Well, I had another productive, but very busy day yesterday.

I managed to get in a nice pushing circuit workout, and two tai-chi sessions.

I finished the day with a PPS Success Mastery coaching call, a nice Vidya-made dinner, a little art and was off to bed to get ready to do it all again!

PROGRESSIVE RELAXATION

Today, many people are challenged to relax.

Our lives have become so busy that we often forget how to relax our minds. Because the mind and body are one functional unit, if our minds don’t relax, our bodies can’t either.

We tend to hold tension in the areas of our body that correspond to the issues we have pent-up mental-emotional energy around.

Some of us have a tendency to carry our stress in our heads. Some of us carry it in our necks. Others carry it in their stomach, back, or feet.

A simple, effective way to induce relaxation it to magnify the tension in any region of your body that is challenged to relax.

If your neck is tight for example, you can lay on your back on the floor or an exercise mat, and take a series of deep belly breaths.

Let your body sink into the floor to the earth is carrying all of your weight.

Then, increase the tension of any tight muscle progressively until you feel you have a good firm contraction and hold that for five seconds.

Then, completely relax for ten seconds to allow improved blood flow and waste removal. Do that three to five times for each tight area and you will soon feel these regions relaxing.

If you want a general total-body relaxation, you can start with tightening the muscles of your feet, then calves, then thighs, then butt, then abdominals, then back muscles, then arm muscles, then neck muscles, and finally, your facial muscles.

Use the same five-second contract/ten second relax format.

When you relax, it is important to completely let go of your thoughts and be present with the area you are relaxing.

By agreeing with yourself that you deserve to feel good and relaxed, you can go deeper into relaxation.

If you are tired and having a hard time napping or sleeping, this method is very helpful for inducing a deep sleep or rest state.

PROCESSED VEGETABLE OILS…

The current edition of “The Ecologist” (my favorite periodical for keeping up on ecological issues in the world) has an important article about growing crops such as rape seed, soy and others used to make vegetable oils.

The article highlights the impact of removing native crops and deforestation to grow cash crops to support the vegetable oil industry and the impact this is having on native forests and wild lands.

The report describes the progressive deforestation in areas that is displacing both natives and a wide variety of endangered animal species, not to mention the loss of plant and tree diversity.

Processed vegetable oils, regardless of the health benefits touted, are very hard for most people to digest and I’ve personally seen them cause a wide variety of health problems.

They range from skin problems, joint problems, digestive challenges, and eliminate challenges.

The key thing to remember is that each of is has unique genetic needs and that our individual capacity to integrate processed foods and oils of any kind must be constantly monitored.

If you can use any of the so-called “healthy” vegetable oils sold in the markets without any sign of trouble, your body may be able to tolerate them.

If not, you should avoid them altogether!

Most of them are not compatible with the human body and tend to clog our cells.

They seem to act more like plastic in the human body that living molecules that can be effectively integrated into our physiology and body.

If you’d like to read the article I’m referring to, you can cut and paste this web link in your web browser:
http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/food_and_drink/1376979/how_green_are_vegetable_and_rapeseed_oils.html

I hope you all have a beautiful day eating real food and finding balance in your output relative to rest or “in-put”.

Love and chi,
Paul Chek

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I hope you are all enjoying the many experiences life brings you.

I had another very busy, but productive day yesterday.

My evening tai-chi session was beautiful. I was out in the rock garden with Rory as the sun was setting.

As I was exercising my diaphragm to maximize breathing and organ efficiency, the birds were coming home to their nests in all the trees around me and the little creatures were busy eating bugs and enjoying their day.

I always get a great sense of joy when I see half eaten oranges sitting on top of my stone meditation seat in the garden. It’s fun knowing that the squirrels enjoy eating where I enjoy meditating.

When I finished my tai-chi session, I was in a lucid high.

Though I was walking across the ground on the way into the house for dinner, it was as though everything was perfectly still in and around me, and I was part of everything that is.

My body felt perfectly balanced and optimally efficient; I wish everyone could feel this way all the time.

Of course if that happened, the medical system would crash taking the economy with it, but hay, at least we’d all have a clear head and could reinvent social systems that actually work!

Yesterday, I got into the gym for a lung (185 x 4), squat (185 x 4), cable twist (110 x 10 ea.)(x four circuits) workout. I was still feeling my deadlifts and rock lifting. I

often couple  my deadlifting sessions with lunging and squatting the next day to drive motor recruitment deeper into the motor neuron pool.

I use this method because to get more strength than I have now would require that I spend more time in the gym and that becomes impractical for a man with my workload.

This isn’t a method that should be used by those without a solid conditioning base because it can produce deep, long lasting post-workout soreness.

Because the butt and abdominal muscles are typically the first to weaken and atrophy once a person reaches 40 years of age, it’s important to keep those muscles well conditioned or your body actually believes you are getting old…

I don’t want my body to every believe it’s old; that’s typically not good for your love life either!

There are so many people out there who’s torso is sewing their ass for lack of support I’m sure the lawyers are busy handling all these shitty deals…while their asses fall too…

There’s more to life than being too busy to live, love and care for yourself.

By the way, if you don’t like lifting weights but want an incredible backside, rollerblading works magic!

I remember when I was about 35 or so and I’d just began dating after my divorce. I met an incredibly beautiful woman about 56 years old who used rollerblading as her primary form of conditioning.

This woman had the body of a 25-year-old woman and could have been a butt model for sure!

If you just go watch where rollerbladers go to skate, such as along beach paths, you can see an incredible display of great butts and legs. Hopefully, that will motivate some of you to levitate what’s losing the battle with gravity.

Here you can see me and Penny getting a good partner’s workout together at her mother’s home in France.

We are often on the road in places where gym access is limited or non-existent from time to time, but I never make excuses about why I can’t take care of myself.

I just put Penny up over my head and climb stairs with her, or on my back and do squats with her as my functional gym.

You’d be amazed at how many ways there are to keep fit and healthy if you just get a little creative!

The first and most important step toward total body conditioning should always be mastery of our own body weight.

This is particularly essential for children, who should never be exposed to weight training until they master their own body.

If people learn weightlifting before they master their own body, the weight lifting only magnifies the motor imbalances they already have for a simple reason.

Bodyweight training teaches your nervous system how to recruit muscles and stabilize joints with total body participation.

