PW Series, Part 1: A Peaceful Warrior weekend seminar

The Crazy Colom­bian (left) and Dan Mill­man (right) at the end of the 2 days
Image: The Mas­ter & the teacher: A Peace­ful War­rior expe­ri­ence by The crazy Colom­bian

An inspir­ing expe­ri­ence. A life-changing series of moments. An insight­ful teacher.

These are my feel­ings about The Peace­ful War­rior Expe­ri­ence, a 2-day work­shop held at the Radis­son Hotel in Syd­ney on April 5 & 6 by Dan Mill­man. In this sem­i­nar Dan cov­ered the core prin­ci­ples he rec­om­mends for liv­ing a bal­anced, ful­fill­ing life.

In this arti­cle I will pro­vide a bird’s-eye view of the Seminar’s con­tent & struc­ture; and share my expe­ri­ences and impres­sions of it. In later posts I will cover in more depth some of the lessons we gained dur­ing this inten­sive emo­tional, spir­i­tual, and philo­soph­i­cal workout.

A bird’s-eye view: Dan’s com­pre­hen­sive guide to bet­ter living

As I’ve men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post, Dan’s tour of Aus­tralia & New Zealand started with a series of 2-hour talks at the cap­i­tal cities. (click here for a review of the Syd­ney talk) For those pre­sen­ta­tions Dan re-used a lot of the con­tent & struc­ture from his book The Laws of Spirit. In a sim­i­lar vein, Dan re-used one of his books (Every­day Enlight­en­ment) as a source of inspi­ra­tion for the struc­ture and key mes­sages he wanted to share with us dur­ing the week­end experience, .

Don’t let that sim­ple fact fool you: This does not mean that you would have gained the same under­stand­ing of these prin­ci­ples sim­ply by read­ing the books. To illus­trate why, I will use a pas­sage from Dan’s best-seller The Way of the Peace­ful War­rior:

Under­stand­ing is one-dimensional. It is the com­pre­hen­sion of the intel­lect. It leads to knowl­edge, which you already have. Real­iza­tion, on the other hand, is three-dimensional. It is the simul­ta­ne­ous com­pre­hen­sion of the ’whole body’ — the head, heart and phys­i­cal instincts. It comes only from clear experience.

And so is the case with this sem­i­nar. Sure, you can read about many of the con­cepts and prac­tices in his book; but it is not the same as hav­ing a teacher in front of you that is engag­ing you and answer­ing your ques­tions as they arise. It is through this three-dimensional expe­ri­ence that we started to realise what Dan has been try­ing to tell us through his boos. And besides, Dan is far more enter­tain­ing in the flesh than he is in his books — and his books are immensely enter­tain­ing and didac­ti­cal, as we already know.

At a high level, these were the main top­ics* cov­ered over the 2 days:

Day One

• Dis­cover your worth
• Reclaim your will
• Ener­gise your body
• Tame your mind
• Reclaim your will

Day Two

• Trust your intuition
• Accept your emotions
• Face your fears

* I decided to use the titles the rel­e­vant chap­ters from Dan’s book Every­day Enlight­en­ment, as they line up quite nicely to the top­ics pre­sented in the work­shop. Whilst in some cases Dan intro­duced us to the topic using these very same titles, in oth­ers he did not.

Dan’s Style: Inter­ac­tive & Fun

Just like the Tues­day talk, dur­ing this week­end Dan made lib­eral use of humour, quotes, and audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion. On day one, Dan taught us how to jug­gle 3 limes; and demon­strated the Peace­ful War­rior Work­out, a whole-body work­out that can be com­pleted in under 4 min­utes and will help you develop strength, sup­ple­ness, sta­mina and balance.

