Maximizing Joy
In Your Life, Work, Relationships — and World
Claim Your Happiness Birthright:
Practical Ways to Enhanced and Lasting Joy in a Challenging World
An 8-session on-demand course and a sample
session mini-course plus live interactive trainings
with pioneers of embodied spiritual awakening
Saniel Bonder & Linda Groves-Bonder
Featuring Guest Speakers
in order of appearance:
Rick Hanson, Ph.D., Mirabai Starr, Ken Wilber,
Stephen Dinan & Devaa Haley-Mitchell, Miranda Macpherson,
Anodea Judith, Ejna (formerly Jean) Fleury, & Terry Patten
We’ve all heard of “mixing business with pleasure.” It’s a whole other matter, nowadays an urgent necessity, to infuse business and our whole lives with joy in every way we can.
Maximizing Joy is a feast of humane wisdom and inspiration for how to actually do it.
The guest interviews are like a mini-summit of world-class spiritual leaders. The teachings of host facilitators Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder are leading-edge and wonderfully grounding.
Anyone can benefit from this extraordinary course. A lot of us need it. I heartily recommend it!
— Business icon Chip Conley is a boutique hotelier and a global hospitality and strategy adviser, founder and CEO of the Modern Elder Academy (MEA), and NYTimes bestselling author of Wisdom@Work and Learning to Love Midlife.
Dear Friend,
A couple of great questions haunt lots of us every day:
With all the issues, pressures, and anxieties I'm dealing with every day, and with everything that's going on in the world— how do I get and stay happy?
More than that — how can I be as joyful as possible, and help others do that too?
Think about the things that tend to drain off, if not completely boil away or freeze up, the juiciness of your sense of basic wellness and happiness.
The transformational process we two offer, best known as Waking Down in Mutuality® or Waking Down®, never shrinks from the pain, darkness, and difficulties of being alive.
But we're not "downers."Â Here's our take on the matter:
Joy is good and good for us all!
This doesn’t mean we should always be outwardly gleeful. Linda tells a personal story:
Mud Puddle Joy (3:00)
There’s plenty of information and experiential practice in Maximizing Joy and its sample session mini-course, Laying a Foundation for Maximizing Your Joy, about how to deal with feelings and experiences when joy is hard to find, like a death in the family.
The quest to maximize joy might seem superficial, selfish, or polyannaish. On the contrary: as contemporary mystical author and champion of spiritual activism Andrew Harvey has said, "Joy is a moral imperative."
We'd add that joy is also an urgent cultural and ecological necessity. And a spiritual one. Sri Yukteswar, the guru of the great 20th century yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, once taught him, "Ever-new Joy is God."Â
Both Maximizing Joy courses take you into those and other depths of what joy can be for you and for us all. As a human being, you have a birthright to happiness. This course can help you claim it.Â
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Who this is for:
 The Maximizing Joy 8-session course and its single session, standalone mini-course could be of great value to you if:
- you feel overwhelmed by the news and the division, polarization, hatred, and cruelty you see in the world today
- it's like you've lost the "spark" in your life and can't seem to regain it — maybe you're exhausted or burned out
- you often find yourself dwelling on negative thoughts and feelings
- you try to practice gratitude, mindfulness, or compassion but can't get enough traction — maybe partly because you're feeling so much outrage
- you're struggling to fight off depression, anxiety, hopelessness, or despair
- you're tired of feeling like you're living on the surface, you want wisdom and inspiration
- you've realized a stable spiritual awakening but don't feel embodied — or you sense the joy is still eluding you
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A little about us:
We're married, non-sectarian, and innovative spiritual and life teacher-coaches.
For more than thirty years we've been helping people lighten and brighten their ordinary lives with joy.
Many have achieved embodied spiritual awakenings and gone on to clarify their genius and express their unique gifts.Â
For more on us, go to About Your Host-Facilitators, Saniel and Linda at the end of this letter.Â
Just knowing that the Maximizing Joy program is available gives me joy and hope. Created by pioneering spiritual leaders Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder, this unique course is both timeless and timely.
