Welcome to Monday!
I hope you are all still enjoying the blissful afterglow of your weekend. I sure am.
I came into the office early Friday morning to finish some work before heading to Encinitas for a massage with Wes Boyce. After my massage I had a lovely steam.
I then had a meeting with some friends to catch up at the Encinitas coffee shop across the street, after which I headed home to relax and finish some drawing.
Saturday, my friend and fellow traveler on the lecture circuit Misty Tripoli came to visit us for an afternoon of visiting, drawing and relaxing in my garden.
Misty is a well-known and respected dance teacher, who, like myself, lectures all over the world. Penny really loves her methods and style, which is quite a complement because Penny’s knowledge of dance is akin to my knowledge of the body-mind-Spirit construct.
I really love what Misty teaches, and how she teaches because at the basis of her teaching is a philosophy that is totally congruent with the CHEK approach to live and creating well-being.
Here you can see my private dance team for the evening at the Chek house! Pretty cool ah.
This is Misty and I showing off our art for the day. Misty isn’t someone boxed in convention, so when she’s around, expect to have the child in you freed from its bondage!
If you’d like to explore dance as a means of unlocking your creative spirit, or getting in shape, I can’t recommend her work enough.
It’s even fun for guys like me that don’t have too many dance moves in their pockets! She teaches anyone to dance easily and freely, including the whitest of the white boys!
You can watch some footage of her teaching her fun dance teaching methods and see some of her DVD’s you can use at home at: www.bodygroove.com
You can also learn more about Misty’s work and see some videos of her and her instructors teaching kids and teenagers on youtube.com
After spending some time with Misty Saturday I had this vision of her dance expression so I drew this sketch to capture the vision:
Enjoy! She’s Liquid Fire Baby!
Saturday, Vidya drew this beautiful mandala as well. Vidya and I certainly can’t dance like Penny or Misty can, but Vidya can make pens dance on paper like few I know.
In minutes, she expresses her simple, pure inner-mysticism on paper. This mandala will be helpful for anyone who’s adrenals are stressed as well as those lacking mental clarity.
Just look at it with a relaxed mind until you feel calm and centered!then choose to live the way you feel and with practice, all blockages will be removed.
Vidya, also created this drawing recently; she was envisioning herself greeting the day . . . I can really feel the love of nature Vidya has, can you?
SUNDAY’S zen BLISS
Sunday was my day to do my manly duties around the house, which today included splitting and stacking firewood.
I grew up on a farm and we sold firewood to make extra money. I’ve stacked and split more cords of firewood than I care to try and count, so needless to say, I’m no stranger to an ax!
Here you can see me practicing with my left hand.
When I was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, I had a pretty back parachuting accident that damaged my left shoulder joint capsule, leaving my shoulder permanently unstable.
Since then, I’ve had to do constant rehab to keep it working well.
I find that whenever I can practice single arm/hand exercises to develop my coordination and reintegrate my left shoulder with the rest of my body, it really helps.
Splitting kindling wood takes a lot of accuracy with the ax so it gives me instant feedback as to how well I’m doing.
By the way, I DON’T recommend anyone use an ax in bare feet like I am here. I’ve got lots of practice with an ax and accept responsibility for whatever I may due to myself, but definitely don’t recommend that practice to others!
Vidya caught this shot just as the wood was splitting and flying. Pretty fun! Great exercise too! You can find all sorts of muscles you never knew you had after a wheelbarrow of kindling is split!
BUILD A STACK WITH ME!
Vidya was out with her new camera in the garden while I was building a new stack. She caught me in every stage of its development so I though I’d share it with you:
The rock just to the right of my right foot is the one I chose as the base. The base stone is the most important stone in a stack. It’s metaphysical equivalent in your life is the root chakra.
Whatever’s left unresolved there magnifies itself in each successive relationship (for the rest of your life ☺).
Here you can see my nice juicy second stone. If the stones don’t conform well naturally, you can “force your choice”, but you usually just come out the next morning to find it all laying on the ground!
The third rock is typically a power center in a stack because most people can’t get more than seven stones to stand stable without practice. If there’s any imbalances here, the road gets narrow from here onward!
The fourth stone is the heart~center. I chose a fairly round and odd one just to make it more challenging and fun.
The fifth stone represents creative expression and will magnify the truth of the “ideas” you’ve given life to below it, and above it!
Usually by now (particularly if you get a little frisky like I did with the fourth stone), you need to stop using your head and get deep inside your inner-self if you plan on going much further!
Now we get into “the groove” of it; if you haven’t been present up until now, you stack is likely to be short lived, particularly if you have as many creatures that like climbing rock stacks as I do in my yard!
The eight’s chakra is one of your subtle body fields, but isn’t really talked about in the Hindu chakra system. This one has a point on top, which will make it challenging to go much higher.
I’m cool with that because that tree next to me is home to as many as 100 humming birds.
When I get a stack any closer to their home than that, they get nervous. They will actually fly at you and your stack to try and get you away from their home if they feel threatened.
One day my buddy Donal Carr was putting up a stack right where I’m at and a humming bird flew right at him and pecked him!
Now I’m getting into more decorative stones, which I also enjoy.
This is a nice red stone, which draws a lot of earth energy into it. When in polarity with a white stone, a strong chi current is created. This gives off energy to the garden and all whom enter it.
Here’s my completed stack. I got the entire stack up in about 20 minutes or so. As you practice, you learn to stop thinking and let your inner-guidance system work for you.
The zen masters call this being with “no-mind”, which I truly love!
If you’d like to learn how such a simple practice can be used as exercise, creativity and healing, we have a spot or two left from Friday’s (Feb 10th) zen In The Garden workshop.
Feel free to have a look at: www.ppssuccess.com where there’s a banner right on the home page.
EATING AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
I fasted all day Saturday and felt so good Sunday, I ate about half as much as normal. I didn’t eat lunch and here you can see me enjoying a beautiful Vidya creation of vegetables, beans, and sourkrout.
I love to connect with the spirits of the food and invite them into a co-creative relationship with me.
It’s a lovely meditation and for me, is a way of showing respect for the spirits that give us an opportunity to live.
Overall, my weekend was just lovely and I can’t wait to get back into the zen garden Friday with everyone!
I hope you all have a wonderful day today. I’ll look forward to sharing more with you tomorrow.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
