Happy Tuesday to You!
I hope you had a great weekend. For some of us, it was a holiday yesterday!but Penny and I and some of the staff were here at the office working away!
I had a lovely weekend with friends but due to the number of new lectures I’ll be giving in Europe very soon, I had to mix some half days of work with rest and play.
This weekend, I got my exercise in the garden creating rock art. I dismantled a few of my existing rock stacks to get at some of my bigger rocks and recreated whatever wanted to come through me.
This is one of my favorite creations from this weekend.
There are some odd angles, small footprints, and heavy stones involved, which dramatically increases how much stillness and presence it takes to get it to withstand the ocean breezes blowing through my garden.
She’s still standing though!
Vidya was very busy creating new rock formations all over the garden. She’s like Troy Casey; the two of them can build a rock stack faster than you can dial your friend’s phone number!
Troy Casey built a stack months ago during a zen in the garden workshop and it’s been adding beauty every since!
Our CHEK UK distributor, Gavin Jennings has been staying with us up at the house this past week. Here is Gavin enjoying the creation of his first rock stack.
Gavin did well in the garden and had a lot of fun too!
This is Gavin and I taking a much-needed rest after lifting stones for a couple hours in the sun. Cheers to great water from my stone water charger!
Angie Lustrick (The Ulitmate CHEK Professional) came to visit us for the day Sunday. We are working on a new webinar presentation about how to train seniors using the CHEK approach and she shared her new slides with me.
They look great and we can’t wait to share. Keep your eyes open for the announcement!
Here you can see Gavin and Angie enjoying some rest after lifting stones. That lump of flesh behind t hem on the ground sleeping beautifully is my buddy Rory.
ART PLAY IS ART HEALING!
I was ready to draw something new this weekend, but unlike most times where a vision appears to me (usually during tai-chi) and then I draw it, I was completely blank when I sat down to draw this piece.
I love it when that happens because it’s yet another chance for me to practice being tuned to my soul.
To create this drawing, I asked my soul (consciousness within) what we should draw today. My energy began moving in a circle.
I know that means to start with a circle, which is the beginning of a mandala as opposed to a regular piece of art (mandala means wheel or vortex). Once I drew the circle, I asked “What’s next?” I was then directed to my box of watercolor pens and to the blue one. That became the blue outer circle of the mandala.
From there, I just continued the process of being completely willing to follow the movement of my soul as I was directed to choose the colors and create the shapes that emerged progressively over about four hours.
This drawing represents The Tree Of Life.
I was wondering in the back of my mind why I was drawing a big tree with purple flowers!Then I looked up and through the window, I could see the beautiful bougainvillea bush with vibrant purple flowers in my front yard.
The tree is right where we typically lay our blankets to sun bathe and visit friends in the front yard. I’m constantly amazed at what messages come through to me (and others) in my art.
Most of my students that practice the art therapy methods Vidya and I teach them have many similar experiences. Through art, we can learn to be guided effortlessly.
We were really busy relaxing with creativity. Here you can see some of our mandalas we created before we began stacking rocks and doing our group mandala (will share that below).
Vidya’s art is the bottom left. Angie’s mandala is the top left piece. Rory’s mandala is the top right.
Here you can see them again, but with Gavin’s very cool (first!) mandala with ours. Great job Gavin!
GROUP ART THERAPY FOR FUN AND HEALING
After creating our individual mandalas and getting some good exercise out in the garden, we came into the house for a rest.
A few of us took a nice cold shower to wash off the heat and garden dirt to freshen up before beginning our group art project; it’s amazing how healing and restorative cold showers are!
How We Began Our Project
To begin, Angie collected our birth dates so that we could determine our collective numerology for all of us, including Penny.
Our master number was “6”, which we used to choose to correlate to Arnold Patent’s Universal Principles we would use to guide our intention for our art.
Universal Principle #6: ALIGN WITH THE UNIVERSE
I open to the Universal flow of energy moving freely through my body. Alignment with my purpose keeps me aligned with the Universe.
Prior to beginning our art together, we changed “OM” for a good fifteen minutes or more until we were all harmonized so well that there was loss of individual identity; very cool experience by the way!