In our challenging world, with unprecedented levels of depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and fear, this is a powerful antidote to experience, metabolize, and make your own. With powerful practices and processes, Saniel, Linda, and their wise guest teachers welcome us to supercharge our joyousness.
If you’re curious but not ready for the full 8-session course, you can opt for a “sample session mini-course,” Laying a Foundation for Maximizing Your Joy. This mini-course itself could help you optimize happiness in a deep and lasting way.
I’m delighted to give this program and these great teachers my highest recommendation.
— Marci Shimoff is the #1 NYTimes bestselling author Happy for No Reason and Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul and a longtime, dedicated spiritual practitioner.
The Two Kinds of Joy, and Why It’s Totally OK for You to Maximize Both
Linda’s "Mud Puddle Joy" story above is a preview clip from our introductory presentation on the Maximizing Joy course, “The Two Kinds of Joy, and Why It’s Totally OK for You to Maximize Both.”
The full video and audio-only recordings of that talk, along with a lightly edited transcript and a topics list, are available for purchasers on the main course page and the stand-alone, sample session mini-course page.Â
These two other video peeks into that presentation summarize the two kinds of joy: the experiential and temporary, and the existential and lasting.Â
The Two Kinds of Joy (1:10)
Three Key Points on the Two Kinds of Joy (2:50)
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Already know you want to take the full 8-session Maximizing Joy course or the sample-session mini-course?
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Some background info on these prices:
- Our original, live version of the full course was priced at $297, a reasonable fee for such an offering, before it occurred to us to invite guest teacher-speakers to contribute interviews. (That's why their recordings were initially called "bonus" interviews.)Â
- Given how much value our guest speakers add to your course experience, it would have made sense to raise the full course price.
- Instead we've cut that fee in half. Nowadays when so many people are struggling to make ends meet, we want the course to be affordable for as many of you as possible.Â
- We added the sample session mini-course later as an extremely low-risk way you can start your Maximizing Joy journey today. Â
From Saniel and Linda’s intro talk it was validating to get that I'm already tapping into both the existential and the experiential forms of joy — and liberating to hear that I’m truly free to maximize both in my life.
In the mini-course, Linda’s story about being pulled over by a traffic cop on Halloween when she was dressed up as a baby doll showed me it’s possible to bring lightness and joy even to really bad situations.
Rick Hanson’s neuroscientific explanation of how evolution has made our minds like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones has stuck with me.
So has his recommendation just to “take in the good” every day.
My whole life has already changed for the better as a result, and I’m just very grateful.
- Cat Dancing-Strong is a retired IT project manager, a devout Christian, and a devoted dog lover. Cat offered this testimonial after watching the Intro Video and taking the mini-course, which is described below.Â
Knowing Saniel and Linda, and seeing the lineup of luminaries they’ve assembled, I know that Maximizing Joy has been designed and infused with wisdom, integrity, and practical tools for growth and transformation — and, yes, conducted with maximum joy.
- Philip Goldberg has hosted us twice on his Spirit Matters podcast. He’s the author of a sweeping modern spiritual history, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation — How Indian Spirituality Changed the West; The Life of Yogananda; and Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times.
"Laying a Foundation for Maximizing Your Joy":
The Sample Session Mini-Course
If you’d like more information or an opportunity to experience a full session of Maximizing Joy without buying the total course, we're happy to offer you this mini-course.
It’s the entire first session of the full course, including these video and audio-only recordings:
- our own Presentation
- our guest Interview with Rick Hanson, Ph.D., best-selling author of Buddha's Brain
- a Conversation we hosted with participants in the original live course
The Presentation and Interview are also available in lightly edited transcripts, and there are topics lists with recording timestamps and transcript pages.
The mini-course also includes two guided meditations:
- our approach to “Gazing” with one another as a way of amplifying spiritual presence and communion
- “Six-Step Recognition Yoga™,” a way to work with challenging issues or feelings, both negative and positiveÂ
Laying a Foundation for Maximizing Your Joy offers you a sound basis for everything else you can explore, learn, and implement from the full course.Â
And, on its own it's a treasure trove of access to enhanced and lasting joy.Â
Joy, and such associated feelings as bliss and happiness, are often in short supply in this troubled world.Â
In this remarkable course, Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder and their guest speakers teach their virtual students how to find and maximize joy, not only in such obvious settings as family, faith, music, Nature, work settings, and loving relationships (with pets as well as other humans) but also in adversity, contemplation, and solitude.
