People are probably doing the best they can with the understanding they have. Most have never been exposed to any real intensive spiritual discipline. And many lack the personal discipline or the level of commitment required to undergo such an arduous regimen. Others are primarily driven by their fears. These individuals are more likely to use spirituality as a means of escape from the realities of their everyday lives and their true inner state of being.

I do encounter some highly dedicated individuals on occasion who are involved in a spiritual discipline that is really working for them. I don’t have time to study or practice all the spiritual disciplines out there, but I’m always fascinated to know more about them. I listen to what people have to tell me and I observe the changes that are taking place in their bodies and minds. I can see the kinds of benefits that people are deriving from the different practices and healing modalities. It’s important to me to know what really works so that I can be of greater assistance to others.

American Indians fascinated me from the time I was a small child. My fascination grew over the years and then expanded to incorporate other ancient and indigenous cultures. I always felt that there was something more to life. I would sit for hours with my friend Jack, a tribal elder, as he told me stories that had been passed down among the Kiowa tribe about the warriors and doctors from previous generations who possessed various paranormal abilities.

I knew from the time I was fourteen that I wanted to go through the vision quest and learn from one of the traditional doctors. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to apprentice with Horace Daukei, the last surviving traditional doctor among the Kiowa tribe. Horace had me going through all kinds of intensive practices, such as the vision quest, that involve fasting alone in the mountains for four days and nights without food or water. Horace would then transfer portions of his own power to me during the vision quest.

Horace was the most intensely powerful and gifted of all the healers that I have ever encountered. He was able to facilitate the healing of a wide range of health issues. He just didn’t know how to deal with his own emotions or personal issues, and that eventually led to his downfall.

I could see that Horace was losing it into the third year of my apprenticeship, and I realized that I had gone as far as I could with him. I needed time to reassemble myself, so I put myself back into college. I would talk with my friends about all the things I went through during my apprenticeship. Some of them were really curious and asked for my assistance on occasion. I wasn’t really sure that I had anything to offer, but they would tell me about the intense power they felt as I worked with them and the changes that took place within their body and mind as a result of the healing that had taken place.

Horace was no longer in the picture. He had taken me through vision quests, transmitted portions of his own power to me, but he was never one to really explain things in depth. He just told me "…Start working with people, the power will then reveal itself to you." I was in my early twenties and there was no one else I could turn to. It was up to me to find my own way.

I repeatedly found myself attracting and becoming attracted to women who reflected all the hurt and unresolved issues that had carried over from my childhood and adolescence. The feelings were excruciatingly painful at times, but I had an instinctive sense that I needed to breathe into them. I kept breathing through the pain until I came out the other side. This practice got me through the really difficult times. I would forget about the practice when things seemed to be going better, but I was still stuck in many ways.

There were a few healers who passed through town on occasion, and I definitely took advantage of the opportunity to work with them whenever it presented itself. Every session helped me to take another step forward, but getting a session once every six months to a year just wasn’t enough. My healing process began to accelerate when I started going back to Oklahoma to do the vision quests. The vision quest is the most powerful transformative experience that I’ve ever gone through. I started going twice a year, but then I would have to wait five to seven months till could go back for the next one.

I have a very strong intuitive sense and that led me to experiment with the feelings and emotions that surfaced in response to the issues and situations that I’m faced with in my daily life.

Our feelings and emotions comprise a bandwidth of consciousness. They are part of our mind’s ability to respond to what’s happening in our lives. Feelings and emotions also help us to get in touch with our needs. Our needs are what connect us to our purpose. We experience feelings in response to so much of what happens in our lives. But many of us have become so desensitized that we don’t really notice what we’re feeling.

Feelings and emotions are a driving force within our consciousness that initiates action. They motivate us to respond or react to various issues and situations. Our minds tend to fixate on the hurts, conflicts and issues that we fail to resolve. The stress generated by these unresolved issues and emotions can impede the functions of our brain, which can then reduce our emotional and cognitive range. The emotional charge generated by our unresolved issues can also cloud or distort our perceptions and that will often cause us to act in inappropriate ways.

Breathing softly and deeply as you center your awareness within your feelings, emotions and sensations will stimulate various functions within your brain and awaken the body and mind’s own natural generative healing powers. Deeper layers of feeling and emotion are brought to the surface so they can be digested. Charged emotions and feelings begin to dissipate and the issues begin to sort themselves out. The resolution of internal conflict brings the various parts of the self into alignment. Digesting your issues and emotions also alleviates much of the stress within your body and mind. Your range of feeling and cognition will also expand and you will find that you begin to access and develop numerous other resources within.

