Now that yoga has gone mainstream, I’ve witnessed many people getting injured from their participation in this ancient art form. It appears that a certain amount of flexibility and strength is required to sensibly participate in yoga classes. This observation coupled with people’s competitive nature which translates into trying to stretch like the person next to them in class, leads to injury.

Of course, yoga is an amazing therapy for the body, mind and spirit but not necessarily for everyone. People who are exceptionally tight or lacking in upper body strength can find yoga to be frustrating as well as potentially painful and injurious. A big part of the problem is gravity. Gravity weighs us down and makes even seemingly simple movement difficult.

Another reaction of the body which makes yoga more difficult is the myotatic stretch reflex. This reflex is the body’s way of helping to prevent damage to the muscles. After 2 seconds of stretching to your end point in your personal range of motion (ROM), your body realizes you are about to experience some microscopic tearing of muscle fiber.

Consequently, the inherent wisdom of the body causes your muscles to tighten in order to protect you from pulling a muscle. Breathing and exhaling deeply into the stretch helps, as in yoga, but you are still fighting your body’s natural reaction. Obviously you can still stretch but one is fighting the body every moment a stretch is being held past 2 seconds. That is one of the reasons yoga places so much importance on the breath, being the only autonomic function of the body that you can override.

We will leave slowing of the heartbeat and other difficult tricks to the gurus. But anyone can focus on their breath and elicit at least a calming effect on the body and mind. But if you back off after 2 seconds once your stretching end point is achieved, inhale, then ease right back into the stretch while exhaling, you will find stretching magically easier and effective. Employing this method will incrementally open your body right up. Even if a stretch is painful, it only lasts 2 seconds. But if you are holding stretches for 15 seconds, 30 seconds or even a minute, it is a miserable experience if you are inflexible.

It’s no wonder many people abandon their stretching program because it hurts! But most people can handle a maximum of 2 seconds even if it is uncomfortable. Consistent stretching will get you to a point of ease within your own body. But getting to that point of ease is easier said than done. That is why I developed Aqua Stretch Kinetics or A.S.K. Bikram Yoga is on the right track by warming the room to over 100 degrees. Unfortunately, performing yoga in that kind of heat is uncomfortable at best but the muscles do release more easily. Now if we eliminate the aforementioned gravity by utilizing flotation devices, the stretching becomes surprisingly easier. Stretching for inflexible people is uncomfortable at best but just by negating gravity, the ease of stretching is astounding. A.S.K. immerses your muscles in warm water which is more effective.

If you have access to a hot tub or warm pool, it allows the opening of the muscles exponentially. The reason for this change is the body measurably expands when weightless in water. If the water is warm, it’s even better. This expansion of the body takes the pressure off the joints, allowing the body to open easily and without pain or at least considerably less discomfort. Aqua Stretch Kinetics is the easiest, most efficient and least painful method of stretching ever devised. Not only is it effective, it can be fun too! A.S.K. is an offshoot of AquaBliss, my ultimate therapy for relaxation and consciousness expansion. But A.S.K. doesn’t need me or a therapist I’ve trained in order to enjoy the experience. By watching and studying the DVD, you can learn how to properly stretch in a weightless environment and begin the journey to a pain-free existence.

Nothing can compare with imagination; hence the book is always better than the movie. Children used to go outside armed with nothing but their own imagination. Cell phones, portable video games, movies, etc., have replaced the age-old workings of the free mind. The more information, the less real “knowing” can present itself.

Being an herbalist, a walk in the woods is interrupted by the botanical names and medicinal uses of the surrounding flora. It’s not just a weed or a flower or a tree, but an unconsciously categorized plant along with its uses. Is it food, a plethora of different medicines or a useful tool for survival? As handy as all this information can seem, the ability to just “be” in nature becomes much more difficult.