Their discussion of the neurophysiology of joy presents its underlying mechanisms.
Too often joy is taken for granted, but this course provides ways to find it, maximize it, and make it a part of everyday life.
This is an important, original project, one that will bring joy to many people.
- Stanley Krippner is one of the founders of the human potential movement, the author of A Chaotic Life: The Memoirs of Stanley Krippner, Pioneering Humanistic Psychologist, and a leading explorer bringing the paranormal into mainstream scientific studies.Â
What You Can Take Away from "Maximizing Joy"
or the Mini-Course
▶ How to plug into age-old truths that so many find in faith — rejoicing in the "3 Faces of God" in your own way
▶ How embodying joy helps you transcend both spiritual bypassing of wounds and pain ("what you resist persists") and emotional wallowing in them (which can re-traumatize you)
â–¶ Ways to open your heart to the joy of giving and receiving love, even if not especially in challenging times
▶ Learn by experience how serving and just being kind to people and other creatures makes us happy — and them too!
â–¶Â Discover how generosity and gratitude are anything but altruistic, and trust makes endorphins swim around in us like happy dolphins leaping through the waves (couldn't resist! :->)
â–¶ Practical brain- and heart-science on how to activate the "limbic loop" for shared emotional intelligence, and other empowering neurophysiological strategies and practicesÂ
â–¶ The liberating, energizing power of "Six-Step Recognition Yoga" for "greenlighting" your shadow, which you might tend to resist and/or struggle with, and for enhancing your gifts and your lightÂ
▶ The power of gazing with someone you trust to lighten your spirit, anchor your resilience, and even activate or enhance your cellular awareness of the one spiritual Heart we all share
▶ Awaken or strengthen your confidence that every moment of prayer or meditation and every act of kindness contributes more to peace on Earth than we can possibly know
▶ Increase your appreciation of a song well sung, a task well done, a child's love, the stars above — the simple marvels and the sheer miracle of our ordinary moments of living
These are a few of the benefits you can enjoy by taking the full course. Many are available through the mini-course too. Hopefully you’ll find more life-enhancing takeaways in the courses on your own!
The Full Course Sessions
Like Session 1 (which is also the mini-course) each of the seven other sessions of Maximizing Joy includes:Â
- A video, audio, and transcript of a Presentation by us, Saniel and Linda, organized around 3 Key Points you'll also find on the course page
- An Interview we've conducted with that session's Guest Speaker
- A Conversation we hosted with original participants in the live course (transcripts not included)
- A written topics list noting time stamps of specific topics in the recordings and on the associated transcript pages (also not included for the Conversations)
Under each session title below we've included one or two main benefits you can bring away from that session.
These are followed by short video clip previews of our guest speaker Interviews, at this time from Sessions 1 and 2. We replace those previews each month with video clips from the next two sessions' speaker Interviews.
This provides a rotating exposure here on this landing page to brief excerpts of all these remarkable teachers' wisdom and personal stories in Maximizing Joy. Â
Session 1 (also the Mini-Course): Why Non-Joy Seems to Win so Much of the Time, and What We Can Do About It
â–¶ Possible takeaways: Leading-edge neuroscience and practical tools to help you stop adding unnecessary reactive suffering to the normal pain and stress of being alive.
â–¶ Guest Interview with Rick Hanson, Ph.D., renowned neuropsychologist and author of Buddha's Brain, Hardwiring Happiness, Resilient, and Neurodharma, and founder of the Global Compassion Coalition. Rick's work over many decades is an unparalled unification of leading edge neuroscience and traditional, especially Buddhist, spiritual wisdom.Â
< Rick Hanson Preview Clip: Helping Our Brain Be More Like Velcro for Good Experiences and Teflon for Bad Ones (4:20)
Session 2: Serving and Being Served — Secrets of Unstinting Generosity and Delighted Receptivity
▶ Possible takeaway: proving to yourself in action that those who give, serve, and care for other people and living beings receive soul-enriching benefits — often more than those they're serving.
