Inner Tapestry “Eco-Consciousness” October November 2006

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A Holistic Journal Celebrating & Supporting LIFE! u Rebuilding Communities ~ Starting From the Heart

Inner

u Messages From Clothes u A Conversation with John Paul Caponigro u Ayurveda & The Healing Act u Food Jitters u Planting Garlic in Fall u Temple Lomilomi ~ Ancient Hawaiian Bodywork

Oct/Nov 2006

Tapestry u

ECO~CONSCIOUSNESS u

F

R

E

E

u Feng Shui ~

Water in Feng Shui

u Herbal Healing ~

Food, Medicine & Beauty from the Sea

u Destination Healing ~

Primitive Ways of the Past...

u Modern Shamanic Living Building A Sanctuary In Your Own Backyard

u Exploring the World Religions ~ Evaluating A Spiritual Teacher

u A Breath of Healing Living From The Green

Volume 5, No . 3

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Conversations With God, October 20th~22nd (For details see page 25) WIGOUT Conference, October 29th (For details see page 24)

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Trager ®

An Approach for Every Body www.trager-us.org

Movement Education. Body/Mind Integration.

Gentle. Effective. Life-changing.

"Creating peace in the world, one person at a time."

Dr. Milton Trager Certified Trager® Practitioners in

Maine & New Hampshire

Marlena O'Hagan-Buzzell Fryeburg, ME 207-212-7721 kbuzzell@megalink.net Lindsley Field Newcastle, ME 207-563-5889 www.pathtotheheart.net

Carla Keene Portland & Bath, ME 207-653-8393 cskeene70@hotmail.com

Gail Edgerly Portland, ME 207-761-3765 gailedge@maine.rr.com Liz Berks Cornish, ME 207-625-2347 lizland@pivot.net Jane Biggio Bartlett, NH 603-374-6326 ® bamboomountain@ncia.net

Introductory Workshops to the Trager® Approach Ongoing In Portland, Bridgton and No. Conway, NH.

For more information, please contact Marlena O'Hagan Buzzell Inner Tapes try Jour nal: Enviro nm ent ally f r iendly p r inted wit h Org a nic I nks on Org a nic Pa per!

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October 28th, 6:00pm, $10 The Hope Spinnery 725 Camden Rd., Hope Maine

For Reservations contact Lucy @ 207-763-4179

For additional information visit: www.pathways 2u.com www.onethemovie.org

Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 3

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Contents

Healing Through Creativity

A Holistic Journal Celebrating & Supporting LIFE!

Upcoming Themes:

Oct/Nov 2006

Dec/Jan 2006/2007: Being Gratitude Fe b / M a r 2 0 0 7 : N e w Fa m i l y Va l u e s April/May 2007: Blossoming into Spiritual Adulthood J u n e / J u l y 2 0 0 7 : Tr a n s c e n d e n c e

Features Messages From Clothes

Page

7

by Yishi Hooper

Rebuilding Communities ~

by Rita Dixit-Kubiak Starting from the Heart A Conversation with John Paul Caponigro

Pages 8 & 9 Pages 12 & 13

by Scott Cronenweth

Temple Lomilomi Ancient Hawaiian Bodywork

Page 16

by Suzanne Blackburn

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Ayurveda & The Healing Act

Page 17

Shamhain

Page 18

by Heather Siri Temple

by Clair G. Wood

Food Jitters

Page 23

Planting Garlic in Fall

Page 26

by Sharon Heller, Ph.D.

by Adelaide Winstead

Welcome to Inner Tapestry Available in more than 400 locations In its fifth year as a free publication, Inner Tapestry provides a pathway of support for all seeking the awareness of living a conscious life by creating and supporting a network of connection within the holistic community.

The journal is supported by its advertisers and distributed to fine shops, offices, bookstores and cafés, health practitioners, education centers, public libraries, health food stores, and healing and wellness centers.

If you would like copies placed at your business or location please contact us. This journal is a great resource for your clients and customers.

See y ou r a d ve rti s e m e nt i n Inne r T a p e s try

QUALITY AND VALUE - ME, NH, CT, MA-DISTRIBUTION - CONTINUALLY GROWING! FIVE WAYS TO ADVERTISE: Display ads, Directory of Resources, Yoga & T’ai

Chi Directory, Calendar of Events and the Classifieds. Each section has details on how to become an advertising presence with Inner Tapestry.

Email, call or see our Website for ad rates. info@innertapestry.org (207) 799-7995 www.innertapestry.org Inner Tapestry does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the articles and advertisements.

Responsibility for the products and services of our advertisers rests solely with them. Articles are for information only and do not constitute medical advice. Please obtain written permission before reproducing any part of this publication. All rights reserved. ® 2006

www.innertapestry.org

Subscriptions

Departments

are available:

$20.00/year, 6 issues A H olistic Journal

Artists & Writers ~ Interviews ~ Cathy Melio

Page 10

by Judith Perry

Loving Earth ~ Electricity From The Sun:

by Pat Foley

A Brief Exploration of Photovoltaics

Page 14

Astrology ~ As Above, So Below ~ The End of The Rainbow Page 18

by Maya White

A Breath of Healing ~ Living From The Green

by Donna Amrita Davidge

Cooking Consciously & Eating Healthy ~

by Guest Writer Mary Carrier Hoodack

Page 19

Eat Your Sea Vegetables!

Herbal Healing ~ Food, Medicine & Beauty From The Sea

by Gail Faith Edwards

Page 20

by Jen Deraspe

Page 21 Page 26 Page 28

Feng Shui & Geopathology ~ Water in Feng Shui

Page 29

Modern Shamanic Living ~ Building A Sanctuary

Page 30

Insuring A Sustainable Future

by Werner Brandmaier

4 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

Publishers

send check or money order to:

All inquiries call:

Inner Tapestry Journal 925 Sawyer Street South Portland, ME 04106

(207) 799-7995 info@innertapestry.org

The Way of Life-Itself ~ We're All United in One Big Living Organism

by Norm Hirst

Exploring The World Religions ~

Destination Healing ~ Primitive Ways of the Past

by Evelyn C. Rysdyk

Joan Emmons, Ron Damico, Betty Close, & Jacqueline Cone

by James Bean

Evaluating A Spiritual Teacher

Page 31

Pages 32 & 33

Mixed Media ~ Book, Website & Music Reviews Pages 34 & 35

Awareness and the art of Seeing ~ The Raven

by Kevin Pennell

Celebrating & Supporting LIFE!

Inner Tapestry can be picked up for free in over 400 locations, but to insure you don’t miss a copy, subscriptions are available.

In Your Own Backyard

Directories

Directory of Resources Pages 37-42 Heart Visions, A listing of events, trainings & trips...

Page 36 Calendar of Events Pages 43-46 Classifieds Page 46 Yoga, T'ai Chi & Meditation Directory Page 47

5 INNER WORKINGS

OUR EXPRESSION OF INTENTION is to continue providing a pathway of support for all seeking the awareness of living a conscious life. As we weave from within, we begin the creation of the outward expression and celebration of our own unique tapestry. Through this exploration of holistic health, natural living, spiritual and life consciousness we create and support a network of connection within the holistic community and its practitioners.

To our readers, we would like to ask everyone to take the opportunity to email our columnists, feature writers, artists and advertisers with comments, suggestions and information inquiries. They all are extremely wonderful and dedicated individuals who look forward to hearing from you.

We are also looking forward to your comments and suggestions as we all continue to evolve and grow together.

Embrace The cover illustration used in this issue is a Touch Drawing from internationally known artist Deborah Koff-Chapin. Since originating the process of Touch Drawing in 1974, she has introduced Touch Drawing at conferences and educational institutions all over the country, as well as teaching trips to Maine teaching artists, therapists, educators, healers and others interested in this creative practice of physical, emotional and spiritual integration. Her SoulCards 1 & 2, which are sold worldwide, are inspirational decks of 60 cards whose archetypal imagery assists in turning one's awareness towards inner wisdom. She is the author of Drawing Out Your Soul.

Touch Drawing is an active part of our Maine creative art community, being a way to bring us to a deeper level of connection within self. You can check with Deborah's web-site as well to find a practitioner and will have a wonderful journey just taking in the images that she presents.

For more information, call (800) 989-6334 or visit her web site www.touchdrawing.com, where you will find her teaching schedule and is a treasury of interesting articles, images, stories and a complete catalog of the products needed for Touch Drawing.

Food Friends & A Wonderful Fall Day! How much better des it get?

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New this Issue: Welcome to Fall and Eco-Consciousness the October November issue of Inner Tapestry. I would first like to start with a huge thank you to our writers and advertisers for their co-operation in getting this issue together so that it could be printed in time for the Common Ground Fair in Unity. We hope to see everyone there, it should be a wonderful fair.

Once again a lot is happening, Maya White is no longer writing her column for Inner Tapestry as her life is expanding in new directions. We are still entertaining a new columnist for the conscious cooking column as well.

Jason Freidus has experienced computer problems for this issue and we will keep in touch with his situation.

We are going to be showing Conversations With God in a pre-screening in three locations, Leapin' Lizards in Freeport, Union Church in Biddeford Pool and Portland New Church in Portland the weekend of October 20th - 22nd, details can be found on page 25. Advanced ticket sales are done on line with Spiritual Cinema at www.cwgthemovie.com.

Lucy Yanz from Hope Maine has contact us to do a special showing of One the Movie at the Spinnery in Hope, Maine so that people in that area may have the chance to see this great movie. The information for this showing can be found on page 3. We are looking forward to meeting and visiting with many of our readers and contributors from that area.

We would also like to welcome Valerie Davis and Paulette Zisette who have most graciously come into our lives to help us with advertising and new places in Maine for distribution. We are excited to have Valerie working on the expansion into the central area of Maine and Paulette will be available for all of our mid-coast family.

The next news is that Inner Tapestry as you may have noticed is moving! We have found a new home in South Portland on 925 Sawyer St. The new phone number is 207-799-7995. We have found a beautiful home with room enough for Inner Tapestry to have its own space, room for our Pathways playshops and groups to grow and hoping that we get to meet more of you in person there. Thank you Jane.

We have added new practitioners to our Directory of Resources and have added a full page onto the Calendar/Classified section, so thank you all for your submissions, I am always in awe of the support of community that these people have the desire to contribute to bring Inner Tapestry to so many.

On The Cover

Photo courtesy of Andrea Freidus

;

INNER TAPESTRY

IS LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO HELP SUPPORT THE GROWTH OF THE JOURNAL

BY SELLING AD SPACE. THIS IS NOT SELLING IT IS SHARING WHAT THE JOURNAL IS, WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU AND WHAT YOU FEEL IT CAN OFFER OTHERS. OUR INTENTION IS TO CREATE COMMUNITY THROUGH SHARING WHAT WE LOVE AND BELIEVE IN. IF YOU FEEL THIS IS SOMETHING THAT RESONATES WITH YOU PLEASE CALL RON OR JOAN AT (207) 799-7995 OR EMAIL US AT innertapestry@verizon.net Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 5

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Blessed Maine Herb Farm School of Herbal Medicine Herbal Medicine Correspondence Course with Gail Faith Edwards

12 in depth lessons ~ 1 year of study Fall Class begins November 1st www.studyherbalmedicine.com gailea88@gmail.com (207) 654-2879

6 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

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Messages from Clothes by Yishi Hooper

FORWARD

While cotton farming uses about 5% of the agricultural land around the globe, conventional grown cotton consumes approximately 22.5% of the insecticides and more than 10% of the pesticides used in the world.

Conventional farming devours roughly 1/3 of a pound of pesticides and fertilizers just to produce enough cotton for a single T-shirt. Most humans walking around the surface of Earth carry loads of toxins in their cotton apparels. These chemical toxins contain many carcinogens and other manmade compounds that block photon flow or life force.

Cotton is woven into our life and thus the toxic residuals of the many known and unknown “cides” enter our lives from all directions. Cotton touches us in many ways: Personal Care Products (swabs, pads, tampons etc.), Household items (bedding, bathroom towels, bathrobes etc), Clothes (intimates, T-shirts, jeans, etc.), Foods (cottonseed oil in snacks, the feed given to the livestock we consume…).

MESSAGES FROM CLOTHES Just as plants have roots and we humans have ancestors, words have their origins. The word life has its root. Life is rooted in breath. Take a deep breath, and feel life. With each exhale and inhale, we weave our intentions into the web of existence and experience our Source with unlimited potentials of possibilities. There is no telling of beginning and ending, only flow of life, of breath. Now that you and me, are wrapped these things called clothes, do we dare to say they are close enough to give us some insights on how our creation of realities go?

Common sense tells us that our clothes last longer when we take care of them. We feel good and look healthy when we put on clean and nice clothing. Our clothes not only keep cold and other unwanted external influences away, they also breathe through and with us. Imagine this: our clothes are actually living beings that constantly exchange energy patterns with their immediate vicinity and bigger environments.

Let us try a little meditation. Take a deep breath. Sit back and look within your body. Look into the fabrics that make up your clothes. Feel your skin cells. Do you see the interactive communication between your skin cells and the molecules and atoms of the fabrics that enclose your body? Are your cells comfortable with these fabrics? Are your clothes happy where they were and are?

Allow your skin to tell you the messages of your clothes.

They are speaking to you. Do you hear them?

Likewise, we also breathe through the materials/fabrics crafted to wrap our physical bodies. Since our clothes are such intimate neighbors and close friends of our lives, perhaps what they would like to tell us could be of vital importance to our general well-being. Though we could be very busy with our solid physical experiences and at times their faint voice could easily escape our already fed-up senses. Their voice, however, still getting through to inform us of the life we came to love. Often they talk to us via our feeling centers.

So what are they saying? Let me quote a little from what I have heard.

• Hempseed is high in protein, amino acids and essential fatty acids, making it one of the most nutritionally complete food sources on earth.

• Hemp is a highly evolved plant species and is not genetically engineered.

• We can grow enough hemp for biomass energy in this country to meet energy needs of the whole world!

Tears of Lady Silkworm

Silk carries the metamorphic inspiration for all life forms evolving to the next higher step. The silkworms are the timeless self-transformers and their cocoons where raw silk is reeled from, are in actuality the chambers where pupae create silkfies out of themselves.

One single cocoon can yield a 1000-meter-long thread.

Imagine that it took about 630 cocoons to make 1 lady’s blouse and over 110 for a man’s tie. In silk apparels we enjoy much in the western world, there are stories of child labor and sweatshops. Many workers in the developing countries cannot afford to feed their families even loaded with long hours of labor under very difficult conditions.

Perhaps, silk is better off appreciated as the topics for poets, singers and artists. After all, the evolutionary wisdom in each cocoon will be needed for each human that commits to evolve in this lifetime and create a bright future on Earth where ALL LIFE IS VALUED EVENTUALLY.

Woolly, The Spirit of Sheep Cries…

Conventional cotton farming lost sight of the symbioses seen in ecosystems of all scales and can be described as hydroponic growing using “dead dirt” as the growth medium. The soil is often sterile: everything cotton growth needs has to be provided. It uses GMO seeds for roughly 70% of US grown cotton, controls weeds by all kinds of “cides” and defoliates with toxic chemicals.

Organic Cotton Farming uses untreated seeds and never GMO seeds. It seeks to restore and build up the soil, increasing its organic matter content, which in turn increases its water-retaining capacity. Its effective cooperation with Nature’s symbiosis maintains and enhances the balances within the cotton fields. Crop rotation, restoring organic matter of the soil, physical removal and hand hoeing for weed control, beneficial insects and setting traps for pest control are the key words often seen in organic cotton growing practices.

It relies on seasonal freeze /water management for defoliation.

The green sages behind the Hemp Family speak:

• Hemp produces 4 times as much paper per acre as trees.

• Hemp requires no pesticides or herbicides to grow.

• Hemp is the strongest vegetable fiber on the planet.

• Hemp fabric is soft, durable and machine washable.

• George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp on their estates.

It is time to rekindle the kinship humans have developed with animals that carry our stellar origins.

The lambs are crying for your love. Our dear friends, do you hear them? Many products including leather and animal furs are actually made in the ways that jeopardize our environments and harden our hearts.

The wool, the woolly clothes and blankets can carry lots of residual from their chemical treatments. Why don’t we support those shepherds who love their sheep and treat their herds as living beings? Ultimately, the sheep bring their feelings into the wool blanket we receive for our newborn babies. In our dreams, we can get a visit from our sheep friend from the future. Are we brave enough to hear their crying and make the efforts to stop their tears from flooding our hearts?

Messages from our clothes are continuing to inform us of our life processes. How do you feel about these little excerpts from these intimate friends? Remember you don’t ever have to rely on scientific databases or authoritative reports to receive their information. All it takes is to close your eyes and feel your clothes. What are they speaking of ? Listen… © 2006 Yisi Hooper Yishi is a life-long dreamer. It's by recording her dreams she has come to appreciate the continuity and beauty of life. She wishes the information she brings into the physical realm will serve many on the journey. Yishi has a private teaching and healing practice and can be reached at www.raythelight.com.

Enjoy reading this issue of Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 7

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Clothing can be extended to serve as a bigger concept that embodies the totality of all the disguises and costumes we create to live our destiny and experience our Source as pure consciousness, pure Light. Now that the game of separation is coming to its end, our inner Light is yearning to remove the roadblocks chosen to limit and clog our communicative breathing. It is critical we recognize that the quality of our clothes have a great impact on our inner life processes. Many of our life concerns may be resolved by listening to our clothes.

If we expand the concept of breath that consists of simple inhale and exhale, what is going on with our inner life processes? What can we see within the bigger pictures of our human existence? Are we not each part of the planetary ecological system? Who says we are not influencing our entire planetary history and being molded by the planet herself at the same time? What kind breath are we breathing? Is it easy and comfortable for all involved? What kind of breath we would like to have our children start out with?

Lint, the Spirit of Cotton says:

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Rebuilding Communities ~Starting from the Heart~

by Rita Dixit-Kubiak “The way is not in the heavens. The way is in the heart.” - Buddhist saying

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Living and communicating from the heart is the surest way of bonding and forming lasting relationships. Although the heart is universally acknowledged as the seat of love and human emotions, society, equally universally, demands that we keep it shackled in the name of societal discipline and efficiency. Indeed, the human struggle has long been characterized by the increasing isolation of the heart as the brain is charged with creating and maintaining orderly social structures politely absent from any personal sensory signatures. As a result, our elegant disembodied mind traverses a lonely path cut off from emotional connections with its fellows and the grace of the natural world. Social conditioning yokes our minds to prevalent ideological and socio-economic constructs, and thereby diverts us from rich channels of meaning and inspiration coursing through our organic reality.

Fortunately for humanity the heart, both celebrated and cursed in literature for its indomitable nature, continues to beat on our behalf. The Institute of Heart Math Research(1) has scientifically demonstrated that negative emotions increase disorder in the heart’s rhythms and the autonomic nervous system, thereby adversely affecting the body’s general health. In contrast, positive emotions increase harmony and coherence in the heart and nervous system helping to counteract the ravages of toxic stress. This research clearly shows that there is a limit to the societal pressure human beings can individually or collectively withstand beyond which we start experiencing heartache, despair and dis-ease.

We are at a critical stage now embedded within yet another formidable human construct, the corporate business-driven world of competitive materialism. The many environmental, human rights and social justice movements arising around the planet against corporate greed and government complicity indicate that human beings are tired of corporate interests superseding their personal well-being and environmental health. Thanks to the corporate world’s recent political choreography, war, violence, pollution, ecosystem degradation, provoked “natural” disasters, displacement and premature death now crowd our species’ dance card.

As the loss of small businesses and living wage jobs imperil the economic security and self-sufficiency of millions, our need for older human social arrangements of community and family returns with great nostalgic force. Corporate culture has long been instrumental in splintering traditional human communities down to the tiniest unit, the single worker and/or consumer.

In the corporate context, individuation is not about inner growth. It is a cultivated selfishness that urges each person to win at any cost in highly competitive job markets and devote their winnings to even more competitive consumption. Company loyalty and subservience are ironically touted as the fast track to this faux individuality, which of course cultures more juvenile dependence than adult self-sufficiency. Beyond the pathos of the “winners” in this rigged little game, what becomes of the losers who have little corporate market value or consumerist clout?

We know people need to connect in order to assuage mental stress, repair broken hearts, feel solidarity, reaffirm their self-worth, and regain a glimmer of hope.

However, how does one rebuild community or family life when the trend for generations has been to break it apart? Perhaps recreating communities may be easier than we think if we apply certain intuitive principles.

A lasting memory from creativity coach Julie Jordan Scott’s “42 Days of Writing Passionately” program(2) is the community of ardent writers that blossomed out of it. Julie presents free writing programs via a Yahoo group and telephone conference services. What inspired 8 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

the aspiring writers from far flung cultures and all walks of life to melt into a collaborative expressive community? It had a lot to do with the inclusive nature of the space Julie created. She asks participants to set their pens to paper and allow their first words to flow untouched by logic, from the heart and using just their senses. Secondly she requests them to be non-judgmental because everyone expresses their own subjective truth.

The first week I joined this group "writing from our heart words uncooked by logic," and simply listening to each other, we began to experience surprising resonance and others' contributions seemed like echoes of our own heart. As varied as each person’s sensory experiences were, none of us ever lost touch with what the others were expressing. We were sharing synchronized laughter, sighs, pauses and most of all insights. Although our backgrounds and cultures could not have been more different, at a fundamental level we all felt we shared real kinship and common ground.

Amongst us there were those who had experienced

...research clearly shows that there is a limit to the societal pressure humanbeingscanindividuallyor collectivelywithstandbeyondwhich westarttoexperienceheartache, despair and dis-ease.

bereavement, divorce, disease, homelessness, poverty and violence; and there were those who had not yet been through any such sorrows. Yet in silently reading and listening to what the others had to say, we began to experience the others’ words intimately. We did not even know what the others looked like, yet listening with an open heart exponentially increased our individual levels of sensitivity. We began to experience a great sense of borderlessness and essential solidarity.

The more we delved inwards to express truths from our hearts, the more we connected to others externally.

And the more we connected to other hearts and minds, the more deeply we felt our own specialness within. We were all rediscovering our uniqueness and interconnectedness in this fluid inward-outward spiral, which unlike corporate individuation elevated the joys of co-creation over competitive zeal.

We went from tentative sharing to the certainty of being heard; from shaky unsure writing to a liberating confidence. Each one’s writing became more sensual, vivid and descriptive. We began writing about foods, aromas, sounds, textures and sights and ended with the taste, smell, feel, music, and vision of emotional and spiritual states. The coming together and sharing had become a celebration no one wanted to miss.

We openly confessed to each other how charged and energetic we felt participating in this process.

Without consciously trying, we actually had formed a vital community in which each person felt vibrant and revived. By wisely focusing on the heart and its innermost needs, Julie had tapped a dynamic and profound energy source.

According to neuro-scientists, the heart contains over 40,000 neurons and its own functional brain.

Its electromagnetic field is 5000 times more powerful

than the cranial brain and it powerfully influences our nervous and endocrine systems, besides nourishing all our blood-fed cells. The heart’s effects on our mental functions and most major body organs intimately affect our health, perceptions and true quality of life.

Unchecked human despair in any form takes a terrible toll on the heart and general health.

Health professionals document that coronary heart disease can be halted or even reversed by changing our lifestyle. Indeed, a positive way of life reverses most disease conditions. However, how do multitudes of people who have been robbed of their choices by the corporate politics of economy make that lifestyle change? Two and a half decades ago, eminent US civil rights lawyer, Dr. Edgar Cahn, must have pondered such a question while recovering from a massive heart attack in a cardiac intensive care unit. His hospital meditations led to the birth of a new kind of monetary system called Time Dollars and Time Banks.(3) According to Time Bank Institute, Dr. Cahn, “recuperating in the hospital and ‘feeling useless,' dreamed up Time Dollars as a new currency to provide a solution to massive cuts in government spending on social welfare. If there was not going to be enough of the old money Dr. Edgar Cahn to fix all the problems facing our country and our society, Edgar reasoned, why not make a new kind of money to pay people for what needs to be done? Time Dollars value everyone’s contributions equally. One hour equals one service credit. Seven years later (in 1987) at the London School of Economics, Edgar developed his theoretical explanation for why the currency should work. He came back to the US and started putting service credits (not yet called Time Dollars) into operation.”

Time Dollars do not replace money, but add a new dimension to paying for services needed in the community. Dr. Cahn was returning meaning to economy in the oldest sense of the word. Economics from the Greek ‘oikos’, means family and household, and ‘nomos’ means management either of the home or the state.

Time banking, which began as a neighbor-toneighbor assistance program, was first tried in the mid 1980s in the context of elder care and youth rehab programs backed by foundation grants. It was, however, the fortunate meeting between Dr. Richard Rockefeller, a medical doctor and philanthropist from Maine, and Dr. Cahn that turned Time Banking into a social movement. Dr. Rockefeller, who had been investing in environmental programs till he heard Dr. Cahn, says, "a light went off, a sudden realization that we can’t expect people to take care of our environment, if we’re not first taking care of each other."

Dr. Rockefeller financed the first New England Time Dollar exchange in Portland and subsidized two international Time Bank conferences. The Portland time dollar exchange eventually became the prototype for other exchanges in New England. Time Banks emphasize neighbor-to-neighbor assistance and coproduction to ensure methodical and successful community building. Co-production involves engaging the people one is trying to help in every step of the process and has four core values: • "Assets": Every human being is a miracle with something of value to contribute.

• "Redefining Work": Work must be redefined to include whatever it takes to rear healthy children, make neighborhoods safe and vibrant, and care for the frail and vulnerable.

9 •

"Reciprocity": The impulse to give back is universal. Wherever possible, one-way acts of largesse must be replaced with two-way transactions. “You need me” becomes “We need each other.”

• "Social Capital": At its core the goal of Time Dollars is to build community in neighborhoods, to connect neighbors, to build trust, alleviate isolation and to build a caring and supportive social infrastructure.

Thousands have gained from Dr. Cahn's vision, absorbed it into their hearts and are remaking their own lives as they create new possibilities for others.

Time Bank's co-production initiatives have been enthusiastically adopted by agencies addressing mental health, elder & disabled care, youth education, juvenile problems, child care, etc. It is not surprising that concerned people working in these sectors understand the devastating impact that mismanaged socio-political economics have on human health. Beyond the US and UK, Time Banks are now in operation in 16 other nations in Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.

Excellent instances of co-production and mutuality also emerge from places that the Time Banks model has not yet reached. The revival of the traditional village healers' role in India's health care is an ongoing story of co-production, dedication and great ingenuity.

The resurgence of traditional healers in the rural districts of Udaipur in west Rajasthan was initiated in 1987 by two charismatic young social workers, Bhanwar Dhabai and Ganesh Purohit. Rural Udaipur is a poor area. Its primarily indigenous population has been affected by commercial deforestation, desertification, scanty rainfalls and repeated droughts.

Ganesh and Bhanwar had just established Jagran Jan Vikas Samiti (JJVS),(4) a non-profit institute to help villagers rebuild their socio-economic infrastructure; and they were deeply concerned with the lack of adequate public social services in the region. They were particularly alarmed that the only medical care available was in the government's ill-equipped and poorly managed public health clinics. The public health workers were in general poorly paid outsiders with little personal investment in the needs or plight of the local communities. As this was a widespread phenomenon in the poorer rural areas, most villagers had to travel many miles to the nearest city to receive any health care, often at great cost. Ganesh and Bhanwar also found that dowry and health care debts were the two chief causes of bankruptcy among villagers, and they knew they would have to get involved.

A tragic public health incident finally pushed them over the edge. Diphtheria broke out in a village where they were working, but when they reported the contagion and the deaths of two children to the local public health office, the officers reportedly dismissed it saying, "disease and death are common in village life". Appalled, Ganesh and Bhanwar appealed to the Rajasthan state public health department, but they too failed to respond. Help finally came from the central government, but by then several more children were dead from a disease that could and should have been easily controlled. This episode convinced them that the villagers desperately needed an affordable local public health system staffed by professionals committed to the people's welfare.

In trying to realize this, the pair followed their usual practice of discussing pressing needs and possible solutions with their JJVS colleagues and village members until a consensus emerged. After long and thoughtful deliberations, the community decided to ask the traditional village healers to help create their village

Guni meeting

Guni house gathering

Now in its 19th year the JJVS Traditional Healer Program has evolved into a movement spread across nine northern Indian states and supported by a variety of non-profit organizations. Groups backing this expansion cite the obvious advantages of affordable grassroots community health care programs, but also the deeper benefits of the holistic and ecologically sensitive approach to healing and community consciousness that the gunis offer. The guni vision encompasses the health of the individual, the village and the environment as a single living system that cannot be violated at any point without harming the whole. This fosters a widening experience of our

natural interdependence and offers a powerful antidote to the fragmentation and exploitation that corporate consciousness breeds.

JJVS Group Photo

The gunis tell us that community is a sacred space of interconnected life. Experiencing it with one’s heart increases empathy and starts the feedback loop of listening and recognition between all its members.

As creative writing mentor Julie Jordan Scott also masterfully teaches, the heart taps sources deeper than logic and self-interest and births a language of concern that elevates our passions and deepens the soul. In many ways, this is the same language that Jagran Jan is reawakening in the villages as they rebuild their ecosystems and self-sufficiency in the face of constant corporate threats. They also still face the challenge of poverty, however, and recognize the need for stronger socio-economic networks of support. Here Dr Cahn’s Time Banks present another heart-driven alternative that could help secure village communities on many other fronts.

In closing, I hope these three simple but inspiring examples suggest the wisdom of turning inward for our maps of the future. As the Dalai Lama advises, “The smart brain must be balanced with a warm heart, a good heart _ a sense of responsibility and concern for the well-being of all.”

Related websites:1. http://www.heartmath.org 2. http:// www.5passions.com 3. http://www.timedollar.org 4. http://www.jjvs.org Photos courtesy of Rita Dixit-Kubiak

Rita Dixit-Kubiak organizes international health and ecology study programs in collaboration with non-profit community organizations in India. Her focus in the last twenty years has been to identify best sustainable community organizing models. A former resident of Maine, she currently resides in California. Rita can be reached at metamed@nancho.net Since this article was written this area has sustained extreme flood damage. For those wishing to help the JJVS please read and respond to the website listed below.

Dear Rita: Torrential rains in western and southern Rajasthan have caused extensive flooding in what were previously drought prone desert regions. Conditions in Badmer and Jaisalmer are particularly critical.

More than half a dozen districts in Rajasthan are flooded. Thousands of people have lost their homes and lives. The destruction caused by the calamity is beyond imagination, wherever you see you will find people taking out dead bodies. People are crying for their family members. Due to the deluge, water borne diseases are rampant. The JJVS health team is working around the clock to bring relief to this area.

Due to this unfortunate and unexpected calamity we would like to request you to organize some monetary relief aid to give more momentum to our work. For on line donation detail of our India flood Drive please click http://vad.aidmatrix.org/vadxml.cfm?

Drive id=1724.

