in turn were on a "natural high" after the retreat - being in the "presence of such purity, divinity and joy" in the form of these wondrous little beings - God's children.

Sherri Boles-Rogers & Brianna Winn

We shared the concepts of Nonviolent Communication with the children. We played a card game using a deck of cards with “feelings” and a deck with “needs”. Taking turns, each child told of a past experience and the other players tossed out cards from their decks guessing at the speaker’s feelings and needs at that time. The speaker then picked which feelings and needs most resonated with him/her. This game helped the children to build a feelings and needs vocabulary and it also served to shift thinking away from feelings being connected to external events/situations/ “stories” to feelings being connected to internal needs.

We also did role-plays wearing the “jackal” and “giraffe” ears. The children practiced with real-life messages, such as “what an idiot!,” to explore the four choices we have when hearing a difficult message: (1) jackal ears in—judging/criticizing ourselves (2) jackal ears out—judging/criticizing the other (3) giraffe ears in—connecting with how we feel and what we need in that moment (4) giraffe ears out—making an empathic guess at what the other person is feeling/needing.

It is our hope that the children take home an awareness of choice in how they relate to others—(1) in how they express themselves and choose their words and (2) in how they hear messages from others.

Gary Lawley & Helene Camp

Our playshop opened with a short discussion of the derivation and a few definitions of the word “mandala”. Several examples of mandalas were shared, including a brief discussion of the sand mandalas created by Tibetan monks. The participants discussed the usefulness of the act of creating a mandala as a way of clearing mind chatter and the use of the created mandala as a focus for meditation or just as a calming device. While listening to some calming music, the participants then created their own mandalas, using their choice of plain paper, a pre-drawn circle or their selection from several pre-drawn mandalas that they colored.

Eileen Kostolni

Synopsis: My one message I wish to give to all children is this: "The possibilities are endless!" Anything can be accomplished! Life is an empty canvas on which we can create our dreams. It was wonderful to play with these amazing children and see Life from their point of view.

On our first day, I worked with the children to build a mission statement for our 3-days together. We read it each day to remind us of what we wanted to create together as a Community and of our Oneness.

On Saturday, Adrienne and I took the older teens to the World Congress Center to listen to Tony Burroughs, author of "The 10 Intentions for a Better World". And we returned with a surprise; Tony himself! He came back with us to lead an Intender's Circle with the group. It was a beautiful opportunity to once again set our intentions; imagine our world full of possibility and experience Oneness. (As a footnote, I had written in my Intentions notebook 3 days earlier that Tony would lead an Intenders Circle with the kids!)

In between the big events (yoga, playing with energy, Non Violent Communications, book signing with Neale, dream boarding, Ursa the dog, etc…) were the smaller ones; like sealing words in an envelope and using our bodies to test whether the word was a positive or a negative. Or the cooperative musical chair game. Or the solving a mystery game. And yes, the pool is always a big hit!

It was a magical weekend chockfull of new activities and thought-provoking experiences; each one reminding the children of the wonders of the world. Thank you for sharing it with me!

Dr. Kris Stewart & Ursa

Ursa and I came to this weekend intending to join the young people in a co-creative experience honoring all of us—including animals. Ursa clearly had a strong connection with the kids, demonstrated by her interest in each of the participants throughout the weekend, but also by her practice of entering the circles and moving from one participant to the next, all around the circle with a brief moment for all, and then plunking herself down right in the middle to simple BE a part of the circle. Sometimes she showed particular enthusiasm by rolling on her back in the middle of the circle with soft grunts of what seemed to be nothing short of bliss in the moment! A stolen cookie here and there, along with some unexpectedly slobbery encounters made for some surprising moments. But all in all, Ursa’s participation as an equal soul was a rounding success! On Friday, we began by talking about the animals in our lives—including a range of positive and sobering experiences—and we discovered that our relationships with animals are complex and variable, and that every one of us is unique. We also had fun with the medicine cards, each of the kids selecting a couple of cards (each of which represented a particular animal) and then learning about the lessons and wisdom (the “medicine” in the Native American tradition) each of the chosen animals might impart to the person who drew the card. On Saturday, I led everyone in a guided meditation that asked each participant to choose an animal and then “become” that animal by experiencing that animal’s point of view. At the end of the meditation, each participant recorded the special message that they—as their animal—had for humanity. Some people shared their messages with us all after the mediation, while others decided to keep their message private. On Sunday, we played with representing ourselves as animals—I was a tiger, Ursa was a black bear (although she needed no mask or costume!), others choose to celebrate butterflies, eagles and peacocks. During that time, Ursa and I got to spend some one-on-one time with each of the kids while we played with animal masks, and got creative with face and body painting. It was light-hearted and spontaneous fun, and a wonderful way to begin winding up the retreat weekend.

Linda Lee Ratto

I work in holding sacred space of the CwG/HeartLight/SNS education model of Peace, Love, Joy, Wisdom, and Gratitude within a dream-maker/intention framework, that embodies tools for life-solutions answering the fundamental questions: Is what we are doing and dreaming --functional, adaptable and sustainable? Are we living out of love? We draw from the children in discussion, activities and writing/drawing/documenting their loves, passions, talents, and dreams in an further understanding of each soul’s mission on earth…some children know their life purpose, others are considering this for the first time. Parents find it useful and enlightening to know and support their children with what SNS teams unveil. Our parent-teacher-student discussions open portals of the heart-mind-soul. During our retreat all of our activities and experiences nest into one another. Darlene took children’s dreams and helped guide dream/vision posters which were created by each student as a way to see/plan/walk-into how the children may make their dreams come true at home; we further discussed longer term dream goals. The SNS team’s regular email correspondence with the retreat families in the months to come will allow your family to share how your child’s dreams are coming along. Throughout the retreat we share tools/ways to be aware of self and how to create a community of people in the heart space that can speak and act in working peace and harmony. An eye-opening and useful follow-up would be to document how and when the children’s dreamboard visions DO come true.