I then broke the essence of the principle down to something easier to chant. My soul guided me to this summary of the principle:
I am One
With The Universe
I sense my purpose effortlessly.
We then chanted that together as a group until we felt aligned with the principle and began drawing. We were like bees in a beehive, moving effortlessly around the art pad.
I thought I’d share the creation of our group expression of Universal Principle #6 with you in stages so you can see how it unfolded:
Vidya led us off by drawing a yellow star bursting in the center of the page, representing her/our collective “shinning!”. As soon as I saw it, I had the vision of kundilini (life-force) energy rising to create consciousness as, and within life.
I took two shades of purple and held the pens together as I drew the beginnings of the Diva (of the group) you see taking shape in the drawing.
Here you can see Angie and I drawing as Rory tests a pen for his next addition.
Once Rory got started, it was like an artesian well gushing through the surface of the earth. Rory’s got a very unique and cool art style that is a lovely mix of the masculine and feminine energies.
This is our art piece toward the end when we all reached a sense of completion. I’m just putting in the black lines to indicate that the Diva’s wings are flying in both time, and timelessness.
This is all of our individual and collective art for the day out in the sun under the tree with the purple flowers I mentioned earlier.
ART INTERPRETATION
Vidya and I have both spent many years studying symbology, art therapy, and a wide variety of related fields so we can best use art therapy to help ourselves, and our clients/patients heal.
As a brief explanation of what this drawing symbolizes from an art therapy perspective, here is what I’d share if I were to read this as though it were a patient’s or friends art:
THE STAR
The center of our art began with Vidya’s star. It is bursting yellow light. Yellow is a power color, and often indicates “will, warmth, movement and power.”
The star represents birth (beginnings), life, and death, for all stars live through those cycles themselves. Without stars, there would be nothing to see or experience in the universe; there would be no yang to counterbalance the extreme yin of cold, dark emptiness.
THE HEARTS
Around the star is an electromagnetic field. The field waves take the form of hearts in light green.
This symbolizes that the Universe is an expression of Love and that if we don’t see the love in any situation, we are simply not being present with the larger picture of what IS.
Green is a color of connection and integration. Green also symbolizes love, nurture and growth and is a very healing color.
FIRE
The entire drawing is surrounded in the fire emerging from Vidya’s star in the center. Fire represents warmth, movement, life, death, power, stability and transformation or spirit.
If it were not for fire, none of us would be here and there would be no life on earth! Fire (yang) creates movement within the vastness of yin.
Where there is movement, there is “consciousness of.” For us, it also represented the fire (warmth) of the sun on this beautiful, hot, sunny day.
THE DIVA
A Diva is a being that represents “consciousness within”. Diva’s are created wherever or whenever consciousness interacts with matter (and possibly information, such as a symbol).
This Diva, based on our guiding mantra:
I am One
With The Universe
I sense my purpose effortlessly.
Our Diva represents the guiding Spirit of The Universe.
As such, our ability to sense our purpose effortlessly is afforded to us by tuning ourselves to the reality that the same consciousness that created the Universe also created every animate and inanimate thing within itself, including us! “Saraphiel” is the name given to the highest ranking angel in the Universe in some Islamic writings, including those of Rumi.
I share a pretty comprehensive explanation of Siraphiel in my audio download titled “The Absolute Essentials Of Rumi”, which is available at www.ppssuccess.com in the audios section for those of you that may be interested in better understanding Rumi’s beautiful, powerful messages.
Though some of the left-brain dominant people may think I’m a bit nuts, if you are open minded enough to read the teachings of a great scientist, inventor and metaphysician, you can learn about Divas studying some of Itzhak Bentov’s books.
Itzhak Bentov was scientist, mechanical engineer, inventor and mystic and is most widely known for having invented the pace-maker used by cardiac surgeons the world wide today.
If you want a scientific explanation of metaphysics, then read his book titled, Stocking The Wild Pendulum – On The Mechanics Of Consciousness.
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If you want a deeper look at Divas and his metaphysical teachings, I suggest reading his book titled, “On The Mechanics Of Creation, A COSMIC BOOK, by Itzhak Bentov with Mirtala.