Friends of mine began to talk with me about the internal martial arts a number of years ago. Part of me had always wanted to learn Chinese martial arts, but I realized that it was a huge commitment and I just didn’t feel like I had the time. I didn’t want to take up some new endeavor and then quit. I responded by telling my friends that there’s no way that I could take on a commitment like that with all the things I have to do. But then someone tried to mug me in lower Manhattan. And then I suddenly found myself feeling very highly motivated to learn Chinese martial arts.

Shifu is the Chinese word for master or teacher. I found Shifu Li Tai Liang’s flyer in Chinatown one evening. And I knew that he was the person I wanted to train with. Xin yi and bagua are probably the most highly sophisticated of any of the martial arts in existence. The forms and their fighting applications are very complex and have been developed and passed down in secret over many hundreds of years. Xin yi and bagua practitioners also learn to generate explosive internal power that greatly magnifies the effectiveness of everything they do. I never cease to be astounded by the subtlety, complexity, power and effectiveness of these forms and their fighting applications.

Time is a big issue for me and I sometimes feel as if I don’t have enough of it. It was a big deal for me to commit myself to doing an hour of practice every day. There were days when I didn’t get to start my practice until eleven o’clock in the evening. I was usually too tired by then to be very effective, but I would still force myself. I realized that I really need to get started with my practice as soon as I roll out of bed in the morning before other commitments or distractions get in the way.

One of my classmates told me that she practiced for about three hours a day. That seemed like a lot of time to me. But then Shifu told me how his father forced him to practice for six to seven hours at different intervals throughout the day from the time he was five years old. Shifu told me that he continued to practice for long hours even as an adult and that this is the level of commitment that is required to become a master. He also said that it can take ten or more years of intensive practice to thoroughly master a system such as xin yi and bagua. Shifu’s comments motivated me to work harder, so I began to increase the time I spent practicing. Xin yi can be very strenuous and practice felt really boring and tedious at times. I had to force myself to practice in the beginning. That began to change as I continued to build power in the dan tien. The dan tien power acts as a driving force that makes me want to move.

I had been going to classes at Shifu’s school for a few months, but I felt that the practices that Shifu was teaching were so complex and that I wasn’t really getting a lot of it. I asked Li Shifu if I could train privately with him. I paid him for ten sessions. Shifu assumed that was all I had intended to do. I realized that I had only just begun. I paid Shifu for another ten sessions and I’ve continued to train with him privately for years. Shifu’s son later told me that it’s a good thing that I started taking private instruction because I wouldn’t really be able to fully learn these practices in a class setting. He went on to say that one really needs to train privately in order to develop to the advanced levels.

People generally think of martial arts in terms of punching and kicking, but that is only a small part of what’s there. The physical body is the vehicle for the spirit. We cannot have a balanced relationship with spirit when our body is in poor shape. The martial, meditation and healing aspects of these practices are deeply intertwined. Internal arts masters continually cultivate chi power and use this power if they ever have a need to stop or destroy an attacker. This same power can be used to heal your own or someone else’s body or to evolve spiritually. The many forms and practices of internal martial arts systems such as xin yi and bagua are designed to transform you into a very highly attuned instrument. These practices activate and strengthen the subtle bodies. That makes it possible for you to draw more of your soul into your body and to align yourself with the forces of the universe.

Shifu began to teach me a number of chi gong practices. I would do the practices at times, but I wasn’t too enthusiastic in the beginning, because it just seemed like an elaborate form of moving meditation. I wasn’t quite getting the fact that these practices are the key to developing internal power. I noticed that I felt more relaxed and refreshed afterwards but I wasn’t aware of much else.

Months passed and I met up with a client who became a good friend that I hadn’t seen for years. My friend began to study yoga and pranayama while he was living overseas. And he would do hours of intensive daily practice. I was amazed by all the changes that I saw that were taking place within my friend’s physical and subtle bodies. He had developed a very radiant presence.

Seeing these changes in my friend inspired me to put more effort into the chi gong practices that Shifu had been showing me. Chi gong practices help you to utilize more of the brain. Many of the internal martial arts masters were known to possess exceptionally high levels of intelligence. Chi gong practices can help the practitioner to heal illnesses or injuries and to nourish the internal organs of the body. These practices awaken the consciousness within all parts of your body. Internal arts masters often live to very advanced ages, and in many instances they appear to be twenty, thirty or more years younger than their actual age.

