Summary
Brett Kistler interviews a retreat facilitator who created “Welcoming Fear,” a retreat combining Art of Accomplishment inner work with adventure sports in the Utah desert. Participants walked highlines between cliffs and free-fell from cliff edges, using these physically fearful experiences to observe their emotional patterns—anger, helping, withdrawal, grim determination—in real time.
The core teaching is that fear should not be conquered or pushed away but welcomed, enjoyed, and used as a guide. The facilitator observed over decades in adventure sports that those who developed a loving, sensuous relationship with fear had the best safety records and most growth, while those who tried to conquer fear had the most accidents and slowest development.
The conversation explores how patterns revealed at the edge of a cliff mirror patterns in boardrooms and relationships—a CEO who converts fear to anger terrorizes their team, while one who can name their fear creates psychological safety. The retreat also revealed that the person who chose not to jump had one of the biggest breakthroughs, discovering that their greatest freedom lay in walking through the social fear of being “the one who didn’t.”
Key Concepts
- Welcoming fear is safer than conquering it
- Fear patterns reveal your identity structure
- Not jumping can be the bigger leap
- Fear you refuse to feel gets handed to others
- The best facilitation happens from your own edge
Key Quotes
“Over a long enough timeline, it was the people who were conquering their fears, pushing them away, skipping over them that ended up having the most accidents, injuries, deaths.”
“The biggest freedom for me in my life is to be found in walking through the social fear of being the person that didn’t jump.”
“If everything goes to shit and you’re feeling yourself, it’s way better than if everything goes according to plan and you’re not.”
“Every moment is a death—every moment you’re like, what you were is no longer. There’s only the you that’s here right now.”
“It blew away my concept of what was probable, not necessarily what was possible, but my conceptions of what I thought this first iteration were going to be relative to what it was.”
Transcript
I’ve been on the exit Point I’ve stood on the edge of Cliff with many people hundreds of people at least yeah and it was those moments where all the cracks start to come through and whatever whatever identity one has you know whatever kind of patterns they they both burst to the surface ratcheted to 10 and also crack open I’ve been dying to ask you about uh The Retreat that you put on and and before I began into talking about that what I want to talk about is that how important it is for me that this happened because it’s the first time that AOA has has a retreat that is not my brainchild and Tera my brainchild that it’s actually the community is growing and now we have for the first time someone else putting out a retreat and uh and I know it went well because I’ve heard a lot of stuff but I want to I want to have a conversation with you and talk to you about it and see how it was for you um but be before before I even ask my first question give everybody context what the hell just happened yeah so I put on a retreat called welcoming fear and the idea for this retreat was that it would take the kind of work that we’ve done in AOA but kind of bring it out into nature Into the Wilderness and into very present physically embodied experiences with fear and it’s called welcoming fear we’ll get into that a little bit later and the idea is that it’s an invitation for people to really sensuously sit with and enjoy and just notice and learn about the way that their body and their emotional system and their mind process fear uh so it wasn’t as much of a goal oriented thing as like you’re gonna come and jump off of a cliff like like some kind of Bungee sort of uh uh operation it it was something that was far more slow and deliberate and so it wasn’t just jumping off a cliff there was there was individual work there was partner work there was group work all camping under the stars in the desert near Moab Utah and there were two rigged activities led by some worldclass guides that are very close friends of mine for many years and one of them was a Highline which is essentially if you’re aware of slack lining it’s similar to this but it’s walking on a 1-in wide piece of uh nylon webbing that’s strung between two Cliffs hundreds of feet in the air and normally this requires a lot of experience to be able to do except we had it rigged such that you have another line above you so that a beginner was able to do the walk and this was a slow way of being able to approach your fear and work with it as you’re taking step after step across a line and feeling the way that your body responds and feeling where your attention goes and then we had the faster way of working with fear which was connecting to a rope and jumping off of a cliff and Free Falling for several seconds before the Rope catches you and swings you away from the cliff and that offered people an opportunity to feel through a certain level of fear and then commit and also notice what happens in their system and what strategies they use to make that kind of a move in their in this kind of physical environment or in their life ah cool so that was that was the retreat yeah so that was that was the retreat so what what was your hope like if you were to say like you had all these people you were serving what was