Reiki and The India Foundation

Sushweta and I are both Reiki practitioners in India and have access to a fantastic person, Bijan Chatterjee, who is a Reiki Grand Master. We have seen him perform unbelievable psychic acts which prove beyond doubt that there is a form of "Higher Intelligence" from which we can all draw. He is also gifted in Karuna Reiki. Please allow me to share a secret with you -- my wife Sushweta is a far better Reiki channel than me and can do amazing diagnosis of complete strangers just by running her hands 3 inches away up and down their bodies, no touching. She can be very accurate about their ailments even before they say anything.

Do you know why she is better than me? It's because she surrenders completely to Reiki with no holding back. I on the other hand suffer from a bit of arrogance about my 2 bit earthly wisdom (gathered from books I've read) which somewhere in my subconscious prevents me from totally letting go of my Rational Self and surrendering fully to Reiki. BUT-------I'm trying to overcome this weakness and maybe soon will enter the world of true Humility shorn of all pride. That is the portal to Meditation and Reiki practice.

Reiki has made me evolve. I would not say transform because I feel the basic traits in me are constant. But Reiki has opened my mind and my insides to the universe and I can breathe more oxygen, feel the "beauty" in human beings more than see the negative, and it has also given me the ability to "weigh" situations in the light of values. This helps me refrain from "indicting" immediately. I wait and give the other person an opening to explain. Maybe working with children for 25 years in various schools has also helped me in this.

In the last 5 to 7 years, Sushweta and I have loved the concepts of:

Synchronicity of Jung & Paulli
Power of Prayer and Morphic Fields of Rupert Sheldrake
Particle Pysicists David Bohm & Niels Bohr describing Energy Fields and their forces
Our Gayatri Mantra that says the same thing
Krishna's dialogue with Arjuna in the Mahabharata which is the "Bhagavat Gita' and where a Higher Intelligence is spoken of.
Sri Aurobindo's "Supra Consciousness"
The Institute of Noetic Science's(IONS) research by Dean Radin

All of these teachings point to a single direction-------Reiki and Positive Thinking!

As I conclude this post, I want to mention The India Foundation which my wife and I created in response to a simple question that asked what we would do if we could light a candle instead of cursing the darkness that India often feels. Sushweta quit her job as a School Principal & English Teacher to do this full time, and I take time out from my manufacturing business to help out. The India Foundation is a non-profit trust with dreams of promoting India and presenting our country in a unique way. Please visit www.theindiafoundation.org to learn more.

Gautam Mukerjee

Helen Levy's Sock Shop

I am a successful business woman and a breast cancer survivor. My life has taught me that you can accomplish your dreams and overcome any obstacle presently in your path with hard work and faith. I post this entry just in case there is even one person who may become inspired by my story.

In 1980, I approached a girlfriend about opening a shop. We wanted to come up with an idea to compete with the 20% off stores that were becoming popular in our area. After much thought and research, we created the Sock Shop, selling socks, tights, and knee highs for all members of the family. Our motto was "Everything for the leg - always 20% off."

Our hard work paid off and the Sock Shop started to flourish. After we were in business for about a year, we opened a second location. With the second shop, we had to work even harder. Eventually, the business partnership ended and I bought the company outright.

One day, an English woman visited the shop and asked if she could pick my brain. She wanted to open a store in London. I spent a great deal of time with her sharing my business views and aspirations. I explained to her that my success was in part related to the location of my shops. The first shop was in a shopping center that housed a drug store, a jewelry store, fruit and vegetable market, pizza parlor, beauty shop, cleaners, tailor and nail salon. The result – a lot of foot traffic from women of all ages, which was my target market. I explained to her the importance of knowing your market, and shared with her the Sock Shop’s philosophy of providing name brand, quality clothing at discounted prices. I then emphasized what may be the principle reason for my success - exceptional customer service. For example, I special order items that customers cannot find in my shops. I’m also pleased that each customer who visits the Sock Shop feels like an extended member of my family by the time they leave. By treating my customers well, and offering products they want at prices they are willing to pay, I continue to enjoy a growing base of loyal customers. My English friend returned home and opened similar Sock Shops in subway stations throughout London. Today she is a millionaire and her company is traded on the British stock exchange.

In the midst of growing my business, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was devastated by the news and worried about how I would manage my illness and maintain the Sock Shop. Having a purpose gets you up in the morning and I realized during this phase of my life that the Sock Shop was my purpose. I underwent a double mastectomy and incredibly returned to work nine days later. It was gratifying to me that my customers were so supportive and helped me through that difficult time. I feel fortunate that my experiences allow me today to offer that same type of support, encouragement and hope to my customers coping with a personal illness.