The first thing I noticed as I began to practice chi gong consistently is that my sense perceptions became more acute. I began to sense and feel more of what was happening in the bodies and minds of people who were around me. Other people and their dramas have become more transparent. I feel frustrated at times, but I’m less likely to personalize the things that other people say and do. My intuition became stronger. I often get a sense of what was going to happen before it does. My cognitive range continues to increase and that’s given me greater clarity and understanding and then my work continues to become even more powerful.

Shifu was saying that you have no real foundation or power unless you develop the dan tien. I feel much more power as I work with the practices to build the dan tien. These practices help one to develop the explosive internal power that enable the internal arts masters to rupture the internal organs of an attacker or to cause them to go flying across the room.

Building power in the dan tien is also helping me to develop a much more rooted or visceral presence. I now feel like I have a consciousness in the lower half of my body. Opening up the lower half of my body has also enabled me to access and heal deeper levels of the hurts and traumas that had carried over from my childhood. I usually go back and practice the fighting forms and applications after doing chi gong practices. That helps me to ground the chi power into my physical body.

I feel very fortunate to have found Shifu Li Tai Liang. All the ancient traditions emphasize the importance of training with a master. I would have never discovered these practices on my own. The practices that he’s teaching were developed over hundreds and even thousands of years and have been passed down in secret in China from one generation to the next. Masters from the various ancient traditions usually train a very small number of students over the course of their lives. These masters would usually pass their secrets and transmissions of power on to one and in some instances a few of their top students. Very few people even know these practices. More of it is lost with each passing generation, and those who do know are often very reluctant to teach.

I teach chi gong practices to many of the people that I work with. I started teaching Jarod some of the practices to build the base of power in the lower abdomen. Jarod would do the practices for a while. But he would then find himself getting caught up in what was happening in his life and then forget to do the practices

Jarod told me that he really liked the chi gong practices and he could feel a difference. He also told me that there were times when he wasn’t sure if he was doing them wrong or right. Jarod said that he sometimes felt frustrated because he couldn’t really see that any real changes were taking place and he wondered if it was really working. He went on to say that the process sometimes felt very nebulous because he didn’t really know how things would turn out.

Jarod had only been doing the practices intermittently for a few months. I told him that it would take time and consistent practice for the results to materialize. I experienced many of the same kinds of doubts and uncertainties in the beginning. I felt a sense of relaxation when I first started doing chi gong practices, but I wasn’t that aware of anything else. It took me a few months of consistent practice to develop the sensitivity that allowed me to become cognizant of the process of development that was taking place within me.

There are often times when I wonder if I’m doing the practices right. That’s just part of learning. I’ll go back to Shifu and ask questions to clarify the practices and to have him correct me. I’ll give him feedback on what I’m experiencing with the practices that he teaches me. Shifu is able to sense when I’ve developed a thorough working understanding of the practice. He will then have me modify the practices in ways that make them even more powerful.

You definitely will see results if you continue to work diligently with the practices. The results may not be anything like what you’re expecting. That’s why it’s so important for us to just do the practices, to let go of any expectations and allow the process to unfold.

I also taught Jarod how to breathe into the feelings and emotions that arise in response to the issues that he faces in his day to day life. Jarod said that he would sometimes back off from doing this practice because it tended to bring so many feelings and issues to the surface.

I responded by telling Jarod that it’s normal to have issues and emotions come to the surface. We need to develop the self-awareness that helps us to recognize our limits. We also need to increase our capacity for discomfort, continue to proceed with what we’re doing and just do the best we know how to do with the situations that we find ourselves in.

Breathing into feelings or the sensations that we hold in various parts of our body will bring issues up to the surface. Jarod said that there are times when so many feelings and issues were surfacing that if felt like it was too much for him to deal with. I have also felt that way at times as the more difficult feelings and issues surfaced, but I just continue to breathe into whatever comes up until I come out the other side. The intensity of the feelings and emotions would gradually diminish.

Many of us have a tendency to shut down in the midst of adversity. We resist the feelings and issues that surface, but that causes our consciousness to contract. My intention is to be as present as I can with what’s happening in my experience and whatever I feel in response it. I feel a source of strength coming from within as I work with these practices and that helps to pull me through difficult situations. I can see things more clearly and that makes it easier for me to sort the issues out and do what needs to be done.

I asked Jarod what he felt was holding him back in his own life. Jarod told me that it was more of a feeling of not being enough. I then asked Jarod to tell me about the kinds of situations that evoked these feelings of not being enough. Jarod told me that the feelings often came up when he interacted with people or at times when he found himself attracted to a woman.