your hope in the outcome for the people you were serving in the retreat yeah my my hope for the outcome for people was not for them to come through the retreat Having learned an ability to conquer Their Fear um I can talk about this in a moment but what I really wanted was for people to have developed an enjoyment of the process of being with their fear and not needing to do anything with it not having you know something that needs to happen not pushing through it not running from it but just noticing what happens when they when they approach their fears and in a very subtle step-by-step way great so what I heard at the beginning there was this idea of and I think you mentioned it at the beginning you said like a sensual experience of fear and then and then here you’re talking about enjoying the fear what for you what what’s the what makes that such an important thing is that people learn how to be welcome have a sensual experience enjoyment of fear what what in your world what I mean I know what makes that important to me but what makes that important that that was the the main outcome yeah for that I need to scroll back to some of my history so yeah when I when I got into adventure sports when I was around the timeline could be when I was 18 or 19 but I was also rock climbing much earlier than that and doing various outdoor things so we’ll just say that early on in my journey I had adopted the narrative which is a common societal narrative common a way that people approach fear that it was some kind of an oppressor for me that it was something that I needed to overcome or to conquer and so I ran with that and I was like okay great to to become uh to become a more seasoned person to grow as a person to really fully experience life then what I need to do is learn to conquer my fears so I went down that path and what I’ve noticed over Decades of doing that now is that over a long enough timeline it was the people who were who stayed in that mode that I was in initially who were conquering their fears pushing them away skipping over them that ended up having the most accidents injuries deaths and also grew at the slowest rate until of course often something would happen to them that would wake them up and they’d be forced to feel what they’ve been avoiding yeah which is something we’ve you know we’ve talked about a lot on this podcast in many different Realms and I also noticed another thing was the people who were had been in the sport the longest and with the the cleanest safety records and were really kind of the mentors were the ones who really developed a relationship with their fear where they just wore it on their sleeve they would show up to an exit point which is in Bas jumping that’s what we call the edge of a cliff where you’re about to jump they would show up to an exit point and just name all the things they were scared of and be visibly feeling it but not in a disregulated way it would just be like here it is here’s the things I’m concerned about or oh yeah I’ve got I’ve got the fear poops I’ve got a poop you know because I’m scared you know just kind of playing with it and then there’d be that guy you know sometimes this was me earlier on especially showing up and being like okay I got this this is the thing I got to do I’m going to do the thing and I got it and just over over the course of a lot of time I noticed that there was a very big difference in both the enjoyment and also the safety record of people who were really developing a loving sensuous relationship with their fear and using it as a grounding in their system while they’re while they’re jumping and as a guide for their judgment so and so that’s that’s really what I wanted people to to get to play with and experience and to transition from a relationship with fear that pushes it away to a relationship that really welcomes it in in a grounded and regulated way so there this opens up multiple questions for me so the the first question is that is the most pointed question is like how much of creating this Retreat for you is a way to save people’s lives like how much of this is like your response to a community that you love and you like oh if I can teach this to young people in this sport like they’re I either I will not have to deal with as many deaths or there will not be as many death how much of that is how much of that is what’s Happening Here Yeah I a few years ago I would have said a lot of what I’m doing here is about saving lives and interestingly I feel like that’s kind of Fallen away it’s like I don’t believe that I anyone needs me to save them but what I do enjoy is being with people in this exploration and it and because of that history of having lost a lot of friends a lot of it around various you know variations of the way people relate to their fear whether it is the fear of jumping off a cliff or a social fear which is something that we got into on the retreat as well uh whether that’s the case it’s just that I really deeply enjoy and find it deeply meaningful to be with people on that Journey wherever it’s going to take them I I don’t I don’t need somebody to be like oh cool I did the welcoming fear trip and now I want to go jump off of cliffs and I’m like great I saved you you’re going to be safer it’s really just right like I I love being in that exploration that’s what I’ve Loved about jumping from the very beginning and I love being with people in it yeah so I I hear I think lovely I get it and I think I know the answer to this question but