Only when the whole neuromuscular system has been integrated through self-mastery can you apply that level of control to external resistance.

If you add external resistance before gaining control of your body, it’s like adding another 100 horsepower to a beginner driver’s car; all it does is increase the likelihood they will crash because their reaction times and coordination are not developed enough to handle that much power.

TIPS FOR COLON HEALTH and POOPING BETTER

Constipation is common among approximately 90% of the world population according to a variety of research papers I’ve studied over the years. I also see it as a frequent symptom for many of my patients – even in small children as young as 18 months.

Being constipated is a great way to get tired and sick!

When you are constipated, dangerous bacteria have time to come out of spore form and proliferate in your intestinal tract, as do parasites.

Once they have time to set up shop in your intestinal tract, they begin migrating through your body to their favorite organs.

Once there, they begin eating into your tissues to lay their eggs, producing high levels of inflammation. As inflammation increases, so too does cortisol production, which will exhaust your adrenal glands typically within as little as 4-6 months.

In addition, if a person is dehydrated (the most common cause of constipation), toxins concentrate in the colon.

Since the colon is the first place the body tries to harvest additional water in a dehydrated person, as the body squeezes water from your stale old poop, it also takes in very toxic liquid that puts a huge burden on the liver and detoxification systems in general.

This leads to a wide variety of confusing symptoms, often resulting in a plethora of unnecessary drugs being prescribed to address the symptoms of autointoxication.

If you want to learn more about this, I’d suggest reading Dr. Jensen’s Guide To Better Bowel Care, by Bernard Jensen. This is a very good book that everyone should read if they want to stay healthy.

If you look at my drawing, you will notice that in a full squat position, your ascending colon is being compressed by your right thigh, and your descending colon is being compressed by your left thigh.

This natural pressure serves to aid voiding.

The human being is the only animal that has to push feces up hill against gravity.

If we stop using our bodies functionally, the result is that we don’t get enough pressure fluctuation in our internal body cavity.

Internal pressure fluctuations are a significant aid to pumping organs, maintaining organ motility (internal movements), and keeping blood delivery and waste removal optimal.

When you sit on a typical western toilet, you can’t get the support needed to get the feces up the hill and around the corner into the transverse colon.

The result is that most people have to strain in attempt to push their poops out, which can have a variety of negative effects.

One negative effect of straining to poop is that it can put so much pressure on the colon that it bulges. These bulges are called “diverticula”.

As you can see in the image above, these pockets created by excessive stress and pressure on the colon become dangerous little compost piles.

The problem is that the diverticula are areas where the smooth muscle contraction stops working and bacteria, parasites and toxins collect there.

After enough time, they can poison the body, or…they can pop, which can kill you.

Here are some simple tips you can use for better, more enjoyable pooping:

1. Make SURE you are drinking enough water! Half your body weight in ounces of water daily is a safe amount to shoot for.

2. Do breathing squats as demonstrated in my book, How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy!

Breathing squats are simply done by getting your feet into the stance that allows you to squat comfortably into the same position you’d poop in if you were out in the woods camping.

Then, from the standing start position, take a deep diaphragmatic breath.

As you lower your body into the bottom position of the squat, exhale progressively with the movement.

Once you need to inhale, begin standing up until fully upright again.

For those of you that are constipated, I recommend at least 20-30 repetitions of this exercise every hour; a good reason to get up and away from your computer!

If you have not made time to do this, you can always do 30 reps at breathing pace just before sitting on the pot and you’ll probably notice immediate benefits from that alone.

3. Put your Feet up!

I found this image on a blog site by The Joyologist with a great little article titled, “Put Your Feet Up” (Go to: http://www.yourjoyologist.com/2011/01/04/put-your-feet-up/).

When you put your feet up high enough to recreate the same basic position created by deep squatting, it allows the sigmoid colon to straighten where it is commonly kinked when sitting on a toilet.

It also allows you to lean forward, take a deep breath, and get the needed compression on the ascending and descending colon, aiding the bowel movement process.

There are a variety of places that sell footrests for toilets, such as drug stores and web sites. I’m sure you can find one or make one easily. A few phone books stacked up will do the trick.

4. Use your breath. If you are in a place without a footrest and for whatever reason, are having a hard time moving your bowel, you can simply lean forward so you are laying over your thighs like you would do if you were in an airplane that was about to crash.

As you can see in the drawing above, as you inhale, the diaphragm drops down, creating a negative pressure in the lung cavity, drawing air in.

When the diaphragm drops down, it puts gentle pressure on the internal organs, which aids in moving fluids through the system and feces out of the system.

While down there, take deeeep, slooowww breaths. This will trigger peristalsis, which is the wavelike contractions of the smooth muscles in your colon.

After about 6-10 deep breaths, hold the inhale and gently bear down while doing your best to totally relax your whole body, particularly your pelvic floor.

If while you are down there in that position breathing you find the smell of your own gas or poop repulsive, it means that you are not eating correctly and/or your body is dirty inside.

Remember, if you can’t stand the smell of you, neither will any of the people you may want to make love to stand it either!

5. Increase the fiber in your diet.

As I’ve mentioned in past blogs, adjusting your vegetable and fruit intake (preferably raw) to the point that your poops float well, smell earthy and natural, and pass easily is critical.

Fiber gives enough bulk to your feces to give your colon muscles something substantial to move through the system.

Fiber also absorbs toxins from the body as well as having a sweeping effect on the colon.

Eating packaged, processed foods is a sure-fire way to become fiber deficient, toxic, constipated, and earn yourself some diverticula to share with a doctor that would love to operate on you…

OK, that’s enough about pooping today!

After all, there’s an old saying that says, “The most overrated thing in life is sex and the most underrated thing in life is a great shit!”

That said, I’d rather enjoy both and I hope you agree!

Get yourself healthy and clean and you can enjoy all life offers.

Love and chi,

Paul Chek

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I had a full-on day yesterday. I got to work before 6:00 AM and stayed very busy until 6:00 PM.

In the morning, I took a break from my work to hit the gym.

After a couple days lifting stones, my body was well tuned, toned and balanced so I thought I’d take advantage of that and put some weight on the bar and do some deadlifting off the box.

I had a lovely, efficient workout of four sets of 4 at 365 lbs. coupled with reptilian crawling.

I left the gym feeling better than when I walked in, which is always a good indicator or physiological and psychological readiness.