Yours truly Ms. Bhanwar Jagran Jan Vikas Samiti Udaipur,Rajasthan-India www.jjvs.org, E-mail: jagranjan@daatainfosys.net, 91-0294-2441322, 91-9414161942.

Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 9

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Bhanway Dhabai and Ganesh Purohit

health team. Some villagers warned, however, that it might not be easy to persuade traditional healers to cooperate due to their known fear of persecution by local health authorities. Nevertheless, they all promised that they would try to convince the few remaining traditional healers to join and lead the institute's first primary health care team.

As expected the traditional healers initially refused to endanger themselves. Past harassment from the mainstream western health-care providers had largely extinguished their desire to share their knowledge publicly. However, the JJVS staff and many villagers launched a persuasive campaign, cajoling and assuring the healers that everybody would benefit from their proficiency in plant ecology, herbal medicine, energy healing and massage. The outpouring of respect and assurances finally won the healers over and they finally agreed to share their learning and their arts.

To belatedly honor these long unsung masters of ancient medical traditions, Bhanwar and Ganesh once again initiated a community discussion on an appropriate new title for them. The joint decision was to call them Goan ke Guni, Village Wise Ones.

Now simply and lovingly called guni, these traditional healers have injected a very different health care culture into the village. Hailing from the region’s farms and forests, they are educated by apprenticeship to gifted elders rather than institutional curricula, and focus their studies on the living body, the powers of the green surround, and all the vital connections in between. According to Bhanwar Dhabhai, who tended the traditional healer project from its inception, “the gunis typically are people who have transcended class, caste, religious and gender barriers. They serve everyone for free. According to their ethics, health care has always been for all and not just the moneyed few.

The villagers know this. They know the guni will care for them irrespective of their social status.”

Bhanwar and Ganesh carefully staffed JJVS with a team of experts who would collaborate as equals with the gunis, both learning their lore and sharing specialized knowledge of their own. The JJVS health team now includes gunis, ayurveds, ethno-botanists, midwives, and community organizers; and they have all jointly developed the institute’s inter-disciplinary health education and health care programs. Together they have established clinics, a teaching and research hospital with in-patient wards, medicinal plant herbariums, seed banks and pharmacies. This group documents and publishes the traditional uses of regional medicinal plants and plant remedies taught by the gunis, and also partners with Forest Department experts to identify and protect rare and endangered plant species. The team now even cooperates with government public health initiatives to assuage the spread and symptoms of communicable diseases like AIDS, TB, etc.

To broaden and enrich the program, JJVS holds guni training camps and regional conferences where gunis, ayurveds and ethno-botanists freely exchange their synergistic know-how in plant medicine, natural health care and environmental protection. These educational camps also help to train and certify the next generation of village healers, many of whom have started their own clinics, herb gardens and pharmacies in neighboring regions.

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I nt e r v i e w s

Ca t h y M e l i o b y J udit h P e rry JP: What is your process like?

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Cathy Melio is an artist, activist, educator, and radio producer. She has exhibited her artwork widely since 1980. She is the former general manager of WERU FM community radio, former adjunct faculty member at Unity College, and currently Education Director at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) in Rockport, Maine. She hosts an eclectic radio program called “Off the Cuff ” on WERU every Wednesday from 2 - 4 PM. She co-founded the Grassroots Radio Coalition in 1996 with Marty Durlin, General Manager of KGNU in Boulder, Colorado. An avid gardener, she lives in Stockton Springs with her family.

Like many people, I first became aware of Cathy through her radio show. It doesn’t take long to discover her varied and heartfelt interest in the arts, community, activism, music as well as gardening, teaching and nature. When I visited her house Magnetic Fields to see and talk about her work she first showed me the work of other artists whom she has come to know and admire. We shared "art" stories at the kitchen table of her farmhouse and continued our conversation as we walked through her gardens. We touched on many topics but always seemed to come back to an underlying consciousness that she brings to her work and I think everything she does is “a feeling of hope for a much different world.” It is in part why she makes art.

Judith Perry: I am impressed by how interrelated all your interests are. You seem to "weave" it all together effortlessly.

Cathy Melio: I think it is common to see your work in various areas as interrelated - I know lots of people who do many things and weave them together - it seems be the natural order of things, especially in a state where so many people wear many hats. I feel extremely lucky to have a position (at CMCA) which I love, and which nourishes my interests in art, community, dialogue, and social change.

JP: How did you come to find a life in the arts?

CM: I’ve been interested in art since as far back as I can remember. I love making art. I also love seeing other people making art, particularly children. I ran an art camp for children in my home studio for five summers and making art with children or just seeing what they create has been a huge inspiration. After I finish an art camp experience with children, I can’t wait to get back into the studio, inspired by their creativity and the fun of working with them.

JP: You are working on monotypes right now, tell me about them.

CM: I have been making monotypes for a long time.

They are one-of-a-kind prints which I hand color with watercolors. I love the medium because of the kinds of lines, textures, and images you can get. There are always great surprises and the method itself is very organic and appealing.

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CM: I work in an intuitive manner. Making art is for me is a meditative process in which I try to work straight from the subconscious and get lost in the process so that I don’t really feel that I am directing the outcome.

Sometimes I go back to a piece and see things in it that I didn’t know were there. I’ve described my work as “visual poetry” because I think that people can “read” my pieces and bring their own interpretations, so I hope they are somewhat interactive. I always work in a series.

Sometimes I get ideas in a dream and start right in on it, but often I’ve thought about a series for weeks before starting work on it. Lots of time spent in the garden often translates into the art.

led me to radio & WERU) but I didn’t continue because playing other people’s music on the radio is satisfying enough.

I’ve been on the radio for 18 years and I’m still not tired of it. The creative process of planning a program, weaving together the elements of music, information, community voices, sounds, is a very satisfying creative experience. The radio influence can be seen over the years by recurring images of Blue Hill Mountain in my work. WERU’s tower is at the top of Blue Hill and the mountain itself has such a presence, almost mystical. I often represent sound waves in my paintings and prints.

I like to try to include energy and other invisible forces in my art. I think the titles of the series say something about where I’m at as an artist. Some recent series titles include “Visible Energy,” “Nature Rules,” “Cosmic Nature,” and “Peace Dreams.”

Big Bay JP: You showed me how many of your monptypes have the "curve of the earth" in them; where does that come from?

Meditation Vibration JP: How about influences ?

CM: I’m influenced by nature as artists have been throughout time. Yet no matter how hard artists try to represent or honor nature, our work always pales in comparison to the real thing, and that is comforting somehow. But we still keep on trying, and that, too, is comforting. I’ve lived in my house in Stockton Springs since 1983 and because of that we have lots of gardens, perennials, trees, shrubs, etc. and we always have two pretty good-sized vegetable gardens. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful state where we can grow our own food, feel so close to the earth, and have the incredible ocean so near us. The ocean figures prominently in my art, too. But thinking about water at this time is also painful because you have to acknowledge the continued abuse of nature and degradation of the rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans. On WERU I have returned again and again to the serious issue of toxins in the environment. It is outrageous in my opinion that the blueberry industry, for example, is allowed to spray very toxic organophosphates essentially without the public’s knowledge. Someday I’m sure this will no longer be allowed and we will see the insanity of it (just as we will see the total insanity of war) and things will change, but hopefully it won’t be too long because the rate of destruction is alarming.

Art, to me is about being constructive, rather than destructive. Every work of art helps to tip the balance towards love and health.

JP: Does music and the radio find its way into your work ?

CM: Music is a great love and influence upon my paintings. Between radio and music, visual representations of sound make their way into my work.

I played bass for a while some years ago (which is what

CM: I think that comes from wanting to step back and consider how our planet appears from space and how, when we see it that way, we are made acutely aware of how delicate and fragile our earth is. If we could all embrace that perspective more fully, we would not pollute, bomb, or destroy things the way we do. We are all responsible for what’s happening on the planet and in the same light we can all make a difference.

I remember after September 11, 2001, like many artists, I just stopped making art for a while in despair over that event and the bombing that followed. A while later when I resumed working there was a renewed feeling of how and why art matters. I’m still trying to figure that one out. Everyone is an artist in their own way and everyone benefits by exploring their own creativity. Art is a huge term that encompasses so much, and I believe that it is a big part of the transformation this planet must undergo if it is to survive.

JP: That’s interesting; here we are in a culture where artists have such a hard time. Imagine if we were actually a part of the planet’s survival. That changes how we might see ourselves as artists. Don’t you think?

CM: Art leads the way so often. If we look at some of the art today there is hope for the future. There is so much art which honors nature and so much art that is pushing for justice, for peace, for social change. Why are artists so repressed in oppressive societies? Couldn’t it be that people in power realize art’s potential to motivate people to demand justice? Freedom of expression has certainly led to great changes in the past - couldn’t that happen again?

CONTINUED ON PAGE 36

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A Conversation with John Paul Caponigro

by Scott Cronenweth

J

ohn Paul Caponigro is an internationally respected visual artist who lives year-round in Cushing, Maine. Among the most important artists working with digital media processes today, his work resides in numerous public and private collections including the Smithsonian. Equally well-known as a technology innovator and teacher, John Paul teaches both privately and at prominent workshops in the US and abroad. He lectures frequently and widely and writes as a contributing editor and columnist for premier photography publications like Digital Photo Pro. His book Adobe Photoshop Master Class (Adobe Press, 2003) is now in its second printing. In 2002, Zoom Magazine named John Paul one of the 15 best artists of the past 30 years. He has also received the Fellow award from the Maine Arts Commission.

animate, sacred, imbued with spirit. Our environment is a living thing. In most nature photography, living forms dominate. In my images the environment itself feels alive. In this way they throw back on the viewer our conventional relationship to the world as “me” separate from “it”. This has the effect of stripping away assumptions and creating uncertainty. You end up working with that uncertainty to reconstruct your relationship to the image. As you watch yourself watching the image, you become deeply involved. That process gets to the heart of how we experience ourselves in a natural context. The illusion in these images is that we’re not in there. The reality is that there is no separation. That is the essence of spirituality: our oneness.

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John Paul’s work does not so much defy categorization as plainly transcends it. "We don’t even know what to call it", he says. Deliberately created accidents, neither photographs nor paintings, visionary yet profoundly real, playful but vaguely terrifying, luminous and dark as the deepest ocean, his images are simply that: images.

Inspired by the natural world, John Paul’s images depict “wastelands” – literally stunning in their surreal beauty but devoid of living presences like humans, animals, or plants. Faced with the conspicuous absence of these familiar and comforting reference points, the viewer’s mind instinctively opens beyond preconception. As you spend time with an image you see and feel more and more. No impressions remain stable and your mouth is very likely to drop open as you forget the social grace of articulate chatter. Pulled inward past your comfort zone, your conversation with the piece may leave a lasting impression; a stone overturned within.

Like his images, John Paul himself must be taken at face value – he is too fully engaged with life to be wedged into a niche. Outwardly an artist, technologist, and writer; privately a painter, poet, musician, husband, father, businessman, playful cook, and effortlessly gracious host; he is also a disciplined explorer and observer of consciousness and his own interior landscape. Spending time with him was, for me, as inspiring and “de-limiting” as the privilege of engaging full-force with the magnificent images that surrounded us in his private gallery space as we talked.

Reflection i adagio SC: I’ve seen a lot of art that is disconcerting, disturbing, or provocative in some way. But your work stops people in their tracks. How do you so successfully push the viewer’s reset button?

JPC: Because I create the work by asking questions, it naturally raises questions for the viewer. I deliberately make altered images that look unaltered, and unaltered images that look altered. The effect is intentionally disconcerting, because the image is ambiguous. Some part of you asks “what do we really ‘know’”?

And, of course, we can’t quite answer that question in our heads. We end up having an unmitigated experience. I often say that my images are an invitation to look at ourselves looking, and, in so doing, to participate more fully in being alive.

Some critics of my work say I’m hurting photography by producing ambiguous, subtly altered images. I’m not hurting photography, I’m destabilizing assumptions.

Not for arbitrary reasons, but because that’s what opens us up to connection.

Exhalation IV SC: Your work has a deeply stirring, spiritual quality. Yet it’s not overtly inspirational or visionary. Please talk about that.

JPC: Nature – the whole of it, not just the individual organisms -- is living, 12 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

Wake IV

13 SC: The symmetrical light-forms in some of your pieces: what do they represent for you?

JPC: They represent my impulse to “draw light” – to explore making pictures of the invisible. In the same way that the water is not the wave, the image is not the light. We only see how the light interacts with surfaces. The forms the light takes in my images are inspired, in part, by the art of primal cultures. In their symmetry they borrow from mandalas and from sacred geometry, which touch our deepest core by giving form to a dimension that underlies nature and spirit, and hence ourselves. A symmetrical pattern suggests that a form is alive, which helps make it a mirror for self-reflection. So then, what is the object and what is the subject? My work challenges that line we’re always drawing between objectivity and subjectivity.

Finding meaning for yourself when you look at anything is an interactive, creative act. When you’re really present, and really show up to participate in the process, you discover that.

SC: How does your creative process relate to your spiritual practice?

JPC: Self-realization means taking an active role in who you’re becoming. In my own spiritual practice I work with tools like proprioceptive writing and appreciative inquiry to make the unconscious conscious, find a vocabulary for it, and give it a voice. In that way I can better align with my creative purpose. Why do we equate the subconscious with a “dark side” and call it “bad”? – It’s part of our vital energy!

Similarly, I am profoundly changed and influenced by my work and spend a lot of time revisiting it and re-understanding it. We have choices to make in what we do and what we become. Taking responsibility for our personal evolution is particularly important right now, because as a global community we’re recognizing that we’re part of a much larger process, and that we need to restructure not just our cultural and religious underpinnings but our whole material culture as well. Why do we need to cast off this soul cage to enter heaven when heaven is right here?

look more closely at the process we’re all part of.

SC: Two words come up when I try to express the feeling I get when I connect to your work: wonder and communion. For me, it embodies both life and death, equally. There’s the highest spiritual vibration, and there’s the pull of the abyss. Do you feel that when you relate to it yourself?

JPC: I see in my work – not because I put it there, but because it inherently exists -- the truth that life and death are one. "The Big Us" – the unity of environment and spirit, the wholeness that transcends all our concepts and boundaries – that’s what my work is about. When we connect with ourselves and the world from that place we can make heartfelt changes. That’s what life is about.

To connect with John Paul and his work please visit his website at www.johnpaulcaponigro.com. In the Library section you’ll find downloadable PDF of his writings. Visit the Gallery section to view his images. In the Store section you can purchase prints, posters, and cards. You can also sign up to receive Insights, John Paul’s free, semi-monthly e-newsletter.

:

Antartica XXIII

Antarctica XI SC: Your recent work in Antarctica** looks more like traditional photography to my untrained eye. Are you making a shift in your creative direction? [** Fulfilling a childhood dream, John Paul visited Antarctica in 2006 for ten days on a retrofitted Russian research vessel. There he and four colleagues conducted a workshop for 50 photographers.]

JPC: My prior work has been ineffective from the standpoint of environmental advocacy. My new work, which is more documentary (though it is still fine art), will provoke more commentary on environmental issues. The environment is the issue that will galvanize our generation. Nature equals us. We are cells in that larger body. Before I went to Antarctica I pored over my archives of prior work, but I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Then, while we were in Antarctica shooting and teaching, I processed my exposures right there on the boat. I didn’t expect a documentary approach to emerge in my work, but the landscape just invoked it. I couldn’t believe the color, the riots of white, blue, yellow… And yet, in terms of the interplay of my altered and documentary styles –on the continuums of objective to subjective, constructed to reported – there remains the constant of intersubjectivityy. Viewed and viewer are connected and influence each other. We’re all in it together. So in that sense this work parallels what’s come before.

SC: Please talk more about how your art – or any art -- can advocate effectively in today’s political and social climate.

JPC: When we’re connected to the core of who we are, it’s natural for each of us to become informed, decide how to act, and take a stand: “This is who I am and this is what I feel and this is what I’m going to do”. We need to declare our truth. Through my work I hope to deconstruct the false duality that permeates our thoughts, language, and actions. In my documentary work as well as my altered work I suggest a way of relating that moves us deeper into the ground of our humanity, to a level that is shared by all of us but is also very personal. That’s my contribution.

If we treat the environment as part of us, our actions will automatically become more respectful and sustainable and we’ll also be happier and healthier physically and emotionally. I want my son to have access to nature similar to what I’ve had.

His presence in my life invites me constantly to become more deeply involved, to Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 13

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Scott Cronenweth is a freelance Shamanic Buddhist Naturalist Bird Guide Personal Dog Servant writer in idyllic South Portland, Me. Connect with Scott at skyhorse@maine.rr.com or visit Scott's website www.naturalpathwalks.com

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Electricity from the Sun: A Brief Exploration of Photovoltaics

by Pat Foley Photovoltaic: “that which is capable of creating a voltage when exposed to radiant energy, especially visible light energy”.

A Little History

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Heinrich Hertz discovered the photovoltaic effect in 1887, but not until Einstein’s quantum theory of light was the phenomenon explained.

In the 1950’s scientists working with semiconductors found that when they introduced small, controlled amounts of impurities called dopants to the semiconductor matrix, the density of free electrons therein could be controlled. The dopant atoms, similar enough in structure and valence to fit into the matrix, had an atomic structure with either one electron more or one electron less than the atoms of the semiconductor material, a condition inviting some kind of activity.

The interesting effects began when the two semiconductor types were joined in a positive negativejunction, and the extra electrons or the spaces available for extra electrons provided by the dopants were free to travel about. Being of opposite charge, they moved toward each other and some crossed the junction, depleting the region they came from and transferring their charge to their new region. This produced an electrical field called a gradient. The gradient became a permanent part of the semiconductor device, acting as a sort of “slope” that carriers tended to slide across when they got close to the junction.

Sunlight striking a photovoltaic cell is, at the particle level, a bombardment of photons striking atoms. When a single photon of light is absorbed at the positive-negative or pn-junction of a photovoltaic cell, one negative and one corresponding positive charge are created. The negative charges tend to congregate in the n-type layer of the photovoltaic cell, and the positive charges congregate in the p-type layer. If metal contacts are placed on each side of the cell, current can be made to flow. * This current may be directed and will energize devices in its path. Thus we have solar electric power.

Photovotaic cells

There are three types of photovoltaic cells in use today; single-crystal cells, polycrystalline cells and amorphous (without definite crystalline structure) thin-film cells.

The main ingredient of all three types is silicon. Silicon is refined from silica (high-grade sand or quartz, a very common material).

Single crystal cells were the first to be used commercially, followed by polycrystalline cells. These are a bit easier to manufacture, but cell efficiencies are slightly less than for the single-crystal cells.

Amorphous thin-skin cells, which are made in a very different process, require considerably less silica.

Construction of these cells somewhat resembles a printing process in which a thin layer of silicon-based alloys is deposited on a moving roll of material such as stainless steel. Although significantly less photovoltaic material is required in the manufacturing process, efficiencies are lower in amorphous thin-skin cells at this point in their development than in single or polycrystalline cells.

All three types of cells are pretty non-toxic in their manufactured form. Their production, however, involves gases and aggressive toxins. These must be carefully handled, reclaimed and recycled in order to avoid environmental damage. In addition, PV manufacturing consumes a great deal of energy. Rigorous whole-life cost 14 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

analysis shows that material extraction costs, substance risks and production energy, if charged at fair wholesale prices, might add as much as 20% to the cost of each module. ** Compared to the costs of burning non-renewable fossil fuels (to which of course we must add the price of fuel-related wars) this 20% seems like quite a bargain.

The costs are comparatively low, but it is important to remember solar energy does not come without some environmental issues. It is not entirely the “free” energy it is sometimes touted to be.

Moving on to application

A simple solar electric system (without appropriate safety features) consists of a PV module or panel composed of many individual photovoltaic cells, a battery and a load. The panel transforms light energy into low voltage direct current, or DC electricity, is stored in the battery until the electrical load is activated. That is, the energy is stored until an appliance connected to the system is turned on. The load or appliance uses energy stored in the battery. Then, when the sun is shining, the PV panel recharges the battery. It would be possible to move the current directly from the panel to the load without the battery, but only when there is available sunlight. The addition of the battery allows us to store power until it is needed.

The PV panel busily produces electricity when the sun shines. In order to regulate this power, we need another device, a charge controller. The charge controller feeds the electrical flow from the panel to the battery until the battery reaches a state of full charge. Then the charge controller tapers off the electrical supply in order to prevent over-charging the battery. At night it prevents a reverse flow from the battery to the panel.

Because both standard household wiring and most conventional home appliances use alternating current, in order to make everything work, in many solar applications, it becomes necessary to convert some of our direct current to alternating current. To do this, we add an inverter to our simple system. DC power required by our system travels from the battery to a DC fuse box.

Power to be converted to AC moves from the battery to an inverter and from there to an AC fuse box. From their respective fuse boxes both types of current power their loads.

And that, in the most general of terms, without any confusing fine points whatsoever, is how it works.

Yes, and how do we easily and gracefully actually do this?

When we first began our exploration of things solar, we were delighted with the idea of using a relatively clean power source and with thoughts of the independence we would gain becoming, in essence, our own utility company. Because we did not live in the outback, we understood our decision to go solar was not going to save us money. Ours was a philosophical choice, and we were excited.

In a flurry of enthusiasm, we proceeded to gather information. We talked to people with many different ideas. Multiple confusing factoids later, we had a lot of information and some of it appeared at first to be conflicting. We are indebted to our over-the-mountain neighbor Drew for his clear and thorough explanations.

They helped straighten out some confusion and saved us from serious information over-load.

There are a few points we have found very helpful to hold in mind: Solar power is an exciting and growing field. It has

not yet been regulated into one standard way of getting things done. For the user, this is good and offers us choices appropriate to our individual situations. Although it can be confusing at first, with study, we can sort out the various pieces. There are many decisions to make when putting together a system. Each system is configured to work in a specific situation. Many home power people are very attached to their particular systems, but that doesn’t necessarily mean their setup will work in another different situation. Wonderful advice for somebody else may not work for us.

The established suppliers with good track records have gotten a lot of experience over the years. Many live with solar power themselves. They can tell us what components will work well with each other and, in general, give excellent advice based on their years of practical experience. Ask questions. If the answers aren’t clear, keep asking.

This can often save costly mistakes or the purchase of incompatible components.

The more we know about our own power needs and habits, and the more clearly we can articulate them, the more appropriately we (or someone else) can design our system.

Conserving power through selecting well-designed appliances with low energy requirements and through the conscious use of our electricity plays an important role under any circumstances, and in particular, when we go solar.

We’ll look more closely at ways we can save energy in a future column.

Pat Foley, happily going solar, is the owner of Earthrest, a retreat center in southern Maine. The main gathering space at Earthrest has a small solar system, to date running perfectly, designed and installed by Photovoltus www.photovoltus.com. *For this explanation I am indebted to The Independent Home by Michael Potts, Independent Energy Guide by Kevin Jeffrey and my high school science teacher. **The Independent Home, Michael Potts Some resources we have found helpful: Rocky Mountain Institute (CO) www/rmi.org, info and research on renewable energy, energy efficient building and system design.

New England Solar Electric Inc. (MA) www.newenglandsolar.com, mail order and info F.W. Horch (Brunswick, ME) www.FWHorch.com, sustainable living products and info, talks given the 2nd Thursday of the month.

Real Goods (CA) www.realgoods.com, mail order, solar, fun solar gadgets, books, classes and more.

Home Power Magazine (OR) www.homepower.com, good in depth info from folks who use the stuff. :

© 2006 Pat Foley Pat Foley attempts to live a green life just outside of Cornish, Maine.

She is a professional writer, artist, shamanic practitioner and the owner of Earthrest, a retreat center offering space for groups and individuals. You may contact both at earthrest@psouth.net or 207-625-4179.

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Temple Lomilomi Ancient Hawaiian Bodywork by Suzanne Blackburn

T

emple Lomi lomi bodywork is a healing system which creates deep physical, emotional and spiritual well-being by removing blocks to the free flow of energy (mana). The master healers (Kahuna Kupua) of old Hawaii knew that there were special ways to release the natural healing powers of the body. They recognized that health (ola) exists when the body’s energy is flowing freely. Illness (ma’i) occurs when that flow is restricted for an extended period.

Lomi was (and is) recognized as sacred ritual.

In ancient Hawaii Lomi lomi was used as a means for deep relaxation, transformation and inspiration. It is said that in those times a session might take up several days. The lineage and skill of the practitioner or dancer was of utmost importance as the Lomi was (and is) recognized as sacred ritual. Since those times past, massage or bodywork has continued to play an important role in Hawaii. The different cultures of peoples who have come to live on the Islands have brought their own forms and styles of bodywork. As cultures have blended so have the different forms of bodywork practice.

Today we have added things like special tables and pre-recorded music to enhance the experience. Despite the changes, the reverence for Lomi lomi continues and people still derive great benefit from receiving as well as performing this ritual.

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The intention behind Lomi lomi was (and still is) to remove all obstacles to energy, readying the person to receive all the energy their environment had to offer as they move into a new stage of life and take on new challenges. These obstacles might have resulted from an injury or from muscle tension or fatigue. They might be from fear or trauma held in the tissue. The obstacles are always the result of some form of stress or insult to the body regardless of the source. Whether a person is suffering from a pulled muscle or pain from tension or restricted breathing it is a block to energy flow.

The energy that flows in the body once the obstructions are removed might look like physical strength, speed or suppleness. It might look like the stamina that is derived from unimpeded breath (ha) and good blood flow. It might be wisdom gathered from the plant or animal kingdom. It might be the sense of self assurance that comes from being loved and cherished or it might be the feeling of well-being that comes when all of these things are in place.

The body has an affinity for right structure and well-being.

The Lomi lomi practitioner begins with the knowledge that the body tends toward health. The body has an affinity for right structure and well-being. Again, it is the blocks that obstruct health or flow and cause discomfort. By reminding the body of how well it feels when blocks are relieved and energy flows ,the body will naturally move in the direction of pleasure and good health.

The work is comprised of long, full body strokes with a focus along the spine.

These strokes are primarily applied with the forearm allowing the pressure to be

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spread across a broad area. The dancer patiently applies increasing pressure as the body softens allowing the strokes to go very deep without causing pain. The second major component of the work is a series of leg and arm rotations that relieve tension deep within the shoulders and hips. These rotations open up the tremendous energy potential of these areas in a way that simple penetrative pressure cannot.

Far more important than style or technique is the attitude and intention held during the session.

Traditionally the bodywork is done with minimal draping and generous amounts of oil. This can easily be modified to honor the receiver’s comfort level and an excellent session can be created regardless of the draping. The advantage of less draping is that the dancer can incorporate full length and encircling touch so that the body feels whole and unified, giving a particularly powerful sense of well-being.

Each Lomi lomi session is a body prayer or body blessing. It is a ritual that sets the time apart, making it special. Each session or ritual begins with setting an intention.

There is a great wealth of energy that can be harvested to make changes in one’s life.

Setting an intention helps direct the flow of that energy for the person’s highest good.

The dancer then offers a blessing (pule) in the form of a chant. This raises the energy vibrations and announces that the ritual or session has begun. The end of the session is marked by a closing blessing.

Far more important than style or technique is the attitude and intention held during the session. By offering the receiver complete hospitality, nurturance and a loving focus the practitioner gives something very precious; something we all have heard much about but perhaps not experienced nearly enough. He/she gives unconditional love, undivided attention and honor to the person on the table. It is this attention; this focused honoring and deep listening that is the essence of Temple Lomi lomi. This is sometimes described as the Aloha Spirit.

The Aloha Spirit is the attitude of friendly acceptance for which the Hawaiian Islands are famous. In the Hawaiian language, “aloha” means much more than hello, goodbye or love. If you take the word apart you find “oha” which means joyful and “alo” meaning sharing. You also find “ha,” which is life energy or breath and “alo” which means "in the present".

Today we have shortened the Lomi lomi session time to accommodate our busy lives.

We’ve added special tables and pre-recorded music to enhance the experience. Despite these changes, the reverence for Lomi lomi remains and people still derive great benefit from receiving as well as performing this ritual.

Suzanne Blackburn is a graduate of Advanced Kino Mana, Lomi Lomi Teacher Training with Susan Pa`iniu Floyd through Aloha International in Kauai, Hawaii. She is endorsed by Aloha International as a Lomi lomi instructor. Her work and her teaching are a doorway into the Aloha Spirit. Suzanne can be reach by phone at 207-272-5114 or by email at lomilomibodywork@gmail.com.

17

Ayurveda & The Healing Act by Heather Siri Temple

*Disclaimer: Please note that the material in this narrative is not meant to diagnose, cure, or treat any medical condition. If you have acute or chronic health problems that are being managed by a medical doctor or other health care provider, it is important to maintain your routine and only change or augment your traditional or alternative form of treatment if advised by your current physician or health care provider.

ANCIENT AYURVEDA COMES MAINSTREAM

Heather Siri Temple is an Ayurveda Health Educator, Ayurvedic Nutritional Consultant, and Kundalini Yoga instructor from her private practice center, Lotus Living Arts Ayurveda & Yoga Therapy, located in Ellsworth, Maine. Her website is www.lotusliving.com. She can be reached at: maineyogamama@yahoo.com or by calling (207)-356-0234.

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Ayurvedic medicine is one of the most ancient, holistic and well-rounded forms of healing in the world. And according to Vedic texts, the healing that underscores Ayurveda comes from a primordial energy that is motherly, vastly creative, and innate in all of us. In fact, as the well-known Ayurvedic physician Dr. Vasant Lad has said, “Doctors do not cure… nature cures,” inferring that on a deep level, all of us know how to access pristine health through the creative force of nature. This doesn’t mean that we ignore our doctor’s orders, it simply means healing is not bestowed upon us by a physician alone; it is granted through the creative process that is nature and life itself.

Dr. Robert Svoboda, a contemporary authority on Ayurvedic medicine and healing, points out that in modern times, we choose often to “go against the grain of nature,” by fighting with or altogether eradicating germs, diseases, and symptoms. We should be listening to such symptoms in the body to gain a clear understanding of where we lack balance in our lives, Svoboda recommends. Dr. David Frawley, founder of the American Institute of Vedic Studies, reminds us that all “disease” in the body comes from a lack of balance most often times brought on by improper digestion. Dr. Frawley indicates that it is not only food which must be digested; thoughts, emotions, sights, conversations, even TV and other forms of media must be “digested” within the Agni or consuming fire of the body/mind/soul.

All in all, if we lack Agni (digestive fire) in the body, imbalance is the result.

Thus, in Ayurveda, we work to regain balance through proper diet and nutrition, daily meditation, regular yoga or other exercise, proper sleep, rejuvenative herbs (rasayanas), as well as practicing pure-heartedness or virtue (Brahmacharya).

It is important to note that while the pharmacopaea of Ayurvedic herbal preparations and rasayanas is one of the most comprehensive in the world, herbs alone will not “cure” a person of his/her disease. According to Ayurvedic texts, “Herbs are only 5 percent of the cure,” the other 95 percent occurs through wise understanding and self-discipline,” in the aforementioned ways to maintain balance and excellent digestion in life.