â–¶ Guest Interview with Mirabai Starr, an award-winning author, internationally acclaimed speaker, and a leading teacher of interspiritual dialogue. Her own works include Caravan of No Despair, Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, and Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life as Sacred Ground. She is also a renowned translator of the works of St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and other medieval mystics.Â
< Mirabai's Clip: More than a Mother’s Loss and Transformation — On the Wounded Healer or Reluctant Prophet Syndrome (4:28)
Session 3:Â The Endless Dance of Being True to Yourself While Helping Others Do the Same
 ▶ Possible takeaway: understanding that, as Linda says, living and speaking your truth is not a popularity contest — yet you're not alone in this life, so it's to your advantage, as well as others', to listen to, hear, and help them too.
â–¶ Guest Interview with Ken Wilber, philosopher, a founder of the international Integral movement, author of A Brief History of Everything, The Religion of Tomorrow, and many other bestselling seminal works. Ken's work continues to impact all aspects of culture and society around the globe, making him one of the most revered leading lights in our time for holistic, integrated living. Â
Session 4:Â Acting Local, Being Global, and the Grace of Contribution
â–¶ Possible takeaways: appreciating new levels of how profoundly interconnected we all are — and how doing good in your local, everyday life is always contributing to the greater good of everyone everywhere.Â
▶ Guest Interview with Stephen Dinan and Devaa Haley-Mitchell, co-founders of The Shift Network, a leading global source of online education on spirituality and personal and collective transformation and a treasured resource for millions. Stephen is the author of Sacred America, Sacred World. Devaa is an ordained minister, ceremonial priestess, and women’s leader.
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Maximizing joy in times like ours, when fear, anger, fascism, and despair threaten to erase love, compassion, freedom, and hope, is a revolutionary act. Maximizing Joy is the resistance we need if people and planet are to thrive.Â
- Rabbi Rami Shapiro is the award-winning author of Holy Rascals: Advice for Spiritual Revolutionaries and more than three dozen other books on religion and spirituality.
Session 5:Â Drinking From the Fountain of Blissful Nectar in Your Own Heart
 ▶ Possible takeaways: relief from the assumption that you have to struggle to transcend your ego, and opening to the grace of natural surrender that can come through "ego relaxation."Â
â–¶ Guest Interview with Miranda Macpherson, interfaith minister, spiritual teacher, author of The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation, and leader of the Living Grace Global Sangha. Miranda is also a gifted chant leader and singer of sacred hymns and a radiant presence of peace and love in our world.
Session 6: Why Trust Is the Ground of Joy — and How to Strengthen It
â–¶Â Possible takeaway: learn how to build trust in yourself, in others, and in God, the universe, or Being, so you feel more secure and confident in yourself and in life altogether.Â
â–¶Â Guest Interview with Anodea Judith, founding director of Sacred Centers Academy and chakra system expert, therapist and global teacher, author of Wheels of Life;Â Eastern Body, Western Mind;Â The Global Heart Awakens; and more. As people around the world know well, Anodea's bright spirit complements and synergizes with her brilliant wisdom and heart.Â
Session 7:Â The Serene Joy of "Foundation Friendship," the Radical Unity That Liberates Us into Our Uniqueness
▶ Possible takeaway: discover the mutually enriching power of relationships that are consciously built on each participant's whole-being recognition of existential joy and unshakable wellness of Being.
▶ Guest Interview with Ejna Fleury, a spiritual activist and counselor, mystic, visionary, and ceremonialist. Ejna is a Lakota Grandmother, the First Peace Ambassador of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe, a leader of the Founding Mothers Movement, and the founder of Healing Hearts at Wounded Knee, an organization devoted to ending war and massacre.