After work, Rory and I headed home for a great tai-chi session with the setting sun.

While meditating with the sun the day before, I had a vision that I wanted to draw so I made that my evening play.

A cool serendipity occurred around my drawing that I will share below when I share my art.

Today, I’d like to share a few simple tips that can really decrease stress and add vitality to your life:

BAREFOOT MEDICINE FOR FREE!

Most people tend to think of their bodies as physical entities. But the body is really a physical expression of complex energies.

All bodies begin as energy before physical embodiment; your body came by way of sexual energy moving through your parents, which laid the foundation for your physical appearance.

Some have a hard time with the concept of energy before body because science has done a great job of creating a mindset that doesn’t view anything as “real” unless it can be weighed or measured.

Theoretical quantum physicist, Amit Goswami, addresses the energy or body question beautifully.

In response to the many scientists in the field of consciousness research that are adamant that consciousness is the product of brain chemistry and neural activity proposes a question.

Goswami stated (in paraphrase), that brains are very recent in the evolution of species. Therefore, we must ask what created brains?

Obviously, the level of technology required to make any brain, let alone a human brain is far beyond our current capability.

Therefore, we can safely assume that the formative forces are pre-physical.

Those of us practicing energy healing work are well aware that energy is the basis of all material form and that addressing the physical aspects of a patient’s disease often has very limited results.

When a therapist has the skills to read the patient’s energy field (or aura) and identify energetic (emotional or mental) imbalances, correction at the energetic level often brings long-term resolution of physical problems.

As you can see in the image above, man is a conglomeration of energies, which are expressed as a wide variety of frequencies.

These frequencies are grouped into octaves (like a piano keyboard). These octaves, in relation to a living body, are called chakras.

The sunlight creates a positive energy polarity that creates levity relative to the earths negative energies.

It is the sun’s positive energy polarity that draws plants, trees and animals upward, out of the earth.

In order for energy to flow through our body-mind construct, we must be grounded to the earth, creating a living bioelectric circuit.

When we are not grounded to the earth, our bodies can’t discharge energies in frequencies that are not harmonious with our sensitive internal circuitry.

The result is an abundance of incongruent energies and frequencies that get trapped within the body.

This energy pollution can, and often does cause “noise” in our internal systems, often resulting in confused communications between cells and systems.

The net result of being disconnected from the earth is fatigue, which leads to illness and eventually, disease.

In the above image depicting the human energy field and chakras from Martin Brofman’s excellent book, Anything Can Be Healed, you can see how the red root chakra energies (equal to the low notes on a piano) connect us to the earth, allowing any excess or chaotic energy to bleed off into the earth.

When we are barefooted on the earth’s natural surface, we are in circuit with the earth and any energies discharged from out bodies are absorbed and used by the earth.

When we wear shoes, we are typically wearing materials that are electrical insulators.

Insulators do not conduct electricity, or bioelectricity. They insulate us from the earth, trapping the energies the body may not want within.

The ancient yogis knew this long before modern science made such conclusions. This is expressed in a saying used by wise old yogis: To a man with leather on his feet, the world is covered in leather.

As a therapist, I could restate this truth by saying, “A wo/man with shoes on feet is disconnected from the circuit of life.”

If you look at this reflexology diagram, you can see the map showing where the pressure points are that relate to each of the glands, organs and body parts.

These reflex points are access points to the specific bioelectric circuits exemplified by your organs and meridian pathways.

Just as you can tap into another car’s electrical system by hooking jumper cables to its battery, putting your car in “circuit” with another car, allowing a transfer of energy, putting your feet on the ground puts you “in circuit” with the earth.

When walking barefoot, each of the points represented in the foot reflex diagram can come into contact with the earth.

When “in circuit”, each of the organ, gland and body systems can either decrease energy (earthing it), or increase energy potential by drawing yin or negative energy into itself.

This natural balancing mechanism is completely disabled by any shoe made of an insulator material.

The result is similar to what happens if your cell phone isn’t put back on a charger; it progressively looses charge and eventually, the charge reaches a critical low point at which time, internal software begins to malfunction.

Your body essentially acts the same with regard to its electronics and internal software systems.

Additionally, the foot is designed to feel and conform to the surface of the earth.

The information gained by the foot is essential because the feet are like eyes that are always surveying the environment and sending the information to the brain quickly so it can make crucial decisions about balance and muscle recruitment.

If the foot is weakened and deformed from wearing shoes (most common in females from wearing constrictive shoes), your body becomes progressively blinded and reaction times become dangerously slow.

This leads to a LOT of orthopedic injuries, among the most common of which are ACL injuries to the knee.

Simple Solutions:

As I’ve highlighted in previous blog posts, stones both hold, and conduct earth energies. Stones also come in a myriad of shapes, allowing us to use them as tools for healing when we understand their benefits.

Walking barefoot on stones allows you to feel which points in your feet are sore. Sore points on the feet typically come in two varieties:

- Hard fibrous points that indicate energy chronic energy deficiency in the body-system they are in circuit with, and

- Soft swollen points that feel like a pea under the skin and are often very sensitive. These points typically indicate excess energy, heat, or toxic buildup in the body.

While walking on stones, if you feel a sore spot that feels good when you press on it, it is most likely a reflex zone that needs more energy.

By pressing down on that point and wiggling your foot a little, you can use friction to break up the tissue there and stimulate the healing current of injury. By inducing a controlled, minor disruption in the hardened tissues, your bodies healing energies begin to flow to the area and reenergize it.

If you find these points, the next thing to do is pay attention to how your body feels when stepping on a dark stone (yin energy) vs. a light colored stone (yang energy).

If your body needs more female/yin energy, the dark stone will give you a sense of calm or enhance your internal sense of balance and well-being.

If your body needs more male/yang energy in that specific reflex system, the lighter (or hotter) stones will typically enhance well-being.

Typically, you don’t want to hold any point under constant pressure for longer than about 20 seconds.

If you do, you starve the cells there for blood and oxygen too long and that can trigger significant post-treatment soreness.

It is better to treat a point for 20 seconds, then move to another point. Return back to each prior sore point as many as three to five times or until the point starts to feel uncomfortable from the physical manipulation.

If you go past the point of therapeutic comfort, you will increase inflammation and loose the benefits of the treatment by dong more harm than good.

