by Carolyn Grabiel

I have been working in meditation and yoga for over 20 years and your event matched the best retreats I have attended or led. – Jill Manly, Founder, JabuMind LLC

The months of planning, preparation, and sorting of details in order to attend and present at our very first conference as the JABUMIND TEAM were oh-so-very worth it.

There seemed to be no end to the stream of intelligent, warm, interesting people to meet; all of whom were passionate about the topic of Mindfulness and the myriad of ways it can benefit our educational system.

We did our best to divide and conquer, but the quantity and quality of topics and presenters made it difficult to choose and impossible to attend everything. That said, we did experience and learn much between the 5 of us attending, Some of our key take-aways were:

• The “upper half interventions” (thought) need to be combined with “lower half interventions” (movement) in order to effect real change. (1000-Petals)
• If you don’t have your own mindfulness practice, don’t teach it to your students; please, please, don’t do it. (Barnaby Spring)
• We are not alone; there is a movement afoot that embodies all of the convictions we’ve been immersed in for years now and it is COSEM.
• Show up with a display that KICKS A**!!
• Speak up! This group won’t shy away from an opposite opinion, but it will be done with respect and a desire to learn from both positions.

In sum, we came, we saw, we learned. We’ve noted all of the things that we could have done better, basked in the hard-work-paid-off glow of things that went juuuust-right, and left with a better understanding of what it means to be part of a coalition that cares.