Bri. Maya Tiwari, a Vedic monk who founded Wise Earth School of Ayurveda in North Carolina, has an excellent illustration of this form of all-encompassing healing through balance. Tiwari moved to New York from her native India as a young woman. She embraced this country and its fast-paced, adrenaline-based society. With a very successful career in the fashion industry, Tiwari found herself on the go constantly, with little attention to the foods she ingested, the company she surrounded herself with, and the habits she incurred. In her late 20s, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and given a very small margin of survival. She removed herself from the fast-paced life she had taken on, consulted her father who was a great Vedic healer with an Ayurvedic background, and went to a cabin in Vermont “to die” unmedicated and with full attention to this process.

Throughout the following winter, Tiwari said she wrote in her journal, slept, wept, fasted, and slept some more. In this process, she succumbed to the creative force of nature – even if it were to take her life – and stayed present for her death. When

spring came, Tiwari stepped outside, looked at the plants pushing up through the ground, and realized for the first time since her diagnosis that she might indeed live.

Eventually fully recovered after having been forced to look deeply at her disease, her life, her possible death, and the all-encompassing urgency of nature, she surfaced from her brush with cancer with a new understanding of balance and peace. Tiwari then “reclaimed” her kitchen, totally cleaning it out to make it a sacred space, removing old utensils, electric gadgets and the microwave and instead reverting back to a large Japanese mortar and pestle.

Tiwari began grinding her own spices to make curries and chutneys, she started to once again make Indian flatbread by hand and cooked over an open flame as in India. She also began to embrace her yoga, her meditation, her heritage, her ancestry, and her Ayurvedic constitution so that she could remain in touch with her deeper fibers, with that all-knowingness that we are all born with. Some years later, she took the vows to become a Vedic monk, founded her school of Ayurveda, and has been writing accessible, inspiring books on Ayurvedic nutrition, balance, and healing since that turning point in her life.

We all have stories similar to this one. Whether or not we listen deeply to the symptoms that have cropped up to manifest as disease is our choice and our choice alone. We do have the opportunity to sit with our “disease,” whatever it may be, and ask whether or not we are truly living a life of balance, good digestion, and health.

Ayurveda recognizes symptoms as just that: symptoms. Instead of trying to irradicate a symptom, Ayurveda asks us to look at ourselves as a whole being, to look at the habits that have been controlling our lives, and to begin to make choices as well as daily routines that support our immunity, digestion, and health.

For example, one may feel plagued by bloating, sore throats, body aches, and head colds. So, the typical Western treatment is to take things that “kill” whatever is causing the symptoms such as “anti” biotics, “anti” inflammatory drugs, “anti” histamines or simply “anti” gas-producing products. While these are certainly viable treatments for such symptoms, and can indeed help with restoring our health on a physical level, it is more important to look at what has caused such symptoms to make themselves known in the first place. By just allowing the drugs to speed healing, we are ignoring what nature is trying to tell us about our own responsibility for our health.

Ayurveda approaches many different forms of disease, as well as general feelings of not being totally healthy. It encourages prevention rather than a cure, emphasizing that excellent immunity is in itself a form of medicine. People of all walks of life have been accessing Ayurveda for millennia to address health problems such as skin disorders, arthritis, digestive complaints and acid stomach, constipation, headaches, ear, nose & throat issues, anxiety and nervous tension, cancer, diabetes, obesity, chronic fatigue syndrome, and many, many other symptoms.

Dr. Svoboda tells us that Ayurveda is for those who are ready to take charge of their own health, who are willing to put in some effort, and who are willing to look deeply into the root causes of his/her suffering. Though it is certainly not the “easiest” or fastest path, Ayurveda very well could be one of the most comprehensive, and thus most creative paths to healing and wellness.

18

a strolo gy

As Above, So Below . . .

October/November 2006

by Maya White The End of the Rainbow

A

las, the demotion of Pluto from planet to a mere dwarf sphere is more than I can bear, and it is with a fulfilled heart that I now lay down my pen (just kidding). But, in reality, it has been over 3 years, which is long enough.

Writing for Inner Tapestry has been one of my most rewarding activities, and it is time to begin another phase of my astrological journey. So, with Pluto, Persephone, and Charon (Pluto’s Moon) as my companions, it is time to move on.

Aside from it being time for me to participate in new openings; do I really think that the reclassification of Pluto changes astrological interpretation? My answer is simple – not at all. Astrology is a symbolic language that tells the story of the human condition through archetype and mythology. A scientific classification by the International Astronomy Union really cannot change our inherent psychology. Wall Street’s best known astrologer, Arch Crawford who has studied the effect of Pluto on the Dow Jones average, succinctly stated; "I’m going to continue using it (Pluto); they (astronomers) can stick it where the sun don’t shine".

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According to the IAU, Pluto doesn’t make the grade under the new rules for a planet, which they define as "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for self-gravity, and assumes a nearly round shape". Instead, Pluto will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what have been long termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun – "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other orbiting bodies. There are actually about 100 other orbiting bodies similar in size to Pluto.

Two other objects that at one point were cruising toward planethood will join Pluto as dwarfs: the asteroid Ceres, which was considered a planet in the 1800s before it got demoted; and 2003 UB 313, an icy object slightly larger than Pluto. The discoverer of UB 313, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, has nicknamed the newest addition Xena. (2003 UB313 is presently located at 21 º Aries, for anyone who might be wondering where we might meet our new goddess Xena.)

As a reminder, in astrology Pluto has rulership of the underworld, unions, taxes, government, and the masses of people. These things are all operating in our modern world, regardless of technical semantics staged by a group of scientists. Actually, Pluto’s association with hidden affairs leaves much license for inquiring minds to ponder. Pluto is just taking a journey into his underground. In these times of constant change, Pluto still reigns in his world as well as ours.

On another note, and point of endings; September 23rd marks the Autumnal Equinox. The word equinox literally means equal night and technically it is the moment when the sun crosses the equator moving southward, bringing the shorter days and longer nights of winter. Spiritually, the equinox is a moment of harmony and balance as the season of harvest comes to a close and the season of reflection begins.

Historically, cultures whose rhythms flow in sync with agricultural harvests observe the Autumnal Equinox as a time of the Second Harvest—a time when the land overflows with nature’s gifts. This is a time to feast and celebrate the bounty of the previous year while preparing for the winter months ahead.

Like any time marker, the equinox offers a time for reflections on the season past, as well as possibilities for the one upcoming. This year, the equinox comes on the heels of a solar eclipse in the critical 29th degree of the sign Virgo. The last degrees of any sign are about endings, and this one was no exception. Many of us are shifting into different arenas. And by now, we have hopefully learned the lessons of healing change so the endings can manifest peacefully.

And, through endings come new beginnings. Again, I wish to express my most heartfelt thank you to all loyal and supportive Inner Tapestry readers; may your days be long and prosperous, your nights blessed with companionship, and your journeys filled with joy.

Maya's Monthly Astrological Forecasts can now be found on her website www.WhiteStarAstrology.com

Maya White is a full-time professional astrologer who resides in Florida and Maine.

Her primary focus in astrology is to identify soul issues and personal growth lessons.

She is also certified in Astro*Carto*Graphy, a specialty that helps people identify their most prosperous and meaningful places on Earth. For consultations or classes contact Maya at 954-920-2373, maya@mayawhite,com. See www.WhiteStarAstrology.com.

18 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

Samhain by Clair G. Wood

October 31 and the first two days of November figured prominently in the calendars and ceremonies of both the ancient Celts and early Christians. This period marks the cross-quarter day midway between the Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice. Children know October 31st as Halloween, a contraction of All Hallow Eve, but to the Celts it was Samhain, which roughly translates to `summer’s end.’

November 1st and 2nd became All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ respectively, as the early church co-opted the religious days of their pagan rivals, but it was Samhain that was the significant day to the ancients. The Celts divided their year into light (Beltane, May 1st) and dark (Samhain, October 31st or November 1st). The latter marked the start of the Celtic New Year. In villages throughout the land great bonfires were built and villagers became known, brands to rekindle their newly extinguished home hearths in a symbolic bonding of all members of the village together. By Samhain the hay was stored, herds brought in from their summer pastures, vegetables and grains harvested, and meats cured for the coming cold weather. It was a time to batten down the hatches for winter.

But Samhain represented more than the end of summer and the onset of winter.

The Celts believed that on this one night the gods came to earth and the veil between the realms of the living and dead was lifted. This belief led to a number of practices that have their counterparts in today’s Halloween celebrations even though the participants today have no idea how they originated. People frequently dressed in shrouds and posing as the newly returned dead, went from house to house demanding food and drink. Pranks were played on those who did not provide what was considered an acceptable repast. In turn people cut fearsome faces into turnips not pumpkins in those days and put them in their doorways illuminated with candles to frighten away the spirits who walked the land. Many other symbols that arose in those olden times, such as ghosts, skeletons, and graveyards for the uneasy dead; black cats and witches for ill fortune; and corn shocks and scarecrows for the harvest, have found their way down to modern times.

In the early Christian era, around 731 A.D., Samhain was replaced by All Saints’ Day honoring those saints not commemorated with a day of their own.

The evening of October 31st then became All Hallow Evening eventually shortened to Halloween. November 2nd was declared All Souls’ Day honoring all the recent dead. About three centuries later, starting in the 9th century All Souls’ Day was observed by Christians walking from village to village begging for "soul cakes," rough bread baked with black currants. For cakes the wandering pilgrim would pray for the soul of a recently deceased relative to be moved from limbo and sent to heaven. This practice continued for centuries.

Since Samhain was the result of an observable astronomical event; i.e., the mid-point between the Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice, it is not strange that religious monuments were erected to mark this important date in the lives of the ancient Celts. Tara, a complex of mounds and stone circle forts located on the Boyne River about 10 miles from the majestic mound at Newgrange in Ireland, was the center of political power for generations. It is said that 142 Kings, reigning between the early 3rd century and 1022 A.D. either were crowned or governed from Tara. The remains of a great banqueting hall, measuring 89 ft by 755 ft, attest to the importance of Tara to the Celtic rulers. Stone ring forts dot the area with two intersecting ones the home of a giant standing stone called the "Stone of Destiny" where Celtic kings were crowned. It is said that St. Patrick preached at Tara in 433 A.D. as he strived to replace the Druidic faith with Christianity.

The largest mound at Tara is called the "Mound of the Hostages" built between 2500 B.C. and 3000 B.C. and named after the custom of Irish kings detaining their royal hostages there. The passageway in the mound is aligned with the rising Moon of Samhain and Imbolc and the full Moon of Lughnasadh, a cross-quarter day falling on August 1 and today known as Lammas. Since the building of the mound, with its faithful recording of the cross-quarter days, took place millennia before kings were crowned there, it stands to reason that the great importance the ancient Celts placed in these astronomical events led to its being a site of political power and not the other way around.

Clair G. Wood, Ed.D, taught chemistry, physics and introductory astronomy at the community college and university levels for many years. He has written a monthly astronomy column, Maine Skies for the Bangor Daily News since 1976.Over this time he has developed a fascination with, and deep respect for the astronomical observations of the anients. Sacred Momunments.

19

a breath o f he alin g

Living From The Green

by Donna Amrita Davidge

W

Green Energy” which I have put on a cassette for people to practice. Kundalini Yoga suggests doing a set for 40 days to really set the intention of that particular set.

To support our heart center opening we must be aware of our foundation, which is the pelvis. Hip openers and lower back stretches and strengtheners help to align the foundation in a way that we can walk confidently and uplifted. Many of us carry tension, especially in the lower back. Physical tension is related to emotional tension. Lower back problems may have to do with our own power issues in the world, possibly grudges or money issues. Tight shoulders often signify carrying the weight of the world and also are caused by shallow breathing. Many people are tight in the hips, an area known to hold fear. The musculature in the hips is quite complex and requires care, time and attention as to how we stretch. Often people push themselves in poses when their hips are not properly aligned or open and this can result in injury, especially to the knees. Often when students tell me that they have knee problems they also have tight hips that they have not consciously addressed.

Another aspect of green living is what we put into our bodies, the body being called in yoga our temple.

The acid alkaline balance of the body can be disturbed by poor eating habits and stress. Leafy greens and green drinks, like spirulina, can help keep this balance healthy.

\

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hat connects us to the earth, the ultimate nurturer, is that which supports green living.

In yoga terms this would relate to all of our standing poses, which draw us into the energy of the earth and pull us into earth’s energy through gravity. It would also mean remembering to truly engage the legs in these poses, as they too are part of the grounding associated with the first energy center, or Chakra, at the base of the spine. From our earth sprouts forth the green (and other colors!) things that support our lifefruits, vegetables, and grains.

When we are nurtured and supported by Mother Earth and our own mother then we can blossom into a heart-centered person whose power and strength is used for positive purposes for the planet. So in our basic awareness in a yoga pose, as in life, do we lead with the heart or the head? If your head is reaching forward ahead of your heart, the ego is your guide.

Simply pulling the chin in slightly into a neck lock (not the exaggerated chin lock) allows the energy to flow freely from head to heart. Another telling posture is when people carry themselves with caved in chests.

Their hearts are often heavy and sad and they are sheltering themselves but cutting the gift of their heart off from the world. To repair these slouched postures the person needs to remember to lift both head and heart high.

In Chakra terms the color of the heart is green.

Green is the color for prosperity, which is defined as having enough, not excess or poverty but receiving and giving back in balance in order to have all our needs met. Some people can actually read the aura, or electromagnetic field, of beings. A person who is led mainly by the heart would have a green aura while one led by their navel, for example, would be yellow.

A highly evolved being would project purple or white, colors associated with the highest centers in the physical body.

A person with a green aura would exemplify the qualities of compassion, humility and love, Compassion is the ability to see that the other person is you. My teacher Yogi Bhajan says “Understand through compassion or you will misunderstand the times”.

Backbends are the yoga poses for the physical opening of the heart center. First we must practice patience in getting to backbends, which for many of us require time and patience. We discover that we must relax and open our spine first with forward bends and loosen the hips, which may take time, to prepare for these heart opening backbends. In the June 2004 Yoga Journal Beryl Bender Birch has an excellent article on the principle of ahimsa, or nonviolence, in our yoga practice. Even in the more physically challenging yoga practices like Astanga Yoga, which Beryl teaches, there is a need for recognition of ahimsa, which is a form or tenderness and caring. Ahimsa is not only about avoiding anger reactions and war, but also being kind and conscious (aware) during your yoga practice so that you do not hurt yourself. When and if you do injure yourself somewhere within you, you are not practicing ahimsa with yourself. Until we heal and love ourselves how can we truly nurture others and share our “green energy” with them?

In the space of an open heart we welcome, and are receptive to, opportunities and in turn help others receive our love and opportunities from us. Kundalini Yoga has an excellent set called “Opportunity and

Green living can mean living in concert with the nature around us-walking in a green forest can actually charge up our energy field just as airplanes, drugs and alcohol can deplete it-and green living can mean remembering to put green foods from earth into our physical body to keep it healthier and in better balance, as we aspire to this also in our yoga practice and in our life.

(For more on this go to June 2004 Yoga Journal inside the back cover to the Centering Page titled “For the Ultimate Grounding Experience Nothing Beats Lying Down on the Earth”) Donna Amrita Davidge and her husband Kent Bonham run www.sewallhouse.com retreat in Island Falls, Maine from July 4th to Columbus Day (Oct 9th) in her great grandfather William Sewall’s homestead. Donna would like to dedicate this to her Mother, who loved the earth and preserving its beauty, especially Maine.

\

Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 19

20

Cooking Consciously & Eating Healthy

by Guest Writer Mary Carrier Hoodack Food is our common ground, a universal experience.

—James A. Beard

S

Eat Your Sea Vegetables!

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ea vegetables—yes, seaweeds—are powerful sources of nutrients and healing substances. Dried and ready to eat, they are widely available and may easily be incorporated into meals. Why, one might ask, would anyone want to eat seaweed?

The short answer is for many reasons, and they’re all good ones.

Ounce for ounce, sea vegetables (along with herbs), are higher in vitamins and minerals than any other food. They are high in protein, and also provide beta carotene, B-vitamins, essential fatty acids, chlorophyll, enzymes, amino acids, and octacosanol, a substance that increases tissue oxygenation. They contain 10 to 20 times the minerals of land plants, and are especially rich in iodine, calcium, iron, and potassium.

Sea vegetables provide us with all their ocean derived nutrients in a bio-available form, meaning that they are easily digested and assimilated. An interesting aside is that blood plasma is nearly the same composition as seawater, containing the 100 or so minerals and trace elements found in the ocean. Oh, and did I mention that they have high amounts of fiber? And for those concerned about sodium, be assured that while sea vegetables impart a salty flavor, they are not themselves overly salty. Like ocean fish, they absorb very little of the ocean’s salt. Their essential sodium is present in a balanced ratio with potassium, calcium, and magnesium.

Research has shown that sea vegetables have anti-aging properties, promoting clear wrinkle-free skin and building strong, healthy hair. They may also be used topically.

Many spas offer a seaweed body wrap. The osmotic action of the seaweed pulls toxins out through the skin, tightening, toning, and reducing cellulite. Soaking in a bathtub full of hot water and seaweed also removes toxins and leaves skin smooth and glowing.

As if being a nutritional powerhouse and a beauty aid isn’t enough, sea vegetables are strong healers. They have anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antifungal, antitumor, and anticancer activity. They help restore and maintain proper acid/alkaline balance; strengthen the nervous and immune systems; help with immune compromised diseases; support bone health; and lower cholesterol. The iodine in sea vegetables supports the thyroid, helping it to normalize metabolism, and giving it protection from environmental radiation and other pollutants. Sea vegetables are especially valuable for their detoxification capability. Most contain algin, a fiber molecule that binds toxins and heavy metals, removing them from the digestive tract. Algin binds with the ions of heavy metals, converting them to harmless salts. These salts, insoluble in the intestine, are excreted. Algin also chelates radioactive matter present in the body, binding it for elimination via the large intestine. This is a vital function, since none of us can escape exposure to radiation in the environment, due in part to past nuclear testing and accidents at nuclear power plants.

I trust that now we are all ready to include these remarkable plants as part of our good diet. Many different kinds may be found. Those native to the Atlantic coast include Alaria, Laver, Kelp, and Dulse. Kombu, Hijiki, Nori, Wakame, and Arame all originate in Asia. Sea Palm is native to the Pacific coast. They are available dried, either pre-packaged or in bulk, at health food stores and co-ops. While many natural foods cookbooks offer recipes for their use, the simplest way is to crush, snip, or crumble any mix of sea vegetables into soups, salads, salad dressings, casseroles, stir fries, noodles, or rice. They can be pan toasted for a crunchy topping or snack. A 5 inch strip of kelp cooked in a pot of beans helps to tenderize them and improves their digestibility.

The Downeast company Maine Coast Sea Vegetables is an excellent source for many different varieties, most of which are grown in Maine waters. Their products are all sustainably harvested, regularly tested for pollutants, certified organic, and may be found in all our local natural food stores. For recipes and lots more great information, see their website, www.seaveg.com.

Rather than thinking of sea vegetables as an acquired taste, see them as a taste well worth acquiring. They provide good health insurance, at a fraction of the cost of any insurance policy. Eat your vegetables and your sea vegetables!

:

Resources: The Body Ecology Diet, by Donna Gates Detoxification, Linda Page’s Healthy Healing, 12th Ed. by Linda Page Healing With Whole Foods: Oriental Traditions and Modern Nutrition by Paul Pitchford Mary Carrier Hoodack, CNW, Holistic Nutritionist. Mary is a graduate of Clayton College of Natural Health with a Master’s Degree in Holistic Nutrition, and is Certified in Nutritional Wellness. She offers advice and counseling on diet, health, and nutrition; contact her at (207) 372-6905 or bhealthy@localnet.com.

20 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

Sea Vegetable Celebration Cookbook

by Shep Erhart and Leslie Cerier ISBN:1-57067-123-0 Book Publishing Company

A cookbook and reference resource for most North American and Asian sea vegetables. In it you will find historical, botanical, medicinal and nutritional information, combined with culinary guidelines and accessible recipes (each with a Nutrition Facts breakdown). You will learn how to easily introduce seaweed into your every day cooking -- breakfast, lunch and dinner, even snacks. There are numerous suggestions how to include the health benefits of sea veggies in your own diet and that of your family-- even how to nourish your skin and hair, your houseplants and garden, your pets and farm animals. A number of full color photographs, line drawings, diagrams and full nutritional charts help complement the 105 carefully laid out vegetarian recipes, mostly vegan. This 163 page book is of interest to both newcomers and confirmed sea veggie users. You can find this book and delicious recipes on the Maine Sea Coast Vegetables web site, www.seaveg.com.

SANT MAT RADHASWAMI The Path to enlightenment and freedom called Sant Mat: the Path of the Masters, Inner Light and Sound Mediation (Surat Shabda and Bhakti Yoga).

Bangor, Waterville, & Portland areas.

For a Satsang schedule, call: James, Sant Mat Society of North America

(207) 368-5866 or email: james@SpiritualAwakeningRadio.com WEBSITE: www.SpiritualAwakeningRadio.com

What is Eco-Consciousness?

Being "eco-conscious" means being aware of what you are doing, buying using and what it does to the environment!

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Food, Medicine and Beauty from the Sea

by Gail Faith Edwards

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ne of the things I enjoy most about directing the herbal education program here at the Blessed Maine Herb Farm School of Herbal Medicine is spending time with so many knowledgeable herbalists and healers, be they students or fellow teachers. This fall, as our summer programs wind down and we take stock of what we’ve learned over the past season, several people, and the time spent with them, stand out in my mind. These folks generously shared a wealth of information with my students and I regarding long-time passions of theirs. I’d love to share with you here some of what we learned from one of them.

...Sea vegetables contain the broadest range of minerals of any food the same minerals found in the ocean and in human blood...

It is well documented that in cultures where seaweeds are consumed regularly, like Japan, the people enjoy very low rates of cancer. Jane Teas, affiliated with Harvard School of Public Health, published a paper three decades ago suggesting seaweeds, specifically kelp, as an important contributing factor to the relatively low breast cancer rates among postmenopausal women in Japan.

Teas proposed that kelp plays a major a role in both preventing the initiation of breast cancer, as well as inhibiting its promotion.

Kelp is an all-around sea vegetable. It is superb when lightly toasted or fried, it can be pickled in brine or boiled in soups, it’s great sautéed and indispensable in bean dishes as it helps to tenderize beans, shortens the cooking time and aids in digestion.

Another sea vegetable we found anchored to the rocks at the waters edge on this trip was deep, dark red, hand-shaped dulse, Palmaria palmata. Dulse is luminescent under water and actually seems to sparkle. It’s so pretty! This common red seaweed is delicious, and since we brought a bucket full of dulse home with us, I have been finding lots of ways to introduce it in our daily meals, I have added it to all kinds of salads, soups and stir-fries, found that it is great with beans, potatoes and fish and really terrific when eaten as a salty snack all by itself. No need to cook this sea vegetable, it is tasty and ready to eat as soon as it is dried. Shep told us that a quick rinse is all that is necessary to tenderize it a bit before adding it to salads and sandwiches. Dulse’s very high protein content, more than 22%, makes it higher in protein than chickpeas, almonds or whole sesame seeds.

If you decide to try to harvest some seaweed, try to find a clean, protected place to gather from. Do so conscientiously, with the ecology of the area, the health of the entire ecosystem, in mind. Take only a very small portion of what you find. Seaweeds are easy to process.

They require a good day or two of drying directly in the sun. Our cedar deck made the perfect drying platform.

As soon as they are dry, seaweeds should be packed away in paper or plastic bags or glass jars. But keep them handy so that you can remember to use some every day. Eating is not the only thing to do with these amazing sea greens.

Seaweeds for Beauty - Thalassotherapy - Hot seaweed baths, wraps and rubs, massages with warm sea water and mud body wraps are some of the essential

components of thalassotherapy, a form of health and beauty care widely enjoyed by Mediterranean peoples, and by Asian peoples as well, though they may not call it by this name. Thalassotherapy (derived from the Greek word ‘thalassa’ which means ‘sea’), uses the beneficial aspects of the marine environment; the climate, sea water, seaweed and algae, mud and sand—for therapeutic purposes.

For a super skin nourishing treat, try putting a small handful of dried seaweed into a cotton or muslin bag, or inside a face cloth, wetting it well with hot water under the shower and then rubbing it all over your body. It’s incredibly soothing and skin rejuvenating!

Your skin will feel so alive and tingly, clean and healthy afterwards, and it will be glowing. Or, soak in a seaweed bath. The sea greens help to balance body and skin chemistry. Electrolytic magnetic action of the seaweed release excess body fluid from congested cells and dissolves fatty wastes through the skin, replacing them with depleted minerals, particularly potassium and iodine, according to Michelle Leigh, author of Inner Peace, Outer Beauty, a book about Japanese beauty customs. Leigh adds that the Vitamin K in sea vegetables helps regulate adrenal function, thus a regular seaweed bath helps ensure well balanced hormones and a more youthful physical appearance, as well as diminished symptoms of menopausal distress.

Seaweeds are also famous for nourishing beautiful, healthy hair. This effect may be due to all those organic colloidal minerals such as silica, calcium, iron and phosphorous, or the emulsifying alginates that cleanse surface toxins and de-acidify, or perhaps it’s the abundance of iodine, amino acids and B vitamins….

Seaweeds help remove dirt and excess oil from the hair while imparting a rich supply of the essential nutrients necessary for strong, lustrous, easy to manage hair.

You may want to try making seaweed tea, letting it steep for thirty minutes, then use it as the final rinse over your hair, being sure to massage your scalp as well.

One more thing! Seaweeds are fabulous nourishers for both plants and soil. According to Shep’s book, Sea Vegetable Celebration, seaweed or seaweed-based products, “increase seed germination and root development, increase bloom set and size of flowers, relieve stress in plants due to weather, insect attack, drought and frost, increase microorganisms in the soil that fix nitrogen from the air, increase mineral uptake from soil and increase shelf life of fruits and vegetables”. Seaweed can be composted, spread directly on the soil, made into a tea and applied to the soil or sprayed on plants, mulched with, or tilled in. No matter how you use it, whether in your garden, or on houseplants, you will be supplying a very broad spectrum of organic micronutrients that will nourish both plants and soil, just as they nourish our bodies, inside and out.

You can see now why our seaweed adventure was so inspiring and memorable. Next time I’m going to tell you about the day my favorite mushroom lady came to give a class.

Gail Faith Edwards is a practicing community herbalist with thirty years experience and the mother of four children born at home and raised on homegrown herbs and vegetables.

She and her family run Blessed Maine Herb Farm, now in its seventeenth year, offering medicinal herb products of impeccable quality, safety and effectiveness, made with MOFGA certified organic herbs and flowers grown in their gardens or wild gathered from the pristine wild nearby. www.blessedmaineherbs.com, herblady@blessedmaineherbs.com A response is guaranteed.

This article is for information only, for health matters and serious health concerns, please consult your local health care practitioner.

Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 21

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One bright mid-July day four lively and excited apprentices and I packed ourselves into my car and drove down to a little town called Franklin on the coast of Maine. We’d been invited to meet Shep Erhart and have a tour around his Maine Coast Seaweed facility. After being introduced to an array of North Atlantic harvested seaweeds in various stages of drying, processing and storing, Shep led us to one of his favorite places to gather these nourishing sea vegetables.

We arrived in a mist, the salty spray of the ocean greeting us, the waves gently breaking on the rocks, the roar like a calming balm. Water birds, or maybe seals, floated on the surface of the water, way out from the shore line. The ocean seemed to be teeming with life, energy and an incredible vitality here in this completely protected, utterly wild and pristine place.

Since we purposely timed our visit to coincide with low tide, we found the rocks literally covered with glistening seaweeds of many varieties. And, at the water’s edge, where sea meets sand and rock, graceful and supple fronds of seaweeds, holding fast to the bedrock beneath, swayed with the movement of the water, seeming so strong, resilient, tenacious and absolutely dazzling.

According to Shep, who has been eating, harvesting, working with and enjoying seaweeds for the past thirty years, sea vegetables contain the broadest range of minerals of any food -- the same minerals found in the ocean and in human blood, such as potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, and iodine. One of the seaweeds we found in abundance on the day we visited was Luminaria longicruris, or kelp, beautiful brown seaweed that grows 4 to 8 foot long broad, golden fronds. Kelp offers exceedingly high amounts of these minerals, and is an unparalleled source of other essential trace nutrients, particularly iodine.

“Our cells and those of seaweed are both bathed in a similar ocean of dissolved mineral matter. The ratio of sodium to potassium is nearly the same in blood and saltwater”. Shep is saying as he gently nudges a bit of seaweed from the rock to give us a closer look.

Kelp has been found to have a normalizing action on the thyroid and parathyroid glands. A healthy functioning parathyroid gland means you can absorb all those minerals to your best advantage, especially those that play a role in keeping the arterial walls elastic, reducing the risk of hypertension and normalizing blood pressure. Studies suggest that kelp not only helps to keep both cholesterol and blood pressure down, but also has a positive effect on the balance of healthy flora in the intestinal tract, actively destroys cancer cells and stimulates T-cell production in our immune systems. These sea vegetables are strongly immune enhancing. Numerous researchers have also discovered kelp’s ability to bind with

radioactive isotopes in the body, thus allowing them to be safely excreted. Consuming kelp regularly will offer protection to the cells in your body during and after radiation treatments, after any routine x-rays and most especially after any kind of radiation poisoning.

Sea vegetables have been used for centuries in both Japanese and Chinese medicine, as well as throughout the Mediterranean region, for the treatment of serious diseases, including cancer, and recent scientific studies have verified these uses. Antitumor and antimutagenic activity has been found in the kelps, kumbu and wakame. The polysaccharides extracted from both brown seaweeds and red have been shown to inhibit cell growth, suggesting they may be able to inhibit cancer cell growth as well.

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Food Jitters

by Sharon Heller, Ph.D.

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Food Sensitivities

What are food sensitivities? Unlike food allergies, which are a rare life threatening immediate immune response -- shortly after eating shrimp or peanuts, you break out in hives, vomit, or have trouble breathing -- food sensitivities are a common, delayed immune reaction to common foods like milk, corn or wheat.

From a few minutes to a few hours or even a few days after eating the irritant, you feel edgy, jittery and anxious.

Some will get a migraine.

Common foods are the most likely allergens as frequent exposure overwhelms the immune system: familiarity breeds indigestion. As you eat these foods frequently, the cause and effect relationship may elude you. The day after

eating nachos, you feel dizzy, irritable, confused, tired, depressed, anxious and even panicked. As you eat corn or milk products daily, you don’t connect these feelings to the corn, cheese or other ingredients in the long-digested nachos. Instead, you assume your symptoms are from stress and self-medicate by eating nachos again for lunch!