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THE GOLDEN PYRAMID and ALTER
Gold is a very powerful, healing color. Metals are the synthesis of earth energies and in general, are good conductors of electricity (energy).
You can see the gold is in brick form on our collective drawing. It is stacked in the shape of a pyramid; pyramids collect cosmic energy, are often placed on earth chakras, and represent higher consciousness.
The capstone of the pyramid represents the human head.
In our drawing, the capstone is separated from the body of the pyramid by the snake of kundalini that expresses Spirit in our Diva’s body (which represents the Universe).
The pyramid of gold is surrounded by light emission and red energy patterns that represent life, safety and security, and the earth.
VORTEXES, PATTERNS AND STARS
Our drawing has a number of energy vortexes, which represent energy in transition from one state to another; it is the energy transition from one state to another within you that creates consciousness within.
If there were no biochemical reactions creating energy emission and vortexes within you, you’d have no self-consciousness. Energy in transition relates to “Shiva” in Hindu metaphysics.
Patterns create circuits of energy and the colors used to create patterns determine the frequency it vibrates at, and therefor, the affect it has on your own energy construct.
Stars are found all around our Diva, which all represent the creation of movement, time, matter, space and time.
In the bottom right of our drawing, you can see a star with a spiral energy pattern in yang colors emitting from it. This exemplifies that all creation is conscious and communicating with the rest of itself.
STEP BACK AND RELAX
If you step away from the image several feet, you will see the Diva from another perspective. Look at the gold pyramid and the alter. You will see the gold is the center of the lips created by the alter.
The initial star Vidya created expands into the serpent’s tail to become the Diva’s nose. The wings of our Diva become The Diva’s eyes.
The head and face of our Diva becomes energy emerging from the crown chakra of The Diva.
Well, that’s it from me today. As you can see, even though I was a busy boy working much of the weekend, I did create time to rest and play.
I find that if I don’t do that, I stop losing my joy for work and things begin to get a bit too mechanical for my creative mindset.
I was blessed to have some of my very best friends around me this weekend and we really enjoyed each others company.
It was nice to see Penny out tending to her plant spirit friends in the garden this weekend too!
In closing, I’d like to mention that I’ve put an announcement for a workshop being conducted by Chris Maund, the most senior C.H.E.K Instructor (Chris was the first CP4 to turn in his thesis and actually become a Certified CHEK Practitioner way back when).
Chris has studied soft tissue therapies and all related for many years now and has a wealth of skills to offer students.
Though this workshop is not a C.H.E.K Institute course (see announcement below), I do encourage anyone wanting more soft tissue skills and a better understanding of how to mix soft tissue work with stability training to consider attending.
Chris is a very straight forward, no BS type of teacher so come ready to learn and leave your cell phones off or you may meet a whole new type of Diva ☺.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
Shoulder Workshop
Encinitas, California
Sunday July 29th 2012
10am-5pm
Taught by Chris Maund
In this workshop I will show you how to identify and correct a variety of common shoulder dysfunctions including:
• ROM restrictions e.g. frozen shoulder
• Instabilities e.g. anterior gleno-humeral instability
• Common pain syndromes e.g. sub-acromial impingement
I will demonstrate a number of manual therapy techniques to treat the soft tissues. Please wear shorts (men) and shorts/sports bra (women) as I will be demonstrating the techniques on people in the class.
I will also demonstrate several stretches and stabilisation techniques. Lack of stability is a very common problem when dealing with the gleno-humeral joint. I will show you specific exercises to re-stabilise a painful gleno-humeral joint.
All the techniques taught in this workshop have been developed and used over the 16 years that I have been helping people with their physical problems. Once you master these techniques, you will often find that you can create a big change in symptoms in just 1-2 treatments.
I highly recommend that you review the anatomy of the shoulder BEFORE you attend this class as we will not have time to do this in the workshop.
Register by Tue June 12th and pay $200
After June 12th the price rises to $250
Please contact me if you have questions or would like to register:
Phone: (760) 753 2334
E-mail: chrismaund@chekinstitute.com