Hard points respond well to vigorous stimulation and frictioning. Soft points respond best to sustained pressure.

An ideal therapeutic pressure is obtained by pressing to the point that the discomfort hovers around a 7/10 with ten being so painful you’d have to withdraw your foot.

If you notice that your pain points come back to the same areas from session to session, that is an indicator that you need to look at what organ/gland or body system relates to that point.

For example, if your liver point is consistently sore from treatment to treatment, you are probably treating the symptoms of an overburdened liver.

If you just keep treating the points but don’t look at what diet and lifestyle factors are causing the energy imbalance, you will just wear your rocks out while you wear your liver (or related organ or part) out!

I wouldn’t recommend you tell anyone you’ve done that because it isn’t a glowing sign of intelligence ☺.

For those of you in the city or without easy access to stones and earth, simple means of balancing your body with stones is to find a large metal or terracotta clay bowl or tray like you see in the photo and fill it with a variety of stones.

The stones should range from about the size of a marble to as big as your fist and be in a variety of colors and shapes.

This allows you to choose with stone tool is best for treating any given pressure point that may be sore.

By adding some water, you will create a conductor that both enhances the flow of energy from the stones into your body and from the earth into your bowl; that’s why the bowl should be made of (unpainted or covered) metal or terracotta clay, which both conduct earth energies.

Those of you that use coffee, caffeinated beverages, sugar, or are dependent on these and other stimulants to get through your day will benefit most from adding the coldest water you can, or even ice water.

The cold water will significantly increase the yin energy, aiding your body in cooling and balancing the heat created by over-stimulating your metabolism (excess yang or heat within).

Those that suffer from hypothyroid conditions (adrenal exhaustion) may find that hot water offers the best balancing effect.

One of my favorite ways of treating my feet on a regular basis is to do this therapy on the exposed roots of a tree.

I’ve got some beautiful roots in my yard and I find the tree roots softer and less invasive to sore areas.

The wood element carries a much different energy than stones, yet it is still a beautiful, useful energy form for your body.

If you find a dead tree somewhere and can cut off a section of root about as thick as your forearm, you can lay it on your floor at home or in your office on top of a beach towel and use it regularly as a backup plan for the times you can’t get outside.

A little self-nurture goes a long way to not only feeling better within yourself, but provides regular doses of awareness.

As you track your sore points on a reflexology chart, you can learn a lot about how your body is responding to your diet and lifestyle choices.

Do this and you will cultivate a functional relationship with your body. Listen to what your body teaches you how to care for what may be the greatest gift you’ve ever been given!

As a head’s up, I’ll be speaking in London at the Barefoot Connections Conference Saturday, June 30th.

If you are in the area and want to attend, I’d love to see you there!

SERENDIPITY OF ART AND TREE

Sunday evening, while doing my tai-chi and sun gazing, I was looking at the sun through the trees on a hill across the street from my house. The sun was amazingly beautiful and bright.

It was so bright that when I looked at it through the tree on top of the hill, the tree appeared jet black to my eyes.

When I covered my eyes enough to block the sun but still see, the tree was beautiful green again.

The silhouette of the tree being backlit by the sun was so beautiful I felt compelled to draw both what I saw, and the feeling that moved through me as I gazed.

The photo of my drawing above is what came out of me last night. Once I finished my tai-chi, I went into the house and started drawing.

About forty five minutes later, this is what emerged.

As I was walking into my house from doing tai-chi, I heard my phone chime, informing me that a text had come – I didn’t want to be bothered by more busy stuff, so I ignored it and got busy drawing.

This morning, I checked my messages and it turns out that the text that came through was from Wayne Daniels (CHEK 4 Practitioner).

I opened the image he’d sent of his most recent piece of art and this is what I saw:

Notice Wayne has a sun in the background with a tree in front of it. Notice he has a cross that with a hallow heart in the intersection of the vertical and horizontal axis of the cross.

Now, you will see that I have a tree in front of a yellow sun. Then you will notice that there is a cross with a hollow circle in the same location as Wayne’s hollow heart on his cross.

Very cool ah! Great minds think alike!, as the saying goes.

Wayne wrote this poem to go with his drawing:

In this love
I become a stranger to myself

In this strangeness
I come to know who I am

In this knowing
ALL
IS.

Enjoy your day and don’t forget to get those damn shoes off !☺

Unless of course you want to make love to the world with a leather condom every day…

Love and chi,
Paul Chek

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I hope you all had a lovely weekend.

I had a busy, but fun weekend working with clients and some film work in the office.

THURSDAY
Angie Lustrick just opened her new store in Riverside where she will stock quality meats and other healthy essentials that aren’t so easy to come by (Learn more about Angie’s World at: http://www.angiesworld.com).

Vidya and I drove down to see her new location and hang out with Angie for the afternoon.

While visiting Angie, Vidya, Angie and I created this piece of art together.

We had great fun doing it together. I was a bit cautious because these girls are such good artists, I was afraid to put my scratches on paper with them.

Can you feel which aspects of the drawing came from Vidya, Angie, or myself?

FRIDAY and SATURDAY

Friday, my Zero-Force coaching client Jason Pickard and his trainer/coach Csaba Lucas came to spend some time with me at the house doing some life coaching work together.

As you’ve probably concluded by now if you are a regular visitor to my blog, I regularly use art as part of my life coaching process.

Art therapy is very effective for me as a coach because it gives me easy access to a client’s subconscious mind.

Art therapy also opens their right brain hemisphere. The right brain functions are very connected to what Daniel Siegel, MD refers to as implicit memory. Implicit memory is the memory of all of our feelings.

By interviewing my clients about their life and life challenges, I can combine interview techniques with artistic exploration to find where their explicit memory or the memory of logical sequence of events (left brain) and implicit memories were not effectively linked.

The separation of implicit and explicit memory often happens when we are in situations we can’t understand or rationalize.

The result is often that feelings and responses to the feelings we have come flooding in at times when we least expect them to.

This can result in a variety of reactions that can range from stressful relationships with people (that unknowingly serve as triggers), to changes in our eating behaviors or our desire to love and care for ourselves, to name a few.

By combining dialogue about challenging events with artistic exploration, I can carefully weave the rational (explicit memory) with the irrational experiences contained in implicit memory.

Each time we make a step forward in weaving the sensory information with the rational/logical information that can often be gained only in retrospective analysis, the individual becomes more whole.

