Championship

Community hands

As a coach, I am a champion for champions, and I champion champions. Many champions seek to win championships. Other champions champion for a cause, a value, a belief system, a religion, or a person, or group. Championship is the act of championing. Championship can be the act of championing a champion to win a championship. Champions mentor, coach, and nurture upcoming champions. Championing nurtures community. Community nurtures champions and championship nurtures community.   We are the champions <cue music> of the world! OK, I have to stop! I am making myself dizzy with this word game! And yet, every statement made, means something. We all are, or have the capacity to be, champions and to champion others. In this article, when I speak about champions, I am speaking about you and me.

As a coach I have seen, time and time again, people (champions) create incredible results, reach heights they didn’t think possible, take courageous action, and have deep, meaningful – even life-changing insights. All of these results came from the individual, not from the coach. And yet, having a coach, having someone who champions them, supports them in whatever their aspirations are, does make a difference! Is it support? Accountability? Cheerleading? Championing? Having someone on your side, believing in you no matter what? Someone who will be honest and still unconditionally accepting of you? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes! And more. Who wouldn’t do better, BE better with that kind of support? No one – that’s who! Who would do – and BE better when championed, coached, and nurtured? Everyone – that’s who!

Champions don’t need a ‘Yes” man. What a champion (you/me) needs is someone who, while championing them, believes in them absolutely, and who doesn’t buy into their B.S. Who is rigorously honest, reflects – like a mirror – what is seen – the good, the bad, the ugly (without judging you as good, bad or ugly). As coach, when I champion you, I SEE you. I HEAR you. Many people go through their lives without truly being seen. Or heard. There is so much power in these things, alone; to be truly seen and heard; in allowing yourself to be truly seen and heard. Then, add to that, someone who sees and believes in your possibility, has a stand for you, and you in turn, see and believe in your possibility, and have a stand for yourself. Now, you are unstoppable. Now, you have someone who is championing you. Now, you have a coach.

Community – belonging to a group of people to whom you are connected is another thing that supports the champion. In a sense, your community is your team. As team members grow, thrive, struggle, fall, pick themselves up and grow again, they are nurtured, loved, supported, challenged, and called forward by each other. Now, you’re even more unstoppable. Now you are championing and being championed by your team. Now you have community – a tribe – a team.

We live in a fast-moving, highly individualistic culture, where we are so often left alone to figure things out and try to succeed on our own. This can be lonely, isolating and devoid of joy, intimacy and connection. The champion (you/me) who truly wants to go the distance, to create the life of their dreams, gets themselves a coach, gets themselves a team. Now you have a champion.

To share thoughts, ask questions or have a possibility conversation, feel free to call or text me at 360-836-9004. I love to have powerful conversations with people about their possibilities.

Linda Scholten

Professional and Life Coach

Join us for a very special Championship Event and Outdoor Yoga Class! :

Sunday, November 22, from 12-3 PM at the Lath Pavilion at Heritage Square, in Downtown Phoenix! At 12:00 PM witness champions from across the state as they demonstrate their yoga in the annual Arizona Yoga Asana Championship! At 1:30 PM join us for a one-hour outdoor yoga class, taught by the famous Lisa Ingle from The Union in San Antonio, Texas! Admission is just $10 for the entire event! Bring a blanket and yoga mat, and be prepared to shop our awesome vendors!

"Gratitude" - A Letter from our Teacher Steve, On His Departure

Sometimes there arrives a powerful call for change which nothing can alter or deny. Try as we might. Nothing is impossible. How many good things can someone leave when it comes time to say this kind of goodbye? How many ways can someone say thank you for them? Change is a natural part of life. So are goodbyes. Amidst this moment of change, I am left in deep gratitude and sometimes cannot speak for the emotions that prevail. Change is a process I am reminded. As my wife LJ and I prepare for our return to our Idaho home, to our grown children, to the life from which we came to Arizona more than three years ago, I reflect upon all of you. Our students, peers, mentors and friends. Like grafted sapling trees, you are part ‘us’ now. We are part of one another. Your journey is interwoven with ours. We are made stronger for our time together. From our willingness to be vulnerable and purposefully seek change we have emerged anew.

If someone was even close to being right when they said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”, then our most challenging task ahead will be to find the equal of the “five” people that you all have been for us. I hope this will happen.

Our Bikram Yoga offers us the opportunity for equanimity (mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation). Where each of us a student the only one on our mat, in our own process, and without judgement. This yoga is an equalizer making all human beings at least temporarily the same. Humble. A mindful recognition of this rare and precious time within to heal and evolve as human beings, makes any temporary discomfort of this practice all the more bountiful.

Learning to become a Bikram Yoga teacher is kind of like learning to become a Bikram Yoga student, only under a magnifying glass with hundreds of eyes and minds watching at every turn, as things unfold, or unravel as the case may be. There is one thing that everyone going through this process certainly feels, uncomfortable. Yet, it is you our students, through your loving energy and generous patience, who allow us to continue on no matter how hard it might be for us to start again and just keep going. Thank you for allowing us to stumble, wobble and but never completely fall down. It takes a village to raise a teacher as it turns out!

To the mentors in our lives, your calling is a most noble one. To dare enough to care. To dare to care enough. To insist on ‘can’ when ‘can’t’ is all we can see. To believe when we ourselves cannot possibly believe. To instill in us faith that where you ask us to go is within our reach. You help us expand our means toward goals that to us are clearly impossible, that with time and effort, instead become accomplishments. Our previous doubts melting away in our rear view mirrors with scarcely a notice. You make the world a better place by helping us become stronger leaders. Thank you. Forever.

Should we be tempted to feel we have lost something in our departing, let us make a pledge now that this is not so. Rather let us celebrate the discovery of a new found inner strength that without one another we may never have known. Never give up!

Trust in your Self and in one another that you are in a conversation worth having. A conversation by the way where ‘impossible’ just isn’t heard.

With love and until next time,

Steve