Jason Alan Griffin :: The Blog

FYI this info sheet has five sections. Payment Dog What Material I Teach Housing What To Do Next PAYMENT: I have no established set of rates and I have no minimum requirement to visit and teach in your community.  Here’s how I find it works best for everyone: I appoint a Producer in each town I plan to visit. If you are reading this, you are probably being asked to be my Producer in your town. The Producer and I decide together what materials I’ll present while I’m there and we’ll settle on a date and time. The Producer will secure the space and promote the event to the local community. The Producer will also set the price for the event, collect fees from the students and use those fees to pay the rental in the space, if applicable. The profit after expenses is split 30% / 70% between the Producer and myself, respectively. I am also open to other suggested ways of arranging this. There are some cases where the best location to invite me to is a place that strictly...

 I will post updates to this schedule as they're made.  Days marked * have been confirmed. Visit this blog for exact times and locations. WASHINGTON *Seattle  (JAG's Birthday Bash "Frankie Say Nia" Playshop)  - June 13 *Leavenworth - June 15 - confirmed w/Gayle IDAHO *Hayden - June 16 -confirmed w/Jamie *Sandpoint - June 17 -confirmed w/Blissa MONTANA *Helena - June 18 -confirmed w/ Kathryn *Billings - June 19 -confirmed w/Sue *Red Lodge -June 20 -confirmed w/Sue MINNESOTA *Minneapolis - June *23, *24, 25 -Dawn WISCONSIN *Hubertus- June 27 am -confirmed w/Jill IOWA *Iowa City - June 28 -confirmed w/Beth ILLINOIS *Chicago - June 29 -confirmed w/Kendra OHIO *Columbus - July 1, 2 - confirmed w/Jill NEW YORK *Averill Park - July 5 - Richele, VERMONT *Newfane - July 6 MASSACHUSETTS *West Concord - July 8 - confirmed w/Maria, Julianne CONNECTICUT *Milford - July 10 - confirmed w/Nancy MASSACHUSETTS *Pittsfield - July 12 - confirme...

Here are the ideas I have for things I am preparing to bring with me on my travels around the country. 1--  FRANKIE SAY NIA (routine) I’ve created a routine using all 80’s Alternative “New Wave” music. With songs such as Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), Burning Down the House, We Got the Beat and many other quirky tunes from bands such as the B-52s, Culture Club and Frankie Goes to Hollywood who gives us the inspiration for the name of the routine. Frankie Say Nia is a play off one of the slogans that the band used to promote itself. "Frankie Say Relax" and "Choose Life" appeared all over the place on white T-shirts in big black block letters. It is a standard, one hour classic format Nia class allowing five minutes to set the focus and 55 minutes of fun, familiar 80s music. If your class is into ‘dressing up’ for special event classes, the New Wave fashions offer lots of fun ideas. Themes were lots of bright colors and faux animal prints. (For example, purp...

Want a sure-fire way to keep spinning your wheels in a quagmire of confusion while remaining conflicted about what to eat? Keep on reading blog entries about what "latest studies show". With new studies coming out daily (most of them not even peer reviewed or repeatable) you should be quite fuzzy on the whole thing in no time. 

 Keep on buying the latest Best Selling nutrition book and fully buy into whatever slant of the month is being touted by the populous. Search especially long and hard for those articles that support your current way of thinking, they’re out there. No matter what you believe, it’s out there, somewhere. The Internet is an amazingly vast place with such an array of input of all types. You don't have to look very far or hard before you'll come across an article about a 'study' that proves what you 'believe' (or what you don’t want to believe) about nutrition. 
 But then keep looking and you’ll soon find one that claims just the...

Today marks the beginning of the 100 day countdown until I begin the Frankie Say Nia tour. Which kind of freaks me out at this point, because it is not much more than a vague idea in my head. But I gave myself until January 1 before I said I had to start writing anything down and contacting people. Until then, I am allowed to keep it all as a fantastic jumbled notion in my head. But I kind of want to start organizing it, so here it is. I'm going to spell it out for the first time. It will begin on the first day of spring when I'll have a send-off event in Seattle and then make my way down the west coast (WA, OR, NV, CA) and across the desert (AZ, NM) turning around in Houston (TX) and heading back up through the mountains (CO, UT, WY, ID) and then back to Seattle for a little break in time for the summer solstice. If I get my act together I might be able to put together a class or a series of classes in Seattle before I head back out again, which I plan to do after J...