I’ve been using this approach on myself for many years and it continues to bear fruit for me and my clients.

Jason’s coach, Csaba Lucas is a very skilled trainer, coach and life coach. He’s studied with me for a long time; Csaba was in my first group of Canadian C.H.E.K Practitioners all the way back in about 1996 and he’s continued to grow and improve his skill set every since.

I love working with Csaba because he’s very willing to get outside help so he can best support his clients and learn from the experience gained when he brings in other experts.

In the photo of Jason here, you can see what he looked like before he started working with Csaba.

If you compare that photo with the pictures of Jason below with me and Csaba in my garden, you will get first hand evidence of what a skilled trainer/coach can do for anyone willing to change!

This is the piece of art Jason, Rory, Csaba and I did after harmonizing together. We changed “OM” for some time until we were all in harmony and function as one being.

Then, without any plan, we just began to express ourselves artistically. This is what we look like together as one combined expression on paper.

I love this one! Me and some of my best friends creating together. What a great way to express our love for life and our friendship together.

You might try it with your family or friends. It’s amazingly fun and healing.

This is Jason’s first piece of art we did in our coaching session.

After he finished it, he put it up in the window in my kitchen next to the table where we do our art. I looked up and saw the sun shining through it and thought it looked really cool. This is what I saw.

As an art therapist, I could give you a long reading on this piece of art, but for fun, why not look into it with an unfettered mind and see what it offers you?

Jason really enjoyed this piece of art he created with us and I encouraged him to take it home and frame it.

Here you can see his art beautifully tucked into the seat next to him for the jet ride back to New York. Pretty cool ah!

This is Csaba’s art piece. It has a lot of symbolic representations in it.

Csaba was raised in Eastern Europe and has a beautiful, grounded perspective on life. I can see that in his drawing.

Csaba and Jason are currently training to participate in a persistence hunt. This is where you literally run down your dinner in a very remote location. This requires extensive mental and physical training.

Jason was consulting with senior C.H.E.K Instructor Chris Maund, who is an expert at all aspects of endurance training and decided he’d like to take Chris with him on their persistence hunt.

I’m sure Chris would love to participate because this is his kind of event and he’s got the skills that will really help dial Jason and Csaba in.

These guys are very alive! Great fun to work with them any chance I get. Jason always follows my coaching to the “t” and the results he’s achieved are very impressive.

We had a great day working together as a team and Rory Mullin was helping me with the coaching that day too so they got a double benefit.

SATURDAY IN THE ROCK GARDEN

The day dawned sunny and warm. Here you can see Jason and I beginning our day of rockwork together.

We cleared out a few existing stacks to make room and free some of the bigger rocks; Jason loves the BIG ONES.

Here you can see me rolling the base stone into place.

We always start rolling the big ones until we are warmed up enough to safely lift big stones. Lifting stones is MUCH more challenging than anything you’ll do in a gym and you can definitely get hurt if you rush into it.

Here you can see Jason putting the third stone in place. I had to giggle because Jason LOVES going for the biggest stones he can get his hands on.

There were times when I was worried he may hurt himself because lifting stones is very tricky.

Unlike weights in the gym, or a load in a box, you can’t easily determine where the center of gravity of a stone with odd shape is. This results in the stone rotating, slipping, or being very heavy on one arm relative to the other.

Carrying a stone with an oddly placed center of gravity can be very stressful to the bodies stabilizer system.

Mix that with uneven ground covered with sharp objects like rock shards, sticks, and thistle burrs, and you’ve got an exciting event!

I can only say, “Csaba, you trained him well!” Jason’s lifting technique was excellent and…the man is as strong as a Rhino!

In fact, he’s got the nickname “Rhino” and it suits his full-speed ahead approach to getting things done in his very productive life.

Here you can see us resting after putting our sixth stone up.

Every one of the stones you see there ranges in weight between about 225 pounds (bottom stone) to a bout 130 pounds (top stone). Even taking turns choosing and putting these stones up was a grueling workout.

Jason and I took a rest break at this point because from here on out, the stacking gets very tedious.

Any wrong move lifting a heavy stone this high and the whole stack goes over in a flash!

This is our seventh stone.

Even though we took a rest, it took everything I could muster to carefully place this stone of about 130 pounds on top of the stack.

Well, as it often goes in a rock garden, I tipped the whole stack over trying to position it.

We both looked at each other with boyish grins and knew that this meant we could do it all over again.

Jason’s ride was showing up in about 40 minutes so we had to work diligently considering it took us a few hours to get to the point where I blew the stack over.

As you can see here, we were able to rebuild and conclude our new stack together before Jason’s car arrived to take him to the airport. We actually rebuilt the entire stack in less than half an hour.

We shuffled the stones to create more stability on the second try and it came out great. That big white stone second from the top is a footprint about the size of a quarter.

It took me longer to balance it than it took us to build the rest of the stack. Jason put the crown on our new Stone-Buddha.

Here you can see Jason and Vidya celebrating the finish of our day together. Csaba had to be home Saturday, so we missed him for the rockwork. But he was there in spirit!

In the evening Saturday after Jason headed home, I got the art bug again.

I often feel my wife’s presence inside me and am very aware of how hard she works. Her mind is like a super-computer that juggles so many people and business issues that it boggles my mind.

I drew this picture of the energy field in and around Pennies head. Can you see me looking in on her?

HEALING EXERCISE – RHYTHM SWINGS

Here you can see Vidya performing what I refer to as Kettlebell Rhythm swings. I use KB rhythm swings to:

- Activate and harmonize the biological pumps of the body, which are the diaphragm, abdominal wall, and pelvic floor.
- Harmonize the breathing rhythm with the movement of the body. This brings the body and mind together as one functional unit; very needed in most people!
- Harmonizing the hormonal system. Particularly good for females with menstrual imbalances.
- Strengthen the postural and stabilizer muscles. You’d be surprised how hard it is to hold good dynamic posture after about 20 reps.
- Improve people’s balance.
- Improve people’s work efficiency and enhance their sense of pace.
- Improve coordination.

To do this exercise, you need a kettblebell or a weight you can comfortable swing between your legs.

The load should be light enough that you can complete 30 reps with good form (about 50-60% 1RM).

The form is basically that of a deadlift, but you are swinging the weight so posture should stay optimal throughout the movement.

