Educating the mind, body, heart, and soul...

“A mind once stretched by a new idea never returns to it’s original dimensions.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

    I guess you could say that I am always pushing myself to learn more, do more, help more people, be more involved... be all the me I can be, and once I get there push myself to go further. I can honestly say I learn something new every single day. Most days I learn more than one thing. I believe in educating the mind, heart, body and soul. And where better to do that than Paris?

Did you know?

    The mind is the easiest one in my opinion, but I tutor for a living and read for fun. So you may disagree and that’s ok with me. It’s easy for me to learn new facts and stimulate brain growth on a daily basis. Each different student requires a different method, schedule, curriculum, intensity, variety, etc. And I have a lot of students who are friends, so it’s so much fun to tutor them in pairs. The key here is to verify the facts and make sure what you are teaching and they are learning is based in reality, not in fiction, or Hollywood, or someone’s imagination. Students nowadays think everything they read on the internet is true. They are all shocked when I tell them Wikipedia is full of mistakes. So, I counter it with cool new facts from reliable websites to show the difference. For example, did you know that a Wolverine is not just an X-Men character? It is also a real animal that looks like a cross between a bear and a skunk, which is why it is also called a skunk bear. And I love science experiments... did you know you can stab a plastic straw into a raw potato as long as you put your thumb over the hole? That is what I have learned so far today and it’s still early.

Yoga is stimulating for the whole body...

    I can’t neglect the rest of me, especially my body. So I do yoga 3 times a week for an hour. I have an amazing yoga instructor, Sandi, who runs her own practice called Salted Mat Yoga. She’s incredible and I am constantly amazing myself with how much more I can do than when I started. My first class I laid there the entire time. Now I can do so much more than tree, downward facing dog, and cobra... like compass, wheel, dancer, pancake, and crow. I am still working on bird of paradise, scorpion, and half-moon. Every practice my body learns new ways to move, stabilize itself, breathe more evenly, and with all of that comes peace of mind, stillness in thought, and meditation/concentration on the self and the poses. 

No one right way to do it...

    As with everything else, when it comes to educating the heart and soul everyone is different and there is no right or wrong way to do it. As long as you are stimulating the heart and soul with meditation, or prayer, or just being one with nature, or observing a religious practice, or just centering yourself in the world, being in the here and the now, you are stimulating your heart and soul... loving others and letting them love you. I would not be surprised if every single human being was different. Even people of the same faith/beliefs practice differently.

    This is all a large part of why I am moving to Paris to get my Masters in Global Communication this fall. I want to be centered somewhere culturally diverse, multilingual, open minded, and free thinking. I want to grow and expand not just my mind, but all of me and Paris is the ideal location. Did you know Texas and France are about the same size? It takes longer to drive across Texas than it does to drive across France. From Paris the rest of the Europe, Asia and Africa are just short plane or train rides away. I cannot say that about Dallas, Texas. But I’ll go more in depth about Dallas and what it means to be a Texan moving to Paris next time.

TO BE CONTINUED...