I asked Jarod how he dealt with these feelings. Jarod told me that he would often try to figure out a way to be more confident. And that he would try to locate his strengths or feelings of confidence within himself.

I looked back at Jarod and jokingly said "You’re doing that totally ass backwards". I went on to explain to Jarod how he was resisting his feelings of not being enough. It’s critically important for us to fully accept our feelings rather than to try and resist them. We need to breathe into difficult feelings that emerge such as the feeling of not being enough, to follow the feelings and to allow ourselves to go wherever they take us. Those feelings may initially intensify. But the pain will gradually dissipate as we continue to breathe into the feelings. Feelings of comfort warmth and strength will begin to emerge from within. We naturally feel a greater sense of confidence and comfort within as we come to a place where we experience true love and acceptance of ourselves.

I told Jarod about my own process of putting myself in challenging situations that force me to grow. I use to experience painful feelings of self doubt and inadequacy when I met women that I found myself attracted to. I wanted to have someone special in my life, so I made a point of engaging with women that I found attractive whenever the opportunity presented itself. I kept breathing through the fears, insecurities, the feelings of self doubt and inadequacy or whatever else came up. This practice combined with the vision quest brought me to a place where I can really love, appreciate and feel comfortable with myself. I know with absolute certainty that I’m truly exceptional and that I have so much to offer.

It was also very difficult for me to approach event-coordinators for various groups or organizations to set up speaking engagements. I felt very uncomfortable speaking in front of groups of people. Now I know very clearly that I possess a level of understanding and gifts of healing that are very much needed in the world.

There are times I feel shy, awkward or afraid and some instances where I come out looking really stupid. It’s all part of the process of learning and development for me. I just allow myself to fully experience any feelings or issues that come up, and then I continue to work with the feelings by breathing into them. Digesting the feelings and resolving issues in this way helps me to expand my range of motion. I use to encounter so much internal resistance. I have a clearer sense of what I truly need to be doing and that is coupled with a sense of urgency that drives me to get things done. I feel more comfortable and I have developed more of the resources that I need to function in different kinds of situations.

I’ve only worked with Jarod a few months at the time of this writing. But Jarod was telling me that the work we’ve done together has helped him to develop the sensitivity that allows him to be aware of what’s coming up. Jarod went on to say that he’s able to understand the reason he feels the way that he does. Jarod also told me that the work has helped him to develop the capacity to process the feelings and issues that come up.

Jarod also told me that he can feel a deeper presence working through him that allows his body and mind to go where it needs to go. Jarod said that the process has taken on a life of its own and that the body and mind continues to process the issues as they come up.

Another practice that I teach helps people to awaken their instinctual consciousness. The abdominal pelvic region is the foundation of our consciousness. This part of our body often becomes very heavy and congested from the residue of our unprocessed emotions. Much of our stress tends to collect in this part of our body. Stress and unprocessed emotional residue impairs the functions of our internal organs. Unprocessed foods and physical toxins begin to accumulate within our digestive tract and that can impair our digestive functions and we may also experience bloating.

We can activate the body’s own healing intelligence by breathing into feelings or sensations that we experience within the intestines or other parts of the abdomen. Many people will initially experience sensations of heaviness, congestion or toxicity. Others report that the intestines feel deadened or inert and that they feel a lack of consciousness within this part of their body. Unpleasant feelings and memories may also surface. All of that will change as you continue to breathe softly and deeply while focusing your attention on the feelings and sensations that you experience within the intestines. Breathing into the intestines activates your body’s own healing powers. You will experience sensations of rumbling, churning and gurgling, warmth, tingling and pulsing. You will feel yourself becoming more connected to this part of your body and that it is becoming more alive. This practice will help our body to clear itself of toxicity. Breathing into the feelings and sensations that you experience within your intestines will awaken your deeper instinctual mind. Working with this practice helps to bridge the gap between your conscious and subconscious mind. You will also find yourself becoming more rooted in your body.

I spoke with a woman the other night who is struggling with deep core abandonment issues that cause her to become overly attached to men who are unavailable. Erika talks a lot about her problems, and I felt this heavy toxic spew as she started to unload. Talking the issues to death will only dig the person deeper into the rut. I interrupted Erika’s pattern and had her go right down into her feelings. Breathing into the feelings helps people to change the pattern and digest the backlog of hurt so they can connect with their own inner source. Many of us have developed very unhealthy mental-emotional habits over the course of our lifetime and that’s why we never see any real positive change in our circumstance or the way we feel. It’s going to take consistent practice for us to retrain our body and mind to digest our issues and emotions, resolve the issues and create the changes we desire.