The kettlebell should be swung such that it just reaches a momentary pause at the top, directly overhead. On the way down, you let it swing between your legs as you squat down.

The key is to not let the KB hit the ground and to go as far into the backswing as far as you can without your back rounding.

For experienced lifters, the back can be allowed to round to gain specific conditioning of the ligaments and fascia of the back.

The body and mind can usually be effectively harmonized with three sets of 30 reps on a 1:00 rest period.

Most males want to grab a weight that is too big for them because that’s the nature of testosterone. After one such set with a heavy load, they usually find that testosterone alone isn’t enough for the task!

It doesn’t matter how strong you are if your body is out of harmony.

In fact, strong athletes that are dis-integrated often injure themselves because the inner-forces of muscle action aren’t balanced, often resulting in tendon and joint inflammation, and eventually, injury.

This exercise can be done daily provided there is no residual soreness from the previous session.

If you are getting soreness from your previous session, it usually means you chose too big a weight for your current levels of strength-endurance.

This exercise is very helpful to mothers and people such as gardeners, painters, construction workers and all who do repetitive bending and lifting work. As a meditative exercise, it is medicine for anyone!

Well, that’s my update for today.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog today.

Maybe seeing Jason’s body before meeting a C.H.E.K Practitioner and after will inspire you to hire a C.H.E.K Practitioner to help you get clear on your dream and get vital again!

You can find a C.H.E.K Practitioner near you by going to www.chekconnect.com and looking in the locator system; there’s a tab on the home page.

If you want to work with Jason’s coach, Csaba Lucas, you can contact him through his web site.

Love and chi,
Paul Chek

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I had a productive day at work yesterday with lots of coaching and meetings. It was my day off from weight training, and so I finished my day with tai cihi, art and great food.

Today I’m busy working with Zero Force coaching clients, who are visiting from the east coast, which I’m excited about.

My Zero Force clients commit to 20 hours with me and I am happy to say, the coaching format is very effective in helping them to stay on track pursuing their dreams and allowing me to help them fine-tune their personal, professional and spiritual goals with self, others and All.

Many people ask me: “How do you do all the things you do each day.” I achieve my objectives through thoughtful planning and goal setting.

By the way, speaking of goals, we at PPS Success are offering a wonderful opportunity to for you to learn how to stay on target and set and achieve your goals.

One of our monthly specials is Life Solutions Lesson 3: Staying on Target: Setting Goals to Achieve Your Dreams!

I would not be able to achieve what I’ve set out to do in my lifetime without using the techniques I cover in the lesson.

As a matter of fact, here is something for you to contemplate: “If you are not working toward your own goals you are working for your bosses!”

If you haven’t been setting goals or not aware of how to do that successfully, or if you are struggling by distractions or can’t seem to stay on target, this is a great lesson that will empower you.

Looking For A Beginning . . .

Or an End

Creates One!

How far can you look up?
How far can you look down?
Vision perceives an end.

When traveling in a circle, is there an end?

Is there an end to seasons…or do they create each other?

When looking at a map, we plot the beginning and the end of a journey.

Yet, does the end of one journey not mark the beginning of another?

If the Universe reaches the end of its journey, where will you go?

Tao-Te-zen Practice is an exploration.

A leaf falls off the tree to be eaten by insects and microorganisms – they leave the products of their journey to be used – to be eaten by others – their ends become our means…

Zen is the practice of appreciating that both ends and means create life out of each other; one’s refuse is but another’s food or tools.

Zen is the practice of weaving beginnings and ends into the tapestry of life.

No beginning – No end.

That is zen.

I Hope your weekend is wonderful!

I’ll be working on Saturday with clients but I’m looking forward to my rock garden Sunday with Rory and Vidya.

In case you have forgotten, Mothers Day is Sunday – give your mom a call! You could not be here without her!

Love and chi,

Paul Chek

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Well, the week is moving along swiftly…

I was so busy working on slide shows and coaching yesterday that before I knew it, twelve hours had flown by and it was time to head home with my buddy Rory Mullin and get out into the garden for some tai-chi.

I was feeling a bit frisky yesterday so I headed into the gym for a short, but intense deadlifting session.

I warmed up progressively until I reached 405 Lbs. Then I did a few sets of two with reptilian crawling between sets.

I only had about half an hour so that was all I could squeeze in, but I left the gym feeling toned and intact with LOTS of androgens flowing through my being.

Great stuff, particularly for people my age that don’t want to watch their abs and ass droop like a plum turning into a prune…

Today I’m working until about noon and then Vidya and I will take a little break to go get a steam together and see a friend’s new house.

Angie Lustrick emailed me the report from a schoolgirl’s science project. She looked at the effects of microwaved water on plant growth.

This is a great little science project everyone should know about. I’ve now seen a number of similar projects showing the radically damaging effects of microwave ovens on food and consumers.

It’s always been amazing to me that after spending time to show clients research on microwave ovens and their dangers over the years how many of them are so conditioned that they still go home and use them!

Amazing how easily people are programmed to the very degree that they loose all sense of logic and critical thinking.

Oh well, everyone has the right to determine how fast they want to deteriorate…

Microwaved Water and Its Effect On Plant Growth

Below is a Science fair project presented by a girl in a secondary school. In it she took filtered water and divided it into two parts. The first part she heated to boiling in a pan on the stove, and the second part she heated to boiling in a microwave.

Then after cooling she used the water to water two identical plants to see if there would be any difference in the growth between the normal boiled water and the water boiled in a microwave.

She was thinking that the structure or energy of the water may be compromised by microwave. As it turned out, even she was amazed at the difference.

The photos speak for themselves!

The experiment which was repeated by her classmates a number of times had the same result.

It has been known for some years that the problem with microwaved anything is not the radiation people used to worry about, it’s how it corrupts the DNA in the food so the body cannot recognize it.

Microwaves don’t work in different ways on different substances. Whatever you put into the microwave suffers the same destructive process.

Microwaves agitate the molecules to move faster and faster.

This movement causes friction which denatures the original make-up of the substance.

It results in destroyed vitamins, minerals, proteins and generates new stuff called radiolytic compounds, things that are not found in nature.

So the body wraps it in fat cells to protect itself from the dead food or it eliminates it fast.

Think of all the Mothers heating up milk in these ‘Safe’ appliances.

Did you see the report about the nurse in Canada that warmed up blood for a transfusion patient and accidentally killed him when the blood went in dead?