I want to I was thinking about more in the reverse like if you had the opportunity to take every Young cliff jumper every young squirrel suit for every highliner whatever those high-risk sports are and like put them through this so you’re it’s not about convincing them to go and jump off a cliff like how how exciting would that be for you or is it I would love that yeah I would love that so much but it just for anybody one of the one of my favorite kinds of moment to have uh throughout my years I’ve spent many I’ve I’ve been on the exit Point I’ve stood on the edge of Cliff with many people hundreds of people at least yeah and it was those moments where all the cracks start to come through and whatever whatever identity one has you know whatever kind of patterns they they both burst to the surface ratcheted to 10 and also crack open in that in that environment so what I when I look back on that on those uh on all of my jumps one of the things that I just enjoyed the most was being at an exit Point not jumping but being at an exit point with people and just noticing oh this person’s this person’s fear turns to anger this person’s fear turns to determination rigidity this person’s anger turns or this person’s fear just moves cleanly and this is what happens when a group is here feeling this together this is what happens when there’s one person in the group who is really willing to say the thing that they’re socially afraid to say because they’re in tune with their physical fear and this is what it looks like when an an entire group avoids it and yeah there’s so much so much juice there and absolutely I’d love to be able to do this work um I would love to do this work with people who are uh who are on a journey of exploring a sport that does carry inherent physical risk and I enjoy it for any in their life because everyone’s life includes inherent fear on their path wherever they go so one one noticing and then I want to move to the the other question about this but one noticing for me is there’s this saying that I’ve run across or said or heard I can’t remember but basically like in in this in Spiritual Development there comes a time where you realize that every moment is a death every moment you’re like what you were is no longer like there’s only the you that’s here right now that there’s like a death in every moment and and it’s it’s a way to describe when the identity falls apart when the story falls apart and it’s just very interesting to me that the that that is every one of those is an exit point and so like I just notice internally what what’s happening for me is like oh right like what happens when you are and and often times the first five six seven times you hit that exit Point there’s a lot of fear that arises and what is it to enjoy your fear in those moments of going oh what what if my whole identity is is is a an illusion or a or a hallucination yeah and there’s there’s the piece of noticing or there’s the piece of welcoming and enjoying the fear and then there’s also the aspect of just not noticing what other fears are there because often what is going on is that we’re focused on one fear that’s the one that’s the most present and we over index on that and we’re actually missing that there’s other fears present so it’s not even just about like grabbing onto that one fear and holding tightly and being like I’m gonna just go into this one it’s also about like okay so there’s a very big fear here that’s present and what are the other fears that are subconsciously driving me right now that I’m not yet aware of the whole network of the fears underlying our identity underlying our physical safety underlying our safety in a group underlying our you know hopes dreams Ambitions there’s so many there are so many different flavors of that fear and it’s only in welcoming a very broad spectrum of them that we feel really grounded in the moment and prepared to take the action that’s appropriate rather than the action that you know some small aspect of that fear thinks is appropriate right so so you You’ said a couple times like I’m just happy to be there with anyone which makes me very happy I love the idea that you’re teaching for your own pleasure I think that’s so critical not not to be there to save the world not to be there because the world needs you not to be there to save a single person it feels to me like the most honest teachings are the ones where the teacher’s like I’m here because I love it it um and it’s really clear that this is not something that you have created just for people in in adventure sports where there’s high risk this is something that you clearly see many many people would benefit from uh absolutely so yeah so what I want to know is let’s say you have a CEO of a company and they’re coming to this Retreat what is it that you would hope would change about their being a CEO or what would they see that would influence being a CEO or what what is it that uh that they’ll get out of it that would benefit all their employees or benefit their bottom line or benefit their enjoyment of running a company yeah so kind of scrolling back a little bit to when I was talking about how all of people’s all of our different patterns show up on the exit Point uh one thing that people got from this from this retreat was just noticing what those patterns are so there’s there’s somebody who showed up and they they really learned how much that when they’re scared they tend to go into anger at what they’re scared at and that’s just