Erika told me that she heard what I said about the importance of doing the practices and went on to say that she wasn’t very disciplined. Erika practices all the time. Her daily practice involves thinking incessantly about the man who’s not reciprocating her love. Talking about what he did or didn’t do and trying to figure out why they are not together may provide a momentary sense of relief. There’s real danger in Erika’s practice of thinking it to death is that it will reinforce her pattern of longing to be loved by someone who will not reciprocate her feelings.

We’re not going to completely stop thinking about the other person. The thoughts will continue to emerge. But we need to stop and ask ourselves "…What’s the deepest feeling(s) behind all this? We may experience feelings such as loss, pain, hurt, betrayal, rejection, anger or abandonment. We need to breathe softly and deeply as we center our awareness in the middle of the feelings that surface. The feelings will dissipate as we continue to breathe into them. This practice will help us to connect with our true source within. Our fixation on the other person will gradually dissolve as that happens.

So much of what I’ve learned comes from observing what’s taking place as I look into people’s bodies and minds. Everyone engages in some form of practice on a daily basis. Practices range on a continuum from extremely destructive to highly beneficial. Many spiritual practices are well intentioned, yet they produce very little or any significant growth. Some spiritual practices can cause damage within the body and mind and leave a person very ungrounded. Observing the changes taking place within people’s bodies and minds has helped me to see the difference between habits, practices or life style choices that are detrimental and those that help an individual to grow and develop.

You become whatever you practice. Reading celebrity gossip, consuming alcohol or other drugs, smoking or sitting for hours in front of the television or surfing the web are also practices. These practices may do little, if anything, to help us grow and evolve. Many of us are spending inordinate amounts of time up in our heads thinking the same thoughts. We’re like a dog chasing its tail. And we’re never going to get anywhere that way. We can be using that time to do practices that help us to grow and evolve. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. The question here is …What are we choosing to do with our time?

Unprocessed emotions create a heavy toxic residue that accumulates within the body. The undigested residue of our unprocessed emotions and issues can cause us to feel very heavy and lethargic. That impairs the functions of the organs and systems. Our body then begins to accumulate more physical toxins. And then the physical and subtle bodies break down and that causes us to age faster.

Many of us prefer to get comfortable rather than challenge ourselves with experiences that cause us to learn and grow. The problem here is that we can only sit for so long before we begin to stagnate. It’s easy to fall into patterns of thinking the same kinds of thoughts, feeling the same kinds of feelings and doing the same things. And that engages the same neuropathways within our brain. Other unused neuropathways tend to atrophy. Our consciousness contracts as we utilize less of our innate resources and that causes our range of motion to diminish. We lose much of our mental, emotional and physical agility and that leaves us with fewer options.

Many of us are also very stressed out doing all the things that we have to do to survive. And then we add to that stress by working continually to pay for more and more stuff. Some of us are so wiped out by the end of the day and then we come home and spend the remainder of the evening vegetating in front of the tube. Television floods our senses with all kinds of additional sensory input that overwhelms our body and mind with more stuff that it cannot process. Stress and unprocessed emotions can cause our body and mind to become very heavy and dense and that makes it very difficult for our soul to be present in our body.

We’re like computers in many ways. Stop and imagine for a moment what would happen if you accidentally spilled a coke over your laptop computer. Then you come back sometime after the coke dries up and turn your computer on. You find that your computer still functions, but certain programs and applications don’t work so well. But you continue to use the computer because that’s all you have to work with. Stress, undigested emotional residue, tobacco, alcohol and other substances cause damage within our body and mind.

Blane drank heavily for years and was very shut down at the time I first began to work with him. He was extremely immature, angry and very easily frustrated. Blane’s presence seemed to be the only resource he possessed. I had no indication that any degree of significant change was possible.

I’ve been working with Blane for a little over two years now. I usually see him once or twice a month. Blane has changed a great deal during the time that we’ve been working together. He’s matured tremendously. Blane now exudes a quiet cheerful confidence and enthusiasm. Blane has become very engaging and now really enjoys his work. He’s much more patient and his persistence has been paying off in his various professional endeavors. Blane has become much more lucid. His self-awareness continues to increase and he’s become more insightful.

