Happy Monday!
I hope you all had a lovely weekend!
I have been working with my client, Jason each day since Friday, and today is our last day of our focused 4 Doctor mastery training.
My buddy Rory is here visiting me as well, and fate would have it that Rory and Jason are buddies that enjoy each others company as well. Even better, Rory is a world class therapist with unique views and skills to share of his own.
Jason and I share a passion for the natural approach to living. He loves stones, exercise, and the history of exercise.
Jason was very kind and considerate of the fact that I have a love of these things too, brought me the antique, hand carved stone dumbbell and hand crafted antique meditation bowl.
The stone dumbbell was used by weight lifters, usually in competitions in the Shanxi Province, China circa 1850. The meditation bowl comes from Shanxi Province, China and has been dated at 1700.
It’s quite an experience to feel and lift this handcrafted stone dumbbell. I felt very inspired to carve my own out of stone, and will as soon as I have a little extra time to play with. The stone is easy to grip and feels amazingly soft in your hands.
I put the meditation bowl inside a hand crafted Native American flower pot with a beautiful clay inscriptions on it. The polarity created by the marriage of the two structures is very grounding in my office and I’m very grateful for such amazing gifts.
Thank you very much Jason for thinking of me in your travels!
Dr. Quiet Meets Dr. Movement In Heaven
My coaching with Jason over the past few days has centered on balancing Dr. Quiet and Dr. Movement. Jason is a very busy executive with all the challenges all executives face when it comes to keeping healthy and finding time to live a more natural, less rushed, holistic lifestyle in a very fast paced world…
Here you can see Jason and I doing tai-chi in my stone circle. We are getting calm and centered, while at the same time getting fluids moving through our bodies, warming the joints and nervous system up, and opening ourselves to subtle energy flows.
We are going to dismantle the big stack you see in the center of the circle, which is my last stonework session.
Jason likes to lift heavy stones, so it is essential that we get his body and mind calm and centered. Lifting heavy stones and stacking them is extremely athletic, demanding work.
I spend a lot of time with my clients teaching them how to utilize both Dr. Quiet and Dr. Movement as complementary systems.
When we use active rest (doing your primary activity at a reduced intensity) and passive rest (using another activity that doesn’t infringe upon your primary activity) effectively, we don’t get stale, suffer poor performance from fatigue, and maintain a balanced state of inner-calm as we create our dreams.
Dr. Movement
The day before (photos above), we had dismantled my previous stack and restored the balance and connection of the stone circle.
After that, we created a beautiful mandala of stone on the ground. Our mandala held the tai-chi symbol. We used this as a walking balance meditation.
Jason was tired from traveling, so we adjusted the intensity of our exercise to meet his authentic needs, which is how to manage Dr. Movement intelligently at all times in your life.
Here you can see us using the stones from our mandala the day before to build a new stack.
I kept having visions of Jason and I building a big stack with twin towers woven together as one structure. I shared that vision with him and we began connecting to our souls (consciousness within) and the stones to gain intuitive guidance.
Again, we use some for of active meditation to prepare for this or it becomes too much of a head-game and the beauty isn’t there naturally.
Here you can see what we created after about an hour and a half of steady, meditative co-creation together.
I wanted to share this photo with you because a common question I get asked by people is, “How do you build those stacks so high without a ladder?” Now you know.
I have to carefully stack stones atop each other to get the height needed at each successive level of the build. It is actually quite hard to find stones that stack evenly enough to be stable.
When climbing stone steps like this with stones that can be as heavy as 200 pounds, on has to be very present in the moment or the PainTeacher arrives with lightening speed to remind you of your haste!
Here she is after cleaning the steps away and restoring the connection of the circle. One of my favorite things to do is build stone sculptures that look like they shouldn’t be able to stand up because they lean, twist, or are very delicately balanced with odd angles.
This stack is neat because it leans quite far toward me as you can see in the photo, but she’s actually quite stable. I’m sure the birds, lizards, squirrels, and wind will let us know very soon just how stable it is!
Working-In
As many of you are aware of from looking at my blogs, I regularly use healing art therapy as part of my coaching and healing practices with clients, and myself.
Our culture is very left-brain dominant, and has become heavily reliant on outside sources for inspiration and creativity. One of the best tools I’ve found for balancing brain hemisphere function, and opening our creative flow is art as unbound play.
When I teach healing art therapy, I put emphasis on NOT judging the art for aesthetic beauty, or it isn’t really art any longer. The beauty of art is that its value is determined solely by the perceiver. A Picasso may sell for a million dollars, but someone witnessing such a sale may be shocked that someone would pay so much for something that looks so unattractive to them.
Healing art therapy is an exploration into one’s inner-world, as expressed by color, shape, shading, and combinations. What is more important than how the art looks, is how it feels during the process.
I have had the joy of watching burned out executives, emotionally distressed children, and most everyone in between turn into a playful child right in front of me with nothing but a few pens and some paper.
As we practice returning to our child-like ability for unbound play (no judgment of outcomes), we remember our natural freedom. Soon, we are more aware of when we are entangling ourselves and creating stress we don’t need.
This “awareness” is the first step toward long-term transformation and inner-calm.
Here you can see Rory (my right), Jason (my left) and I celebrating our completed art piece. Vidya also contributed to this healing art project, but she’s holding the camera so you can’t see her.
I have named this piece “Soul Bird”, since much of our work together this visit centers on developing a better relationship with our souls and learning to take inner-guidance instead of relying on the ego-mind so much.
Learning to feel and read subtle energies is an essential element in learning to feel the subtle communications of our own soul. The soul speaks in silence, or energetic impulses, visions, inner-hearing, inner-knowing and inner-feeling. The voice of the soul is very subtle, just like plant and tree communications.
Typically, people can’t feel plant communications because they are too wound-up inside from stress. One test I use to see if someone is likely to be able to feel plant communications, or their own soul, is to take a phone that’s turned on and have the person close their eyes.
I then ask them to tell me when they feel the phone close to them. Sadly, even people that seem healthy at first glance are terribly clogged up and can’t feel the phone’s energy at all! I’m always amazed because I can easily feel a cell phone as much as 10 feet away from me and they literally shake my insides, agitating me when touching my body.
In the photo above, you see me teaching Jason some methods for connecting with and communicating with plants and trees. He was able to do it easily, which I suspected he would because he can feel stone energies, which are even more subtle. Great job Jason!
Here you can see Jason and I celebrating the end of our highly productive day together last n ight. We are doing something very fun. We are letting my fruit trees guide us in our tai-chi.
Its really quite mind blowing for my friends when they come and join me in a tai-chi session with my trees; my friends are typically very healthy, open people that can feel these things naturally.
The strength that the trees can generate as they push and pull on your energy field to guide you is amazing!
Once you learn to relax and let them guide you, an A-Ha! Moment usually emerges…Mother Nature hast been trying to guide me all along and I just have been too deaf (or over-educated ) to notice!
That brings you up to date in my life.
I hope you take a little time to enjoy some fresh air, a little doodling, some great food, and some deep sleep before we meet again.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