Session 8:Â What the One Great Heart We All Share Won't Settle for Less Than
â–¶Â Possible takeaway: a growing faith that we're not just interconnected, we are, in Thich Nhat Hanh's beautiful term, "interbeing" — and that in our exploration of interbeing we're participating in the one great Heart of all life, and finding undeniable grounds for both optimism and activism.Â
â–¶Â Guest Interview with the late Terry Patten, global Integral leader, (r)evolutionary, author of The New Republic of the Heart, and founder of The New Republic of the Heart Community. Terry was a cherished mentor and guide to change-makers and leaders around the world. See more on and from Terry below.Â
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As an experienced student of Saniel and Linda's Human Sun Heart Work, I’ve taken and/or participated in most, if not all, of their courses. Of them all, Maximizing Joy has been my favorite and most personally meaningful and empowering, for at least 2 specific reasons:
1) The emphasis that it's totally OK to maximize the personal, daily, everyday joys. I think I had still been living with some lifelong internal messages, received from my mother (and no doubt others in my young personal world), that to care for self, let alone seek “joy,” was selfish and not good or OK.
Even though I had done a lot of psycho-spiritual work for decades before this course, somehow that message was still in me. The permission, emphasized in this course, to maximize that personal joy was very liberating for me — I GOT IT!
Perhaps the “reason” is that I now somehow know that my own joy helps bring out my inner SUN and LIGHT more to others and the world.
2) The interviews with the 8 other teachers were so excellent — the ways Saniel and Linda interacted with them and what I heard from them all was very rich, empowering and motivational for me.
And, in retrospect, overall, I feel that this course really helped deepen my already felt and known sense of “unshakable JOY."
- Marlene Samuelson is a professor emerita of biology and a gender awareness/rights advocate.
Words of Welcome from the Heart!
This recorded course and its mini-course excerpt, plus the ongoing live trainings we offer, are open to all. Everyone is welcome — especially all who sense that:
- our potential is immense,
- we can enjoy life ever so much more than we ordinarily do, and
- no matter how dark or hopeless things seem, what we do to maximize joy in ourselves and others helps brighten our whole world!
As you consider…
Whether to invest your time, money, attention, energy, hope and heart in the Maximizing Joy full course or mini-course:
Remember all the stuff that tends to syphon off the juice of your sense of wellness, if not boil it away or freeze it solid?
It or other things like it are still going to be here tomorrow, testing and challenging you.
This course can empower you to meet all that and more — with joy!
We’re confident you’ll be glad you did!
Sending you all our love and Heart-blessings, with deep appreciation for who you are and are becoming,
Saniel and Linda
 P.S.  If you would like to taste a free "appetizer" for the "main course" or mini-course, click here to opt in to a 5-day series of emails on principles and practices for Awakening into Joy. It's our gift to you!
About Your Host-Facilitators, Saniel and Linda
The spiritual teachings of Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder embody timeless wisdom, immense practicality, and a refreshing lightheartedness and joy. They are authentic healers — practitioners who help people become whole by discovering their intrinsic holiness. And, they are among the most talented, multifaceted, awake people I know.
Larry Dossey, M.D., is the author of One Mind, The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things, and Prayer Is Good Medicine.
Saniel Bonder is one in whom the Conscious Principle is awakened, and he is attempting to forge a new path of mutuality in the midst of ordinary, messy, everyday realities ... and Linda Groves-Bonder is a brilliant teacher in her own right.
- Ken Wilber is a renowned cultural philosopher, a primary founder of the international Integral movement, and the author of The Spectrum of Consciousness, The Religion of Tomorrow, and many other seminal works. He's also our guest speaker in Session 3 of Maximizing Joy.
At Ken's invitation Saniel and Linda became Founding Members of his Integral Institute and, along with some two dozen other teachers from multiple traditions and schools, Charter Members of Ken's Integral Spiritual Center.Â
Saniel Bonder has been awakened for decades, and was an early pioneer in the democratization of embodied awakening.
I have known him for almost 50 years, and I can attest that, quirks and all, Saniel is the real thing — brilliant, awakened, authentic, deep, alchemically potent, sincerely caring, and vulnerably, divinely human — a true original.
He has a superpower or siddhi: he is able, quite naturally and authentically, to behold the unique divinity, humanity, and gifts of an awakening soul, and to mirror it back — not infrequently with life-changing catalytic effects.