I love supporting my customers and being a catalyst for their personal and professional successes. After three decades in business, I mostly enjoy the personal relationships I have built over the years. I love what I do and hope to leave this legacy to my daughters one day. Thank you for allowing me to share with you. I hope that someone’s life has been touched by reading my story.

A Holistic Approach to the Practice of Law

Meet Michigan super-lawyer, Henry Gornbein.

I am pleased that Kathy has asked me to participate as a guest on I.M.P.E.L.’s blog. My name is Henry Gornbein and I have been a specialist in family law for more than 30 years. During that time I have seen just about every situation imaginable from international custody disputes to kidnapping, suicide, and murder. As Metropolitan Detroit becomes more of a cultural melting pot, my clients are increasingly dealing with religious, ethnic, and cultural issues. Lifestyles and marital relationships that are accepted overseas sometimes are not acceptable here. Arranged marriages, the roles of women, language barriers, and even the acceptance of divorce in some cultures are not uncommon issues. That is why it is important to understand a client’s background and the effect of religious, ethnic, and cultural heritage.

One thing I’ve learned is that the traditional divorce lawsuit can cause financial and emotional trauma, regardless of one’s background. To avoid the common pitfalls of divorce, my law firm, Gornbein, Fletcher, Smith, Peskin-Shepard, PLLC (gfsfamilylaw.com) takes a holistic approach to the practice of law and emphasizes alternate dispute resolution (ADR) -- mediation, arbitration, and collaborative law. Collaborative law is an innovative approach where the litigants and attorneys attempt to work out the details of a divorce before a lawsuit is filed. In such situations, it’s common to assemble a team of professionals (attorneys, therapists, financial planners, and any other specialist) to help negotiate a settlement. Each member of my firm, which includes Cheryl Fletcher, Danielle Smith, and Alisa Peskin-Shepard, is trained and certified in mediation and collaborative law. Our goal is to provide simple solutions to complex problems, without creating new problems. We are always available to answer a basic question over the phone.

My firm also believes that knowledge is power. That’s one of the reasons why 10 years ago I created “Practical Law” – a local cable TV show. The show has featured many prominent attorneys, judges, politicians, newspaper columnists, local and federal law enforcement officers, and private detectives. I will often have prosecutors, defense attorneys and others involved in high-profile lawsuits as guests on the show. One of the goals of Practical Law has been to demystify the legal system and make it more user friendly to the general public. I believe that over the course of more than 350 shows I have succeeded in that goal, and I am proud that Practical Law has won awards.

As human beings, we all bring our backgrounds, personal biases, and experience to the table. We must be compassionate and realize that people from different backgrounds often look at the same scenario very differently than we do. The legal profession must bear this in mind and be sensitive to the many religious, cultural, and ethnic differences of its clients.

Henry Gornbein
hgornbein@gfsfamilylaw.com
henry@divorceonline.com
248-594-3444

Please meet a dynamic and talented entrepreneur -- Nipa Shah.








I love my life and enjoy every minute of it. My time is shared between working on my three- year- young online marketing company, Jenesys Group, LLC and my family. My “spare time” is spent cooking, traveling for pleasure, implementing new projects each quarter, socializing with friends and participating in activities to give back to the community. Sounds tiring? Actually it’s not!

Three years ago, I created Jenesys Group (http://www.jenesysgroup.com/), a professional technology company providing online marketing and web site solutions for businesses because of a drive to do more every day.

I always wanted to own a business but I couldn’t make any decisions as to how to go about it. Not to mention the fact that my best friend and hubby (of 23 years now) was never interested in being an entrepreneur and still isn’t. And since I always wanted to own a coffee shop with a bookstore adjacent to it (and still want to), I kept looking to buy a store of some sort. Then one day it hit me, how do I continue working full time, find a business that can be done without being physically somewhere, and yet manage my family obligations – all single handedly. That’s when I decided to open an online company where I knew that I could do a lot of the work through the use of technology and still be able to fulfill my obligations to the family and not quit my day job which paid the bills.

The first year was tough because even though I knew ‘technology’, I knew nothing about running a company, building a pipeline, etc. etc. But I learned from my mistakes. Over the years, I refined my business model and focused more on selling to other strategic partners than to direct end customers who wanted a website and online marketing expertise. Three years later, we have a full team of 20 resources and we do business globally.