But the makers say it’s safe. But proof is in the pictures of living plants dying!!!

Below is a report that gives us the conclusions of the Swiss, Russian and German scientific clinical studies, we can no longer ignore the microwave oven sitting in our kitchens.

FORENSIC RESEARCH DOCUMENT
Prepared By: William P. Kopp
A. R. E. C. Research Operations
TO61-7R10/10-77F05
RELEASE PRIORITY: CLASS I ROO1a

Based on this research, one can conclude this article with the following:

1). Continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes long term – permanent – brain damage by ‘shorting out’ electrical impulses in the brain [de-polarizing or de-magnetizing the brain tissue].

2). The human body cannot metabolize [break down] the unknown by-products created in microwaved food.

3). Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating microwaved foods.

4). The effects of microwaved food by-products are residual [long term, permanent] within the human body.

5). Minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of all microwaved food is reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit, or the human body absorbs altered compounds that cannot be broken down.

6). The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens.

7). Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal cancerous growths [tumors]. This may explain the rapidly increased rate of colon cancer in UK and America .

8). The prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes cancerous cells to increase in human blood.

9). Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes immune system deficiencies through lymph gland and blood serum alterations.

10). Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory, concentration, emotional instability, and a decrease of intelligence.

Those of you reading this please share this with others or if you don’t believe it, do the experiment yourself.

RUMI’S CORNBREAD

My poem resembles cornbread:

If you keep it overnight, you cannot eat it.
Eat it when it is fresh,
Before it gets dusty.

Its place is memory which goes fast, like fire.
But it dies in this world from the cold.

It flounders, flutters with one breath,
Like fish on the ground.

A moment later,
You see it become cold, then gone.

But when it is fresh,
If you absorbed its images,
You would drown many more of your own.

The Image you drink has to be very fresh.
It is no good to repeat the old one, hey man.

Ref: The Glory of Absence: Selections from Meter 12, Divan-I Kebir,

Mevlana Celalebbin Rumi
Translated by Nevit Oguz Ergin, Page 57.

COMMENTARY

What is the message here…?

I see it as a message from Rumi to not loose our spontaneity.

How many times have we felt the excitement of doing something we really love and want to do, only to convince ourselves we don’t have time for this or that reason…

When we do that, the moment, the opportunity gets stale, then moldy!

Have you ever had someone beautiful rub against you, wanting some spontaneous intimacy…only to be so caught up in the mundane acts of you life and let the moment go stale like cornbread that’s been sitting too long?

Rumi is encouraging you to live in the moment and don’t let the many beauties of life get stale and moldy.

When you are laying on your deathbed, fresh cornbread may not be easy to get!

Enjoy your day!

Love and chi,
Paul Chek

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I was as busy as a beaver yesterday getting all sorts of things done and coaching clients.

I had a nice pushing workout in the gym with Vidya and Rory.

I did a circuit of Swiss ball dumbbell bench presses (90 lbs x 4-7 reps) with clubbbell touch-backs (20 lbs each for 12-16 reps), followed by single leg push-jacks on the Swiss ball.

After a warm-up circuit, I did four rounds of this mini-circuit.

I left the gym feeling great and ready to finish the rest of my workday.

One thing I’d like to share this morning is that it really doesn’t take long in the gym a few times a week to keep your body looking and feeling great!

One of the reasons I share my training sessions with the detail I do is so that people can see that even someone as busy as I am can choose to keep themselves healthy without too much of a time commitment.

I can typically get into the gym, change, train, and get out of the gym in under 45 minutes.

If time is short for schedule reasons, I can create a circuit with higher reps per exercise and couple five exercises back to back followed by a 1:00 rest.

This format allows me to do about 20 sets in 21:00, resulting in a total gym time of a bout 30:00, including a cold shower to cap it all off.

Considering the health and vitality costs of not taking time to care for ourselves this way, this is a very efficient way to contribute to total health!

My tai-chi sessions continue to be very healing and enlightening.

Rory’s been out in the garden with me each evening getting some meditation in as well.

I’ve been slowly creating a new piece of art most evenings too. I often draw while watching a decent cop show in the evenings for the last hour before bed.

I find that drawing calms me for a good sleep better then most things I’ve tried, and it’s fun!

Give it a try!

RELATIONSHIP WITH SOURCE

Seeing and feeling God as unconditionally loving and supportive is the way I experience life – a totally joyful experience. I discard feelings of distrust, resentment, doubt, or anger towards God or Universal Intelligence, and my life works perfectly; I realize my ideal.

Ref: From the Universal Principles teachings of Arnold A. Patent

COMMENTARY:

I have spent a significant proportion of my life working on myself.

I’m very aware of how reading Universal Principles like the one’s I’m sharing here can trigger the ego to fluff about with all sorts of reasons why this isn’t real, true, or practical when one is caught in challenging life situations.

It is completely normal (but not natural) for people to have this reaction to spiritual growth opportunities that actually require that we face up to our creative power.

Certainly it would be lovely if God would simply pay off our bills, heal our challenging relationships, and cover the streets in rose pedals, but would that really help any of us grow into self-realized individuals?

Or would it just turn us into spoiled rotten little children that keep acting like children and expecting our loving parent in the sky to wipe our bottoms every time we mess our pants out of avarice and silliness?

In PPS Success Mastery Lesson 1. How To Find and Live Your Legacy, and in PPS Lesson 2. Self Mastery, I share a variety of techniques for mental-emotional self-management.

These methods have been very helpful for me over the years. I still use them successfully each day.

As I’ve progressively learned to manage my mind and emotions in one aspect of my life, inevitably, I get comfortable, pat myself on the back and the next thing you know, I’m finding myself getting agitated or irritated by someone over something.

I know then and there that I’m being shown where I still have old programming clouding my awareness.

When we find ourselves acting in ways that we know aren’t optimal, or in concert with Universal Principles, we have been given a very valuable gift of awareness.

If I can’t shake the experience, I find that going home at night and drawing what I feel and then meditating on it until I see how I can create beauty with it helps.

Once I see how I can take the image that depicts my own inner-conflict and add the colors and shapes that will transform the artistic expression into something that looks and feels beautiful to me, and do it, I feel a great shift within myself.

I have found that this practice has given me the skills to do this in my mind and make the transition more quickly.