This happens all the time because your body begins to crave foods that you eat often. Apparently, these foods tap into the endorphins – the bliss promoting part of the brain – and make you feel better. You become addicted to the food and when you abstain from eating it, you experience withdrawal symptoms and crave the food even more.

Typically, people will react to an offending food if they’ve eaten an excessive amount, if they eat several offending foods together, or if they’re ill and their resistance is low. But some highly sensitive people will eat an olive and go over the edge. Some like Darwin are lactose intolerant and get quickly ill from dairy

Food is a drug!

What we eat directlyimpacts the physiology andbiochemistry of our brains. products. Some people are wheat intolerant, a condition called celiac disease. They react to the gluten, a protein in wheat and other grains, like barley, oats and rye, and suffer chronic diarrhea, stomach pain, and bloating from ingesting wheat products. Amazingly, just one in 2,500 cases of celiac disease are diagnosed, and pinpointing the disease may take up to 12 years!

Battering the Immune System

While not life threatening like allergies, food intolerances irritate the body and, exceeding the tolerance threshold, ultimately weaken the immune system. Here’s what seems to happen. You begin with sensitivity to milk, wheat, corn, and eggs and have a few minor symptoms. If nutritional deficiencies, sugar consumption, exposure to environmental molds and chemicals or illness further batter the immune system, you develop adverse reactions to additional foods.

These include even foods that are healthy for you, like almonds or celery. By activating the immune system, food intolerance weakens other systems. Health further deteriorates and you develop other GI problems, respiratory problems, aches and pains, and even chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. You feel bad all over, irritable, anxious, lethargic, and can’t think clearly.

Removing Allergens

If you suspect that food allergies may underlie your fear and trembling, what can you do? Start by removing the most common allergens, like wheat and dairy. The casein and gluten in wheat make it hard to digest and eliminate, while milk creates mucus. Sugar, alcohol, and

corn are also common allergens. Corn is tricky to avoid as it unwittingly finds its way into many prepared food as cornmeal, cornstarch, and corn syrup. As soybeans and soy flour have become more widely used, more people have become intolerant to soy as well.

Replace milk, cheese, and ice cream from cow’s milk with that made from rice, soy (if you’re not sensitive), almonds or purchase goat milk. Or, if not lactose intolerant, try raw, unhomogenized dairy products from grass fed cows, far easier to digest than the processed dairy products that pervade our diets. Replace wheat products with pure rye, brown rice, soy, quinoa, millet, teff, spelt, and buckwheat.

Eliminate food containing food additives. Unknowingly, many people react with anxiety and even panic after eating foods that contain sweeteners like aspartame (a low-calorie sweetener used in foods and beverages and as table sweetener, and sold under the name NutraSweet and Equal), food coloring, and monosodium glutamate (MSG).

Replace foods containing additives with natural, whole foods. READ LABELS! Don’t worry if you crave the missing food and experience brief withdrawal symptoms. This is expected as you are literally addicted to the food. DON’T GIVE IN TO YOUR CRAVING AND SNEAK A BITE OR TWO! Remember, the food is poison for you.

Getting Diagnosed

Ask your personal physician for an allergy test. Be aware though conventional doctors tend to know little about food intolerance. If you seek help from an allergist, he or she will give you a scratch or prick-puncture test to detect food allergies and sensitivities, a procedure that is only around 20% accurate. Alternative practitioners recommend the ELISA blood test, designed specifically to assess food allergies and to pinpoint delayed allergic reactions. The most comprehensive test available, it subjects a patient’s blood sample to 102 different food extracts. The average person is intolerant of only a few foods that need to be eliminated. But if you’ve had unidentified food sensitivities for years, you may be intolerant to many different foods -- sometimes as high as twenty or thirty.

You can also use your body as a laboratory and systematically monitor your own reaction to foods. One way is to take your resting pulse and then again twenty minutes after eating a particular food. Elevation above 10 beats of your normal rate is a likely sign of an allergic reaction. Start with the foods you eat the most, as these are the foods to which you are most likely sensitive. A simple home urine test is also available.

Acupuncture and acupressure can also help eliminate food allergies as can the QXCI/SCIO biofeedback machine, based on quantum physics.

Supplementing

As food sensitivities keep the immune system running overtime, they use up the body’s nutrients and deplete necessary vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.

These need to be replenished. As you restore body balance, you may find that food cravings and allergy symptoms relieve.

Be sure and include the following in your diet: • Magnesium, as shortage is especially implicated in addictions and food sensitivities.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 36 Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 23

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hortly after 27 year-old Charles Darwin returned to England in 1836 after his five-year voyage on the Beagle, the father of evolutionary theory began complaining of “constant attacks” – heart palpitations, trembling, shortness of breath, vomiting, extreme fatigue, depression, and “swimming in the head”. He declined a secretaryship at the Geological Society of London because “anything that flurries me completely knocks me up afterward”. Two years later the adventurous explorer retreated to his country home in Kent and became a recluse, rarely leaving his home and then traveling in a carriage with darkened windows.

Darwin never learned the true nature of his malady. For forty years, he complained to over twenty doctors who diagnosed his problems as anything from “dyspepsia with aggravated character” to “suppressed gout”.

Today many books and papers have explained Darwin’s mystery illness as psychiatric – as psychosomatic, hypochondria, bereavement syndrome, an expression of repressed anger toward his father, or genetic, noting a familial vulnerability to the symptoms Darwin described.

The general consensus has been that Darwin probably suffered panic disorder with agoraphobia, hence his secluded lifestyle and difficulty in speaking before groups and meeting with colleagues.

Other researchers have looked for an organic cause, including arsenic poisoning, Chagas’ disease as a result of being bitten by an insect common to South America, or multiple allergies. Drs. Campbell and Mathews of the Darwin Centre for Biology and Medicine, Milton, Pembrokeshire, UK believe otherwise. To them, all evidence suggests a food link: lactose intolerance.

Lactose intolerance results when the body doesn’t produce enough lactase, an enzyme needed to break down lactose, the main source of carbohydrates in milk, into simple sugars. Two to three hours after he ate, the time it takes for lactose to reach the large intestine, Darwin experienced vomiting and gut problems. And his family history suggests an inherited component. Darwin only got better when, by chance, he stopped taking milk and cream.

If these researchers are correct, Darwin’s heart palpitations, trembles, shortness of breath, vomiting, extreme fatigue, and “swimming in the head” were signs not of anxiety and panic but of food intolerance.

His agoraphobia was not a fear of leaving the safety of his home but of being too ill to do so. The solution to his woes was not probing his psyche or balancing his biochemistry but eliminating milk products from his diet.

Like Darwin, many people unknowingly suffer anxiety and panic attack not from something eating away at their psyche primarily but eating away at their gut. Food is a drug. What we eat directly impacts the physiology and biochemistry of our brain. Digestive problems from food sensitivities to Candida overgrowth to malabsorption to overtoxicity can cause anxiety, nervousness, and head fog.

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CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD Admission $12 October 20th, 7:00 PM Leapin' Lizards, Main St., Freeport October 21st, 7:00 PM Union Church, Stone Cliff Rd., Biddeford Pool, October 22nd, 4:00 PM

Portland New Church, Stevens Ave., Portland INNER TAPESTRY JOURNAL

925 Sawyer Street, South Portland ME 04106 (207) 799-7995 Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 25

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Planting Garlic in Fall

by Adelaide Winstead

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I am more and more aware of how the seasons shape my life and have become metaphor for my life, or is it vice versa?

Summer is indeed over, if, in fact, it ever fully “arrived”. My garden says it did not. Now I am harvesting the last of the vegetables and herbs that made it to fruition and cleaning up the beds for winter. In the midst of all this closure, however, are thoughts of where to plant the garlic for next year, as this must be done before the ground freezes.

Planting garlic in the fall has become a ritual for me ever since, years ago, I helped my daughter Lila plant her garlic in Vermont.

Last year she came down to plant for me as I was out of action with a hip replacement. The ritual could continue. Thinking about just why this has become such a rich metaphor for me, I realize it is not so much about the anticipated crop as it is about facing into the necessity of going into and through winter—through the dark and cold—not just resting, but being willing to undergo change in some subtle and necessary way.

So, in a few weeks, while lamenting the increasing hours of darkness, I will plant my garlic with much affection, determined to follow its example of going deeply into the dark and cold of winter with the hope of emerging with perhaps a little more clarity about my life in this time on this beautiful planet home.

Greenfire Women’s Retreat is a nonprofit organization founded in 1990 for all women who seek contemplation, community and spiritual growth. From staff meetings to consultations, every aspect of Greenfire’s organization is run using the circle model. Greenfire offers circle conversations, workshops, individual/group retreats, weekly community meditation groups and Sunday service. Set on a tranquil woodland farm in Tenants Harbor, Greenfire provides sanctuary amidst a fast paced world. Guests can spend the day or week, enjoying delicious meals, comfortable accommodations and quiet. For more information contact 207-372-6442 or go to www.greenfireretreat.org.

Awareness andtheartofSeeing: contemplationsontheenvironmentandinterconnection

by Jen Deraspe Photo courtesy of www.earthlife.net

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The Raven

e reached and pulled our way over boulders and ledge to reach the mountain’s plateau, offering full circle views. Cairns and a path lined with stone lead the way across a landscape of stunted trees and plants. The sumac and blue berry bushes have turned crimson red, bright against the deep blue October sky. The touch of the northern wind crosses my face with a sharp snap.

A short spruce, dwarfed from the harsh weather and thin soil, stands alone in my view.

A raven circles, caws, and lands precariously on a short branch. Her feathers shimmer a waxy blue~black in the sun’s light. She shifts her weight and settles into a resting space, gazing at us while we watch her every move. She is so large compared to her perch, as if she does not belong, as if this wasn’t the right place for her to rest and take stalk in her world on this spectacular precipice.

I wonder what she thinks of us, as we trudge along with the weight of the world on our backs, moving through her lofty domain. Leaving my perspective behind for a glimpse of the world through raven’s eyes, I realize we see each other with the same eyes-eyes of fascination and wonder about how we share the same space and time and we are connected. She flies. I walk. In the end, we are equal. And, we all belong.

Jen Deraspe is a licensed Maine Guide, holistic retreat facilitator, certified yoga instructor and adjunct faculty member with the University of Southern Maine's College of Nursing and Health Professionals. She owns Nurture Through nature, providing holistic nature retreats for women. She lives off the grid on Pleasant Mountain in Denmark. www.ntnretreats.com (207) 452-2929.

26 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

Nurture Through Nature

Let Us Guide You Home...

Pleasant Mountain, Denmark

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Frederica Marshall Artist/Teacher classes/workshops Sumi-e Oriental Brush Painting Watercolor Painting Cold Spring, Nikko, Japan, ©2001 (watercolor batik on rice paper)

81 N. Deer Isle Road Deer Isle, ME 04627

Young Cherry Blossom – Yokusuka, Japan, ©2001

Mandalas

207-348-2782

www.fredericamarshall.com fredericamarshal@aol.com

Washington Village Massage & Wellness Center Helen G. Caddie-Larcenia Licensed Massage Therapist

Providing Neuromuscular Therapy, including but not limited to: Myofascial Release, Soft Tissue Mobilization, Sports Massage, Trigger Point & Deep Tissue Massage

Member AMTA

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Caring therapeutic touch to honor and nurture the total being

(207) 845-2155

Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 27

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destinatio n he al i n g Primitive Ways of the Past Insuring a Sustainable Future

by Kevin Pennell Photo courtesy of M. Dirk Macknight, Bethel Landscape.

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co-Consciousness, sustainability, selfpreservation, survival, concepts that may or may not influence thoughts. However, they are related and they can cause us to reflect on our basic needs. Consider another question, without dwelling on doom and gloom, how prepared am I when it comes to knowledge of basic primal skills? Learning and knowing about primitive skills can also help us appreciate and conserve what is already possessed.

Returning to the basics and relying on ancient methods of spirituality and healing permeate a holistic lifestyle. But how familiar are you with identifying and foraging for edible or medicinal plants? Can you start a fire without a lighter or match? Perhaps you’d like to learn or brush up on primitive skills, wilderness survival, tracking, or earth philosophy to broaden your base of holistic living. The Maine Primitive Skills School near Augusta, Maine offers classes throughout the year, allowing you to connect with like-minded people while reconnecting with the skills of your ancestors.

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With over 30 classes and workshops offered, where does one begin? School Director, Mike Douglas recommends beginning with Earth Living I a class emphasizing primitive survival. This is a prerequisite course for many classes. It introduces students to primitive skills and wilderness survival while focusing on the survival basics of attitude, shelter, water, fire, and food.

What does learning primitive skills have to do with healing? According to Mike Douglas, “Primitive skills grounds our spirit, connects us to our collective ancestry and immerses us into temples of creation.

When the wilderness becomes home and the manmade world becomes wilderness, it is easier to track our sources of dis-ease”. In many ways, holistic healing includes a shift from the norm whether physical, mental, or spiritual. Our perspective may need some modification, some change and thus some healing. Maine Primitive Skills School helps raise the student’s level of awareness, healing our level of conscious awareness.

Mike made some unique observations during our discussion. “Most people in today’s world don’t know their own back yards. A native has a deep connection with every plant, tree, rock, animal and bird in that same space. Even the insects have much to teach.

The line between spirit and physical may be blurred and is often crossed when you receive such vast communications and teachings, from the subtle colors, scents and input from everything on the landscape. In short, there’s no such thing as a vacant lot.”

During a recent “Summer Foraging” workshop students enjoyed the opportunity of learning to identify edible and medicinal plants. Following introductory thoughts including the proper use of a field guide and basic plant identification, the group “foraged”. We arrived at a predetermined sight. The instructor, Arthur Haines, a plant biologist and field taxonomist by trade, then 28 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

led us on a journey through a wooded area above and along the banks of the Kennebec River with Mike Douglas assisting. Like taking a step through a time portal, the students listened and watched intently as Arthur shared ancient knowledge of the flora. No mere lecture in a natural setting, this became a hands on opportunity, selectively foraging and gathering edible and medicinal plants. The edible species would later be cleaned, cooked, and served as part of our evening meal.

As a result of the workshop, we looked at the natural world from a place of deep appreciation and awareness. Our perspective of a field or a wooded area, now enhanced, helped us recognize the bounty available to all, yet with a sensitivity to forage properly; not stripping a plant carelessly, but carefully taking only what’s needed, thanking Creator as we gathered.

Primitive Skills grounds our spirit, connects us to our collective ancestry and immerses us into Temples of creation.

Many other classes are offered through the Primitive School. For example, Reiki classes will be offered at the school’s natural setting in the near future by guest Reiki Master/Teachers. Perhaps you’d like to learn how to make a rattle or hand drum. Workshops are offered that teach primitive techniques while students add their “spirit” to their instrument. Students make and fire pottery, using primitive methods of course, in the Primitive Pottery Workshop where you’re asked to bring water, lunch and “clothes you can get clay all over”. Mike affirmed that art forms are often used to express one’s spirit, which is also a distinct and unique form of spirituality and healing. Native Awareness classes teach how to feel at home in the natural world with an awareness expanding to a place where you feel unified with the earth.

The Philosophy class introduces the underlying energies behind the hard skills and community building efforts. Mike explained, “This course empowers individuals regardless of religious background or spiritual experiences. Through practical exercises, students strengthen and make real on a daily basis what they have learned through their own belief systems or on their own journey. The long-term goal of the Philosophy class is to develop a community of healers from a diverse collection of those who have been exposed to a lifetime of traditions and religions.

We do this by transcending the labels that divide us while claiming the universal truths within the purity of wilderness”.

Maine Primitive Skills School also offers a Healing Workshop focusing on healing oneself, others, and the

earth. With no outline, it cannot be said where this class will begin and end. Meditation, visualization, and ceremony predominate a weekend of learning purpose beyond self. Plenty of practical hands on skills weave through Maine Primitive Skills School’s curriculum.

Skills include flint-napping, bow making, atlatl making, tanning hides and making a friction fire or “You want me to start a fire without my lighter or matches and you want me start it with what”!

Then there’s tracking, winter survival skills, scout skills, and even a survival-trapping workshop.

Tracking and awareness, as a doorway to the spiritual world, teaches how you can read the tapestry of tracks, trails, landscapes and bird alarms. With a sense of true commitment, Mike says, “It is impossible to deny the Creator moving through all things. This class helps to make this a reality in one’s life”. The class begins by teaching how to track mice on rocks while the advanced classes shows there no longer a need to look at the tracks, when you come to the place where you look through the eyes of the subjects that make them. Some cultures refer to the higher arts of tracking as journeying and even shape-shifting. Mike mentioned, “Anyone who reads a novel, conjures up vivid images of the characters, and makes accurate predictions about the plot uses the same part of the brain that our hunting ancestors used to survive for tracking their prey”.

Maine Primitive Skills School is, without a doubt, unique in its philosophy, approach, and courses offered. It offers practical courses that produce lifechanging results in healing, attitude, preparedness, and just plain fun for young and old alike. Readers are invited to visit the Maine Primitive Skills School web site at www.primitiveskills.com, call them 207623-7298, or email them at mpss@gwi.net for more information.

Mike Douglas shared some important final thoughts.

“It’s important to honor and recognize the cultures and ancestors who passed on both spiritual and physical skills to us and future generations. We don’t use any song, story or ceremony without the express permission from the elders of these communities.

In deed, we only use them to build, strengthen and nurture communities. Collectively, these technologies are called the invisible school.” And with a note of celebration Mike added, “Once a person is exposed to their ancestral skills, the desire to pursue these skills and empower their personal journey cannot be turned off. Simply put, your life will be a blast, each day becoming a day to truly live and not just survive in society’s mundane treadmill”.

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Kevin Pennell, an author from Bethel, Maine, wrote Two Feathers - Spiritual Seed Planter and has written for other periodicals and media. Kevin is also an Usui Reiki Master, Certified Hypnotherapist, Shamanic Practitioner, and Psychic Empath. He conducts Reiki workshops and other workshops that assist spiritual and personal development. Kevin, with his wife, Vickie Cummings, operate SpiritWings, their Compassionate Healing Center and therapeutic Store located in Bethel, Maine.

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Feng Shui & Geopathology

by Werner Brandmaier

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Water in Feng Shui:

Chinese symbol for water. The word “Water” appearing in crystal structure from M.Emoto In ancient civilizations water was essential and often considered holy. Mythical beings were described dwelling in water springs, Gods and deities protecting holy sites.

For the last 2 or 3 decades western scientists have begun researching the properties of holy springs and natural water resources, which keep people like the Hunzas in the Himalayas healthy far beyond the age of 100. Until now our common understanding only dealt with the chemical consistency of water, one atom of Oxygen and two atoms of Hydrogen forming the water molecule H2O. Our city water is considered clean and safe when a list of pollutants is kept below pre-determined standards. However, latest research shows that even when filtering out all potential dangers by distillation or reverse osmosis process, the vibrational information of a possible toxin might still be stuck in the water, this time not on the physical level, but as an energetic imprint in the water structure itself. Dr. Hahnemann, the founder of Homeopathy had understood those principles nearly two centuries ago. We now are finally able to explain how high dilutions of homeopathic remedies still carry specific information, although there might not even be one molecule of the substance left in the bottle.

In Europe, holistic research focused on waterenergetics has been going on for quite a while. Radionic machines (devices to radiate energetic patterns into objects) are used to clean up community water facilities. Numerous companies offer water improvement systems to address the need for erasing possible memorized information in addition to filtering.

When Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto started his fascinating work of taking pictures of water crystals 10 years ago, he could show that significant structures

The words “Thank You “ and “You Idiot” on a water probe.

Those who are familiar with my work are aware, that water moving below a sleeping place can also be a source of detrimental energy called Geopathic stress. The water vein we try to locate for a good well is draining our Qi at the same time if we spend time on top of it. This it is not the fault of the water itself. It seems that water due to its perceptive nature easily picks up vibrational patterns of whatever crosses its way.

There is an increased effort with dowsers to clean underground water in case of Geopathic problems through methods of focused intent. We found in our work that it is essential to repeat these efforts on a regular basis to keep them active. In a number of field cases we detected that water was back in its old flow paths sometimes just a few weeks after it had been removed or restructured. We therefore use Feng Shui based tools (such as the Feng Shui Power Discs) to help anchor a detailed energetic program in the etheric house body to change negative energy patterns permanently and keep crossing water paths clean. These correction devices work similar to an ongoing radionic support program counteracting detrimental energetic structures and unfortunate arrangements.

Water of terribly polluted Lake Carapicuiba in Brasil before and after prayer.

In his books Mr. Emoto shows polluted water sources from all over the world, energetically “dead” city water in major metropolis like London, Paris or New York, and changes in the structure after people started to focus their attention in prayers and positive thoughts on that water. All over the world groups of dowsers and interested people started projects in cooperation with Mr. Emoto and his concepts to rejuvenate public water sources like reservoirs or even lakes. What a fantastic perspective in assisting our planet in reversing environmental damage and what an impressive argument for our spiritual powers if used in a positive way.

Pictures from Masaru Emotos books: 1. Messages from Water 1. Love Thyself Dr. Masaru Emoto will be in West Hartford, Ct., November 5th, at the Town Hall, 50 South Main Street. Advanced tickets can be purchased through Meg's, 74 East Center Street, Manchester, Ct. (860) 649-9941 or on-line at www.megsinspirations.com (FMI:See ad on page 22) Werner Brandmaier Dipl.Ing., a medical engineer and a citizen of Austria, studied with prominent international Feng Shui masters and trained in Germany to practice dowsing and geopathology. Werner offers consultations for homes and businesses and teaches workshops and seminars. He is a member of the International Feng Shui Guild and the American Society of Dowsers. You may contact Werner (207) 772-7888, or werner@ InstituteofFengShui.com. Visit his Website at: www.InstituteofFengShui.com.

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ater is an essential component in life. It determines the appearance of our planet even from far away. If you look at our “blue planet” from space, water covers about 70 % of the surface.

Interestingly enough, that’s the same proportion of water we find in our body. When a baby is born water contents are closer to even 80%, the body is still very soft and fluid. Once we age and the bones harden the whole body becomes more “solid”. Considering proper nutrition most people suffer of general dehydration.

When we finally approach the end of our physical life, our water content is closer to 60%. This tells us to keep ourselves well hydrated in order to age slower and to live longer.

In Feng Shui water is an essential element too. Some of you might know, Feng Shui literally means “wind and water” describing the energetic influences of Heaven and Earth, wind representing the energy movement of Heaven, water standing for the Qi flow on Earth.

are imbedded within each water drop with the idea of a connection to pure source energy. Emoto could demonstrate the vibrational impact of words on the physical medium water. If one would write a negative expression on the water probe the crystals would turn dull and lose all their beauty. Prayers of appreciation and love would change this structure into beauty again. This for example, gives new meaning to blessing food and praying before a meal.

WE HOPE THAT YOU ENJOY READING THIS ISSUE OF INNER TAPESTRY Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 29

⇠ 30

modern s ham an i c l i v i n g

Building A Sanctuar y In Your Own Backyard

by Evelyn C. Rysdyk

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upporting a healthier ecosystem in your yard can be a huge step in the right direction and our actions toward this outcome may indeed be seen as a spiritual as well as practical quest in that the focus is on producing harmony. The World Wildlife Federation has a wonderful incentive for individual and families who are searching for ways to improve their local ecosystem in the Backyard Wildlife Habitat program. The WWF offers a certification program for you who are willing to be a little more conscious about the choices you make in maintaining your yard.

Creating a healthy, wildlife friendly yard includes several features. Besides eliminating the use of synthetic pesticides and herbicides, feeding the birds and offering them a clean water source, will attract many more species to your yard. The complete list of elements required for Backyard Wildlife Habitat certification are listed here and whether or not you choose to become an official site, these are excellent guidelines to have a healthier yard and neighborhood.

Food - It is important to wildlife that we grow native vegetation on our land especially as so many yards are filled with nonnative imported species that aren’t good food sources for our birds and animals. Local, native shrubs, trees and other plants that produce acorns, berries and other seeds supply food for wildlife. You can also supplement natural food sources by locating bird feeders in your garden.

Water - Wildlife needs a constant, reliable source of water to thrive. You can provide this with a birdbath, pond or even a shallow dish. Wildlife will use water for both drinking and bathing so a side benefit of providing water will be the treat of watching birds splash around in your bird bath! Local birding shops even offer ways to keep your bird bath water from freezing over the winter.

Cover - Good cover protects wildlife against the elements and predators. Create cover for wildlife with densely branched shrubs, hollow logs, rock piles, brush piles, stonewalls, evergreens, meadow grasses and deep water.

Supporting Subsequent Generations - It’s important to offer your local wildlife safe places for courtship and nurturing young. Mature trees can provide den sites for squirrels and nesting places for birds. Having trees or shrubs that host caterpillars will ensure the presence of butterflies in your habitat. Salamanders, frogs and toads will thrive in a pond or water garden. Putting up nest boxes, birdhouses and other supportive spaces will also encourage new generations of wildlife. Places such as Maine Audubon’s year round centers at Gilsland Farm (Falmouth/Greater Portland area) and Fields Pond (Holden/Greater Bangor) offer wonderful resources on how to supplement your yard’s existing wildlife safe places. (For those readers outside of Maine, finding your local Audubon center is as easy as typing this address into your browser: www.audubon.org. Click on “States, Centers and Chapters” to find a page with an interactive map of the United States highlighting all of the Audubon Society’s locations!)

Practicing Sustainable Gardening/Yard Care - The way you garden or manage your landscape impacts wildlife in your yard and your entire neighborhood. Planting native plants, eliminating chemicals, reducing areas dedicated to lawn and building healthy soil are just some of the things you can do to help wildlife and conserve natural resources.

30 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

In addition, it’s recommended that sites reduce the use of commercial pesticides (which includes herbicides and fungicides) as well as chemical fertilizers. This feature is of real concern for us as we are only a few hundred feet from the Royal River and know that the runoff from typical pesticide and fertilizer laden lawns eventually finds it’s way to the bays and ocean where it contaminates local fisheries!

Creating a Backyard Wildlife Habitat is an excellent way to bring the entire family back outside.

The switch to organic lawn care is starting to spread here in the United States, but our neighbors to the north are many steps ahead of us in preserving the environment. A recent ruling by the Canadian Supreme Court upheld laws banning the use of pesticides for aesthetic purposes--that is for lawns and gardens--by homeowners and governments. These laws--created by the people of Canada’s largest population centers, and supported by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE)--mean that nearly 40% of Canada’s citizens now live in pesticide free areas!

This is of a great concern as pesticide use has been linked to such unacceptable risks as cancer, neurological disorders and endocrine disruption. Equally important, this also means that the non-human citizens of these areas will benefit as well--thereby encouraging a healthier and more balanced ecosystem. Passing this kind of groundbreaking legislation in the United States has been hampered by aggressive pesticide industry lobbying.

Industry sympathetic lawmakers in the U.S. who have chosen company profits over the health of our citizens have pushed through preemptive legislation to hope to avoid Canadian style bans! In spite of this however, there is a growing grassroots interest in reducing pesticide exposure in states such as Connecticut, New York and California. For instance, in 2005, the Connecticut state legislature has already banned the use of pesticides on school grounds.

Running scared, the pesticide industries of Canada and the U.S. issued dire warnings of insect and weed plagues, should we move away from the use of these toxins?

Instead, after the initial soil-rebuilding period of three to five years, beneficial organisms are replenished and these species begin the work of balancing the local ecosystem.

Industry pundits also claimed that going organic would be too costly for the average person, but the truth is after completing the shift, a property that goes organic will see the cost of lawn and yard care actually go down! Proving that not only are chemical pesticides more expensive, their hazards are also far too costly in terms of their health effects on children and adults.

Creating a Backyard Wildlife Habitat is an excellent way to bring the entire family back outside. Today, many children are at risk of what author, Richard Louv has termed “Nature Deficit Syndrome”. By playing inside instead of going outside, children are denied the many

physical, emotional and psychological benefits nature can provide. For instance, a study done by the HumanEnvironment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois has shown that engaging with nature significantly reduces the severity of ADD and ADHD symptoms in children as young as five. While parents today may be reluctant to have their children wander the hills and forests to the degree we did a generation or two ago--a backyard wildlife habitat can provide a safe haven for the entire family to interact with the natural world. In addition, creating even one tiny sanctuary is a wonderful way to heal ourselves while contributing to the healing of our planet!

Once my partner and I certified our own in-town acre yard, we began to catalog the different species that either visited or made their homes around our home. In essence, we created a very localized field guide to the flora and fauna of our yard. We began with a large threering binder, which we filled with blank sheets of card stock. Then we browsed through all of our many field guides looking for the species we had recognized in our backyard habitat. We then photocopied those entries and pasted each on their own page in the binder. With the addition of tabs, we had a way to easily keep a record of our “neighbors”. Every season, we take the opportunity to update the pages with any new inhabitants and get reacquainted with old friends. We also keep notes on the respective pages about each species’ life cycles--for instance, when each different bird species arrives in the spring or when a particular wildflowers blooms. (It’s especially wonderful to turn the pages in winter and be reminded of all the life that will return in the Spring!)

The certification process and creation of our field guide has given us a deeper sense of joy in realizing how many other living beings share our little part of the world.

Just this morning I was greeted by the sight of a beautiful white-tailed doe grazing not fifty feet away! While some suburban gardeners cringe at the arrival of deer, I was delighted to count her among the list of creatures with whom we share our one-acre yard. We have cataloged over sixty bird species alone! Once you add the twelve or so wild mammals, several amphibians, reptiles, innumerable insects and all the native plant species--one quickly realizes how much home and garden care can become a personalized form of Earth stewardship. While we might feel daunted in creating change on a global scale, we can certainly make sure our local garter snake has a safe place to warm itself in the sun, the toads will have ample shade during a hot stretch in July and the pine siskin will find food on it’s midwinter fly through!

To find out more about creating a Backyard Wildlife Habitat check out: National Wildlife Federation: www.nwf.org © 2006 Evelyn C. Rysdyk (excerpted from her as yet unpublished book: Reawakening Your Wild Heart.)

Evelyn C. Rysdyk, author of the book, Modern Shamanic Living, is a Teacher of Shamanism, healer & artist in joint practice with C. Allie Knowlton, LCSW, DCSW as Spirit Passages. Since 1991, they have offered workshops across the US and Canada. They also offer a private shamanic healing practice at True North in Falmouth, Maine.

Featured in the book, Traveling Between the Worlds, interviews with 24 of the world’s most influential writers and teachers of shamanism, they may be contacted at: www.spiritpassages.com

31⇠

the w ay o f lif e - its e l f

We're all United In One Big Living Organism

by Norm Hirst What is life?

The official definition has declared that something alive has three properties: • It is carbon based • It grows • It can reproduce But in my opinion, in the light of what we know today the old official definition is downright inadequate.

Emergent knowledge brings up new questions and thinking on the properties of life.

An important question now is how much of our environment is actually living and what does it require of us?