I am often amazed at how far I have come. I traveled to the United States from India in 1985 after being married (and it was an arranged marriage too! But that’s the topic of another blog). The only advantage I had was that I spoke English. Other than that, not having a family, having practically no money, being in a completely different social culture than where I was born and brought up, and being in an arranged marriage, all added to a very complicated few years. And although I don’t look back I can say that I couldn’t have been where I am today, without having the experiences of those first few years that shaped myself and my family.

While I continue to run a business and enjoy my family, I also seek opportunities where I can give back to the community and provide something that can benefit others. Thinking, thinking, thinking, I finally decided to launch a radio talk show geared towards merging my business focus to make money with my need to give back to the community. So last week, I launched my first radio talk show, Round Table India (more about it can be found on http://www.miicc.com/).

The radio show has three primary focuses: providing a forum for Asian Indian business owners to showcase their businesses, giving visibility to individuals who are subject matter experts or in an unusual vocation, and giving the youth of the community and charitable organizations the ability to share more about themselves.

Within one week of its inception, the radio show was migrated into an audio pod cast so that it can be heard via the internet at any time of the day or night from anywhere in the world. The show has received a lot of praise and now that it’s on the internet, I’m able to interview guests of Asian Indian descent from anywhere in the world. I’m seeing this also as an opportunity to expand my company’s offerings into creating pod casts for companies and individuals who similarly want to reach a wider audience. So take a listen to Round Table India at http://www.miicc.com/ and let me know what you think.

Ok, enough about me. To end this blog, I’d say that if today was my last day on earth, my only regret would be not having more time to spend with my children and hubby. My goals in life are fairly simple: Be a good mother and wife and in general a great human being, learn continuously to be better than good, be known as an expert in website development and offshore consulting, and of course make money while doing all this!

I want to introduce you to a coaching friend - Sylvie Carter.










My Journey…..

Have you ever wondered is there is more to life?

I was at the top of my field as executive recruiter in Australia and the pressure was intense. Typically, we “find candidates for employers, not jobs for candidates,” but I preferred working with the candidates to motivate them to be their best. I never seemed to have enough time to do this, worst still, I never seemed to have enough time to think about my own goals. So I set off on holiday to ponder.

When I returned, I did the best, yet hardest thing for me at the time. I resigned to become a professional coach. Parting with the dollars and the status to start anew was difficult, but I had carefully researched coaching, and I felt certain this would be the right fit for me. I had been doing it informally at work but knew there was so much more to learn about empowering lives, especially mine! A month later I enrolled as an ICA student where I met and began working with Kathy -- a gifted and intuitive coach.

I had never been coached before and I was genuinely surprised how quickly it worked, opening up new possibilities and approaches for me. It was a bit like tapping into my inner self and the energy from my coach was exhilarating. I always wanted to find more energy or inspiration in my life, I just hadn’t realised it could come from coaching.

My view of coaching is best expressed in the following story:

It is about a romantic weekend escape I planned with my husband. We set off for a relaxing time B&B on the South Coast of Australia designed for international visitors to experience Australian tranquillity. It was called “Ngairin” (“Black Swan”) on the Sapphire Coast.

One day, after a glorious breakfast set in an Eden-like garden, we decided to kayak to a beach for a picnic. After 10 minutes, we found ourselves fighting the current, the wind and eventually each other. My husband wanted me to row harder and I claimed that he was rowing too hard. We needed to communicate better to manoeuvre the boat as a team and combine our strengths. We considered giving up but we decided to keep fighting. We eventually caught sight of the sand spit entrance a short distance away. At the time, it seemed almost impossible for us to cross that stretch of water, but we set it in our vision and somehow through conversation and observation became acutely aware of each other’s strengths. We synchronized our rowing, and at times resorted to grabbing handfuls of reeds and digging along the muddy shore, inching our way around the island. There was a strong sense of urgency, if the wind picked up we could became stranded.

Our team work paid off, we reached the beach and enjoyed our picnic. If my husband and I hadn’t communicated effectively, motivating and observing each others moves, we may not have made it.

It was only later that I realised that this experience started my thinking about coaching. If we have a vision, can enthuse and tap into our individual strengths, be committed and motivated into strategic action we can all celebrate the journey that much more!

Today I feel empowered to move on with my new journey in life. I am now successfully coaching others and feeling more inspired than ever.

I am so thankful to Kathy for her coaching and for inviting me to be a guest blogger.

My journey continues…

http://sylviecarter.wordpress.com