Karma Tshiteem, Secretary of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Commission, last week told conference attendees that people frequently first understand GNH on an intuitive level — a firmer grounding in theory and practice comes later.

That definitely spoke to me.  Initially, it was so clear.  Then, it became confusing, trying to articulate how the GNH perspective can bring together economic, environmental and personal happiness concerns.

Susan Andrews, founder of the Future Vision Institute in Brazil and one of the keynote speakers at the conference, said she’s been thinking of GNH as three “E’s” — environment, economy and expanding heart. I finally got all that, and internalized it on a deeper level, at the conference.

Somebody else who “got it” was NPR reporter Lisa Napoli.  Lisa was with us through the entire conference, and somehow managed to distill countless hours of conference notes and interviews to a short, thorough report that aired on NPR today (June 9, 2010). Through interviews with GNHUSA activist Chris Wood, Karma Tshitseem, professor and author Eric Zencey, and Dahlia Coleman of GPIAtlantic Youth Programs, Lisa did a great job of pulling the concepts together.

You can also hear the enthusiasm of the conference in the background.  Take a listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127586501