Since life does not conform to all the laws of physics, as we have known them, I wonder if there are laws for life that supplement the laws of physics we have known. The discipline dealing with this question is a new kind of physics, biophysics. The discoveries in biophysics totally change my ideas about reality. For example Dr. Mae Wan Ho in her book, “The Rainbow and the Worm: The physics of Organisms” page 90, points out that while thermodynamic analyses usually ignore space-time the thermodynamics of organized complexity applying to living systems depends on space-time heterogeneity. On page 91 she states, “There is always energy available within the system, for it is stored coherently and ready for use, over all spacetime domains”. Think about this and biodiversity.

Biodiversity is essential to the ecosystem. It needs biodiversity to manage its energy requirements.

That hasn’t been known until recently. People who think they are being practical seem to think the need to maintain biodiversity is just sentiment. Unknowingly such people take actions that reduce, interfere or minimize Gaia’s biodiversity and they are making the ecosystem ill.

I have come to the conclusions that our worldviews and ways of thinking lead to many of the problems we face. In his book “The Turning Point”, physicist, Fritjof Capra describes how all our problems such as terrorism, war, pollution, crime, unemployment and health care are facets of a crisis of perception, which comes from mechanism (Mechanism references processes that operate by cause and effect like cogs in a wheel). From such a mechanistic concept and worldview, a dynamic living reality cannot be perceived.

I agree. I have been saying this for several years. Also, there are other perception crises generated in our worldview that keep us trapped.

So what is needed to think about our living world

the process stops and the butterfly dies. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

The crisis of cause and effect thinking is that it has kept us focused on discrete things that are not connected, and have no independent volition. Yet, living organisms function as a collective whole, each aspect functioning freely with self-determination. Further crisis in perception is focusing on things as fixed and in static categories. Living organisms are constantly changing, creative and energetically flowing. The whole of reality is a world of energy flows and fields. We live in oneness connected by such fields. As philosopher/ mathematician, Whitehead said… ”The many become one and are increased by one.” Instead of functioning by cause and effect, life functions as flowing events all connected and affecting the whole.

In his book “The Wisdom of Crowds” James Surowiecki provides examples of processes that defy current understanding, and at the same time they demonstrate that we are all connected.

The Consciousness is throughout the living reality. It's all one big organism and this living organism knows itself.

You are most likely aware of gravity as a force field.

However, in life, there are many kinds of fields, fields of information which are quite different from force fields. Life’s fields generate coherence laws by which we experience maximum freedom to know how to act from our own self-determination and how to function as a unit. However, these coherence laws can be violated bringing about a chaos that creates symptoms indicating a need for correction. The agreement that when driving in a car, all drive on the right side of the road functions like a coherence law. It enables maximum individual freedom while enabling everyone to function together.

Life is self-creating as revealed in the theory of autopoiesis. Being self-creating, it has to be selfreferential. It has to know itself. In acting, it will discover conflicts and paradoxes. Old worldview thinking would have us believe we must resolve the conflicts. Old logics, as we have known them, require us to be consistent and to preserve truth. Such logics cannot be the logic of life. Life requires both poles of all categorical contrasts to be operational to know what to do. For example, to know strength, you must know weakness. Life resolves this contradiction through oscillation. Thus life is vibratory, ever changing. Life is creative, therefore it doesn’t preserve truth.

•

In 1968 the submarine Scorpion was lost. Based on its last position report the navy estimated it to be in a circle twenty miles wide and thousands of feet deep. The navy began searching but did not succeed. A navy officer, John Craven, had a different idea. He assembled a team including mathematicians, submarine specialists and salvage men. He then concocted explanations of what might have happened. He then asked each man for his best guess as to the most likely explanation.

He then used some mathematics, Bayes’s theorem, to build a composite picture. That produced the group’s collective estimate of where the Scorpion was. The Scorpion was found 220 yards from where the group had said.

•

Within minutes of NASA's Challenger explosion, seen on television, investors started dumping their stock in the four companies that built the shuttle.

By the end of the day three of the firms had recovered to within 3% of their beginning value.

Only Morton Thiokol was down 12%. As we now know, Thiokol was responsible for the part that failed.

A group of people can be smarter than any individual member. This isn’t good common sense at all.

In his book “Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance” James Oschman describes researched and documented performances that we would all agree are quite impossible. The list goes on and on. I will leave that until another article.

It is my strongest belief that through eco-consciousness we are becoming aware of the whole of realty as a living organism. The whole of reality includes the cosmos, the earth, the atmosphere, the oceans, and living entities all united in oneness. The consciousness is throughout the living reality. It’s all one big organism and this living organism knows itself.

We’re part of this knowing and we have access to it. Sensing inner process wisdom and connection in the fields that form us and that we form, we become fully alive and awake to this knowing. With each of us knowing ourselves not as things, separate or fixed, but as magnificent miracles of inner creativeness and intra-relatedness. We can lead the way with our understanding of oneness, connected to the organizing processes that work for us united in one big living organism.

:

The perceptions required for eco-consciousness cannot be based on common sense nor on notions of so-called practicality.

Turning to living reality we find many strange and miraculous happenings. For example a butterfly being born, trying to get out of its cocoon, involves a fierce struggle. A helpful person may decide to cut a hole in the cocoon so the butterfly can escape. When they do,

Skye

&

Norm

© 2006 Norm Hirst Norm and Skye Hirst are co-founders of Life-itself Institute, a research and education non profit organization discovering the ways of Life-itself, its self-creating forces and functions revealing wholistic intelligence. For more information See the Directory of Resources page 32, skyeh@midcoast. com or (207) 236-6331..

Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 31

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Today there is the Gaia hypothesis that the earth itself is a living organism. I cannot imagine the earth producing little baby earths. So I guess Gaia must be wrong by the old official definition. In physics, it is believed that everything is subject to the second law of thermodynamics. In 1940 Erwin Schrodinger, famous for his contributions to quantum physics for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1933, contributed a book, “What is Life?” In it he said that life is not subject to the second law. Living organisms produce ektropy to cancel entropy. In any event we know today that living organisms are not subject to the second law. Why not define life as not being subject to the second law?

That opens up enormous possibilities. Maybe Gaia is not wrong, the earth can be a living entity. Maybe the cosmos is a living entity.

and a dynamic connected eco system? What can be our eco-logic?

32 ⇠

e x p lor in g the wo r l d r el i g i o n s

Evaluating a Spiritual Teacher by James Bean

I

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am delighted to present to you, "Evaluating a Spiritual Teacher", a subject on the minds of countless seekers these days. This was authored by Don Howard, a friend of mine who lives in Eugene, Oregon. Don will actually be in Maine in November to facilitate a spiritual retreat and meditation workshop. I find this article to provide some rare insight into the world of spiritual teachers or gurus, and paths. Evaluating spiritual masters is not always necessarily a simple matter of “true” vs. “false” or “cult leader” vs. “genuine” enlightened guru of advanced spiritual attainment, for there are degrees of legitimacy and a number of factors to consider. Don has done an amazing job of articulating not only warning signs of “trouble in paradise”, but also celebrates the high ethical standards and love of wisdom the true seeker should expect in any nurturing oasis of genuine spirituality. Rather than another postmodern article on cults headed towards a secularist, cynical destination, Don presents the possibility of the spiritual seeker being able to successfully navigate the choppy ocean of Samsara, finding an integrity and enlightenment that rarely makes the headlines.

As the saying goes, “Be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves”. (Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Saying 39) Does the guru drive a Porsche while preaching non-attachment to the material world? Is there a long line of women reporting sexual misconduct, and is it documented on some website? Did the teacher plagiarize writings by earlier authors and call them his own, or cover up his own past? Being willing to take an objective, honest second look at one’s own spiritual path is perhaps for the brave-of-heart, not an easy thing to do for most of us. It is a healthy thing to dare to open that door and examine “the dark side”, any contrarian views and controversies about a teacher, if there be such, so that we may preserve our original soul-innocence or divine impulse, that yearning for the Light that caused us to begin our spiritual search in the first place! To thine own Self be true.

-- James Bean

Evaluating a Spiritual Teacher

By Don Howard Sitting in the Tokyo airport on my way back home from India I was feeling disappointed, disillusioned and somewhat sad. For the second time in this life I had realized that a spiritual teacher who I was following was disingenuous. I had been lied to and conned and I was finished with this “spiritual teacher”. I questioned if there were any true teachers -- anywhere. As I measured my predicament I wondered how many other seekers of truth had found themselves in this situation? It was then that I began to consider, and in no uncertain terms, the requirements of a teacher.

This experience in the airport was the catalyst for later compiling a list of specific requirements, which a spiritual teacher should and should not possess. This list is the topic of this presentation.

As you read below you will see that I have very specific ideas of what a teacher is and is not. However, I do not have all the answers and for many I may have no answers. I am not a sage but merely a seeker on the path who has learned that the path can contain the treacherous. I hope my story and points can keep you from some of the spiritual landmines, which I have seen and sometimes detonated. It is my heartfelt wish that you have or may find a true teacher.

Spiritual seeking has the not-so-modest goal of revealing nothing less than the Divine, the Truth or Ultimate Reality. For far less modest goals than this we would not dare attempt their achievement without a qualified teacher. Our universities and the degrees they 32 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

confer bear witness to this fact. For example, we would never attempt to acquire the skills of a professional airline pilot with mere reading, nor would we dare take instructions from someone who himself had never flown. Common sense requires that we approach subjects such as aviation or any number of other technical subjects with the help of skillful teachers and tried-and-true curricula. Why then would we assume that the highest and arguably the most difficult of all goals could be achieved without a teacher or guide?

To seek for the truth sounds simple, but once the search begins the enormity of the task begins to emerge.

A guide or teacher is not only desirable but, practically speaking, a necessity.

The West, in spite of its heavy reliance on rationality, seems to have missed this inescapable logic, for more often than not in the West the spiritual seeker avoids any type of spiritual teacher. Our Western independence and individuality play a prominent role in this phenomenon: in the West we hold the social notion sacrosanct which tells us that all men are equal and therefore that social hierarchy should be disdained and authority held in suspicion. Social hierarchy and its attendant respect for authority seems to be a hallmark of eastern cultures and is pivotal in those cultures’ relationships with spiritual teachers.

Conversely, many of us in the West have a difficult time submitting to spiritual seniority with its implied authority and implicit suppression of individuality.

Fear of being submissive (and the consequent damage to one’s pride) and the foreign concept of spiritual teacher (guru) are common reasons for avoiding the formal teacher-disciple relationship. Add to this the fact that the media—often accurately—depicts “spiritual teachers” as charlatans and it is not hard to see why most Western seekers are reluctant to seek such guidance.

To seek for the truth sounds simple, but once the search begins the enormity of the task begins to emerge. A guide or teacher is not only desirable but, practically speaking, a necessity. The Persian mystic Rumi warns: “Seek a perfect Master, for without the Master this journey abounds with perils, lures, and pitfalls...without the protecting hand of the Master... you will be bewildered”. And in The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, an aspirant is admonished: “If you don’t find a teacher soon, you’ll live this life in vain. It’s true you have the buddha-nature. But without the help of a teacher you’ll never know it. Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher’s help.”

In the East, it is axiomatic that a genuine teacher is required if the seeker is to make any real progress.

A truism holds in this field as well as others that the

student cannot learn more than the teacher knows.

But the problem in the spiritual field is that it is difficult to know what the teacher knows. Unlike other areas of knowledge, where certificates of competence such as the Ph.D. are issued and serve as bona fide evidence of accomplishment, there are no such certificates in the spiritual realm. To make matters worse, self-proclaimed spiritual teachers usually are neither spiritual nor teachers.

I am reminded here of a “spiritual teacher” from India whose web site advertises him as profoundly enlightened. I had occasion to experience first-hand just how profoundly enlightened he was. On a trip to India I was asked by one of his American disciples to deliver a parcel to him as he was in India at that time. For customs purposes I insisted upon knowing the contents of the parcel. A partial list included: “soma vision” (a personal electrical strobe light which could be worn as a pair of glasses), and a pair of Nike running shoes. I suspected then I might not be meeting with one of the spiritually elect. Confirming this was a list of enlightenment courses, which were enumerated on the Swami’s web site. The courses increased in cost as the degree of enlightenment sought increased. As I recall, you could buy a fairly high degree of enlightenment for around $900.00. The swami was disappointed that we were unwilling to donate to his organization. All in all my wife and I had a good chuckle. Only later did we realize the damage this man was doing: people actually follow this man for spiritual advice, thereby exposing themselves to a form of psychological damage so subtle that it is difficult to correct.

I began to realize then that choosing a spiritual teacher for many is not considered a decision requiring intellectual deliberation and discrimination. Such casual choosing usually has a not-so-surprising result. That result tends to be disappointment and disillusionment. As such careless seekers will tell you: caution and careful consideration are important in this search. In the West we are not familiar with the concept of a “spiritual master” and even less familiar with what to expect from such a person. Little is known or written on how one should assess a teacher.

Where to begin? Having garnered the experiences of many seekers, as well as personal interactions with numerous would-be teachers (and also considering interactions with persons I personally believe to be genuine spiritual masters), several observations emerge. I always consider that anyone can claim to be a spiritual adept, and unfortunately most claimants are counterfeit. For every 100 so-called masters only a few are genuine. There is a strong motivation these days to go into the guru-business: it’s profitable and brings prestige. And it’s easy to get into this business.

In India, for example, the purchase of saffron robes and a few sets of used beads are all that’s needed to start such a business. In the West it’s a little more complicated (robes, for example, are not as appealing as, say, a medicine man’s herb-bag hanging around one’s neck). If you can say that you are a channel for some archangel, all the better. I think you get my drift of how easy it is for the unethical to be tempted by this easier way to make a living.

Many people can be lured to follow a spiritual counterfeit. I say “many” because I include in the counterfeits the Jimmy Bakers of the world as well. I personally have been fooled twice. Seeking a spiritual master is an arduous pursuit filled with traps, snares, emotional investment and often heartbreak. Many will give up after realizing they’ve been deceived.

So how can one tell if a master is genuine? Actually there is a wealth of information on this subject, most

33⇠ There is more than one case of spiritually challenged teachers taking sexual advantage of their followers.

It is often later revealed that those who were sexually preyed upon were told that they were specially chosen to have this sexual experience and that it is solely for their benefit and greater good. From the outside this is obvious sexual misbehavior bordering on rape, but an insider, who is psychologically invested, may buy into this reasoning. Think of the difficulty of admitting that not only were you sexually used but that your entire spiritual paradigm is wrong. It takes a strong person to face up to this.

I do not personally tolerate lying and stealing in any form nor do I tolerate deceit. I know of an organization whose spiritual misfit of a teacher routinely had his disciples smuggle electronic equipment across European borders to avoid import duty. The rationale was that since this was work for the divine it was okay to dispense with the more earthly rules such as import duties. This is easy to justify, since spiritual law transcends man’s law. True enough, out of context. However, I try not to be fooled by such crafty justifications for transgressing the law. See it for what it is: theft. Maharishi Mehi of Bihar adds the additional danger of following a morally corrupt teacher when he says: “...in following an immoral teacher the aspirant would have the difficult task of not going astray, much less advancing on the spiritual path.”

Immense egos, which are easily bruised, are sure signs that it’s time to abandon this particular “path” and resume the search. A true spiritual master has such power that it is not even imaginable to most of us.

But it seems that an equal or greater degree of humility comes with such power. While a master may feign anger (and it is usually obvious), he will never banish an aspirant who has been rebuked. I have seen an aspirant who has been banished permanently because he inadvertently bruised the "teachers" ego. A true Master should not have lingering anger or a colossal ego. The words of Kabir, the 15th century Indian Master summarize the above: “Surrender yourself to him who has no worldly desires, who is devoted to God and who has foregone his ego. Do not take long in leaving the association of a false teacher for you will wander time and again and will not find the entrance to the Divine…”

The guise of the spiritual teacher is another possible clue as to his genuineness. The spiritual path has established traditional methods, manners and modes of operation. I avoid those would-be masters who are self-styled (who have “invented” a method). Spiritual seeking is hard enough without following an untried path. The West tries to lend to spiritual seeking the same creativity that has made it great in the field of material wealth. Unfortunately, the rules change here and tradition, tried and true, is the best road to travel.

While there is more than one genuine spiritual path, they are, nevertheless limited in number...

I look for traditional lineages in traditional cultural settings.

The cultural setting does not have to be mine but the teacher should be from a traditional lineage. Since spiritual paths are an area where the West clearly does not excel, why not utilize those traditional paths that have the endorsement of voyagers of those paths? To give an idea of what is meant by “traditional,” here is a list which I consider to be traditional lineages: the Hindu masters and traditions of India, Sufi traditions, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Orthodox Hesychasm, and certain recluse Catholic orders who employ structured meditation such as “The Jesus Prayer”. There are many others. A note of caution, however, is that having a teacher from such a tradition does not guarantee that such a teacher is qualified or even fit to teach a spiritual path.

Any teacher who claims to be enlightened or spiritually advanced in other ways -- who makes known his supposed spiritual powers I assume to be unworthy. Humility and lack of ego is the hallmark of the spiritually advanced. The public display of “miracles” is to be especially suspect. I believe spiritual adepts do have the power to render miracles but rarely do so. A “teacher” who routinely performs miracles should be viewed dubiously. The following illustrates the point: Several years ago an acquaintance of my wife and I were attending the Conference of World Religions in Chicago and came across a “yogi” who produced bhuti (ash taken from a sacrificial fire) out of thin air,

or so it seemed. My wife and I were both suspicious of this man -- we kept our opinions to ourselves but made it a point to avoid him. Our acquaintance, to our surprise, was enthralled. At last, he proclaimed, “I have found a true spiritual adept”. We said nothing, as it was doubtful we could have persuaded him otherwise. Our acquaintance proceeded to follow this “yogi” all over the United States. Finally, one day the “great yogi” unexpectedly produced a lot of bhuti which all could see had obviously come literally from up his sleeve. I suppose the “yogi” had a large decline in followers that day and included in the stampede was our acquaintance, who related to us that the “great yogi” was in fact not only not a master, but not even a competent magician. I might add that one of the clues to this fake was his very large ego.

Probably the most insidious of all false spiritual teachers are those who exploit their followers. On a material level the aspirant should not be asked by the teacher to give time or money. My wife and I often volunteer to give but I consider it unacceptable for a teacher to ask for money or ask for you to use your time in a way which will materially better the teacher.

If aspirants are asked to volunteer work, or worse work full time for a grossly underpaid salary, this is usually outright exploitation. Community living is an exception, of course; but lifestyles within the community should not differ much from disciple to teacher. Many genuine teachers are dependant on their followers to support their organization and there is nothing wrong with this. However, I would say the line is crossed when one is asked to give. Being asked to give even by a fellow aspirant should be carefully considered. If the teacher lives a lavish lifestyle with large well-appointed residences, and expensive cars while his followers live a common lifestyle then he should be viewed with skepticism.

The reason we take a teacher is for the personal element of teaching which is so essential on this path.

If the teacher is inaccessible then what is the point?

Inaccessible teachers are like painted cakes they look great but are useless in satisfying our hunger. If you cannot meet with a teacher face-to-face then how can you learn a spiritual path? Personal instruction with time for questions and answers is essential. An inaccessible teacher is the same as no teacher.

Speaking of meeting face-to-face with a teacher brings up the element of the quality of that meeting.

In India this quality of meeting with a true teacher is known as dharshan. Dharshan are the spiritual emanations of the teacher, which are received by the student. The result of this is a deep sense of peace, which stays with the student for some time after his meeting with the teacher. This is not a mood but an actual spiritual transmission which the student experiences. For a dedicated student some form of this experience should be present after meetings with the teacher. Lack of this experience could as easily be from a lack of receptiveness as easily as from lack of an accomplished spiritual teacher. So be careful on what conclusion you draw if this experience seems to be missing.

Finally, assuming one has had the good fortune of finding a moral and pure teacher does not necessarily mean that this teacher is himself an adept. Usually such a teacher will tell you that he is less than accomplished. This is not all bad: such honesty is not destructive of the spiritual life. Such a teacher can at least bring you up to his level. For many that would be more than they could hope for in a lifetime.

Walking away from a mistaken choice can be easy or extremely difficult, depending on the amount of emotional investment. In my own experience I do not think I have failed but rather that have learned another lesson, which bring me closer to meeting my real spiritual preceptor.

So by now applying all of the above screens, tests and filters one effectively eliminate most of the candidates for the designation “spiritual guide”.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 36

Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 33

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of it from the Eastern scriptures or Indian masters and, of course, some is simple common sense.

I would caution the reader that the following are my opinions only. I have used these in my own seeking and am not saying these are the only way or even the right ways to qualify a teacher. I am saying that they seemed to work for me. If I sound a bit like I’m preaching from the pulpit please excuse me, my intention is to submit these as ideas not dogmas.

I would consider several early warning signals, which may be applied well before deciding to follow a teacher.

First: Paying money for spiritual guidance is a violation of fundamental spiritual principles. In my opinion taking money is the number one “no-no” in conveying this knowledge. If you are asked to pay money to learn a spiritual path, walk away -- no run away! The rule of the transmission of spiritual teachings is that one does not charge a fee for such knowledge. Most established traditions confirm this. One may be asked to alter your lifestyle slightly or to take up a different diet or to commit time to practice the spiritual exercises. These are the true payments. For the payment is from you to the Ultimate Truth, not from your bank account to someone else’s.

How a spiritual teacher handles money will tell me a lot about the worthiness of the teacher. Which brings us to the second point: a teacher who lives lavishly is suspect. Numerous luxury cars, large estate-type living, multiple “retreats”, and opulent offices are more often associated with the spiritually challenged than with the spiritually advanced. These trappings are especially ominous if they were purchased from “contributions” of his/her followers. Charities, humble ashrams or headquarters housing older vehicles are more desirable when looking for the accouterments of a master. Less emphasis on money is better in the spiritual realm of masters. Optimally, the teacher should live on his own income, which is not derived from his followers. A true teacher only gives, he does not take. The fact is we have nothing a true spiritual master wants. If he takes contributions and lives a lavish life, then he “needs” followers to support his lifestyle. This type of need is a red flag signaling that this person will lead one to a spiritual dead end or worse.

Third: those would be teachers who promise immediate spiritual riches are questionable. The West has become accustomed to immediate gratification in the material world. We have fast food, fast cars, fast jets, high-speed everything. Why shouldn’t we expect the same in the spiritual field? Those unscrupulous “spiritual adepts” wise to our thirst for instant gratification gladly advertise the same in the spiritual realm, usually for a fee, which is equal to the desired speed. After all, higher speed always costs more, right? The reality is spiritual progress is something that requires a lot of hard work, usually spanning a lifetime. It requires consistent, diligent work. There should be definite, observable results for this work, but they probably won’t be immediate. Trust a teacher who recognizes the real price of the spiritual venture.

I have found that in applying these first three screens, you have effectively filtered out the majority of the disingenuous teachers.

You may have other initial evaluation tools of your own, but generally if the teacher can pass these first three tests then he is worth looking into further. Once I have accepted a guide, I continue evaluating him as long as I am his student. Below are additional danger signals, which usually are not discovered until after accepting a spiritual teacher.

Doubtless, the easiest way to recognize a false spiritual teacher is to examine his moral life.

Dishonesty and lying are absolutely unacceptable from a spiritual teacher. In fact, any type of unethical or immoral behavior is my prompt to leave.

It seems easy enough to recognize unethical or immoral behavior, but these types of behavior are rarely overt and generally are obscured under some form of an exalted justification. For example, I was once told that it is permissible to deceive others in order to persuade them to join the “spiritual community” because after all I will in the end be helping that person. One, actually finds oneself in this situation, it will probably sound incredibly convincing.

However, I always remember that deceit is never a trait of a true teacher. Integrity is the litmus test of the spiritual life, and therefore all the more so of a spiritual teacher.

⇠ 34

m ix ed m e dia

Holistic Radio Review

Book Review

by J a m e s B ean

by James Bean

Lime ~ "Healthy Living With A Twist" Broadcast via Sirius Satellite Radio Channel 114 Also Streaming Live Online at Lime.com: http://www.lime.com The Beginning of Wisdom

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Launched in 1998, Wisdom Media (Radio and Television) was founded by visionary cable pioneer Bill Turner.

Wisdom Radio was a 24 hour a day network based in Bluefield, West Virginia, featuring positive talk shows such as New Dimensions, Spirit of the Times, Spiritual Awakening, programs on holistic health, diet, yoga, the new age, the environment, relationships, spirituality, lectures

by Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and many other well-known guests and authors. For many, Wisdom Radio was the fulfillment of a vision for a more positive and constructive use of the media dating back to the higher consciousness movement of the 1970s, and no doubt long before that. Some dreamed; others talked. Mr. Turner actually created not only an alternative radio network, but also a television channel, which began airing programs never broadcast before, and it instantly found an enthusiastic audience, filling a real void in the media, that missing spirituality channel. We have scores of fundamentalist channels, a channel for comedy, channels for news and movies, a science channel, a military channel -- why not an eco-friendly channel for spirituality and health? The advent of Wisdom Radio and Television in a very real sense represented a turning-point in broadcasting, and, you could say, the “legalization”, so to speak, of spirituality as a subject worthy of coverage and discussion on the airwaves in a serious (Sirius!) sort of way.

Lime Unfortunately, in 2002 Bill Turner passed on, but the vision did not.

The seed he planted, Wisdom Media, continued to grow. In 2005 Wisdom was purchased by America Online cofounder Steve Case – his private holding company, Revolution, and Wisdom was rechristened as “Lime -- healthy living

with a twist”. “Revolution believes they are preparing a more sophisticated approach appropriate for an audience that has grown too large to dismiss. ‘ This category has moved out of the subculture and into the mainstream,’ said the channel’s CEO, C.J. Kettler, who was president of sales and marketing at the Oxygen network.”

(Hollywood Reporter.com) The Mission & Values statement found at the Lime website: lime.com

Mission: To serve a community of people interested in a healthier, greener, more balanced lifestyle.

Values: We value personal growth.

We value mindful choice.

We value an individual’s ability to effect change.

We value optimism.

We value community.

We value integrity.

We value a diversity of opinions.

We value responsibility to our community and our planet.

We value simplicity and a life in balance.

We value a model for success in which all stakeholders share.

We value inspiration and encourage innovation.

How Do You Hear or Watch Lime, You Ask? * Lime streams it’s audio over the web 24/7 at Lime.com. At the Website, click “Radio”, then “LISTEN NOW!”. * A higher fidelity audio version of Lime is found on Sirius Satellite Radio Channel 114. See Sirius.com. * Lime television is available via some cable systems, as well as it is available everywhere on satellite TV via the DISH Network, see: DishNetwork.com

James Bean reviews books and music for the Wisdom Radio Network and other stations via a syndicated radio program called Spiritual Awakening. Address questions or comments to: P O Box 7, Newport, ME 04953, or Email:james@spiritualawakeningradio.com

34 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

Peace Lagoon ~ Sacred Songs of the Sikhs By: Sardami Premka Kaur, Dr. Katar Singh Puri, and Bibi Inderjit Kaur.

ISBN: 1-928761-11-9 Publisher Sikh Dharma http://www.spiritvoyage.com Peace Lagoon -- Sacred Songs of the Sikhs -- The collected hymns of Guru Nanak, Guru Amar Das, Guru Ram Das, Guru Arjun, and Guru Gobind Singh, serve as an excellent introduction to the Sikh scriptures of India, also known as the Adi Granth or Sri Guru Granth Sahib. It is one of the few anthologies of the Granth in English, providing selections from key texts such as the Jap Ji or Morning Prayer of Guru Nanak, Sidh Godht (Nanak’s Dialogue with the Siddhas), Anand Sahib (Song of Bliss), Rehiras Sahib (Evening Prayer), Shabad Hazare (The Prayer Worth One Thousand Prayers), Kirtan Sohila (Song of Praise), Bara Maha (The Twelve Months), Lavan (Wedding Song), Ardas (Prayer), and Sukhmani Sahib (Guru Arjun Dev’s Peace Lagoon or Song of Peace). This collection also includes the Jaap Sahib (Meditation) of Guru Gobind Singh from another text known as the Dasam Granth. (“Granth” means scripture composed by an enlightened Master

or Saint.)

This particular translation is extremely well done, in a very readable, pleasurable contemporary English, which is not always the case with some of the these translations of the Granth published in India. I know -- I own most all the English translations of the Granth that are available, including an eight-volume set, two four-volume sets, and several other anthologies, also a three-volume set of the Dasam Granth. Therefore, I highly recommend Peace Lagoon to anyone interested in beginning their exploration of this great holy book from India, and to anyone who is a devotee of mystic poetry in the bhakti tradition of “lover and the Beloved”. If you enjoy the ecstatic, divine love-poetry of the Odes of Solomon, Mandaean or Manichaean Gnostic Psalms, Rumi, Hafiz, Mirabai, John of the Cross, Ravidas, Surdas, or Kabir, you will no doubt also fall in love with the Sri Guru Granth.

Music Review

by James Bean Kabbalah Kirtain Artists: YofiYah and the Tone Deaf Choir Label: Sounds True Website: Sounds True.com Kabbalah is the esoteric, mystical branch of Judaism. The chanting or repetition of sacred names is a universal practice in many schools of spirituality including the Kabbalist tradition. Names of God are considered to be ”doorways” through which one can encounter the divine Mystery and attain God-consciousness, union with the Beloved. YofiYah says: “The process of chanting develops an intimate, personal experience of the Divine. For example, when we chant ‘Dodi li, vaani lo’ (the Beloved is mine and I am my Beloved’s), we are making a declaration of the reciprocal relationship we have with the Divine. We claim God as our intimate partner, and in doing so, we feel known and loved. It is here that one finds the ecstatic experience of

Kabbalah Kirtan..... Let the power of the chant transport you to the ecstasy of the One.” Kirtan is a term from India for a sacred hymn. Kirtans are often sung in satsangs (spiritual gatherings) by satsangis. With this new compact disc, Kabbalah Kirtan, we have an innovative East-West fusion of the music of two great mystical traditions. The singing is in Hebrew, but the style would be quite familiar to anyone acquainted with devotional music from India. You are also invited by the artists to chant along with these sacred sounds.

Instruments used on this album include: harmonium, oud, tablas, sarangi, bansuri (bamboo flute), bass, acoustic and electric guitars, also, tamboura.

35 Book Review

by Sc o tt C r on e n w et h Sanctuary: The Path to Consciousness By: Stephen Lewis and Evan Slawson ISBN:0-56170-844-5 Publisher: Hay House Inc.

Inner Tapestry's new address: 925 Sawyer Street, South Portland, ME 04106 (207) 799-7995

by Caro l Wait e r The Jesus Dynasty By: James D. Tabor, Ph.D. ISBN: 0-7432-8723-1 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Consider the fact that Jesus’ brother, James, was the first bishop of the Jerusalem Church. After his death, the second bishop was their brother/ cousin Simon, and the third bishop was Jude, possibly another brother. Later descendants of Jesus’ brother, Jude, were bishops in SeleuciaCtesiphon in the Church of the East. Jesus left the responsibility to spread his message about the Kingdom of God on earth to his family.