On day two, we prac­ticed a bit more jug­gling; com­pleted a box­ing rou­tine to Lionel Richie’s Run­ning with the Night; and par­tic­i­pated in 2 sur­pris­ing exer­cises. The first one was a pin-bending expe­ri­ence. The pur­pose of this activ­ity was to show that it is eas­ier to achieve an out­come when you are fully com­mit­ted to it. We were given pins (like the ones used by tai­lors to pin-down hem-lines, etc), which we then stuck to a wooden board, with the flat-head stand­ing up. The objec­tive of the exer­cise: To bring your palm down hard on the pin. If you com­mit to the out­come, and bring your palm down hard, the pin will eas­ily bend, and you won’t even feel it. But if you hes­i­tate and bring the palm down slowly, you will hurt your palm, and will prob­a­bly not bend the pin.

Dan helps a Peace­ful War­rior in Train­ing put the pin on the wooden board
Image: Pin-bending exer­cise by Johnk Kason­ica

On the sec­ond exer­cise we were asked to write some­thing that we wanted to “break through” as part of this seminar’s atten­dance. We were then told to sus­pend the wooden board on 2 bricks, and to use the edge of our palm to break the wooden board. The pur­pose of this exer­cise was two-fold: First, it allowed us to over­come our fears and break through them (both lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively — try­ing to snap a board of hard-wood is quite scary!); Sec­ond, it showed us that by focus­ing on the out­come (the air space below the board, where our hand needed to land) rather than on the obsta­cles we would face in get­ting there (namely, the board), we can achieve seem­ingly impos­si­ble tasks.

A Crazy Colombian’s impres­sions: Extra­or­di­nary moments with an Extra­or­di­nary teacher

My impres­sions of the event can be sum­marised in 2 words: Fantab­u­lous & Extra­or­di­naire. In short, I loved it.

This work­shop left a very deep mark in my soul, and will stand in the his­tory of my per­sonal and spir­i­tual devel­op­ment as a very spe­cial series of moments. Not only did I get to meet Dan, and spend 2 days learn­ing from /with him, I also met a very spe­cial group of peo­ple. Every per­son that I had the plea­sure of meet­ing on those 2 days now makes a mem­ber of The Peace­ful Warrior’s Cir­cle, a group of like-minded Peace­ful Warrior’s in training.

This is a list of the ’best of’ moments in the seminar:

Most fun: Lunch with the other Peace­ful War­riors in training

Most insight­ful: Overview of numerol­ogy approach to learn­ing of one’s life pur­pose (explained in more detail in The Life you were born to live)

Most hum­bling: Learn­ing to juggle

Most prac­ti­cal: Learn­ing (and prac­tic­ing) The Peace­ful War­rior Workout

Most sur­pris­ing: Break­ing 2 wooden boards with my bare hand

Most ordi­nary: None. As Dan says, there are no ordi­nary moments in life (we only treat some as more ordi­nary that others)

Com­ing Soon: Trust your Intuition

Despite my deep ana­lyt­i­cal edu­ca­tion in engi­neer­ing (I did Indus­trial Engi­neer­ing at Uni­ver­sity), from a very early age I found the power of Ora­cle tools as ways to tap into my body-knowledge. In my next post, I will dis­cuss some of the prin­ci­ples that Dan shared with us about Trust­ing Your Intu­ition, and will relate some of my expe­ri­ences with tools such as the I Ching and Angel cards.

Stay tuned — the best is yet to come!

Links

• The Way of the Peace­ful War­rior (at amazon.com**)
• Every­day Enlight­en­ment (at amazon.com**)
• The Peace­ful War­rior Workut (at danmillman.com)
• The Peace­ful War­rior Expe­ri­ence: An evening with Dan Mill­man (at crazycolombian.com)
  

** Dis­claimer: all links to Amazon.com are ’asso­ciate links’. This means that every time you fol­low that link and make a pur­chase, I get a small com­mis­sion for refer­ring you to their web site. It is these com­mis­sions that make this web site pos­si­ble; your use of this asso­ciate links is most appre­ci­ated. If you don’t feel com­fort­able sup­port­ing us in this way, sim­ply go to Danmillman.com or to Amazon.com and man­u­ally search for the book you’re inter­ested in.

Tagged as: Dan Millman, Lessons, Life skills, Peaceful warrior, Peaceful Warrior Series, Review