I was surprised that a person like Blane would ever be drawn to this kind of work. But it’s very gratifying for me to see Blane and many other people that I’ve worked with develop all kinds of new resources as a result of the healing sessions. The changes that are taking place in Blane are very typical of what happens as the frozen or wounded parts of an individual heal and become fully functional.

Our western culture is very technologically advanced and we have attained a very high level of intellectual development. We excel in the sciences, arts, business, athletics and numerous other fields. The down side of that is that we tend to lose touch with our emotions and to disconnect from our bodies. I often find myself having to connect the dots for people who become so disconnected or shut down because they can’t seem to do it for themselves.

Many of our lives have become so out of balance. We really need to be making time to be present with our own feelings, sensations and bodies and attending to our own needs. We expect children, adolescents and young adults to learn and grow. We set up all kinds of athletic, academic and social programs to encourage their development. None of us have made it …we’re not done …We need to continually be developing our body, mind and spirit throughout our lives. We can develop more resources and become more powerful every year.

Many of the internal arts masters were known to possess exceptionally high levels of intelligence. Learning intricate forms helps to stimulate mental development by causing us to use more of our brain. The basal ganglia and the cerebellum, which are associated with the control of muscle movement, also help to coordinate thought. Learning intricate sequences of movement can help the neurons or nerve cells within the brain, to develop longer and more branched projections or dendrites. The longer and more ramified dendrites can receive and process greater amounts of information. It also helps to develop the bonding synapses which make it possible for the neurons to more readily transmit signals from one cell to another.

The prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain that is associated with sensory perception, rational thinking, decision making, working memory and emotional processing. The thickness of the prefrontal cortex tends to decrease as we age. This shrinkage of the prefrontal cortex contributes to our tendency to forget things, such as where we left our keys.

Meditation practices can help to thwart age-related deterioration of the prefrontal cortex. Buddhist monks and others who meditate on a regular basis do not experience the same degree of brain shrinkage that non-meditators experience as they age. Buddhist Monks show a great deal of additional activity in the prefrontal cortex as a result of their practices of meditation. Regular meditation practice can help to increase the thickness of the prefrontal cortex.

There are a lot of commonalities between the Chinese and American Indian practices. Shifu was telling me how some of the internal arts masters have the ability to leave their body at will when the body gets too old, to embody themselves within a developing fetus, and then to be reborn. Tribal elders spoke to me on a number of occasions about some of the really powerful Indian doctors who possessed the same kinds of abilities.

Olympic athletes cross train by doing other kinds of sports and activities during the off seasons. Cross training helps athletes to create balance within the body by developing other sets of muscles. No one practice or healing modality can do it all. We need explore and experiment and we need to approach healing and personal development from different angles to determine which combination of practices and healing modalities work best for us.

There are so many different esoteric traditions. Each tradition or discipline serves as a doorway to a whole universe. There are different kinds of forces or beings that will assist us in the process and different ways to develop our body and mind, all of which enrich us by adding greater depth and dimension to our lives. Muslims chant the names of Allah. Each name evokes a different attribute of the divine. Vedic chants invoke the various Gods and Goddesses and their divine attributes.

I’ve worked with specific mantras for some time and I can feel the vibrations of the syllables. Working with mantras as a practice is a more recent advent, and the results feel more nebulous at this point, but I’ve experienced some really interesting changes in my life in the year prior to this writing. I can really sense the power when I’ve attended pujas or had the pandits conduct yagyas for me. There are a number of gurus who offer darshan that I’ve seen in New York, Boston or during the times I’ve spent in India. I like to go and be in the presence of these individuals whenever the opportunity presents itself, because I feel a lightening of some of the heavy load or karma.

Every system or discipline has its inherent strengths and weaknesses. We sometimes need to step out of our own models or systems and to work with other kinds of practices and disciplines to create balance and to gain perspective. I’ve felt concern over the fact that many of the Gurus are not in that good of shape physically, and I’ve noticed that some of them are taking on a lot of stuff from other people. Many people who attempt to do healing work are also taking on other people’s emotions and sickness.

My training with Horace and the vision quest has made it possible for me to become a conduit for other beings and forces to work through me to facilitate healing within people’s bodies and minds that would not otherwise be possible. Xin yi and bagua are very well suited for me, because these practices are causing me to become much more rooted, to develop my body and mind and to create a strong foundation. Breathing into my own feelings, emotions and sensations has taken me on this amazing journey of exploration within my own inner universe. It’s also helped me to awaken the healing powers that reside within my own body and mind.