“The royal family of Jesus, including the children and grandchildren of his brothers and sisters were honored by the early Christians well into the 2nd century A.D., while at the same time, they were being watched and hunted down by the highest levels of the Roman government in Palestine.” They were known as the desposyunoi – “belonging to the Master”, the members of the Jesus dynasty.

James D. Tabor, PhD, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has written The Jesus Dynasty. It is the result of 40 years of study and research.

Drawing on his archaeological research in the Holy Land, his expertise as a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and his knowledge of the social, economic, and historical milieu in which Jesus lived, he presents a fresh look at the life of Jesus. His goal is to propose “an original version of Christianity, long lost and forgotten”. This book is hard to put down.

The study of early Christianity is benefiting from the discoveries of the past 60 years, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Collection, and recent archaeological finds, such as the James ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb.

Dr. Tabor’s thesis in this book is: 1. Jesus was the firstborn son of a royal family – a descendant of King David of Ancient Israel.

2. Jesus established a royal dynasty drawn from his own brothers and immediate family.

3. Rather than being the founder of a church, Jesus was claimant to a throne.

4. Jesus set up a provisional government with 12 regional officials, one over each of the 12 tribes of Israel. He left his brother, James, as the head of the fledgling government.

The foundation for this new look at Jesus’ life is set in the history, geography, and social realities of this region. One chapter is entitled, Growing up Jewish in Galilee. The author draws primarily from the texts of the Old & New Testaments, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Q gospel, the Didache, the Letter of James, and the Gospel of Thomas, but also includes information from lesser known writings.

Jesus’ teacher was John the Baptist and they defined the Kingdom of God as the “will of God done on earth” as it was being done in heaven. They had “the idea of the rule of heaven breaking into human history and manifesting itself on earth”. This is one of the main themes of the Gospel of Thomas.

Dr. Tabor also shows that “Jesus was convinced that the downfall of Satan, the unseen ruler of the world, was imminent”. Together John and Jesus set out to establish the Kingdom of God, to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. The unfolding of this Messianic Mission is presented step by step, season by season, and year to year, continuing after the death of John the Baptist to the crucifixion of Jesus. As this plan was being played out, Jesus was maintaining his role of head of the household, moving his family with him as he traveled and baptized.

The book concludes with James and his role as head of the Jesus Movement. The group continued to see themselves as part of the Jewish faith, but as attempting to bring their fellow Jews back to doing the will of God on earth. For James, the message was not the person and role of Jesus (as Paul taught), but the actual message that Jesus proclaimed. The Gospel of Thomas emphasizes the words of the “living” Jesus and the wisdom teaching of Jesus are also preserved in the Q gospel and the Didache.

There were many competing Christian groups in the early centuries with different ideas about Jesus and his message. The Jesus Movement became known as the Nazarenes. The Nazarenes were opposed by the Jewish synagogues in the East, the Church in Rome, and the Roman authorities in Palestine. The Church in Rome felt the need to codify their beliefs and establish a canon of scripture. In the process they declared other groups of Christians as heretics and destroyed written scriptures that did not fit with their beliefs.

Finally, in the 4th century, the Nazarenes themselves, the followers of Jesus and his family, were declared heretics by Augustine of Hippo, a chief bishop of the Roman Church.

Book Review

by Barbara Delage

Standing Still: Hearing the Call to a Spiritual-Centered Life By: Meredith Jordan ISBN: 0-9749535-2-0 Publisher: Rogers McKay Publishing Rogers McKay—a non-profit, interfaith organization located in southern Maine— announces the release of Standing Still: Hearing the Call to a Spirit-Centered Life by psychotherapist-author Meredith Jordan.

We live in a culture that functions at a furious pace and lures us, little by little, into placing our attention outward instead of turning inward where the still, quiet voice of Mystery speaks, sometimes in tones so hushed we fail to notice unless we are standing still. The over-busy world in which we live is not user-friendly to those of us who choose to live lives consciously centered in Spirit.

Following the inspirational and often thoughtprovoking path of her first book, Embracing the Mystery: the Sacred Unfolding in Ordinary People and Everyday Lives, psychotherapist, interfaith spiritual director, and author Meredith Jordan continues to pursue and examine the many complex and fruitful aspects of the spiritual journey. In Standing Still: Hearing the Call to a Spirit-Centered Life, she probes those times when we are challenged by life events— occasionally even forced—to stop everything, wait for our next instructions, and listen quietly as those next steps are made clear. Masterfully weaving spiritual wisdom into the stories of seekers in their everyday lives, Jordan teaches that the Source of All Life is continually generating new opportunities for us to expand and mature spiritually, if we only see that these opportunities most often arrive “disguised as our lives”.

Challenging, inspiring, rich with the wisdom gleaned from paying attention to the inner life, this is a book for:: • spiritual seekers of all faith traditions and religious backgrounds • members of book study groups or twelve-step programs • everyone who longs to develop or deepen a spiritual life • those eager to embrace the ongoing evidence of Mystery every day, in everything, including the most common or catastrophic events.

Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 35

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Though its cover states that Sanctuary is “a novel,” it’s actually a lightly fictionalized account of the history and healing paradigm of the Energetic Matrix Church of Consciousness (EMC 2 ) (www.energeticmatrix.com) and its All Inclusive Method (AIM) Program for energetic balancing.

Enjoyable and compelling to read, the book uses a story format to both pose and answer many of the questions one might have about the program and its benefits.

Sanctuary explains how EMC2 founder Stephen Lewis, portrayed in the book as the enigmatic Max, uses computer software and other proprietary technology (which is not described) to identify, measure and balance “subtle energy” frequencies in people and their pets. These frequencies are said to correspond to various physical and emotional imbalances – both environmental and hereditary -that can manifest as disease or otherwise negatively impact wellness and life force.

The AIM Program operates on the premise that “everything is energy, therefore everything has a frequency”. The frequencies of “imbalances” can be neutralized by applying a precise, balancing energy. By exposing their photographs, which are believed to work as “spiritual holograms”, to the entire spectrum of thousands of energy balancing frequencies, participants are said to receive these healing frequencies 24x7. As imbalances arise, they are quickly neutralized as each person’s system takes in what it needs to manifest healing and higher consciousness. The true goal of the program is to gradually eliminate all energies – even karma – that do not support our self-realization.

Detractors of the AIM program often point out that it makes use of multi-level marketing principles.

EMC2 is incorporated as a for-profit church.

Participants pay $1,000 annually for the program, and there are plans for spouses, families, pets, etc.

Participants can apply to become Facilitators, who promote the program, and support and advise the participants they bring in. In return, Facilitators receive an annual commission for each active participant they subscribed. As participants become Facilitators, the Facilitators who brought them in get a further commission for participants brought in by the newer Facilitators “under” them. But that’s as deep as the pyramid gets.

While many Inner Tapestry readers will have little difficulty accepting that remote energetic healing is possible on many levels, it is a greater leap of faith to allow that it can be accomplished at the highly specific and truly miraculous level that Stephen Lewis and his colleagues claim. Testimonials at the front of the book and online, some by celebrities, illustrate that many AIM participants credit the program with enabling them to heal everything from joint pain to cancer. In the end, of course, the reader is challenged to “believe it before you see it”.

Personally, I think it’s hard not to be intrigued!

Book Review

36 Food Jitters... Con't from page 23 • • •

Evaluating a Spiritual Teacher... Con't from page 33

Digestive enzymes at all meals and snacks to help the intestinal tract break down food more completely and minimize small fragments (peptides) leaking into the blood undigested.

Probiotic supplements that contains acidophilis, bifidus and other friendly bacteria. HSO, homeostatic soil-based organisms are the most powerful -- or yogurt.

L-glutamine daily, an amino acid shown to help heal leaky gut and reduce cravings.

Reintroducing Food

Unlike food allergies, food sensitivities are generally temporary and typically disappear when you eliminate the reactive food for 60 to 90 days. After this time your body has cleaned out some toxins and you can reintroduce the food. But do it slowly.

If you react to wheat and decide to have a sandwich made with white bread for lunch and a few cookies for desert, you will overload your system and the symptoms may reoccur dramatically.

Maintenance

To avoid creating new food intolerances, rotate your foods. It takes four days for the food you eat to leave your body. On the rotation diet, you eat a particular food once every fifth day and don’t overload your system. For instance, you may have apples and pears on day 1, cherries and plums on day 2, blueberries and cranberries on day 3, and oranges and lemons on day 4. On a true rotation diet, you eat foods from the same category on the same day and then not again until the fifth day. This is because if you are allergic to one food, you are likely allergic to other foods in the same food family. If you react to soy, you may also react to peanuts. Likewise, if you react to cauliflower, you probably also react to broccoli and Brussels sprouts.

For detailed information on food related triggers of anxiety and holistic treatment options, as well as other physical anxiety mimickers, check out The Anxiety Myth: Why Your Anxiety May Not Be "All in Your Head" But from Something Physical, at www.anxietymyth.com, written to help you help yourself.

That means as one is paging through the various magazines and periodicals, which advertise the “spiritual elect” one can discount most of them. Pretty incredible but true. The fact is true spiritual teachers are a rare commodity. Of course, from the true spiritual master’s standpoint, true aspirants are also rare. And only true aspirants will go to the trouble to qualify their teachers and to seek out the true teacher. It is a lot of work and requires a degree of discrimination. Guru Nanak, a 15th century Master, maintains: “Those whose guru is himself blind, Pointless is their pursuit of Truth; Without the guidance of the true guru We cannot find the Name (Truth)” As one reads the sacred texts of the East, repeatedly the same theme is argued, which tells of the necessity of a guide. The Upanishads assert: “Wisdom cannot be taught by one who has not attained wisdom… The way to wisdom is through a teacher who has seen wisdom… This sacred knowledge is not attained by reasoning; but it can be given by a true teacher.”

I guess this wouldn’t be complete without mentioning what happened after my layover in Tokyo, which I mentioned in the beginning. That was 19 years ago. As you might guess I did not give up. Eventually, I found a teacher who fits every definition above and continues to do this after being his student for 15 years. I found him through my lovely wife who is East Indian. He has been her teacher for the last 32 years and she can attest that he has always been consistent and pure.

He is the embodiment of holiness. After 11 years I still find that he is a true teacher and exceeds all my expectations in this regard. His name is Santsevi of Bhagalpur, India and he is the true inspiration for this work.

:

James Bean reviews books and music for the Wisdom Radio Network and other stations via a syndicated radio program called Spiritual Awakening, and teaches Sant Mat Meditation and Surat Shabda Yoga in the Bangor, Waterville, & Portland areas. Address questions or comments to PO Box 7, Newport, Maine 04953, or email: james@ spiritualawakeningradio.com

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Sharon Heller, Ph.D. is a developmental psychologist and author of four popular psychology books, including Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight, What to do if you are sensory defensive in an overstimulating world (HarperCollins, 2002). She lives in Delray Beach, Florida.

Artists and Writers ~ Cathy Melio... Con't from page 10 Art writers and thinkers like Lucy Lippard and Suzi Gablik point this out in their writings. Lucy spoke recently at CMCA to a packed room. The title of her talk was “Imagine Being Here Now – Activist Art.” Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA) has had an exhibition called “Warflowers: Swords to Plowshares” traveling throughout the state for a year and that exhibit provoked a lot of dialogue about converting from a warring society to a peaceful society. You have to dream and hopefully some of those dreams will become reality. There is so much fear promulgated to keep people down and I see art at its best when it is fearless. Think about the fact that Colin Powell thought it was important to cover up Picasso’s Guernica at the U.N when the discussions of going into Iraq took place. Why was it so important to shield an artist’s vision of the pain of war at that particular time?

Cathy Melio will have monotypes exhibited at the Maine Art Gallery in Wiscasset and at the Belfast Framer Gallery in Belfast during the month of October.

Judith Perry is an Artist and Writer living on the coast of Maine. Her landscape derived paintings reflect our connection to nature. To see some of her paintings go to www.judithperry.com.

Heart Visions Future Events requiring commitment to

Z

time or finance Fall 2006

Z

October 8th-15th Healing Retreats for Women with Cancer F Holland Day Foundation for Creativity and Healing, on the Coast of Maine. The program was developed to assist people in their quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. Visit www. fhollanddaycenter.org.

October 14th-15th Reiki Healing Dance© Certification Course FMI: www.avantihealingarts.com, (207) 989-9009.

November 5th-12th Healing Retreats for Women with Cancer F Holland Day Foundation for Creativity and Healing, on the Coast of Maine. The program was developed to assist people in their quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. Visit www. fhollanddaycenter.org.

Now accepting applications: Spirit Passages’ THIRD Graduate Program in Shamanism Evelyn Rysdyk (author: Modern Shamanic Living) & C. Allie Knowlton, MSW, DCSW for graduates of the Spirit Passages 2-year Apprenticeship Program, FSS Three-Year and

36 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

Sandra Ingerman’s Teachers of Shamanism Training. This is the only training of this kind available to advanced students of core shamanism. Brochure and application form: (207) 846-6829 passages@maine.rr.com www.spiritpassages.com

Registrations taken for Spirit Passages' Seventh Two-year Shamanic Apprenticeship Program Participants in this program experience advanced shamanic methods from around the globe and opportunities to work toward developing a deep relationship with Spirit. In addition, there is a focus on integrating these practices into everyday life. The training will include many classic healing methods such as extraction, power animal retrieval, soul retrieval, word/sound doctoring, deposession, psychopomp and absentee healing. There will be a strong emphasis on ethical responsibility, clear diagnostic work and following the guidance of Spirit. Also included are initiatory experiences, group ritual, working with nature spirits, manifesting Spirit and many other chances to work directly with the Sacred Teachers. Facilitated by shamanic teachers and healers Evelyn C. Rysdyk, author of the book, Modern Shamanic Living, and C. Allie Knowlton, LCSW, DCSW who were featured in the book, Traveling Between the Worlds, interviews with 24 of the world’s most influential writers and teachers of shamanism. Contact Spirit Passages for more information and registration details: 207-846-6829 or passages@maine.rr.com

Winter 2007 January 26th-28th Healing With The Elements Let Earth, Air, Fire & Water share their wisdom with you in these intimate personalized all-includive retreats, presented with Skye Institute, in amazing natural settings in NH and MA: $395 includes workshop/lodging/meals $150 deposit. Reiki experience welcome but not necessary. www.avantihealingarts.com, (207) 989-9009

February 16th-18th ART/MASTER Usui-Tibetan Reiki Training Avanti Healing Arts, Brewer, ME.,www.avantihealingarts.com (207) 989-9009.

Spring 2007 May 7th-8th Reiki Healing Dance© Certification Course, Lake Geneva France FMI: www.avantihealingarts.com, (207) 989-9009

May 11th-15th ART/MASTER Usui-Tibetan Reiki Training Puglia, Itlay. www.avantihealingarts.com, (207) 989-9009.

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Inner Tapestry DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES (pages 37–42) Holistic practitioners, products & resources at your fingertips! Reaching over 40,000 readers ( TAKE A LOOK AND SEE WHAT’S NEW! ( (New listings added each issue) For information on how to add your listing, see page 37

: Body Essences .......................................................page 37 ; Counseling & Therapy ............................................page 37 ; Creative Healing Arts ..............................................page 37 ; Dance/Movement ....................................................page 38 ; Herbs, Gardens & Herbal Products ........................page 38 : Holistic Healing Centers .........................................page 38 : Hypnotherapy ..........................................................page 38 ; Integrative Healing ...........................................pages 39-40 ; Life Mastery ............................................................page 40 : Living Spaces .........................................................page 40 : Meditation ...............................................................page 40 ; Psychic & Spiritual Mediumship .............................page 41 ; Reflexology & Healing Massage ............................page 41 ; Retreats ..................................................................page 41 ; Sacred Space ....................................................page 41-42 ; Salons, Spas ..........................................................page 42 ; Shamanic Healing ..................................................page 42

Body Essences Are you looking for a home-based business that could change your life? Arbonne International has the answer!

Arbonne was developed in Switzerland more than 25 years ago and our product line has since grown to include both inner and outer health and beauty products that are unparalleled in quality and results. Do you know what you are putting in and on your body every day? Our Siiri Gott, products are pure, safe and beneficial to your body. Our best product of all, The Business Opportunity! The Arbonne family is made up of Independent many independent consultants working to make their dreams come true. Feel free to contact me anytime to learn more.

District Mgr. siiri@maine.rr.com, (207) 839-3596. Arbonne website: www.arbonne.com.

counseling & therapy Health problems, relationships dilemmas and dreams can be your connections to nature, the spirit of the future, and new unknown aspects of yourself and community. Process Work, also known as Dreambody Work, gives you innovative but simple ways to unfold and

Carol Zahner Process Work

understand what your body, relationships and life are communicating. Individual sessions, ongoing groups, classes and phone sessions.

Introduction session free. Carol Zahner MS, Dipl. Process Work Center of Portland in Oregon. In Maine: Portland and Walpole (near Damariscotta). Call (207) 522-3600, cz@processworkne.com.

Supporting the heart’s desire for intimacy, meaning, and connection. Conscious relationship is the art and science of using the

inevitable challenges of relationship to evolve into more present, loving, and compassionate beings. Ron, Deb, and Michele bring a unique blend of expertise, support, and challenge to couples who are ready to open their hearts, transform shadow into light, and heal ancient wounds in the context of relationship. We offer a variety of formats for this work: Husband/wife co-therapy team, couples’ intensives, Integrated Marital and Sexual Therapy, weekend workshops, and shamanic healing. Call for information: (207) 878-3141.

Ron Feintech, Ph.D, Licensed Psychologist, Sex Therapy Diplomate, AASECT; rfeintech@choiceonemail.com; Deb Feintech, RC, Certified Shamanic Practitioner; Michele Keef, LMFT. 222 Auburn St. Portland, ME 04103.

creative healing arts Art Therapy & Shamanism Art therapy is a dynamic combination—powerful artistic creation with the insight of psychotherapy. Art therapy and shamanic counselling will help you cultivate your strengths like a gardener tending plants. Together we can use imagination to design the garden.

We can learn to tell flowers from weeds when your spirit is overgrown. Then we can plant seeds, nurture and water them and reap a new harvest. Everyone has an artist within. Our spirit and soul speak through the artwork. The art never lies; it gently reflects back those areas of life that need our attention, promoting positive change and healing on all levels. The best way to walk into our future is to create it!

Board Certified Art Therapist, Licensed Clinical Counselor, Shamanic Practitioner with over thirty years experience. The Thirteenth Moon Center, "Art from the HeART", (207) 589-3063. moonart@midcoast.com

Susan Bakaley Marshall ATR-BC, LCP

Dance/Movement Therapy Dance/Movement Therapy is a body-centered psychotherapy that promotes emotional, spiritual and mental health. Caroline uses a

therapeutic process which combines words and movement, integrating the usual flow of words with expressions of the body and it's wealth of information and wisdom. Caroline offers individual therapy sessions as well as consultation for professionals. She also teaches groups in Contemplative Dance and T'ai Chi Ch'uan at her studio in New Gloucester. For more information: Call (207) 831-7600 or e-mail cmloupe@maine.rr.com.

Caroline Loupe ADTR, LCPC Workshops, retreats and individual journeys facilitated by visionary artist and healer Helen Warren, MSed., MFA., providing sacred

space in which to reconnect with our eternal aspect which remembers our oneness with the creative source. Immersing in visual artmaking as process (Touch Drawing* and other media) our unique wisdom, knowing and creativity is activated. The circle gathered, co-created ritual, connection with earth, and labyrinth work grounds and supports our process of remembering. As trust replaces fear energy flows, the immerging images reflecting the healing and integration taking place within. All levels of experience welcome. FMI: Call Helen at (207) 829-6876; email: helen@creativespiral.net; or www.creativespiral.net. See www.touchdrawing.com

North Yarmouth, Maine 04097

A d ve rti s e in t h e I n n e r T a pe st ry ~ Dire c t o ry o f Re so u rc e s ~ 115 words, $1 thereaf ter $250 for 1 year (6 issues) or $300 to include the Online version: www.innertapestry.org Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 37

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The Couples Center

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dance/movement Movement as Healer Free movement is directly related to our health physically, emotionally and spiritually. When we experience the possibilities of our own movement, no matter how restricted we are, release happens, and our movement becomes more free. I offer two approaches using

movement to assist you on your healing journey. I work directly on the body as a Certified Trager® Practitioner, using touch and rhythmic movement to communicate the feeling of freer movement. In the 5Rhythms™ Movement Practice, based on the work of Gabrielle Roth, I coach and witness your improvisational, self-expressive movement journey through a rhythm wave. I offer private sessions and classes in Portland and Kennebunk. FMI: call (207) 761-3765, or Email gailedge@maine.rr.com

Gail Edgerly, RN, CTP

holistic healing centers Gardens of Atlantis Just a short drive from where you are, you'll find a special place to relax and find yourself. We invite you in for a soothing therapeutic

massage or detoxifying spa treatment. Visit Meg Davison, our Homeopathy Consultant for a remedy to balance and heal naturally. We have many workshops, Yoga, T'ai Chi, Energetic Consultations with Jill Leigh. Awaken your soul with Anurag. Connect to the wealth of universal wisdom with Pat O'Connor, our Master Shaman. We offer Hypnotherapy, VibroAcoutic Therapy, and Life Coaching. Find answers with our experienced Psychics. Join us for a walk in the Garden! Route 35, Dayton Me. Call (207) 929-5088 or visit our website www.gardensofatlantis.org.

Healing Arts Center The area’s premiere environment for creating health & wellbeing, Sanctuary Holistic Health & Yoga Center offers a comprehensive selection of healthcare & lifestyle services. The community of certified professional practitioners at Sanctuary Center work independently &

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collaboratively to serve client needs. Select from a spectrum of therapies & treatments, including acupuncture, homeopathy, polarity, facial rejuvenation, hot stone massage, reiki, Ayurveda, holistic psychotherapy, nutritional counseling, detoxification coaching & more. Certified & skilled teachers offer daily classes in yoga, Pilates, meditation & Qi Gong to students of all ages & experience levels in the bright, spacious Studio. For more information, to enroll or schedule an appointment: (207) 846-1162, email: info@sanctuaryhhyc. com, www.sanctuaryhhyc.com, 50 Forest Falls Drive, Yarmouth.

herbs, gardens & herbal products Bles s e d M ain e He rb Farm

Blessed Maine Herb Farm offers Medicinal Herb Products of Impeccable Quality, made with Certified Organic and Wildgathered Herbs,

hand cultivated on our farm or gathered respectfully from the blessed earth around us. A Family owned and run business since 1989, we at Blessed Maine Herb Farm are dedicated to offering the very best of what is offered to us all by our Bountiful Mother Earth. Our product line includes nourishing and delicious Herb Tea Blends, Tinctures in Organic Alcohol, Compound Formulas, including our world famous 13 Sisters Restorative Elixir, Syrups, Infused Oils, Salves, Beauty Care, Incense and Smudge Sticks. Opening Our Wild Hearts to the Healing Herbs and Traversing the Wild Terrain of Menopause; Herbal Allies for Men and Women, by Gail Faith Edwards. Visit us online where you can peruse our offerings, read about the many uses of medicinal herbs, ask a question of the Herblady, or place an order. www.blessedmaineherbs.com

hypnotherapy Harness the power of the mind-body connection. As a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, I have the tools and skills you need.

ELISSA GARDE-JOIA

Hypnotherapy eliminates fear and stress and creates a blueprint for health and healing that your mind can read and follow. Medical experts acknowledge that Hypnotherapy compliments all medical procedures, maximizing their effectiveness and minimizing negative side effects.

Pre/post surgical patients experience reduced anxiety, blood loss, anesthesia need and rapid healing. Hypnotherapy is extremely effective in treating many physical challenges such as chronic pain and disorders of the stomach and digestive system. Hypnosis for Childbirth removes the fear and pain of childbirth. Hypnotherapy played a major role in my own successful battle with breast cancer. After 16 years of private practice in New York, I am now privileged to serve my neighbors here in Mid-coast Maine. Please take advantage of a FREE phone consultation to discuss your questions and concerns. Contact: Elissa Garde-Joia at 207-338-1669. Home visits available.

Hypno-Health As a practicing certified Hypnotherapist since 1991 in Blue Hill and Portland, I have helped hundreds of people improve their lives.

Together we have resolved over 120 different issues, ranging from abuse, anxiety, dejection and insomnia to smoking, sports performance, sexual dysfunction, weight concerns – and much more. As I guide people, they bring forward from their subconscious mind an awareness and understanding of “the roots of their problem”. They are then empowered to disconnect those roots and create a new, positive thought pattern, which becomes their permanent reality through repetition. I feel Hypnotherapy is a comfortable, gentle, genuine, and powerful way to learn the techniques to heal one’s self. Hypnotherapy could be the answer for you. Call (207) 374-2344 (Blue Hill) or 773-5200 (Portland), sadlier@hypno-health.net, www.hypno-health.net.

Hugh Sadlier, M.Ed., C.H. 38 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

Inner Tapestry Directory of Resources Ad Listings can also be advertised Online, see: www.innertapestry.org

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i ntegrative h e a l i n g Empathic Healing Channel Anju Myodo, first opened healing abilities through intensive Zen meditation. Her work is non-denominational

and serves people of all faiths. Healing Sessions begin with Anju listening to the client’s concerns. During this, Anju tunes in, using clairsentient abilities, to determine where blocks are in the client’s energy. She then channels healing energy wherever needed. Clients often enter an altered state, as their energy is boosted and begins to return to balance. Because of Anju’s religious vows, sessions are offered on a donation basis. These are held at a lovely country setting in Livermore Falls. (207) 897-4378. www.ibinn.net/ohs

“Everyone is born with the right to be healthy and live with happiness, and the path of Reiki helps to fulfill that right” – Roberta Barnes, Gendai Reikiho and Komyo Reiki Shihan (master/teacher), & Herbalist. Nestled in the trees you are encased

in harmonizing relaxation while the universal vibrations of love and harmony named Reiki restores balance where needed. Reiki promotes and speeds healing at all levels and enhances all areas of life. Among the Reiki teachers Roberta Barnes studied under are renowned Japanese Reiki Shihans Hiroshi Doi and Rev. Hyakuten Inamoto. She offers Reiki healing sessions and personalized herb reports. She teaches six levels of Japanese Reiki, courses in Peace through Meditation, and raising awareness through Connecting with Nature. Call (207) 445-5671 today or visit www.naturalhealinglearning.com.

Roberta Barnes Reiki Shihan & Herbalist

Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Reiki Master, Aromatherapist and Spiritual Director, Marie utilizes different tools in energy work, knowing that talk therapy is not always effective in treating anxiety, phobias and stress. Marie brings many years of experience in

the field as a health professional. “I would consider it a privilege to work with you in your healing, whether it is for you to attain greater joy and peace, or spiritual growth and wisdom, or to help with relief from pain or other issues.” Call for an appointment. Visa/MC Accepted. 69 Foss Street, Biddeford, Maine 04005 www.marielb.net (207) 282-9722 marielb@gwi.net

Marie Laverriere-Boucher, MSW, MA Restore wholeness to your body, mind and spirit with Dr. Gianna Settin, Usui-Tibetan and Karuna Reiki® Master-Teacher. Director

Path to the Heart

"Housekeeping for your body, mind and spirit." Drawing from a broad range of healing methods, as well as my gift as an intuitive and

channel, each client receives an individually tailored session appropriate to their needs and symptoms in the moment. People feel easier and more comfortable in their bodies, relaxed, balanced and revitalized, often expressing how “light” they feel. Treatment provides support during life changes and challenges, as well as relief with chronic pain, stress, depression and anxiety. Clients often choose to receive regularly as part of their self-care, to maintain their health and sense of well-being. It is truly an honor and my joy to act as a facilitator and teacher for others. www.pathtotheheart.net (207) 563-5889, Newcastle, Maine.

Lindsley Field, RMT, CTP

SpiritWings

Kevin Laughing Hawk Pennell, Usui Reiki Master Teacher/Shamanic Practitioner and Vickie Little Bird Cummings, Massage Therapist/Usui & Karuna® Reiki Practitioner: Massage Therapy, Hypnotherapy, Reiki, Past Life Regression, Shamanic Healing and Readings.

We consult with each client to identify the appropriate modalities to achieve self-healing and overall well-being. We also offer Reiki classes and other workshops. Visit SpiritWings for a cross cultural variety of enchanting gifts, supplies and accessories to aid your spiritual journey including an exquisite selection of healing crystals. SpiritWings is conveniently located at 57 Main Street in Bethel, Maine.

Sessions by appointment. Store hours Tuesday through Saturday 10 - 5. Telephone (207) 824-2204 or visit their website

CompassionateHealing Kevin Laughing Hawk Vickie Little Bird

www.SpiritWingsBethel.com

EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) is one of the most powerful tools for regaining emotional and physical health. Simply

JanetGleeson Energy Therapy

stated, EFT is psychological acupressure. By tapping key acupressure points located on the face and torso while tuning into the problem, unresolved negative emotions, traumas and beliefs are gently and easily released causing the mind and body to relax into a natural healing state of well-being. Research now proves that our unresolved negative emotions are major contributors to most physical pain and disease. EFT is a simple, inexpensive and clinically-proven, healing technique that usually works, often when nothing else does. Even if you have doubts, EFT can still change your life. I work on all issues, but specialize in releasing anger, fear, stress, anxiety, PTSD, phobias, grief, guilt and traumatic memories. Call Janet at 207-236-0269, or e-mail janetgleeson@verizon.net Camden, ME.

A neck or back doesn't walk into the office, a whole person does and all their history as well. What we do not choose to express

emotionally will then show itself in our bodies through tension, pain, illness and/or dis-ease. Joe invites his clients to welcome and feel, in order to transition, the walls that keep each of us from expressing our authentic selves in the world. Everything you need for what you really desire in your life is right in front of you. All you have to do is surrender to feel what is there. Joe chooses to support people physically, emotionally and energetically through manual therapy (cranial, muscle energy, functional technique, myofascial release), a deep belief in osteopathic philosophy and heart. Marlborough, CT (860) 295-0572, or e-mail Joe at joeb.pt@snet.net

Belanger Physical Therapy,

Connecticut

To place your listing in the Directory of Resources, please call: (207) 799-7995. For rates see page 37, or www.innertapestry.org.

Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 39

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of Maine-based Avanti Healing Arts, Gianna draws on her experience as a professional dancer, clinical psychologist, and licensed ICRT* teacher to bring an eclectic blend of spiritual energy and a distinctive combination of holistic services to her clients. Through all levels of Reiki training as well as Reiki Healing Dance© and Reiki Treatment, pathways to higher levels of consciousness are opened with light, balancing our energy field -- and this self-healing helps us heal others. As the power of Reiki releases blockages and heals the shadow self, we become compassionate, loving and one with all creation. Experience the healing power of Reiki training with Gianna at her beautiful lake-view retreat in Downeast Maine or on one of her unique Reiki-around-the-world excursions. Discover the sacred nature of inner healing. You’ll be transformed by the experience. (207) 989.9009 Avantihealingarts.com.