I was watching a documentary about cults earlier this week and as I watched one of the cult leaders give her vitriolic hate speeches, I was trying to find her love. I was searching for my empathy, believing that we're all doing our best given our circumstances, and knowing that there was a light shining somewhere deep inside of her. Hearing her talk about how much violence "God" wanted her to perpetrate onto the world, it was quite a challenge for me. But I didn't give up on her. After the documentary was over, I still hadn't found her inner goodness, but I also hadn't given up my search. I knew it had to be there, I just wasn't seeing it yet. I recognized something very important. And this is that my first instinct was to label her and her actions as 'wrong'. But since I know that reality is always right, I dug deeper. I wasn't going to be satisfied to hide from this problem under a veil of judgmental condemnation. This morning, two days late...

People have often told me that I should write a book about nutrition. And I have considered it, and have even sat down to get it started a number of times. But I always run into the same problem. I have too much integrity. I am too conscientious to write a book about nutrition. I don’t know how authors of diet books can live with themselves after publishing. The only way to remain focused and get out a cohesive book is to hone in on one, narrow-minded aspect of nutrition, and to focus in on one particular set of beliefs. My problem is that the more research I do, the more I find compelling evidence to support many conflicting ideas. I’m not just talking about minute details but large, compelling and important issues like whether or not human beings thrive on eating meat, for example. I have seen extensive and compelling arguments for either side of that debate; and that’s just one example of a very large and important topic. Just one of scores of controversies on the topic of human...

Well, here we go again. The holiday season is one of my least favorite times of the year for many reasons. Let me get a few of them off my chest. First of all it is the beginning of the winter season, which is dark and cold. The days are short and might be filled with rain, snow or other inclement weather. I love to be outside, in the sun, with very little clothing on. I much prefer summer and spring; even fall, although the weather may be on the colder side, at least has pretty colors to look at. Secondly it is a season of traditions. The whole concept of traditions rubs me the wrong way as a thinking, sensual, aware person. I abhor herd mentality. I encourage everyone to think and act as if they had free will and were actually living in the present moment. Traditions are the opposite of that; they are “doing something without giving it thought, just because we did it last year.” I can think of no less valid reason for doing something than ‘we always do it’. And it’s not only ...

It breaks my heart when I hear of my friends going on a “cleanse” or on a “detox”. First of all, it’s important to realize that a cleanse or a detox is simply a ‘diet' given a less offensive name. Since it has been pretty common knowledge for a few decades now that diets are bad for your body and mind, the industry cleverly came up with a couple of exciting new terms to market diets anew to desperate and unsuspecting consumers.  90% of recently polled American high school girls were on some kind of ‘diet’.  Some were using laxatives, some were taking pills and some were vomiting after every meal. Many girls, still pubescent and developing, were limiting themselves to less than 1200 calories a day, which is what the World Health Organization cites as the lowest possible daily healthy human intake. Below that, they classify it as starvation. The healthy RDA of calories for young adult women is 2000 and for men is 2500. Harvard Health Publications suggests women eat at least ...

Today, on Facebook, I was asked a question, which I answered. The response to my answer was, “It was just a question.” To which I replied, “yes, and I answered it.” The asker of the question then offered that she didn’t mean for the question to be offensive. I assured her that I was not offended by the question.  (To me it seemed like she had asked a legitimate question that deserved a thoughtful answer, which I gave.) I have no desire to ‘interpret’ why she felt the need to assure me that she didn’t mean to offend me because such interpretations lead to more problems than to understanding. 

 If I really wanted to pursue it, I could’ve asked her, “Why did you think it necessary to inform me that you didn’t intend to offend me?” But I actually think it would have been a waste of our time and would keep us mired in the misunderstanding and possibly dig us in deeper. Instead I chose to assure her that I wasn’t offended and let it be. That way we were free to move onto other topics...