Fall 2020 15 Year Anniversary Issue
Dear Friends,

As this unprecedented year soon comes to a close, perhaps now is the right moment for us to take a collective breath, balance and center and count our blessings. "Let's do it!" George Leonard would say.

I want to express deepest gratitude to you for connecting to our practice community and for being a light in the world. As a 20-year practitioner, I resonate with ITP's hopeful worldview. By focusing on our own growth, vision for the future and contributions in the world, we seek something greater and more beautiful than our current condition. Hope combined with dedicated practice and generous action for positive change is life-affirming and contagious! I'm grateful to be sharing this path of practice alongside you.

Hooray! 2020 marks our 15th year as a non-profit organization. In honor of this occasion, we spotlight the ITP 9 commitments in this issue, which form the basis for our practice. Enjoy viewing video clips and reading articles submitted by our wonderful ITP teachers, as each reflect on the personal impact of the commitments on their lives.

We are also excited to include readings and quotes from George Leonard and Michael Murphy, our co-founders, who paved the way and continue to do so. Kudos to you both and boundless gratitude!

Wishing you a healthy, safe and peaceful holiday season. Enjoy our gift of music from the George Leonard Trio over the coming weeks and into 2021.
 
With love and gratitude,
 
Pam Kramer 
ITPI President 
Excerpt from
The Future of the Body
by Michael Murphy
The very activities that facilitate growth can also inhibit it. Imagination and self-reflection, for example, if they enlist destructive images and patterns of thought can impede our further development. Indeed, we are simultaneously supported and held fast by the mind-body complex we inhabit, with its functioning so exquisitely adapted to life on earth. That abiding tension of our animal-human nature, its simultaneous resistance to life-threatening change and capacity for dramatic restructuring, must be skillfully negotiated in transformative practice.

We must respect the basic regularities of our intricate makeup as we begin to refashion them, remembering that breakdown must serve buildup (either psychic or physical), making sure we do not injure ourselves as we develop new capacities. Such negotiation can be difficult, of course, and often seems impossible, but it is sometimes assisted by mysterious agencies that seem to originate beyond the ordinary self. These spontaneous empowerments - call them the graces of God or the workings of Buddha-mind - answer our calls for a greater life and confirm our aspirations for it.
Upcoming Events
Transformative Stillness

A Virtual Meditation Experience with Michael Murphy

December 12
9am - 12pm PDT
Integral Leadership Training Program

Develop Yourself as a Leader from the Inside Out

Note new schedule!
March 13 - September 12

Free Zoom Intro Jan 10
ITP Weekly Kata

Join us for our free Thursday virtual Kata sessions

Thursdays
4:30-5:45pm PDT


Enjoy Reflections on ITP Commitments
from our Teachers & Board Members!
Click here to view the 9 ITP Commitments
Commitment 5
by Christina Grote
I am conscious of everything I eat.
Sounds simple right? No dietary advice here, just being conscious of what you are putting in your mouth. Well, there’s a little more to it, but that is the basic idea. 
Commitment 4
by Barry Robbins
Aerobic exercise and strength training are two-thirds of the integral approach to physical fitness, the third being the ITP kata or some form of stretching. These three components represent the golden triangle of Western sports physiology, and combined together, they produce a remarkable effect.
During a moment of crisis, just touching yourself lightly at a point on the abdomen an inch or two below the navel can alter your attitude and your ability to deal with whatever situation you face. With practice, you can bring your bodily balance into a more harmonious state that will be reflected in every aspect of your life.
- George Leonard
Commitment 1 - Roger Marsh
Commitment 3 - Charlotte Hatch
Commitment 7 - Max Gaenslen
Commitment 8 - Donita Decker

Commitment 9 - Rachel Hamilton

Commitment 2
by Kim Kristenson-Lee
When George Leonard and Michael Murphy articulated the ITP Commitments for the first time, I wondered, what were they thinking?

I find it strikingly paradoxical that right after articulating the value of maintaining ones’ own authority (commitment #1), George and Michael immediately articulated the importance of joining in community with others (commitment #2). 
At the root of all power and motion, at the burning center of existence itself, there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix of time.
- George Leonard
Commitment 6
by Lucy Piper
When I first read The Life We Are Given and began to take on the nine commitments, commitment number 6 was one I thought I really had handled. I had been a philosophy major at the University and had read extensively in the areas of philosophy, science, sociology for all the years after graduation. 
Excerpt from Jacob Atabet
by Michael Murphy
Our body is a tower of mirrored doors to the world at large. Revealing and reowning its immense hierarchical structure is possible because our deepest self made it in the first place.

Part of the game is dismembering. Part is remembering – in both senses of the word. For with the knowledge and control we have won we can begin to recreate this human form so that it may house and express a fuller consciousness and capacity.
Both spontaneously and through transformative practice, a new
evolutionary domain is rising in the human species.
- Michael Murphy
Excerpt from The Silent Pulse
by George Leonard
The game is evolution and each of us is fully involved. Through our intentionality, we can change our bodies and the body politic in surprisingly effective and dramatic ways. We are doing so all the time, whether we acknowledge it or not. At the depth of our being, we do know everything. No matter how limited our situation seems, even in a prison cell or on our final plunge to death, we are rich in options as to how we experience the moment. Just by transforming the moment, to some extent we transform all of existence.
Letters to George
Let us celebrate this lovely day; that is, the one which, by chance alone, comes only once on this manifesting plane. Let us thank with brief thanksgiving whatever gods may be.

- George Leonard

Enjoy this touching tribute to ITP co-founder, George Leonard, presented to his daughters, Burr, Mimi and Emily, at For the Love of ITP 2018 benefit gala.