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integra tive h e a l i n g c o n t i n u e d Cosmic Spiral Balance Christa Colby, is an Architect, Urban Planner, with six years as a mental health worker and as many years as a homeless health worker. I am a Psychic and Tarot, reiki, crystal healer and teacher since I was two when my only friend was talking crow. I met spirit at

the age of five when I left my body for the first time. I dowsed for water the first time at seventeen, now I dowse for spirits. I also teach self-hypnosis for pain, anxiety, and stress. I do past life regressions, psychometry and clairvoyance. Gift certificates will be offered with a 15% discount for the buyer. Sliding scales are also available. I work with women ages 13 and up, please feel the warmth of my “soft” medicine. Call Christa at (207) 239-0591 or Email: cosmic.spiral.balance.@yahoo.com.

Pathways for Women

life mastery Norm & Skye Hirst, Ph.D. Co-founders of The Center for Life-Itself (CLII); revealing new insights about what life is and how it functions.

Mainstream science from Western Culture foundations has produced a machine-like view of life and what is living. In the past decade, new knowledge from biophysics reveals revolutionary insights that invalidate that view and almost everything that has been believed about life.

21st century understanding of life will be as different from 20th century thinking as quantum physics is different from Newton’s physics.

To find our way, CLII provides an environment of research/inquiry/discovery, inspiration and personal development. For Classes, 2006 Summer Conference Program, Lecture/Discourses, Individual Sessions, Consulting, Monthly Helpful Hints, Inquiry Circle Projects (ICP now forming), Wholistic Health and Healing, and inviting health care providers to explore emerging knowledge 2006 Summer Conference: Discovering Stage 6 contact: The Center for Life-Itself, Camden, Me (207) 236-6331 or skyeh@midcoast.com. or

The Center for Life-Itself PATHWAYS TO CONSCIOUSNESS Pathways to Consciousness began as an opportunity for us to create a life being and doing something we love and wholly believe in.

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Through individual, couple and family sessions, weekend and mini playshops and gatherings of conscious exploration we create an environment to support those choosing to live a life of the heart... A life of self-acceptance, openness, gratitude and appreciation for all life and all that we are. Through an eclectic process of intuitive heart-based guidance, energetic and physical harmonizing and the body's own innate wisdom, all are gently guided to embody their own unique healing process. This is an opportunity to become a conscious participant in your life. As we change so does our world. Please feel free to contact us with any questions. South Portland, ME. (207) 799-7998, website www.pathways2u.com, e-mail info@pathways2u.com.

Ron & Joan

living spaces Healing for Buildings, People and Businesses. Quantum Physics and Mysticism agree that ‘everything is energy’. Buildings, like people, are affected by emotional drama and trauma. And, like people can be cleared and healed of their past. Clients tell us that often, after this work, homes for sale sell quickly, neighbor or tenant problems clear, businesses flourish and homes feel more cozy and safe. David clears the energetic structure of buildings using a proprietary technique called Quantum Grid Restructuring, as well as Shamanic skills and Angelic intervention. His basic approach is Everything is Energy, Everything is Connected and Everything is interactive. David Franklin Farkas, M.S.Ed. is an Intuitive, Spiritual Healer and Technician of the Sacred (that which is 'secret' or normally hidden from view). He works remotely on buildings, people and businesses.

Call: Remote Realty Services from Rubicon Partnerships at (888) 5RUBICON (888-578-2425) Or on the web: www.HouseHealing.com

David Franklin Farkas Come home to beauty that feeds the soul. A home should be a retreat from the stresses of everyday life - a sanctuary for body, mind,

and spirit; a place of beauty that nurtures and supports all who dwell within; a place that welcomes friends and family with comfort and style; a place that reflects and celebrates your unique essence. A home should have functional spaces that are delightful places to love, grow, work, dine, play and live! I approach interior design from a holistic, intuitive perspective, working with you to create a home that is the highest expression of you, at an affordable rate. I also create business spaces that advertise for you while making your clients feel at ease, comfortable and valued. Call Tracey Walls at (207) 327-2042 or email wild_melodia2@yahoo.com

meditation SANT MAT RADHASWAMI The focus of the Maine Satsang is on Inner Light and Sound Meditation (Surat Shabd Yoga) and the Wisdom of the Masters.

These are founded on the rich heritage of the classic Sant tradition of India. Receive guidance for the spiritual journey from a Living School of Spirituality. Develop your own spiritual practice. All events are free. All seekers are welcome. Bangor, Waterville & Portland areas. To learn more and join the mailing list, call James at: (207) 368-5866, or email: James@SpiritualAwakeningRadio.com

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(New listings added each issue) For information on how to Advertise your Directory listing, see page 37

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psychic & spiritual mediumship PsychicMediumship, Hypnotherapy

Bonnie Lee is a professional Psychic Medium, Hypnotherapist, Registered Counselor, Reiki Master, healer, teacher and lecturer with thirty years experience. She resides in Fairfield and Northport Maine. Her first experience with Spirit was at the age of four. She has

connected many people with loved ones who have crossed over, as well as their angels and spirit guides. Bonnie Lee communicates with pets, both here and on the spirit side. She gives spirit readings all over the world by telephone and travels in the US and Canada. Services include: Hypnotherapy, Psychic Mediumship Readings, Gallery Readings, Workshops, Classes and Lectures, Reading Circles and Private Groups in the comfort of your home. Call (207) 453-6133, cell (207) 649-7089, spirit@bonnielee.net, www.bonnielee.net, and

BonnieLeeGibson

www.hypno.us

reflexology & healing massage Treat Your Feet

School of Reflexology

A Very Rewarding Career ~ Nurturing your physical Nervous System through reflex points found within your feet & hands.

Learn about a specific touch technique of applying pressure, using your thumb and fingers, to reflex points of the feet and hands that relate to other parts of the body. Reflexology is credited with improving circulation and reducing body stress, which removes blockages along the nerve pathways what we call Zones. A 250-hour certification course for $3,300 to learn Reflexology and its Application. Cost includes two Reflexology chairs, all required reading books, foot/hand charts, footbath items & much more. For more info, call Board Certified Foot & Hand Reflexologist Myra Achorn, Augusta (207) 626-FEET classes start in Feb. May & Sept. www.treatyourfeet.com Licensed by the State of Maine Department of Education.

Hands on Feet Reflexology is an amazing stress-relieving technique. Relaxation is a skill that most Americans do not practice often. Stress builds

and builds until it becomes a lifestyle. Lynn Marie Danforth has been practicing Reflexology for over 5 years. Lynn specializes in therapeutic Reflexology. Her greatest success is with tendonitis, plantar fasciitis and relief of tension. Lynn’s Reflexology sessions are quick, effective and could be the answer to your body’s cry for relief. Lynn has been able to show clients that change for the better is possible, that improved health is truly in your hands and feet. To contact Lynn call 207-767-5776 or 207-318-0129, or visit www.handsonfeet.net.

retreats Greenfire is... a women’s retreat house dedicated to reflection, renewal, exploration, and quiet. Set in a two hundred-year old farmhouse

Greenfire Retreat Nurture Through Nature

in the midst of meadows and woods on the St. George’s peninsula, Greenfire offers space to all women who want to rest and explore their spirituality, regardless of their tradition, age, or race. Women throughout history have gathered in circles and found wisdom in their own stories; in this tradition, guests may schedule conversations with staff to explore their own questions. Greenfire offers sanctuary, healthy and delicious food, and calm in the midst of a fast-paced culture. For more information, call 207-372-6442, email us at: greenfir@midcoast.com, or visit us on the web at www.greenfireretreat.org

Women’s Holistic Canoe Trips, Wellness Retreats and Customized Circles~ We create a safe and enriching haven and layers of

opportunities to find deep peace and growth. Our circles provide a balance of depth and lightness, group and solo space, movement and stillness. Connect with the contemplative and healing power found in nature. Find camaraderie with other women on an artfully led retreat through guided meditation, gentle yoga, Reiki, and mindfulness practices. Fill your cup on a canoe~kayak wilderness retreat, in nature's rhythm and beauty in Maine's back country. Gather your own circle of friends, family and colleagues, for a custom retreat.

Let Us Guide You Home...

Located on Pleasant Mountain, Denmark, Maine, just 40 miles west of Portland. FMI: (207) 452-2929, or www.ntnretreats.com

Pleasant Mountain, Denmark Rolling Meadows Farm Retreat provides a rural sanctuary for yoga meditation and silence. A daily schedule of yoga asana, restorative

poses, pranayama, meditation and unstructured time in the natural world create an environment for personal renewal and spiritual reflection. An 1840 farmhouse on 100 acres has been restored into a small retreat center with woodland paths, fields, a spring-fed swimming pond and a wood-fired sauna. Vegetarian meals are based on ayurvedic principles. Retreats from weekend to week-long thru the year. For more information contact Patricia Brown or Surya Chandra Das at (888) 666-6412, e-mail at: info@rollingmeadowsfarmretreat.org or see www.rollingmeadowsfarmretreat.org.

sacred space Earthrest provides indoor and outside gathering space for retreats, workshops, spiritual questing, ceremony and celebration.

Come, surround yourself with beauty! Immerse yourself in a country setting of open fields, woods, rocks and water where the land is still a little wild and the animals remember their true names. We are just 35 miles from Portland on 350 beautiful acres of land, nestled in the foothills of the white mountains. Large (1500 square feet) and more intimate (545 square feet) indoor gathering spaces, both with fireplaces.

Outside walk the land, the labyrinth and hiking trails. Many options available.

FMI call Pat at (207) 625-4179 or email earthrest@psouth.net

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Lynn Danforth, Certified Reflexologist

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sacred space continued The knowledgeable and experienced practitioners at The Wellness Center offer a full spectrum of holistic, traditional and alternative techniques. Enjoy engaging seminars that will flex your intellect. Join a movement class to tone your heart and spirit. Experience

the skillful touch of artists sensitive to the subtle thread of muscle and mind. Freshen your outward glow from head to toe. For more information about ongoing programs, upcoming seminars and suite availability, please call (207) 465-4490 or visit us on the Wellness page at VillageSoup.com. The Wellness Center, 69 & 71 Elm Street, Camden, ME 04843.

salons & spas Raven’s Crossing Appleton, Maine

Ravens’ Crossing — Come find some rural comfort and relaxation in our wood-fired sauna and/or therapeutic hot tub. Deep tissue, swedish, and

myofascial-release massage available by licensed massage therapist. Rustic retreat cabin can sleep four. Available by appointment in private setting. Trails to walk, ride horses, or X-country ski. Space for small gatherings. Please call Lori Cressler at (207) 845-2304 or visit www.ravens-crossing.com

Offering holistic facials using the organic and biodynamic botanical products of Dr. Hauschka Skin Care. These earth-friendly, holistic

preparations restore and maintain the skin's vitality. Also offering Swedish massage, full body exfoliation, expert eyebrow shaping, and thereapeutic hair and scalp treatments. Retailers of fine holistic grooming supplies for the whole family. nordstrom skin care studio,

389 Main Street, Rockland, Maine 04841. (207) 594-5077. www.nordstromskincare.com

Flourish

holistic face, body & nail

Flourish is a place of quiet and relaxation. Charlotte Van Joolen offers a unique type of facial treatment — Facial Rejuvenation,

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a hands-on sculpting of the face combined with the ageless healing arts of head reflexology and nerve regeneration that awakens your beauty and renews your inner self. You enter a deep state of relaxation uniting body and spirit — renewing physical vitality and inner beauty.

Combined with the use of Jurlique organic skin care products you meet the world with a radiant face, a refreshed body and a relaxed sense of self. Charlotte also offers basic facial care and manicures and pedicures for natural nails. Gift Certificates available. By Appointment Monday through Saturday. (207) 774-0585. 260 Western Avenue South Portland, ME 04106. www.flourishfacials.com

Charlotte Van Joolen

shamanic healing D O R Y C OTE

Shamanic Healer

…Follow the Path to Your Own True Essence. At the core of my shamanic healing practice is the belief that we have the capacity to be

whole, stable, and functioning at our highest potential. Soul retrieval, divination, extractions, shamanic energy healing, and communication with those who have passed on, can all help us fulfill this potential. My training with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, including completion of the Three Year Program in Advanced Shamanism and Shamanic Healing with Sandra Ingerman, author of Soul Retrieval, provide a solid footing for my work with adults, children and animals. Call me for information about workshops or appointments for shamanic healing sessions at (207) 841-1215 or Email me at dory@dorycote.com. www.dorycote.com Transform your body, heal your soul and change the way you live and die with the ancient healing techniques of the South American Medicine people. The core of healing occurs in the energetic or Luminous Energy Field; this is the blueprint for the physical body, and an

archive of our physical and emotional strengths and wounding. Illuminating this field transforms these wounds into sources of knowledge and power. The loss, pain and sorrow may remain as a memory but it no longer defines who we are; we realize that we are not our stories.

The Illumination Process is powerful, efficient, effective transformation. In training with Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D. Appointments in Brunswick (207) 729-7270, deb@midgette.org

Spirit Passages As Spirit Passages; C. Allie Knowlton, MSW, DCSW and Evelyn C. Rysdyk (author of Modern Shamanic Living) have facilitated shamanic healings and taught shamanic workshops across the U.S. and Canada since 1991. Graduates of the Foundation for

Allie & Evelyn

Shamanic Studies 3-Year Program in Advanced Shamanism and Shamanic Healing, they have also been fortunate to study with indigenous shamans from Peru, Ecuador, Tuva and Siberia. Working heart-to-heart with Spirit, they offer all traditional forms of shamanic healings at True North (207) 781-4488 ~ a unique, multidisciplinary medical center that they helped to found.

They may also be reached at: www.spiritpassages.com.

spiritual centers THE MAINE BEACON CENTER FOR SPIRITUAL LIVING embraces all people providing a safe harbor of healing love and joy.

Through teaching and living the Science of Mind principles, we support all people in their own spiritual evolution.

The Maine Beacon is a Teaching Center for The Science of Mind.

Sunday Morning Celebration Services are held at 10:30 AM Camp Ketcha, 336 Black Point Road, Scarborough, ME Children's Program now available.

For more information, call Rev. Linda E. Holmes at (207) 767-3515 or (207) 409-2515 www.themainebeacon.org 42 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

⇠ 43

O c tob e r 2006 M aine

September 29th–October 1st Fall Get Away Pleasant Lake House Bed and Breakfast, and BKD Fitness Center in Casco are teaming up to bring you a weekend of relaxation, gentle movement and personal pampering and enlightenment.

With a versatile schedule and qualified facilitators you can design your own spa weekend of meditation and body-work or personal boot camp, or both. Private sessions and group activities available. FMI: call Lisa Mageria (207) 627-7170.

October – December Nourishing Ourselves Deeply

October 7th-8th Wellness weekend at Mahoosuc

October 14th-15th Weekend retreat with Ray Reitze:

in the beautiful western mountains near Grafton Notch State Park. Practitioners will be offering services in foot reflexology, massage, spiritual DNA readings, counseling or healing sessions with Apache Holy woman Sapokniona Whitefeather. Info call Polly (207) 824-2073, email: info@mahoosuc.com.

teacher, naturalist, Master Maine guide at Mahoosuc Guide Service in Newry in the beautiful Mahoosuc mountains. Teachings will center around his book "And We Shall Cast Rainbows Upon the Land". Weekend will include guided meditations and visualizations, mindful walking on the land. $235 includes meals, camping. For info (207) 824-2073 or info@mahoosuc.com.

October 8th Introduction to Shamanic Journeying The Barn, Topsham ** 1:00pm to 6:00pm ** $100 Learn to access knowledge, power and healing from your spirit guides and power animals who you will meet in the shamanic realms of the Lower World and Upper World. Learn to use shamanism as a tool for healing yourself, others and the planet. Dory Cote, Shamanic Healer and Teacher. To register: (207) 841-1215 or dory@dorycote.com. www.dorycote.com

A twelve-week class exploring and changing our relationship with food and our beliefs we hold regarding personal nourishment of mind, body and soul. Led by Sue Young at Meadow Wind.

Call (207) 781-3733 or (207) 878-3899 for more information.

October 10th, 24th, November 7th, 21st & December 5th Wellness Workshops

2nd Saturdays October 2006 – April 2007, Beans, Leaves & Deities: Pagan Coffee Chats 2:00pm–5:00pm,

October 11th Introductory Tarot Class

October 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd & 30th~ November 6th, 13th, 20th 27th Monday evenings, 11:00pm-midnight ET ~ Toward The Light Radio Program centered on NDEs, the Afterlife, Immortality of the Soul, Intuition & Telepathy and more... Featuring special guests each week and call-in opportunities. Presented by Rev. Juliet Nightingale on www.BBSRadio.com

October 3rd & 4th RCT Treatment Groups and Free Introductory Talk Reconnective Therapy is a healing art that facilitates reconnection between the energy body and the physical body.

Tuesday Free Introductory Talk 7:00pm Treatment Group 8:00pm Wednesday Treatment Group 7:00pm Location: Riley School, Rockport Talk is Free, Treatment Group is $70.00 Contact: Margaret Rauenhorst, (207) 236-8139 FMI: www. reconnectivetherapy.com

October 4th, 11th, 18th & 25th 6:00pm -8:00pm Opening to Meditation Easy to learn. For beginners and those who have already begun. Contact Roberta Barnes, Reiki Shihan for details. (207) 445-5671http://www.naturalhealinglearning.com

October 6th, 6:00pm-9:00pm, October 7th, 9:00am-5:00pm The Bagua, Five Elements and Intention At the New England Center for Feng Shui and Intuitive Arts, with Peg Donahue and Barbara Madding, FMI: visit www.necfs.com or call (888) 211-2206 Cost $295, lunch included.

October 6th-9th Yoga and Meditation Retreat Rolling Meadows Retreat - a 100 acre sanctuary for yoga, meditation and silence. With Surya-Chandra Das. Brooks, Maine. www.rollingmeadowsfarmretreat.org (888) 666-6412

Six weeks to learn the Tarot with Jeanne Fiorini $175. FMI: Leapin’ Lizards (207) 221-2363.

October 12th 7:00-9:00pm FREE Teachings of Bruno Groening ~ Freeport Leapin' Lizards 123 Main St. (207) 865-0900, www.leapinlizards.biz Inconceivable healings occurred during the lectures of Bruno Groening (1906-59).

Medical doctors support this work world-wide. A medical doctor from Germany will lecture. Everybody who is looking for help, healing, or who is just open to experience this wonderful life force in his own body, is welcome.

October 12th, 7:00pm Satsand with Neelam At the Wellness Center, 69 Elm Street, Camden. $15 For more info see www.neelam.org or call Michelle (207) 338-2869 $ amount is a suggested donation – sliding scale.

October 13th Two Hour Special Satsang with Neelam, “The Power of Presence” At The Wellness Center, 69 Elm Street, Camden $35-$20 For more info see www.neelm.org or call Michelle (207) 338-2869 $ amounts are suggested donation – sliding scale.

Reclaim your "self" with helpful tools to supporting a holistic lifestyle, Yoga, Pilates, breathwork, meditation, guided imagery, discovering energetic-vibrational qualities, and more.

(207) 839-7192 www.holisticpathways.com

October 15th, Sunday 9:00am to 5:00pm, Ceremony of Initiation into Womanhood at Hope Peace Ceremonies in Hope, Maine. A Day of Healing and Empowerment for Adult Women led by Angie Bear Heart. $80, pre-registration with deposit required. Contact Carla Sanders (207) 763-4356, carla@hopepeacechamber.com

October 17th, 6:45pm-8:45pm Ongoing Dream Group Opening four-week session for anyone interested in witnessing the wisdom of the Dream. Limited to eight participants. South Portland location $100 Facilitated by Jeanne Fiorini, practitioner/ counselor 15 years experience working with the symbolic language of the archetype. FMI/register (207) 799-8648.

October 19th, 6:30pm- 8:30pm Qigong for Menopause, Perimenopause, or any Pause at True North Health Center, Falmouth Qigong exercises particularly beneficial for women, Suitable for all. $40. Register with True North (207) 781-4488.

October 20th-22nd Self-Care for the Caregiver Women’s restorative weekend through yoga, meditation, nature and nutrition, with Nurture Through Nature (207) 452-2929, www.ntnretreats.com.

October 21st, Saturday 1:30pm-4:30pm Yamuna Body Rolling

A Residential Playshop which supports a process of wholebeing harmonizing through conscious awakening & energetic support. Friday 6:00pm to Sunday noon in South Portland. For more information, questions & to register (207) 799-7998, www.pathways2u.com. Self assessed sliding scale $325 - $425.

At the Portland Yoga Studio, taught by Marianna Moll (certified YBR Practitioner) For more information contact info@portlandyoga.com.

Pre-registration and prepayment necessary.

October 14th Take Charge of Your Healing

Take your yoga outside under beautiful Fall Foliage! Breathwalk combines walking, breath patterns, mantra and mudra to bring you to total awareness. Pre-registration required. $30 Kundalini Community Yoga, Portland, (207) 615-5405, dwarmin1@maine.rr.com

Using the techniques of hypnosis, guided imagery, chanting and affirmations, this class will teach you how to take charge of your physical emotional and spiritual healing. Feminist Spiritual Community at Friends Meeting House Portland ME FMI: Call Doris Bell, RN, CHT (207) 883-4570 or Eddita Felt (207) 353-8648

October 14th, 21st, 28th & November 4th Free Senior Self-Defense and Awareness Course Sponsored by Aikido of Maine at 226 Anderson Street, Portland Register for Free (207) 712-2826 or benjaminerne@gmail.com.

The Sanctuary, Yarmouth ** 1:00pm to 4:00pm ** $25 Drum, dance, draw, make clay figures, find your Power Animal, create an altar together and talk about the directions. And more….

Dory Cote, Shamanic Healer and Teacher. To register: (207) 841-1215 or dory@dorycote.com. www.dorycote.com

October 14th & 15th Flute Carving Workshop,

October 7th & 8th The Long Dance, in Hope Maine

October 14th-15th, 9:30am-5:30pm Exploring & Evolving Your Energy Field. Part 1

PLEASE SUPPORT THE ADVERTISERS WHO BRING THIS JOURNAL TO YOU!

October 15th Retreat for Renewal Day!

October 13th-15th Weekend of Self Exploration

October 7th Children’s Shamanic Play (ages 5 to 10)

An overnight visioning dance for people of all faiths, $150, Contact Dance Chief Lindsley Field, at Path to the Heart, (207) 563-5889 or lindsley17@adelphia.net.

Open to those who have been to satsang previously wit Neelam at the Riley School, Glen Cove $95-$145 pre-registration requested. For more info see www.neelam.org or call Michelle (207) 338-2869. $95-$45 amounts are suggested donation – sliding scale.

Presented by Tim SpottedWolf and Eve Abreu. Carve your own Native American Flute. $160 Please call (207) 647-2082 or (207) 754-5447 for more information.

Gardens of Atlantis, Dayton. Learn easy, effective energy field self-care practices. Includes: chakra & aura clearing, activating and energizing your clairvoyance system, connecting with your essence self. $195. FMI: www.transformativeenergetics.com/ offerings.htm or call Jill Leigh at (207) 247-2442.

October 21st, 9:00-12:00 AM (Rain date: Oct. 22) Breathwalk-A Walking Meditation

October 21st, 9:00am-5:00pm Five Elements and Health At the New England Center for Feng Shui and Intuitive Arts, with guest speaker Jon Sandifer, FMI: visit www.necfs.com or call (888) 211-2206 Cost $195. This workshop is advanced studies.

October 28th treat - $30 off Komyo Reiki First class of Shoden Contact Roberta Barnes Reiki Shihan (207) 445-5671 www.naturalhealinglearning.com

October 28th~ Saturday, 9:00am-4:30pm.

Renew Your Spirit Day Retreat at Gardens of Atlantis.

Register by October1st please ~ $99 or $89 for groups of two or more. Details at www.gardensofatlantis.org FOR THE ADVERTISERS WHO BRING THIS JOURNAL TO YOU PLEASE SUPPORT THEM & LET THEM KNOW YOU SAW THEM HERE!

Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 43

Cyan Magenta Yellow Black

New Portland Church, Portland, ME. Join us for coffee, tea and meet other pagans in Southern, Maine. All pagan paths are welcome. One-hour topical discussion followed by social time.

FMI: (207) 671-4292, jgrandbois@gwi.net or visit www.beansleavesdeities.blogspot.com

Best Western-Lord Wakefield Hotel, 595 North Avenue, Wakefield, MA FMI: Call (781) 258-6597

October 15th Daylong retreat with Neelam

⇠ 44 October 28th & 29th, Saturday & Sunday Earth: An Elemental Wheel Workshop

November 5th–10th Yoga and Meditation Retreat -

With Evelyn Rysdyk & Allie Knowlton The elements are powerfully profound Teachers of Manifestation.

Working with them can support us on our path of dreaming a new way of being into reality. Each weekend is dedicated to a different element. As we enter into relationship with the very fabric of Life, we find ways to weave a new future for ourselves and the planet. Prerequisite: Working knowledge of the Shamanic Journey Process. Falmouth, Maine $200 Spirit Passages (207) 846-6829, www.spiritpassages.com

Rolling Meadows Farm Retreat - a 100-acre sanctuary for yoga, meditation and silence. With Surya-Chandra Das, Brooks, Maine. www.rollingmeadowsfarmretreat.org (888) 666-6412.

October 28th-29th, Saturday, 9:00am-12:00pm, 2:00pm-4:00pm Sunday 9:00am-12:00pm

November 10th-12th Greenfire Women's Retreat, Tenants Harbor

Ken Cohen: Honoring the Medicine Indigenous Healing and Spiritual Traditions Workshop Cost: $250 Saturday, 5:00pm-7:00pm, Public Healing Ceremony Maine Audubon, Falmouth.

Thursday, October 26th, Free Slide Lecture 7:00pm, Maine Audubon Falmouth.

More information: www.pachaworks.com, or (207) 756-0488

Understanding Our Mother Stories, no matter what our relationship, we are deeply connected to our mothers. Come explore this relationship to expand self-awareness and spiritual growth.

(207) 372-6442 or www.greenfireretreat.org

October 29th from 9:00am-4:00pm Women In God presents its 3rd annual Spirit In Action conference: Nurturing Ourselves, Our Families, Our Community and the World. Join us at the Freeport Hilton for a day of inspirational speakers and amazing performances. For more information please see www.womeningod.com or call (207) 233.7658

October 2006 Connecticut

October 7th & 8th New England School of Feng Shui

Cyan Magenta Yellow Black

Basic & Advanced Workshops. Certification Program.

New Series begins October 7th-8th. Early registration discounts available. For info or brochure :info@newenglandfengshui.com (203) 266-4211 www.newenglandfengshui.com

November 2006 Maine

November Energy Balancing Productions is offering explorations in sound healing. Sound healing is a form of vibrational medicine, which can assist in returning ourselves to balance with the appropriate use of sound. Rich Goodhar t, www.richgoodhart.com is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and recording artist and has studied extensively with Sarah Benson, Tom Kenyon, Robert Gass and others. FMI: contact Karen Rollins at www.energybalancingforall.com or (207) 751-9127.

November Touchstone Bookstore presents Tama Kieves!

Author of This Time I Dance – Trusting the Journey of Creating the Work you love. Contact us FMI: touchstonebookstore@maine. rr.com, www.touchstonebookstore.com or (207) 878-3866

November 3rd-5th 14th Annual Weekend Yoga Intensive with Gabriel Halpren Theme Yoga: For the Sake of Life, For more information: www.belfastyoga.com. Pre-registration and prepayment necessary.

November 3rd & 4th Taize Services and Workshop a ecumenical service of meditative singing, silence, and prayer. Friday evening, and Saturday, at St. Thomas Church, Camden. crocker@midcoast.com, cmartine@midcoast.com), stthomascamden@adelphia.net, (207) 236-3685. See also: www.taize.fr

November 4th Powerful Play: Feminine and Masculine Expressions and Interactions. Movement, theater, creative expression exercises, discussion and play facilitated by Katey Branch and Carl Lakari, day-long workshop, 10:00am–6:00pm, Portland location TBA. Sliding scale of $70-$130. For info contact Carl (207) 282-5598.

November 4th & 5th and April 21st & 22nd (2007) Workshop in Contemplative Dance For persons with prior experience in this powerful movement form… To be held at the Sanctuary Center in Yarmouth. Call Caroline Loupe At (207) 831-7600 or e-mail at cmloupe@maine.rr.com

Email your listings to events@innertapestry.org 44 Inner Tapestry Oct/Nov 2006

Upcoming Maine

Starting November 8, 2006 One Year Program in

December 1st-3rd Women's Yoga and Meditation Retreat

Advanced Shamanism and Shamanic Healing The Sanctuary, Yarmouth. Every Wednesday evening beginning November 8, 2006 ending December 19, 2007 Call Dory @ (207) 841-1215 for an application or email dory@dorycote.com www.dorycote.com

Rolling Meadows Farm Retreat - a 100-acre sanctuary for yoga, meditation and silence. With Patricia Brown. Brooks, Maine. www.rollingmeadowsfarmretreat.org (888) 666-6412.

November 10th-12th Harvesting the Gifts Within: Creativity, Wisdom and Truth A Three Day Retreat for Women, nurturing the feminine soul through Touch Drawing*, labyrinth work and co-creative ritual. Creative Spiral Studio, N. Yarmouth, ME., Facilitator: Helen Warren, MS and MFA. FMI: (207) 829-6876; Helen@creativespiral.net; or www.creativespiral.net *www.touchdrawing.com

November 11th, Saturday Wounded Boys Wounded Men; Breaking the Myth of Masculinity. A Day-long workshop for Men, 9:00am-4:00pm The Friends Meeting House, Portland Tom Allan, LCSW, LADC, & David Ward, LCSW, LADC FMI, call David, @ 207-846-3422, or visit www.davidwardlcsw.com/events.

November 11th Take Charge of Your Healing

Using the techniques of hypnosis, guided imagery, chanting and affirmations, this class will teach you how to take charge of your physical emotional and spiritual healing. U. U. Church Westbrook, ME FMI: Call Doris Bell, RN CHT (207) 883-4570 or Eddita Felt (207) 353-8648

November 17th-19th Weekend of Self Exploration A Residential Playshop which supports a process of whole-being harmonizing through conscious awakening & energetic support. Friday 6:00pm to Sunday noon in South Portland.

For more information, questions & to register (207) 799-7998, www.pathways2u.com. Self assessed sliding scale $325 - $425.

November18th, Saturday, 1:30pm-4:30pm Yamuna Body Rolling At The Portland Yoga Studio, taught by Marianna Moll (certified YBR practitioner). For more information contact info@portlandyoga.com Pre-registration and prepayment necessary.