an initial response and they needed to move through that and feel and love the whole thing to be able to step off of the cliff and I I find that would be really valuable for a CEO and there was another person who was very buttoned up throughout the entire process before during and after except for the moment of Freefall and during that moment they were just they wanted to be absolutely anywhere else but here and they they’re like well I can’t unsee that that is my response to helplessness when I’m in it not just preparing for it or having just experienced it but when I’m when it’s right there yeah and you know we had others with sort of like a grim determination they were like okay once I put the gear on I’m going and then they went and then had a big process after so for for that type of person I might learn that there’s a lot of post-processing that they do and something in the moment just they execute and then later on maybe they need to take space to process it um and there were a number of other patterns there’s one person who who didn’t even jump and they got perhaps one of the biggest growth experiences out of it and the way they learned more from the way that they related to themselves having walked away and the initial pattern of going going into shame and beating themselves up and being able to work with the thoughts that were coming online in real time and see through them and feel what was Underneath It ultimately they found a really deep freedom of oh yeah the biggest freedom for me in my life is to be found in walking through the social fear of being the person that didn’t jump and just they just had this massive Epiphany this giggle fist this giggle fit for half an hour about the the recognition that they just did not need to take so seriously what people thought of them and I mean if there’s one thing that I would love to like just hand as a Epiphany gift to a new CEO or an experienced CEO you know it would be that or to my to myself as a CEO so let let’s just track one of these down let’s track the first one down so a CEO comes in and they have the the anger that they react to their fear with anger and let’s say that they’ve been doing this inside of their company how do you see that that would play out in a company and how do you see that once they had this realization it would play out differently yeah I mean prior to prior to the Epiphany or transformation the kind of pattern you might see would be that there’s always something wrong there’s always somebody doing something wrong from the CEO’s perspective and the CEO feels alone in it and they start attacking people and then people there’s a lot of fear because the CEO is not feeling because the CEO isn’t feeling Their Fear now the whole team is feeling fear and and of course that’s not going to be that’s not going to be a terribly productive team that’s not going to be a team that feels highly creative and Innovative and takes risks with the company or socially in the team speaking their truth um it’s going to be a lot of trying to make that person happy and it’s going to depend on how scared that person is but that that fear isn’t going to be present in the room to be addressed and so after the Epiphany after the transformation uh an example of the way that this might play out would be that the leader and perhaps you know the team because this The Retreat happened in a group context and so there were a lot of beautiful ways that I can speak to soon that the group held each other and were able to ask each other for what they wanted and how they wanted to be held so there might be a leader who’s like hey uh I noticed that like when I’m scared often I get angry and so if you find me being angry know that it might not be about you it might just be that I’m scared and I’d love an invitation to check in with myself and I’ll of course be tracking that in myself as well and if that’s happening like oh I see what’s going on I’m actually just scared we’re not going to hit the numbers or I’m scared we’re going to lose this client or I’m scared we’re going to lose an employee that feels key to me and I don’t know what I would do without them and I make myself responsible and I’m afraid of that yeah and then you can bring to the surface what’s actually going on rather than a bunch of people running around trying to get it right around an angry boss yeah it’s an interesting thing one of the little nuggets that was in what you just said was that because the fear isn’t being felt directly you’re putting it on other people like you’re you’re you’re like it’s like a fear Hot Potato I don’t want to feel this and so you throw it someone else and then they’re like I don’t want to feel this and then or they or they’re the ones that feel it and so it’s like this fear Hot Potato going on how how and which is a big way people not wanting to feel fear oftentimes you see it like I see this in families where somebody holds the anxiety for the family and everybody else is like trying to manage the anxiety I don’t want to feel that anxiety like it’s gonna be fine honey or you know whatever like we’re going to get through this and blah blah blah blah um How is so you had this group of people all facing fear how how did the fear Hot Potato go how did you set up a system where the fear Hot Potato didn’t go I would assume like that would be a show if you’re in that Retreat and everyone’s just passing the fear around tell tell me what what happened there and how how you thought about it or how