In certain situations, such as being lost in the woods, this knowledge is potentially life-saving, but during a relaxing day hike, it’s just more mental clutter. And that goes for all our “know-ledge.” The incessant stream of monologue (i.e. talking to oneself) actually clogs our awareness. Our brilliant organic internal computer spends much of its time churning away over nonsense. To be internally as well as externally quiet can approach MISSION IMPOSSIBLE status. And it is getting worse. I could go on but you know what I’m talking about without having to spell out the details.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-technology. In fact, it’s astonishing what we have access to in the media alone, but where’s the inner peace? That’s another reason I constructed the FLOWER OF LIFE, an original symbol of CREATION predating modern religions. In order to tap into your true creativity, which everyone possesses, one must get quiet, allowing the answers and ideas to well up from your subconscious mind. Whether it is meditation, sitting in nature, or whatever it takes to achieve inner quietude, this process is essential.

The reason I created AquaBliss was to fashion a fast track to these altered states of consciousness whereby thinking ceased and a timeless awareness enveloped you. Meditation, essentially NOT THINKING, is extremely difficult for most people. AquaBliss is the easy way.

Now that I’ve completed a project conjured up and seemingly finished three years ago but not, I can finally write about it. After reading Drunvalo Melchizedek’s books on the Flower of life, an idea began to percolate in my mind. Why not build this ancient symbol on the front forty acres. Not even having a tractor at my disposal, a good friend suggested I scale it back a bit. So I started on one acre instead.

Trying to explain my reasoning for initiating this project was my first challenge. The war in Iraq was raging and I was sensing a complete disregard for not only many peoples of the Earth but the Earth itself. Being situated just outside Yellowstone National Park, which is basically a volcano overdue to explode anyway, maybe self-preservation was a factor. The concept of Gaia, the Earth as one living organism, resonates with me, especially living in Montana. The thought of giving something back to the Earth began to make sense purely in a balancing act type of scenario. But it would have to be something substantial. Instead of mining, industrial agriculture, logging, drilling, extracting, not to mention poisoning the very substrate of the planet which supports all of us, I felt a little thank you note to Mother Earth herself was long overdue. In my small way, building a sculpture into the Earth of the original creation symbol struck me as appropriate. Doing everything by hand except driving the truck to and from the quarry, also seemed to be the low tech and proper way to approach the project.

Armed with a piece of rebar for the center point, a 15 foot radius of string, and a pointed wooden stick, I began scratching circles into the sun-baked soil. The entire symbol is nothing but 30-foot diameter circles all crisscrossing either a center point or the edge of a neighboring circle all within one giant circle. When completed it looks like a giant lotus flower from above.

The material I chose was paramagnetic volcanic basalt rock dust. The owner of the local quarry, John Fanuzzi, was kind enough to donate the rock dust material for my project. Paradise Valley is a high desert and the soil was not irrigated and rock hard. The simple act of scratching lines into this soil canvas was a two month project in itself. Terra Firma indeed! By the time I was halfway through, my lines were fading so I strategically placed colored irrigation flags around the perimeter of each circle. I was toiling amidst a sea of multi-colored flapping mini-flags representing symbolically, the flags of all nations. It became somewhat confusing having only the primary colors at my disposal as they all intersected around me. But I continued to reposition the rebar post and scratch more circles into the backyard. Finally, amidst a sea of flags, my layout was complete. These lines were painstakingly gouged into the ground on hands and knees effectively ruining more than a few sets of workpants.

The sense of accomplishment was short-lived when I had to determine the best way to make this a permanent sculpture, hopefully. Fortunately, my eyes caught sight of a piece of yard art, a pioneer era, manual, one-prong plow. No horses here, just serious manual labor. I proceeded to plow each circle individually, then use a narrow irrigation shovel to clean out the furrows. I can’t begin to explain how grueling this process was considering the hard pan I was trying to churn through with my century-old plow. But eventually the trenches began to form a pleasing pattern. Unfortunately, digging the 6” deep and 5” wide trenches was still only step two. Next were my regular visits to the Black Diamond Quarry.