November 18th, Saturday 10:00am-5:00pm Ceremonies of Gratitude With Evelyn Rysdyk & Allie Knowlton A despacho is an experiential, ceremony of gratitude used by the people of the high Andes of Peru to celebrate achievements, petition the spirits for help, to manifest something in one’s life and to stay in the state of ayni--the state of sacred reciprocity--with our beautiful Earth- Pachamama, You will make your own despacho and learn how to tailor one for any special occasion!

No previous experience necessary! Wells, Maine $100 Spirit Passages (207) 846-6829 • www.spiritpassages.com

November 18th & 19th Beginning African Shamanism with Oscar Mokeme Pacha Works in Falmouth, ME, Cost $250, Call (207) 756-0488 or visit: www.pachaworks.com for more information.

November 2006 Connecticut November 5th, Sunday, 1:00pm-3:30pm Dr. Massaru Emoto, The Key to Life is Water A Water Crystal Presentation and Book Signing based on his best-selling books: The Hidden Messages in Water, The True Power in Water and Love Thyself. West Hartford Town Hall, 50 South Main Street, West Hartford, Ct. Advanced Tickets: Single $40, Two $36, Ten or more $30 pp. Day of event $45. Call Meg’s (860) 649-9941, www.megsinspirations.com or http://www.eventproducers.org (860) 232-3331 or visit Meg’s at 74 East Center Street, Manchester, Ct. Dr Emoto’s books, cards, CD’s and DVD’s are available at Meg’s and will be available for purchase at the presentation.

Calendar of Events & Classified Ad Information Can be found on Page 46 and at www.innertapestry.org

December 8th-10th Weekend of Self Exploration A Residential Playshop which supports a process of wholebeing harmonizing through conscious awakening & energetic support. Friday 6:00pm to Sunday noon in Bartlett, NH. For more information, questions & to register (207) 799-7998, www.pathways2u.com. Self assessed sliding scale $325 - $425.

December 29th-January 1st New Year's Yoga and Meditation Retreat Rolling Meadows Farm Retreat - a 100-acre sanctuary for yoga, meditation and silence. With Patricia Brown & Surya Chandra Das. Brooks, ME. www.rollingmeadowsfarmretreat.org (888) 666-6412.

Classes Beginning January 2007 Beginning Shamanism: Building a Luminous Field 4 Weekend trainings over 16 months with Eva Rose Goetz. Call (207) 756-0488 or visit www.pachaworks.com for more information.

January 6th & 7th Give Yourself the Gift of Reiki: Usui-Tibetan Reiki Level 1 & 2, Contact Gianna Settin, (270) 989-9009 or www.avantihealingarts.com, Brewer, Me.

January 19th-21st Weekend of Self Exploration A Residential Playshop which supports a process of wholebeing harmonizing through conscious awakening & energetic support. Friday 6:00pm to Sunday noon in South Portland. For more information, questions & to register (207) 779-7998, www.pathways2u.com. Self assessed sliding scale $325 - $425.

O ng o i ng M aine

Free Lectures. “Alternative Realities”.

Psychotherapist/channel Brenda Nelson will speak about how to receive guidance from higher sources. Patten Library, Bath ME. 4th Weds. of each month. Starting September 27, 5:00pm-8:00pm FMI: bhnelson@midmaine.com.

(207) 386-5056 or www.otherrealities.net

Hatha Yoga, Meditation, Satsang, Classes in Psychological & Spiritual Development, & more.

Based in the Tradition of the Himalayan Sages. N. Yarmouth, ME. For full listing, see website. www.TurningLight.org (207) 829-2700

Science Of Spirituality is sponsoring a satsang.

Meets the last Sunday of every month 1:00pm at Hartland Library, under direction of Sant Rajinder Singh Jyoti meditation. www.sos.org (207) 876-2954 www.newengsos.org

Ongoing Psychotherapy Groups, Yarmouth, ME. Openings available in weekly men's & mixed psychotherapy groups. Intentionally build your relationship skills, communication, personal and spiritual growth. David Ward, LCSW, LADC, (207) 846-3422, www.davidwardlcsw.com/group.html

“Authentic Movement” with “The Wave” Two Saturdays per month at Bath Dance Works Classes October 7th and 21st, November 4th & 18th, December 2nd & 16th 72 Front Street, Bath, 10:00am-1:00pm $10 per session.

Kay Mann (207) 725-9997.

Classes in Yoga, Pilates, Qi Gong, and meditation in a bright and serene studio. Fall session starts now. Drop ins are welcome. Gentle, moderate, & vigorous classes for all ages & levels of experience; private classes available. View schedule on the web at www.sanctuaryhhyc.com or call (207) 846-1162.

NEW MOON FESTIVAL, Facilitated by Oscar Mokeme, Nigerian priest and chief, held monthly @ FOREST CIRCLES, Topsham, Me. for info call (207) 776-3152 or email rstrongheart@gmail.com

"Developing Your Personal Healing Gifts", a four part class offered by professional teacher and healer Regina Strongheart, (207) 776-3152, rstrongheart@gmail.com

Healing Touch sessions with Gail Meyer, Certified Healing Touch Practitioner Thursdays from 11:00am2:00pm at Touchstone Bookstore, 1832 Forest Ave. Portland.

Call (207) 878-3866 to schedule your appointment.

⇠ 45

Tools For Teachers

Reiki Works offers all levels of Reiki

This workshop is designed for schoolteachers to enable them to use simple Yoga based mind body integration techniques in their classrooms, as a means of classroom management.

These tools will allow teachers to help children with relaxation, breathing, and stress reduction which will complement their over all learning and create a harmonious learning environment.

Workshops can be scheduled as in-house workdays for teachers in public and private schools. These workshops are individually tailored, and price varies according to the length. Please contact Lily Goodale at ngoodale@aol.com or (207) 236-6001. Workshops can be given from Portland to Bar Harbor and are certified and part of the YogaEd foundation of yoga for children. www.yogaed.com.

classes, sessions and free clinics. For schedule please contact Andrea Smith, B.S. Rehabilitation at reikiworks@midmaine.com (207) 474-9962.

Thank God It's Grace: Women in God, Women in Good

SpiritWings-Workshops, Reiki Classes & Events

Please join Women In God each Thursday, 4:30pm-5:30pm at Meadow Wind 100 Gray Road, Falmouth, for an hour of peace, grace and Spiritually-based conversation. Women in God is a non-denominational, spiritual support group that welcomes all women on a path of love, hope and inspiration. For more information call (207) 233-7658, or visit www.womeningod.com.

Dragonfly Taijiquan, Larry Ira Landau Group & Private Instruction in T’ai Chi Ch’aun (taijiquan) & Chi Kung (qigong) for beginners & experienced students.

Studios in Portland and Kennebunkport. Ongoing classes, workshops & retreats. FMI: (207) 761-2142 or (207) 967-4070.

Holistic Pathways Yoga & Healing Center, Gorham.

Ongoing classes offered in Kripalu Yoga, Pilates, Pregnancy and Mommy & Me Yoga. All ages and abilities. Call (207) 839-7192 or visit www.holisticpathways.com for more information on upcoming sessions. in Bethel Maine. Social Drumming Circle first Friday of every month. Reiki Shares second Tuesday of every month. Reiki Classes and other Workshops scheduled every month. Call for schedule (207) 824-2204 or visit website www.spiritwingsbethel.com for details.

First Sunday of the Month

A Gathering of People Exploring Conscious Living

FREE introductory book discussion on "ECKANKAR - Ancient Wisdom for Today", held on the first Sunday of each month, from 12noon–1pm at Community Chiropractic of Maine, Suite 216, 222 St. John St., Portland. Contact (207) 771-0281 or www.eckinme.org

Join us Thursdays. 6:00pm-8:00pm at 925 Sawyer Street, South Portland. Sliding scale $5 - $15. FMI: (207) 799-7998, or visit www.pathways2u.com.

Student Massage Therapy Clinics

FREE ECKANKAR introductory book discussion on "How to Survive Spiritually in Our Times", by Harold Klemp, held on the first Tuesday of each month, from 7:00pm–8:30pm at Mobius, 319 Main Street, Damariscotta. Check www.eckinme.org

at Namaste' Institute for Holistic Studies Ongoing Student Massage Therapy Clinics at Namaste' Institute in Rockport Maine. Please call for more information on how to become a recipient of Student Massage Therapy Clinics & Student Massage Therapy Session Studies!

Call (207) 236-2744 or visit www.namasteinstitute.com

Birthwise Midwifery Potlucks

Doula tea, meet with doulas in person.

Interested in Homebirth? Meet the midwives of Birthwise Midwifery Service and local homebirth families. Bi-monthly, 3rd Sunday of September, November... 5:00pm-7:00pm at Birthwise, Bridgton.

(207) 647-5968 www.birthwisemidwifery.org/bmservice.html

Learn how doulas help families during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. We meet Sundays at the Ballard House, 131 Spring St. Portland from 10:30am-11:30am. There is no fee, pre-registration is required. Call Rebecca Goodwin at (207) 318-8272.

First Tuesday of the Month

Reiki: Healing Hands

Belly Dance Classes & Flamenco Classes

Aikido of Maine Portland Aikido for Women classes, Wednesday and Friday am classes.

Daily beginner’s classes and youth programs. www.aikidoofmaine.com (207) 879-9207

Is actively looking for people to join this group, for info: Visit www.paoweb.com. If interested, call (207) 743-2613, E-mail bobham@adelphia.net, or write Maria Ham, 51 BumpTown Rd, South Paris, ME 04281

Free one-hour Holistic Health Counseling consultationsFocusing on your personal health concerns, health history, diet, relationship with food, and other issues that influence your life and food choices. FMI contact Shannen, (207) 837-4878 at The Healing Path, Holistic Health Counseling, Reiki, 615 Congress St., Suite 313, Portland. www.pathofhealing.com

Inner Light Spiritualist Church Invites You to Weekly Services, Sundays 10:00am-12:00pm, with Reverend Gloria Nye. Healing, Songs, Sermon, Mediumship, Governor King Masonic Lodge, Route 1, Dunstan Corner, Scarborough, Me.

Women’s Workshops Designed exclusively for you to address your unique problems online & in-person. Henderson, NV. $75 per workshop Fridays 6:00pm-10:00pm, FMI: (702) 408-1783 email: workshops_for_women@yahoo.co.uk

Children’s Aikido Kokikai Class Schedules: Josiah Bartlett Elementary School in Bartlett NH Wednesdays 3:30pm-4:30pm grades 2-5 ($35/month) Wednesdays 4:45pm-5:45pm grades 6-8 ($35/month) Fridays 3:30pm-4:30pm grades K-1 ($30/month) The Ballroom in Harrison Maine Sundays 5:00pm-6:00pm grades K-6 ($30/month) Water and Stone Yoga Studio in Conway, NH Mondays 4:00pm-5:00pm grades 2-5 ($40/month) Mondays 5:15pm-6:15pm grades 6-8 ($40/month) Mondays 6:30pm-7:30pm adults and teens ($40/month) Contact Jane Biggio for more information at (603) 374-6326 or email at bamboomountain@ncia.net

Yoga For Kids: A way for children to strengthen emotional stability through self exploration. Seven Week sessions following school calendar.

Ages 5-9 Belfast The Belfast Dance Studio Wednesdays 4:00pm-5:30pm Camden Open Door Yoga Thursdays 3:45pm-5:00pm For more information call Lily at (207) 236-6001

Holistic Pathways Yoga & Healing Center, Gorham.

Different paths to empowerment and connectedness, learn traditional movement vocabularies of either (or both!) of these sensuous and inwardly strengthening arts. At the Belfast Dance Studio & Datura Dance in Montville, www.daturanightbloom.com or (207) 589-3129.

WholeHeart Yoga Center, Portland

Breathwork/intuitive Healing

Ongoing Yoga Classes

Dynamic facilitated group sessions monthly in Auburn, Falmouth, Harrison and Oxford. The ultimate tune up.

Workshops, classes, private and all levels of Reiki training. FMI call Breathe In & Beyond Christopher and Paula Easton (207) 583-6603.

Yoga classes and individual instruction that start from where you are and expand your life. Experience the Journey. Rising Moon Healing Arts, Kimberly Allen. (207) 590-0082, www.rising-moon.org

3rd Tuesday of month, 6:00pm-8:30pm Avanti Healing Arts Reiki Center in Brewer. All levels of practitioners and teachers welcome. We will be changing this to Firday evening starting in January. Please call in advance to confirm meeting dates.

(207) 989-9009. www.avantihealingarts.com.

Thirteen Moons, Millinocket, FREE

Soundings - Energy Therapy Woven In Sound An intuitive blend of Reiki, IET, Quantum-Touch, crystals and sound. Usui Tibetan Reiki, IET and Crystal Bowl Meditation classes. Brenda (207) 557-2664, soundsqwazi2@verizon.net, www.gentlerhythms.com

Ongoing Master Reiki Training Retreats

Wednesdays, 6:00pm: Live & Learn introductory discussions, topics change weekly. Thursdays, 6:00pm, Coffeehouse: local talent Penobscot Avenue, (207) 723-5313, thirteen.moons@verizon.net

Wavelengths Hypnotherapy ongoing classes: HypnoBirthing® Parents, Self-Hypnosis, Weight Managment, Smoking Cessation, Relaxation Guided Imagery, Bonnie Lee Gibson, CH and Ernie VanDenBossche, CH; www.hypnowave.com (207) 453-6133, (207) 649-9655, Waterville, Me.

Real-ize Your Integral Potentials ~ Real-ize your multidimensional self! Integral Energy Healing ~Explorations in Consciousness ~ Leadership in Consciousness ~ Life Transformations. We offer sessions, classes, circles and workshops. Elizabeth@IntegralPotentials.com (207) 873-3514.

Kittery, ME: Rawfood Potlucks Last Thursday of each month, with guest speakers from the Rawfood community. Support, learn, share, and build a local rawfood community. Call Aimee, (207) 409-0899.

Inner Light Spiritualist Church, Rev. Gloria Nye Location: Governor King Lodge 649 U.S. Route 1 Scarborough, ME, Sunday Services: 10:00am Healing Chairs 10:30am Service, Healing Meditation, Inspirational Talk, Messages from Spirit, 12:00pm Fellowship Hour – Refreshments.

Ayurvedic Massage Experience Abhyanga, Garshana and Shirodhara, the ancient healing bodywork techniques of India. Ruthanne Harrison, LMT. Located in Richmond, ME (207) 737-8593

Deadline for calendar of events and classified submissions for the December/January Issue is November 5th

Full schedule of weekly classes for all levels with experienced, Kripalu-certified instructors. Workshops and Kirtans (chanting) offered regularly. Call (207) 871-8274 or visit www.wholeheartyoga.com for more details.

Yoga Classes starting September 25th in Kennebunk Monday evenings, Saco Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and Dayton Wednesday mornings. First Yoga class free for newcomers!

Dance, Chant & Meditate in Portland, Fridays, 6:30pm-9:00pm, September 15th, October 13th, November 10th & December 8th.

Yoga Retreat October 13th-15th at Earthrest in Cornish Yoga Vacation February 17th-24th at Virgin Gorda, VI Yoga Vacation July 21st-28th in the Swiss Alps FMI: call Jeanette Schmid Lakari (207) 282-5528.

Healing Drum Ceremony Second Mondays, 7:00pm-9:00pm Yvonne Treeslimb Raphael Dancing Trees Lodge 17 Cotton Lane, Oxford ME. $10 donation to benefit Dancing Trees non-profit retreat center. You need do nothing during the ceremony, but relax and receive. After the ceremony we do shamanic journeying. (207) 743-8467.

Sample & Full length Shamanic and Reiki Sessions Thursdays, Healing Sessions with Yvonne Treeslimb Raphael, Touchstone Bookstore, 1832 Forest Ave, Portland ME (207) 878-3866, Sessions are $1 a minute.

USM Center for Continuing Education.

Ongoing classes in Complementary Therapies, (Traditional Chinese Medicine, Aromatherapy, Reiki, etc.)

Visit www.usm.maine.edu/cce for course and registration information or call (207) 780-5900 for catalog.

Energy Vibrational Healing Therapies including Polarity and Energy Interference Patterning of DNA. Ongoing Reiki & Therapeutic Touch classes. FMI: (207)-839-7192, www.holisticpathways.com.

Free Reiki Exchange, Hosted by Gianna Settin

Avanti Healing Arts Reiki Center in Brewer. Please check webite for upcoming trips and retreats for practitioners and teachers to hone their skills and explore their creativity.

(207) 989-9009 www.avantihealingarts.com

Artists Support Group, Inner Balance, Belfast, ME On 156 High Street. Third Tuesday of the month from 7:00pm-8:30pm. Call Elliot Benjamin at (207) 338-4576

Crescent Moon Herbals Ongoing classes and events, psychic readings and energy workers. 76 Center Road, Lebanon, Maine.

(207) 457-1114, e-mail: crescentmoonherbals@excite.com Web site: www.crescentmoonherbals.com

Mindful Meditation™ Mondays 5:30pm-7:00pm All are welcome, no experience necessary. $15 or 4 classes for $50. Mind/Body Therapy at Meadow Wind, 100 Gray Road, West Falmouth, Maine (207) 650-3964 FMI www.mbtherapy.org.

The Awakening Process Learn about a simple path that will eliminate depression and anxiety, leading eventually to peace and enlightenment.

First and third Tuesday 7:00pm-9:00pm.

Call (207) 286-8060 for directions.

Oriental Brush Painting Classes and Workshops Frederica Marshall, an artist who lived 28 years in Japan, teaches sumi-e in her Deer Isle Studio. Basic to advanced levels. (207) 348-2782. www.fredericamarshall.com.

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Offers classes, Reiki Therapy sessions, and Monthly Clinic every 2nd Sunday of the month at United Methodist Church, West Kennebunk. FMI call Pauline Wilson, BA, CRM (207) 985-3575.

Planetary Activation Organization in Maine

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Belfast Yoga Studio. Iyengar style Hatha Yoga

Teaching Reiki Master, Transformational Breath, Crystal Healing, Hypnotherapy, and Hypnobirthing. Private sessions by appointment. Gift certificates. Ongoing classes. Contact Vicki Kupferman 14 Weed Rd., Knox, Maine. (207) 568-3782.

All levels including, Beginner, Level I, Level II, Gentle & Private classes & workshops. For more info and schedule see www.belfastyoga.com or call (207) 338-3930/338-4256.

Kripalu “DansKinetics”

Gallery exhibits Original Visionary Art by Helen Warren, MSed., MFA Open by appointment or chance. Co-Creating with Your Soul retreats and individual journeys. FMI: (207) 829-6876 or helen@creativespiral.net; www.creativespiral.net.

The body, mind, spirit workout blending yoga and dance.

No experience necessary. Free trial class. Days Meadow Farm, 889 Alewive Rd. Kennebunk. (207) 985-6896 or: daysmeadowfarm@prexar.com.

Sacred Circle Dance Dances from a multi-cultural folk dance tradition.

Steps taught at all sessions. No experience/partner needed.

Fourth Friday of every month, 7:00pm-8:30pm, Portsmouth, NH. FMI: amyla44@juno.com, (603) 750-7506.

Ongoing Usui Reiki Classes in all levels, private sessions and free clinics, Gift certificates available.

Please contact Judy Fisher, Reiki Master Teacher in Camden, Maine at (207) 236-0359.

Dancing Xigong: Twelve movements to music Every Thursday morning, 8:30am-9:00am Summer at Merryspring Park, Winter at Quarry Hill, in Camden.

FMI call (207) 236-8732.

Experience the healing of Love without condtions.

Ongoing classes. Learn the freedom of healing without limitations. Shamballa 1-4 and 13D Certification. Contact Elizabeth, Center of Momentum, (207) 873-3514, or centerofmomentum@hotmail.com.

Short-term Solution-oriented Couples & Family Work.

Guiding Couples & Families from conflict to communication, from disengaged to connected, from hurting to resolution.

Group and private sessions. Call Maureen McCarthy-Darling at (207) 691-0023.

Energize! and RYSE® sessions

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(Realizing Your Spiritual Energies) Sessions for artists, actors and performers. Expand your creative potential, rejuvenate, rebalance after performance. $65/$55 Holistic Pathways. Gorham. (207) 839-9819. www.starlightacting.org.

Creative Spiral Studio

SACRED SPACES Space Available for Gatherings, Ceremonies, Presentations.

At Earthrest, Cornish, ME. Call (207) 625-4179.

SACRED RENTAL SPACE Gardens of Atlantis Healing Arts Center has space to rent by day, month or event. We can accommodate your practice, business meetings, or celebrations.

(207) 929-5088, www.gardensofatlantis.org.

Meadow Wind Center for Holistic Arts.

All levels of belly dance classes taught by experienced and caring instructors. Bangor and Waterville classes. Visit our website: www.aaminahdance.com or jeason@pivot.net.

Shared practitioner space for rent as well as rooms for yoga classes, workshops and office space. Great location, 100 Gray Rd., Falmouth. Easy access to Routes 95 and 295. For more information contact Andrea at Meadow Wind (207) 878-3899 or (207) 939-1124.

NDE Support/Discussion Group

A Place In The Heart

Aaminah School Of Middle Eastern Dance

FOI (Friends of the International Association for Near-Death Studies), meetings held by teleconference once a month.

FMI, please go to http://neardeathexp.meetup.com/1/about/ or contact Rev. Juliet Nightingale at (615) 292-2217.

You may also visit www.TowardTheLight.org.

The New England School of Feng Shui Basic through advanced workshops. World-renowned faculty.

Professional certification program available. For complete brochure: (203) 268-9483 or visit www.neschoolfengshui.com.

“SANT MAT RADHASWAMI SATSANG”

Energetically clear beautiful spaces for classes, workshops, celebrations, and ceremony. Outdoor ceremonial space available. Located in Falmouth. Reasonable rates. FMI call The Vywamus Foundation (207) 797-6106.

Professional Office Space in Health Clinic in Freeport Village, 2 rooms newly finished, ½ or full time, includes all utilities, easy parking, excellent opportunity to network, seeking Osteopaths, massage therapist, Naturopaths, energy or body workers. See clinic at www.freeportacupuncture.com.

Rent: $450-$550/mo. Call Mary Beth: (207) 865-1203.

Inner Light & Sound Meditation. Surat Shabd Yoga. For a Bangor, Waterville, & Portland meeting schedule, call James at: (207) 368-5866 or James@SpiritualAwakeningRadio.com.

SACRED SPACE FOR SALE

Have you experienced sexual assault or incest?

HELP WANTED

Connecticut

We are Survivors of Incest Anonymous.

We meet every Monday evening in Hartford, CT. Call Mae at (860) 236-1770 or email HartfordCT@sianyc.org

Classifieds Maine

Maine Renaissance Faire for sale 78 acres of beautiful, magickal woods, buildings and drilled well on site make for a perfect spiritual retreat or campground.

FMI: contact Valerie Davis (207) 926-5693.

Inner Tapestry Is looking for people to help support the growth of the journal by selling ad space. This is not selling -- it is sharing what the journal is, what it means to you and what you feel it can offer others. Our intention is to create community through sharing what we love and believe in. If you feel this is something that resonates with you please call Ron or Joan at (207) 781-9885 or email us at innertapestry@verizon.net..

FOR SALE Wise Women Daughters of the Moon Ceremonial Wisdom Circle honoring our Inner & Outer Seasons & Cycles. Sliding Scale. FMI: www.spiritualrenaissance.com, www.templeoftheheart.com or call Deborah, spiritual guide, healer & ordained priestess: (207) 883-1081.

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED READING THIS ISSUE OF

Kennebunk Restaurant for sale $45,000. Rent paid until 2007. (207) 967-4321 visit www.portbistro.com.

Place your Events in Inner Tapestry’s Calendar The first 30 words submitted per issue are free!

Email: events@innertapestry.org • Please follow the format of the Calendar— please do not send unformatted Listings such as press releases.

•Email typed text indicating which heading you want your event to appear under: (Month, Upcoming or Ongoing).

•If your first Event is longer than 30 words, please send .75¢ per word thereafter — (Email & Website addresses count as 2 words.)

Ongoing Calendar Events under 30 words may be posted up to six months, or until requested to be removed.

Events & Classified ads are also posted on the Inner Tapestry Website! www.innertapestry.org

How to advertise in Inner Tapestry’s Classifieds Keeping with the themes of natural living, alternative health & well-being, Classified ads are $20 for 30 words, $1 per word thereafter. Times, dates and telephone numbers count as one word (like “August 6”. Email and Web addresses count as 2 words. Payments must be sent with the listing.

The deadline for the December/January 2006~2007 issue is November 5th.

Email your listings: events@innertapestry.org.

Antje Roitzsch www.healingartsmaine.com info@healingartsmaine.com (207) 594-7372

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\ YOGA, T’AI CHI AIKIDO & MEDITATION Practitioners Directory BELFAST, ME Belfast Yoga Studio Iyengar Yoga, Relax&Renew® (restorative) Yoga, Yamuna Body Rolling®; classes, workshops, individual sessions. Marianna Moll (Iyengar, Relax&Renew®, Yamuna® certified) and Belinda Pendleton (Iyengar style, Gentle Yoga, Yoga for Cardiac Wellness). (207) 338-3930. www.belfastyoga.com info@belfastyoga.com

BOOTHBAY HARBOR, ME The Yoga Firm Studio Join our ongoing movement inspired Beginning and Flow Yoga Classes to restore the supple nature of your body and mind. Also offering Shiatsu/ Acupressure bodywork. For schedule and info please contact Romee May, (207) 380-6975; 115 Townsend Ave. www.yogafirmstudio.com

CAMDEN, ME

FALMOUTH, ME Meadow Wind Center for Holistic Arts Offering several styles and levels of yoga from beginner to power yoga. Call (207) 878-3899 for class schedule or go to www.meadowwind.org for more information. 100 Gray Road, Falmouth, Me.

GORHAM, ME Holistic Pathways Yoga & Healing Center All abilities/ages. Beginner, Continuing, Intermediate, Toning & Sculpting, Pregnancy Yoga, Couples Pregnancy Yoga, Mommy & Me (infants), Yoga for Tots, & Pilates. Private Sessions available. Postures, breathwork, meditation, relaxation.

(207) 839-7192. www.holisticpathways.com.

NEW GLOUCESTER, ME ®

Life Breath Institute Offers classes, workshops and private sessions to meet your schedule. ChiKung, deep meditation, Reiki and breathing techniques combined to achieve ultimate well-being in our Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual life.

Rev. Valerie Davis B. Msc. 31 Rowe Station Rd., New Gloucester, ME (207) 926-5693.

NORTH YARMOUTH, ME Turning Light Yoga & Meditation Center Classes in Hatha Yoga, Meditation and Psychological & Spiritual Development.

Free Monthly Satsang. Personal, group and corporate programs available.

Director Darcy Cunningham certified by Institute of the Himalayan Tradition and Yoga Alliance. (207) 829-2700, www.TurningLight.org,

PORTLAND, ME

Full Circle Synergy School of T'ai Chi Ch'uan We offer classes morning, noon and night. Cultivating stress reduction, balance, internal energy, and meditation while celebrating the joy of movement spectrum from self-healing through athletic efficiency and power to self-defense. All abilities welcome! (207) 780-9581. www.fullcirclesynergy.com

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Kundalini Community Yoga Full class schedule including beginners and children. Workshops. Groups.

Private sessions. Certified Instructors. Class includes Kriya (set of specified exercises), breath, mantra, meditation, relaxation. Try Kundalini Yoga-the yoga of Awareness. 52 Pine St., (207) 615-5405, www.kcyoga.net.

Portland Yoga Studio Highly trained instructors, Iyengar certified, Anusara influenced. Prenatal, Teen, LifeLong, Restorative, Ashtanga (flow), & Yin Yoga classes! Weekend workshops!

Belly Dance! Beautiful studio! 616 Congress Street, (207) 799-0054, www.PortlandYoga.com, email info@portlandyoga.com Aikido of Maine Aikido: "The Art of Peace"' a martial art for self-defense and spiritual development.

Connecting movement, breath and energy through partner practice. Seeking harmony from conflict. Creating an Alert mind, calm body and enhance health and awareness. Daily classes: beginners, adults & children, Flexible schedules, (207) 879-9207, 226 Anderson St., Portland, www.aikidoofmaine.com WholeHeart Yoga Center Portland's Kripalu affiliated studio offers classes for all levels which include postures, relaxation, breathwork and meditation. Our teachers are highly trained & Kripalu-certified. We also offer private classes, workshops, Partner Yoga and regular Kirtans (chanting). 150 St. John St., Portland.

(207) 871-8274, www.wholeheartyoga.com Touchstone Bookstore and More Offering guided and open meditation. During open meditation times, we will light a candle and set the intention for peace. Just come in, grab a seat and breathe! Weekly morning and evening Kripalu yoga classes. Call or visit us at 1832 Forest Ave., Portland, ME, (207) 878-3866, www.touchstonebookstore.com The Yoga Center Quality instruction for 25 years. 30 weekly classes-all levels, restorative, therapeutic, power, pre-natal. Master teacher workshops and Yoga vacations in Mexico & Maine. Two lovely studios & supply store.

Directors Vickie Labbe and Jennifer Cooper, (207) 774-YOGA (774-9642).

Portland T'ai Chi School Traditional Yang Style T'ai Chi classes at the Portland New Church Wednesdays 5:30pm-6:30pm. White Crane QiGong is taught to develop internal energy. The focus is on developing a healthy body and emotional being. (207) 272-8286, www.portlandtaichi.org.

SCARBOROUGH, ME Rising Moon Healing Arts and Maine Massage and Yoga Yoga classes and private instruction designed for all levels. Awareness through movement, breath, and meditation. Reiki, Massage, and Mindful Living.

Consults available. Kimberly Allen, (207) 590-0082, www.rising-moon.org and Emily Eastbrook, (207) 415-3123, 153 US Route 1, Scarborough.

YARMOUTH, ME Sanctuary Holistic Health & Yoga Center Spacious & beautiful newly built studio. Professional instruction in KRIPALU & HATHA YOGA and MEDITATION. Now also PILATES and QI GONG! Group & private classes, all ages experience levels. See website for schedule.

(207) 846-1162, www.sanctuaryhhyc.com

Calling all Yoga, T'ai Chi, QiGong and Meditation Practitioners. Place your listing here! An excellent resource for getting the word out for your classes & workshops!

If you and your group or school hold classes and workshops and would like to be listed in this Directory, please call: (207) 799-7995 or Email: info@innertapestry.org.

Please include in listings Yoga, Meditation, T’ai Chi and Qi Gong related classes Oct/Nov 2006 Inner Tapestry 47

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Open Door Yoga Center Offering a wide variety of Yoga classes, 5 Rhythm Ecstatic Dance, Feldenkrais Movement, Mindfulness Meditation, Shamanic drumming, T'ai Chi and Tantra Workshops. Morning, evening and weekend classes for all ages and levels.

Conveniently located less than 3 miles from the center of Camden. Call for brochure or info: (207) 236-8971.

PORTLAND, ME (Con't)

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Articles, New Calendar Events, New Directory of Resources Listings and much more... Thanks for reading!