Happy Day To You!
I’m celebrating a day off today after teaching zen In The Garden Friday and my Vitality Building workshop on Saturday.
We had an amazing group of men that came to zen In The Garden. We had fun toning and chanting, creating with unbound play and relaxing together.
Here you can see us at the end of the day putting the finishing touches on our combined rock art.
We used chanting and toning to harmonize us as a group. As in previous zen In The Garden workshops, there was a beautiful harmony among us.
I don’t recall a time during our day when we tripped or were obstructed by each other. There were a number of times one of us reached for a rock to put where we felt it wanted to go, but another of us already had that intuition and was there before we got there.
In usual zen fashion, we allowed each person to create without obstruction and simply allowed ourselves to be led to the next opportunity. It was great fun!
Here you can see how the sunlight passing through the lime tree interacts with the stones. The stones absorb the light and some is reflected, which creates the orange looking blotches you can see, particularly on the round stone in the stack in the forefront of the image.
The rocks are charged by the sunlight and they emit what I often refer to as magnetic light. The magnetic light of the stones penetrates your body when you are within the stones field of projection.
Here you can see Paul Leendertse and Paul Jensen (Yes, we had 3 Pauls!) standing next to our rock formation. The light you can see hitting Paul Jensen’s right leg and solar plexus region and right arm is what I’m referring to as magnetic light.
I’ve found this light to be very nourishing and stabilizing to the body. It has an energizing and calming effect.
When I come home from road trips and am tired and jet-lagged, the light from the stones feels like sun on a cloudy day inside me. It freshens me up and balances my body’s rhythms to those of the sun helping my hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis balance itself to the rhythms of home.
This light by the way, is basically a visual of what I see in my third-eye when using magnets to heal myself and others.
The stones have unique magnetic properties that cause each type of stone to interact with the light in ways unique to its mineral composition. Just as you use different types and strengths of magnets for healing work, different types, sizes and combinations of rocks have unique healing properties.
My time in the garden is used to develop a library of experiences that allow me to better understand how to use natural healing methods with my patients.
It was great fun to see the students having their own unique realizations as to how what they learned during our day together could be used to enhance their personal, professional and spiritual development and lives.
Here you can see our group creation at the end of our lovely day together. Some of the guys had also built individual stacks in different locations in my garden as well. The six of us had an amazing day together. Thanks Guys!
Paul Chek’s Vitality Building Workshop
We began our day with cold showers! Yes, “cold showers!”
Cold showers are a very powerful, natural means of stimulating the sympathetic nervous system and adding yin energy to the body to start your day.
Sleeping puts us into a hibernation state. If we’ve eaten incorrectly, we can’t effectively manage our blood sugar throughout the night, which results in elevated stress hormones and poor quality sleep.
When we wake up tired and groggy, instead of reaching for coffee and sugar to start us up, why not use cold water? There are no negative side effects and it certainly brings you back into your body and jump-starts all our biological system.
It also aids the body’s ability to regulate temperature and activates our internal pump systems, helping to keep our body clean.
Our cold shower and morning mandala practice were coupled with learning how to practice Sun Meditation.
Here you can see me teaching my students how to use alternate nostril breathing to harmonize the left and right brain hemispheres.
There is a lot of inner-growth that comes by way of sun meditation. The first stage of any and all spiritual growth practices though, is the willingness to participate!
We had a small group for this workshop. When I asked what people thought the reason for the small turnout was, the most common reply was that no one wants to get out of bed that early.
Though I understand that when viewed from the standpoint of the social-mind (conditioned mind), as a man that has always put the learning experience and opportunity first, and every-day patterning (that really doesn’t teach much of anything) second, I found myself feeling empathy for all those that constantly tell me they want to learn how I develop myself and aren’t motivated enough to get out of bed and come learn.
Sadly, the same people are motivated enough to pester me when I’m trying to eat, shower, shit, pee, drive, work and do what I need to do to live effectively.
That’s the nature of the conditioned mind! I’m really proud of those that did show. I think if you talked to them, they would tell you it was worth getting up for the experiences they gained!
Here you can see a plate of beautiful Chef Lance’s breakfast.
I love sharing how I eat because anyone that follows my lead is now putting their money into food that sustains the world, not just rich people’s narrow, minded profit-motivated endeavors. We all loved the organic foods we shared for breakfast and lunch – Thank you Lance for your love and delicious meals!
One of the many methods of vitality building I use and taught to my students in the workshop is the use of breathing and movement. Here you can see me demonstrating how to use kettlebells or dumbbells to harmonize the body and mind to our natural breathing cycle.
This method of movement at a natural breathing rate is very effective for creating body-mind harmony.
Here you can see me teaching the class how to use extension stretches and exercises as a means of healing one’s self from depression or negative mood-states.
When I teach classes like this, people are genuinely surprised to find out how effective natural, easy methods are. I can’t even begin to count the number of times people have asked me, “why aren’t medical people using these methods when they are safer and more effective than drug therapies?”
The answer my friends if very simple! “They work!”
If the medical system was to incorporate natural methods that really work, people would heal and instead of sedating symptoms and wouldn’t need drugs for life. This would be a business disaster for hospitals and drug companies.
Therefore, the medical model, which is a business model, isn’t designed to teach people how to manage and care for themselves, it’s designed to create just enough of a shift that people are willing to subscribe to methods that facilitate the idea that “something is wrong with them”.
First, teach them that they have a disease, then tell them what the (pseudo) cure is. Once you believe you have a diagnosis or disease, then the sad-sack-ego has just what it needs to avoid responsibility and the opportunity to take responsibility for yourself!
and so the story goes on and on and on.
I’ve found it very interesting that many of my patients would rather have chemo therapy, radiation therapy and dangerous surgeries than take a cold shower in the morning!
That pretty much sums up why the medical system has prospered for the last hundred years, even though most people at large know it doesn’t work!
If people didn’t keep buying into their own unwillingness to participate in life, they wouldn’t keep putting money into a system that sells them diseases. It’s really quite simple.
Sunday I spent some time doing some reintegration work with my friend and student Corey Jung. We used rock stacking as part of our therapeutic practice.
While Corey worked on his stack, I took the opportunity to create something unique for myself.
I love the challenge of lifting heavy stones and building tall rock stacks. Every rock you add magnifies any imbalances left in the rocks below.
In general, the taller a stack is, and the longer it lasts without falling over, the more present you were when creating it.
This beauty is one of my taller stacks and I’m confident even the birds, squirrels, lizards and wind won’t take her down too soon. This took me about four hours to build and I got one hell of a great total-body workout too!
The higher you go, the heavier the stones get and the harder it is to position them gently without knocking the whole stack down. Sometimes, it can take me 45:00 to an hour just to get some of the higher stones placed so that their center of gravity is aligned with the center of gravity of all the stones below.
You have to be totally present during the process because if you are even a little too forceful, the whole stack comes down in a flash!
Yes, you can lose fingers and toes! Yes, this is DANGEROUS!
Yes, I love it because it teaches me to take responsibility of my actions and to accept the results of being too aggressive, rushed, and not listening to the stone Buddha’s guidance!
Here you can see Corey’s zen meditation for the day. For those of you that live in Northern California, Corey practices as a CHEK Exercise Coach and HLC 2 in Arcata, CA. If you are looking for a lovely man to coach you into healthy eating and living, Corey can be reached at: fitnessexpeditions@hotmail.com
I’m going to go see if I can find a massage therapist that’s working and let go if it all for an hour.
Since today is a holiday here, may we all pause for all the souls who have been called to fight and who have died in combat over the many years.
I hope you are all enjoying a beautiful, peaceful day.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