During the early years of teaching Waking Down in Mutuality he catalyzed transformational awakenings in many dozens of ordinary people, creating a community of awakening and clarifying a dharma that embraces the messy imperfection of human life rather than attempting to override it in hypermasculine fashion.
He is a tantric, and works the alchemy of the deep feminine — now in a new way because for over two decades he has been synergistically partnered with his wife, Linda Groves-Bonder.
Linda is revered in her own right by students for an immense capacity to transmit transformative love, and for her unique abilities to help people awaken to and deeply embody their divine humanity.
Together, Saniel and Linda are now empowering the awakening and growth of many emerging gnostics, weaving a masculine-feminine matrix of blessings, and — one heart at a time — activating and provoking new levels of emergence and empowerment, helping people 'drop' into conscious enjoyment of and participation in the sacred nature of reality, recognizing that it is always already the case.
— Integral leader Terry Patten, author of the bestselling A New Republic of the Heart, became a fellow spiritual journeyer with Saniel in 1974. They maintained their friendship all through the years until Terry passed away in late 2021, having contributed immensely to the lives of many thousands. For a time he participated in Saniel and Linda's Waking Down in Mutuality work and served as a Waking Down teacher. Terry is also the guest speaker in Session 8 of Maximizing Joy.
For over three decades, Saniel and Linda have been blessed to pioneer an in many ways new form of spiritual awakening.
They've taken enlightenment from the remote temples, “Olympic spiritual athletes,” and venerable schools of traditional spiritual practice and transformed it into a deeply embodied, relational way of contemporary ordinary living.
And they've conveyed this ever-evolving process, best known as Waking Down in Mutuality, into the towns, households, and workplaces of everyday people around the world.
With their help thousands have lightened and brightened their daily lives, hundreds have transitioned into unshakable, embodied awakening, and dozens have become teachers and transmitters of that condition in their own unique ways.
Saniel was born Jewish in New York, grew up in the small-town, mostly Christian South, and became a Harvard Honorary National Scholar, earning a B.A. in Social Relations.
After completing a two-decade spiritual quest in late 1992, he dedicated himself to and was soon joined by Linda and others in democratizing the new kind of conscious embodiment they've been graced to stably enjoy.
Saniel has authored spiritual books, among others Waking Down, Healing the Spirit/Matter Split, and Great Relief, and two novels, While Jesus Weeps and Ultimaya 1.0. He's an amateur flute player and a golf nut who doesn’t get to play nearly enough.
Linda grew up in a Catholic family in the Midwest. An artist from childhood and an athlete and thespian, she graduated from Ball State University with a B.S. in Art Education. Linda was a professional singer-songwriter and photostylist, and continues to be an avid photographer and painter. She toured with an international band in the 00’s and has released two solo albums, I’m Here and Joy of Being.Â
Since her awakening in 1996 Linda has focused on teaching and coaching work with Saniel and others. Her day is also full of other natural sacred ceremonies: feeding the hundreds of wild birds that visit their yard, taking care of many plants and trees on the property and of course their beloved cat Stripes, and being the primary caretaker of their home.
Linda and Saniel: For most of the last two decades, they’ve lived in and offered their services from a lovely home among the vineyards and pastures of rural Sonoma, California. Their rented house and its grounds have become a true sanctuary, saturated with the living, peace-bestowing presence of the great Heart of Being.
They're close with both of their extended families and treasure their many friends. They're also dedicated world citizens and fierce patriots, fighting for the freedoms and equal rights of everyone everywhere to realize their divinely human potential and express and share their unique gifts — with joy!
Saniel and Linda offer their publications and active services as teachers and coaches through a for-profit company, Human Sun Institute. They're honored and grateful to be able to meet and serve many others in these capacities.
They also steward a 501(c)(3) non-profit to sustain their home and haven, Sun in Your HEART Sanctuary Fund. You can learn more about them and their total Human Sun HEART Work™ at sanielandlinda.com.Â
Saniel and Linda hope you’ll make great use of Maximizing Joy and look forward to hearing from you! You can write them at [email protected].Â