you arranged that yeah well for for one we spent a day before we did any of the activities just doing introspective work and and this was like individually we had I had people crawl up to the edge of a cliff and peer their head over and then just kind of meditate and Ponder on a series of invitations and let that start to dredge up some of their some of their fears some of their identity fears some of a lot of them came up as fears of death there was there was really two main categories of fear that showed up for people which was the fear of the death the the fear of death which is including their identity and then others were social fears which I’d say that’s also identity related but there were like specifically about what happens to my partner what happens to you know what my business if I go and so we brought all that to the surface to begin with and then by the time we got to the edge of a cliff to either Walk The High Line or to jump the thing that was kind of unique about this is that everyone is feeling some level of fear and it’s completely understandable it’s not like you know it’s not like people were showing up and it took some work to figure out that there’s actually a visceral fear of annihilation here underneath the like relational work we’re doing it was just yeah you know it’s table Stakes here it is fear of annihilation you your identity might not feel it but of course your body does my body does I’ve done it thousands of times and right it’s still there and so that’s one of the things it was just unquestionable that what was going on that what we were all working with was fear on on the base level and because of the group context everybody could see the different ways that that was moving through people and the different emotions that were evoked so one person might assume that everybody’s going to have the same response to the edge of a cliff as they do or maybe they might not assume that but they might not really know the nuances of all the different ways that that shows up and and in this context people got to see that and they got to see the way that it Consolidated into individuals and a group like there was the person that held the role of here’s my anger there was the person that you know held the role held the Hot Potato of you know I’m the one that’s gonna be you know the helper and the supporter or right right right you know I’m the one that’s gonna be kind of Silent hanging out in the back watching everyone else uh until my you know yeah yeah so one of the things I I notice it’s like actually really interesting because it’s so explicit we’re all here dealing with fear assuming that there’s some gentle pointing of like notice one person’s way of handling fear is getting angry one person’s way of handling fear is helping everybody one person’s way of handling fears it’s an interesting thing because it allows any one of you to walk into the world and see fear where it actually is instead of exactly you know which has helped me have a tremendous amount of compassion life somebody gets angry and I’m like oh they’re scared like creates so much ease and compassion to to be with their anger or um somebody is really helpful in a way that I’m like hey stop like stop taking away my empowerment but I really want to be helpful now I can take care of myself so much compassion because oh they’re they’re afraid they’re afraid and we we’re all we can all be afraid so it’s interesting just like that that there’s a way in which your retreat allow that too to see how other people were in their fear to witness the different ways of doing it and and allows for deeper compassion I I’m want I want to ask how much did I just make that up and how much did was that an explicit part of the retreat yeah that was that was a very explicit part of the retreat and we also added a few more elements there was uh a lot of experimentation so people were invited especially for especially for the Highline where you’re spending up to like 20 minutes or so walking this line so there’s you can take experiments you’re like okay I’m going to do this one with just looking at the end of the Rope I’m going to do this one I’m going to like look down and like look where I don’t want to look while I’m walking or I’m gonna let my legs wiggle as much as they want or I’m going to try to manage myself as much as I can or and we also had the opportunity for for people to ask what support they wanted from their group and for others to suggest prompts uh one of one of the people who was jumping um it was suggested like hey like why don’t we just do this like you you approach the edge of the cliff and you’re ready to jump you don’t have to jump in fact you can intend not to jump but just have the experience of walking up and saying no and then the group says we love your not and this person went up to do that experiment and they found themselves jumping like that was just having that know honored by the group and brought fully to the surface and loved in themselves yeah was was enough to remove the block to to honor like that piece was honored and so then the part of them that wanted to jump and have the experience of jumping not just the experience of the no but get both was that was for them something that they wanted at that moment you know that’s cool that’s great so I could keep on digging into all this stuff I could geek out on this forever and I want to be conscious of time so I want to transition to a slightly different topic which is like what was your