[worldmegan]

Since I'm seeing this and I just attended the seminar in Dallas this last weekend, I figured I'd write an overview for anyone who's interested. I'm going to blog more about the stuff I learned, but I will probably do it over time -- so here's a synopsis.

First of all, it was freaking awesome! The instructor was Millicent St. Claire, who was really warm and vibrant and engaging. That woman is good at what she does.

The entire environment was a non-traditional, wholly creative, accelerated learning environment -- right down to the details. The classroom was beautiful and colorful with tons of pretty things on the walls, and colored markers and brightly-colored brain toys/games on the tables. Millicent was very firm: no stress in her classroom (and there wasn't). In addition to that, she encouraged us to remember that this was our class, and to make of it what we wanted. We moved things around on the walls (some of us were too short or too tall to practice on the photofocus posters) and we came up with great (and crazy) ideas about how to continue to learn the material better. By the end of the seminar weekend we'd all decided we wanted to keep in touch with one another, so we orchestrated a way to share contact information and various other initiatives so that we could create a support structure for ourselves. Activating (at least for me, and definitely for others in that seminar) seems to work best when there's someone to talk to about the book you're activating!

There were a lot of things I adored about the weekend, not the least of which are in this list:

* Millicent used a ton of different super-interesting techniques to help us learn, ranging from NLP to brain gym exercises to interpersonal conversations - and writing poetry. ;}

* Many of the techniques we learned had nothing (specifically) to do with the PhotoReading course itself -- there were many things I've heard of before, plus several pieces of Learning Strategies materials embedded in the curriculum, so I got to see first-hand how I felt about a lot of things I didn't expect to encounter. (This resulted in me picking up other LS materials while I was there, since I liked some of the techniques so much -- and there were weekend discounts for the seminar participants, so that was awesome too.)

* It was SO relaxing, and SO empowering. I drove home from Dallas feeling really refreshed and proud and confident. There is so much positivity, so much reminding that you are powerful and unique and amazing, I can't imagine doing something like that and leaving empty-handed (or -hearted).

Ultimately I left feeling a) damn accomplished for a beginning PhotoReader, b) completely relaxed and ready to go back to work, like I'd taken a vacation! c) thrilled with all the neat people I'd met and could keep in touch with, and d) incredibly, overwhelmingly positive about myself and my ability to deal with anything at all. That last one feels REALLY good.

It was also really neat to hear from people in the seminar who'd already taken it (once and twice in some cases), who had personal stories to tell about how it's affected them. Some of those personal stories were AMAZING. Some of them were back to brush up, but after experiencing it for myself I am pretty sure I'd go again even if I didn't need to brush up, because it was such a great thing to spend a weekend doing. Speaking of which, once you've attended one PhotoReading seminar, you can go again (and again) to audit the seminar for a MUCH reduced price through Learning Strategies (I believe it was something like $80, to apply to participant expenses). This, of course, is an excellent marketing strategy, because this is TOTALLY something I'd like to do with friends or family. So I might be talking to some other people about going with me again. ^_^

I guess this overview is a bit rough (I'm sleepy!) but I hope it's useful to someone! Feel free to message me if you have questions. It was a great experience.

Megan M.