Eccentricity of expression allowed in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, vigor and moral courage, which it contained.
That so few now dare to be eccentric marks
the chief danger of the time.
-John Stuart Mill

I had the good fortune to be in Los Angeles when the human potential movement: Yoga, Tai Chi, eastern philosophy, meditation and all the rest burst into bloom. The time was 1967. I was 31 years old. I studied Yoga with a vengeance and became one of its first teachers in the field.

I’ll never forget moving back to my old home in Florida and announcing to my mother I wanted to teach a Yoga class in the living room. Her first response was, “How can you teach something no one has heard of before?” I said, “Well, now they will!” Then she said, “Why do you want to teach something so strange? People will think you’re crazy.” I said, “Well maybe yes and maybe no. I simply have to do it. Yoga has done me a world of good and I think it can do the same for others.”

Lo and behold, my mother had a big flower planter in the middle of the living room, but when realizing I needed more space, she hired workers to hammer it to bits. A new rug was laid out and colorful pillows were scattered around the corners of the living room. And so I set about blazing into a new and different frontier in which the path of Yoga has now become known all over the world.

The point of this story is the time is now, my age is 73, and here I am once again braving the forces of tradition with a radically new form of fitness called WOWZACISE that quantum leaps over solid body mechanics into exercising total freedom of expression as our sacred birthright.

There was only one rub. Just as I was finally ready to launch this program, a barge of self-talk grew in loudness inside my head. A voice insisted, “No one is going to take you seriously ever again! This process is undermining your well-earned intelligence! Go back to your real name and offer something the mainstream can relate to!”

How extraordinary. Some things never change! Now I am forced to take my own medicine, in which I prescribe to others to expect the Inner Judge to call when we attempt something new. Before any major launching of a new idea, the fear of ridicule, the fear of God forbid – being called a “crazy old fool” looms large in the brain. And yet the greatest fear is coming to the end of my life with the realization that I have not fulfilled my unique God given destiny that only I can fulfill.

So my message to us all is dare to be outrageously yourself! What appears to be eccentric behavior is a flexibility of mind, a diverse and different, adventurous and creatively passionate way to consider alternatives beyond the conventional modes of thought. Lets face it, you are an original force in the world that has within you unique resources, inventiveness and natural genius that no one has ever seen or heard before. Living in a world of unpredictable change, the time is now to come fully alive. Daring to take a stand with an open vulnerable heart develops greatness of spirit that nothing can put asunder.