what was like if you look back and you think subconsciously or lesson consciously what was your reason what were you trying to learn by putting on this Retreat what were you wrestling with that if anything yeah there were a couple questions I was wrestling with one one was just I mean for your personal to be clear I’m talking about your personal development here I’m not talking about like how do I put on a retreat like what what what were you trying to teach yourself in the retreat by by putting on a retreat yeah for me I really wanted to experience facilitating this work in a context that is really deeply that I’m really deeply steeped in and that there was such a sense of place to where we were the the canyon that we were camped at the top of is a place that I’ve frequented for over a decade like probably a decade and a half I’ve done dozens maybe hundreds of jumps there I’ve been with people for rescues I’ve been with people for first jumps hundredth jumps and had lots of just Rich learning from this place so it was really beautiful to be facilitating something in a place where every time we would turn a corner driving down one of the one of the roads there just be something else that would pop into my mind uh a new teaching a new reflection an invitation for the group and so it was really beautiful for me and that was one of my intentions was like what if what would I create from from my experience that also like fully inhabits the work that you know that we’ve been doing together that I’ve been learning through you yeah and also another aspect of it was facilitating you know being being the sole facilitator in a group in A Place With No cell service where there are real risks was something that just reined something that was your that was your Highline yeah that was my Highline like oh right here here’s my way to fully confront facilitating right right it was like right in the deep end it’s like okay if we run out of water we’re like a couple hours away from a town and we run out of whatever it’s going to be a logistical kerfuffle just to to deal with anything that was a curveball so there was kind of that aspect of like okay like how much can I how much can I trust myself to be building this retreat with all these moving parts different vendors guides Logistics and beholding the thing myself um without the capacity to make a phone call to be like Hey Joe what would you do in this situation none of that was there um and uh so that it was really cool just like letting the buck stop with me um throughout the process and I found that that was really important for my uh for for my process because I I really found a a different level of capacity to hold the hold the group and hold the container when there was no part of me that could think that there was any out if I needed it or wanted it it was just I’m here and this is it and that was really important for me yeah so the thing that I see in what you just said is that you were on your own Highline as you’re doing the fear thing you’re you’re actually doing the being with the dance enjoying welcoming your own fear in the facilitation which I find really deeply helps facilitation I I noticed that a lot of times when people are facilitating something particularly for the first time they are wrestling with it themselves in their own way as they’re teaching it because it makes it very alive in their system um and the the reason I I put that whole setup is is that what I’ve noticed is when I do a retreat for the first time there’s a way in which it’s like the people are guinea pigs and they’re getting the first version of it which is not going to be in some ways as good as the future versions of it but in some ways it’s going to be better than any version you know because there’s something that something that can happen on the first one that can’t happen anywhere else so and this is a challenging question I would assume but what is it that the first group got that probably is never going to be replicable and then or like it’d be lucky if anybody else got that and what is it that you’re that the that you’re going to do differently and so that the second and third groups get something or the 10th group get something that’s a little more refined and and doesn’t get what the first group got yeah good question so one thing the first group got was just the reality that I was sitting in my own Highline process um however much they felt it like that was something uh another piece was the group size that we had this time was it was eight people including myself so there was a small intimacy to that group and I don’t think I’m going to run one that size again but one thing that was really nice about it is that we could all fit in one suburban and as I drove around I got to like share with a whole group and reflect with a whole group and everybody got to be in in that space together during the transit times which was really cohesive for the group oh yeah yeah yeah and another piece was um and I don’t know to what extent this affected the group but this is almost a continuation of your further of your previous question which was that for myself I had also brought my base jumping rig with me and I had an intention to approach the edge of the cliff after the retreat and maybe jump maybe not jump and so the entire time during the retreat I was with my process of approaching I haven’t jumped I haven’t base jumped in about four years three three years four years so it’s been a little bit of time and Alexa