I would take my pickup truck up the mountain to a huge pile of the basalt rock dust. Most people have experienced what a shovel full of dirt feels like, weight wise. This basalt granite dust is so dense it felt to be approximately three times the weight of a shovelful of soil. Then I would proceed to hand load about a ton of rockdust into the bed of the truck. On my return home, I would crawl down the mountain in low gear and 4¬-wheel drive while practically dragging my back bumper due to the excessive weight. Luckily, I only live about a mile down the road. But that was a scary mile, every time. The hood of the truck was so elevated I could barely peer over the steering wheel. I did this twenty four times.

The process of unloading the truck shovel by shovel into the waiting trenches became a labor of love. Regardless, the questioning of my sanity would frequently present itself. The soundtrack for this entire process was a CD by the Indian violinist Shankar, along with my favorite tabla player, Zakir Hussein. Sounds like “Who’s sane.” Five months into the project, I was saying, “Not me!” But I was in much too deep to abandon the sculpture even though the thought occurred on a regular basis. Occasionally, my wife would come out, hands on hips, survey the scene, shake her head and retreat back to the house.

Looking across the Yellowstone River to the 11,000 foot peak called Emigrant, I noticed there were three peaks from this angle. Thoughts of the Trinity, body-mind-spirit, and other trilogies meandered through my brain. But the craziest thought, no, not thought more like telepathic transmission formed in my consciousness on a regular basis throughout this process. The specific message was “Build it and they will come.” I felt like Kevin Costner in “”Field of Dreams.” But instead of a baseball diamond, I was constructing a sculpture symbolizing life itself! But I wasn’t sure why anyone would want to come all the way to rural Montana just to take a peek at my piece of handiwork, ancient symbol or not. But in the ensuing two years, after putting that project to bed ( I thought!), I built the AquaBliss Institute. Since AqauBliss has the capacity to elevate anyone’s consciousness to higher levels, the meaning of the telepathic message became clear. Build your AquaBliss teaching Institute and the people who need to transform and expand their consciousness will come. I’ve built in the ensuing two years a solar/propane heated pool and attendant outbuildings along with an observation deck in order to teach my life-altering method of AquaBliss.

But back to the Flower of Life which had begun to fade over the last two years. The light grey of the rock dust and the dry grass of the high desert valley didn’t really offer much contrast. Coupled with incessant winds and a gradual encroachment of weeds, all my hard work was in danger of disappearing. I racked my brain for a solution to make it more visible and permanent. Eventually I decided on bright white marble chips conveniently bagged and sold at the local home center. 200 bags later, The Flower of Life stands transformed and more prepared to withstand the ravages of time and weather. Being able to really appreciate the beauty of the design because of the contrast wasn’t the only difference. There seemed to be an energetic shift as if it was taking on a force unto itself. The Flower was coming to Life!

I hadn’t realized upon my initial completion of the Flower that the paramagnetic basalt rock dust, which had solidified into a cement-like footing, was just that, a footing. It wasn’t the building, it was the foundation! The marble represented the structure, the temple, if you will. Since the F.O.L. is found at many sacred sites around the world, the marble seemed appropriate being that many Greek, Roman and other ancient statues and temples were made out of this re-crystallized limestone.

Just before I finished laying down all the marble chips, I went to the local hot springs to give an AquaBliss to an old friend and ran into John, the generous donor of the basalt. He’s an expert in sacred geometry and the energetic of rocks and minerals. I mentioned that the energy was changing from the straight basalt after piling the marble on top of the lines. He told me the marble was diamagnetic placed on top of paramagnetic. He went on to explain that our bones are paramagnetic and our soft tissue is diamagnetic. It was mimicking the structure of our very bodies. The addition of the marble really did bring it to life!

Not only that, there is a book called Love is in the Earth which catalogues the metaphysical properties of the mineral kingdom. It informed me of marble’s qualities which include promoting peak states of meditation and total recall of dreams. It also helps actuate the “unused” portions of the mind, providing for the strength of self-control, mastery of thought and the power of serenity. I’ll keep you informed of any positive effects or changes attributable to the F.O.L. in subsequent blogs.

All I know for now is that it is a beautiful work of art capable of standing the test of time (with a little maintenance) and it is my thank you card to Mother Earth for all she has done and continues to do for all of us.