and I are planning on having a kid soon and so this was potentially the last chance to do that before having a kid and then the calculus changes a lot more yeah and so like I feel like energetically I was really there in the retreat um and that not that that can’t be true in the future but there was something something about that that it was like everybody knew that this was my first time running the retreat in the future they’ll know that I’ve done it before there’s a different thing going on there yeah yeah sure and to say to speak to what’ll be different in the future iterations um one thing I’d love to do is add another day of uh of integration and deep work between the two days of highlining and jumping that we did uh so future iterations will be a little bit longer and for that there might be some more depth there might be some more um kind of more spaciousness um I think that a lot of people will appreciate that especially you know especially if people are newer to this work there’s just a lot you’re basically doing a couple of big emotional releases back to back so I want to spread that out a little bit more and there’s also just a number of ideas that I now have for various exercises and ways to work uh work some Reflections and kind of meditative questions into some of the processes while people are doing the activity that’s awesome of course balancing that with being overly structured and letting people have their experience yeah yeah awesome okay so I have one last question for you last question I have for you is like what what’s your biggest gratitude walking out of this like there’s this deep privilege that you got to be with a group of people that they trusted you in this experience that you got to teach something that’s very meaningful for you so there’s like this amazing privilege of of what you ought to do and I’m wondering just where what’s the what’s the deepest gratitude you have for having chosen to do this taking the risk of doing this giving folks this experience which I I’ve heard from so many people was well seven not eight people who that it was amazing what tell me what what the what’s the what’s your greatest what’s the biggest gratitude walking out of this my my biggest gratitude is for for the journey that brought me here and for the the people who have influenced me along the way and that that includes people who are still around that includes a lot of people who aren’t and you know in many of those in the manner of their transition taught me more than anything else I’ve ever learned and there’s just a deep gratitude for a gratitude that I am here and capable of doing this work and and also just a really deep gratitude I have a lot of deep gratitude for for the training that I’ve done with you and with Tara a lot of deep gratitude for the for the coaching cohort that we have and you know the group that I practice with and ultimately the the deepest there was a moment on the the final night when basically the entire thing had completed and we were going to sleep when I took a 20-minute walk to a rock that I used to Camp under like a decade ago and I just climbed on top of that like 40 foot rock or something and then sat and just sat in the silence and just felt myself and felt the place in my history with that with that location with that group and it was just like tears coming down my face for what I had just witnessed in this group and it blew away my concept of what was probable not necessarily what was possible but what I my conceptions of what I thought this first iteration were going to be relative to what it was I was just like oh it went all the way there like there’s nothing else that needed to be done this was this was it this was the retreat and I can iterate but this was this was the the eeky guy this was the the mix of everything that I’ve spent so much of my life doing in a place that I deeply love with people that I deeply love doing the kind of inner exploration that I’ve always been drawn to in many different ways in many different iterations and just to feel that richness of life and that love and just it just was a deep welcoming in that moment it was just everything I can just welcome everything right now and yeah there’s no difference between that feeling and gratitude yeah I I I want to end there because that feels like the perfect way to end but I I also want to say I am really proud of you man yeah thank you that feels really good I’m really grateful that I got to be a part of in any way having that happen in the world and it and it just yeah lot of I have a lot of Pride and and very proud of you thank you yeah I want to add one more gratitude which is that okay the day before like the night before I went down there uh I talked to you and you said hey it’s like you know if if everything goes to shit and you’re feeling yourself it’s way better than if everything goes according to plan and you’re not and that was that one nugget was a really really powerful for me and so thank you you’re welcome before we keep on gratitude-ing all all over the place uh uh just if anybody is interested in this um when are you doing it again and how did they find out about it yeah so I’m planning on doing another one in very early May 2024 followed by another one in October roughly uh so if you’re interested go to welcomingfear.com um or just hit us up through any of the normal art of accomplishment channels artofaccomplishment.com Twitter/X uh or the like awesome thanks Brett talk to you soon thank you