I’ve learned over the years that often, when I’m feeling put-off by some event that it is often because, “I thought someone was saying this or that, but I wasn’t actually listening for their unmet need.”

Once I get past surface appearances and keep in mind that everyone is doing the best they can with the programming they carry, I can begin listening with the intention of truly understanding the need being expressed by the other.

Then, I can give them empathy, give myself empathy if needed, and seek to find a mutual resolution.

The process can be challenging because sometimes we have to admit that we were wrong in holding our often-rigid viewpoint.

But that is exactly what spiritual growth is all about. Becoming more than the sum of your individual, often spontaneous whims.

I can share, for sure, from my heart, that practicing the restructuring of your thoughts to align with Universal Principles is a very liberating practice.

After all, if we look at the things we spend out time doing day in and day out, we find that few of them are as essential as healing our mind!

As our mind heals, we often come to the realization that much of our pain emerges from doing all sorts of things we’ve conditioned ourselves to believe we have to do, yet, when our mind heals, we tend to become brave enough to do the things we need to do.

What we need to do more than anything is to learn to live and love fully.

Anything else is a distraction from what ultimately matters most in life, which is learning how to truly live fully.

Let’s Seize the Day Together!

Love and chi,
Paul Chek

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I had a busy, productive day yesterday.

I was able to get into the gym for a nice lunge session. I coupled lunges with 185 for 4 reps per leg with squats for six reps and finished the circuit with wood chops at 10 reps per side.

After warming up, I completed four of these circuits.

That was just enough to keep the integrity of my body and allow me to keep it feeling young, which I prefer to do.

Today I’d like to share a drawing of a dragon that I worked on over a period of a week, which is quite a long time for me to be engaged in one piece of art.

I didn’t want to rush it because there are so many layers and combinations of color, shape and symbols that I needed time to feel what was being conveyed to me.

My drawings of dragons are largely motivated by my studies of Chinese cosmology. In the Chinese cosmology story, THE DRAGON creates universes as its hobby.

Each time it creates a new universe, it breathes two dragons into existence. One is the female dragon (yin) and the other is her identical twin brother (yang).

THE DRAGON then says to his children, “This is your universe. You can rest from the responsibility of managing your universe when the two of you can get along.”

For anyone that has studied life, there is deep truth hidden in what many left-brain dominant people see and perceive to be merely a story.

Life is more like a poem than a series of facts strung together.

Therefore, today, I’d like to also share my poem that I wrote about THE DRAGON.

THE DRAGON

I AM
THE DRAGON

I AM
because you are

You are
because
I AM

I AM
EVERY-THING

I AM
NO-THING

I AM
THAT I AM
so you are as you are.

THERE IS NOTHING BEFORE ME
NOTHING AFTER ME
ALL IS WITHIN ME
“You” are WITHIN ME.

Because you are WITHIN ME
I AM WITHIN ME

Because I DREAM
You dream.

WITHOUT you
I CANNOT KNOW MYSELF
WITHOUT ME
you cannot know yourself.

YOU CANNOT FIND ME
BY LOOKING
FOR IT IS “I”
THAT LOOKS THROUGH
your eyes.

YOU CANNOT KNOW ME BY KNOWING
FOR I AM EVERY-THING TO BE KNOWN, and
I AM BOTH THE KNOWER, and
THE UNKNOWN.

ALL KNOWING DEPENDS ON
NOT KNOWING

NOT KNOWING (yin) DEPENDS ON KNOWING (yang)
THEY ARE MY CHILDREN
MADE OF, and
OUT OF ME.
Yin cannot know ME
Without knowing her brother, yang.

Yang cannot know ME
Without knowing his sister, yin.

TO KNOW ONE
YOU MUST BECOME THE OTHER

WHEN ONE SEES THE OTHER
THERE ARE 2

2 IS THE WHAT ALLOWS ME
TO LOVE YOU
FOR WITHOUT THE OTHER
WHAT WOULD LOVE DO?

I AM
THE DRAGON

you are
BECAUSE I AM
I AM
BECAUSE
you are

WE ARE LOVE, and
BECAUSE LOVE IS
WE ARE

WITHOUT LOVE
THERE IS NO-THING TO SEE
NO-THING TO BE, or
BECOME.

LOVE IS THE SUBJECT
THAT BEHOLDS THE OBJECT

LOVE IS THE OBJECT
THAT CAPTURES SUBJECT

NEITHER IS
WITHOUT THE OTHER
IN LOVE
I AM
IN LOVE
you are.

TO KNOW ME
IS TO BE LOVE

TO KNOW ME IS
TO LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY

LOVING UNCONDITIONALLY
2 BECOME ONE
NO you
NO ME
NO ONE

YET LIFE IS MY DREAM
LOVE IS MY DREAM
SO FUN
ALL ONE
NEVER DONE
2 you
ALL ONE
SO FUN…

Love and chi,

Paul Chek

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My awesome weekend began Thursday afternoon after finishing a series of coaching calls. I enjoyed a massage and an evening of relaxation.

Friday, Angie Lustrick came down to visit Vidya, Penny and I at the house.

Penny was busy as usual doing all her catch-up work for the week so we enjoyed creating art and laying in the sun relaxing outside in the front yard with all the wildlife.

We wanted to create a piece of art together so I thought of a theme we could use to guide our intention.

We took each of our birth dates and Angie did a numerology breakdown to get our common number, which turned out to be eight.

We then read Arnold Patent’s Universal Principle number 8 aloud and allowed that message to sink into ourselves.

Universal Principle 8: AWARENESS OF PURPOSE

Awareness of my purpose for being on the planet at this time now manifests to my conscious mind.

Positive thinking is fine, but it must be focused. We come to this focus by defining our purpose. Purpose is our vision of the ideal. Purpose is our conscious-mind discovering truths about our beingness, which our Higher-Self has known all along. When we align all of our thoughts with that purpose, life looks different.
We notice that everything has meaning and supports us.

We then took a big sheet of watercolor paper, got out the watercolor pens and let it flow.

Holding the vision of our highest purpose, we began working like bees in a hive. Without any obstruction to each other, we began quietly expressing ourselves artistically.

Over the course of a couple hours, the drawing you see above emerged.

Though I could give you a symbolic reading on the art, I feel I’d rather not prime your mind with ideas and let it mean what it means to you.

If you simply look at the art with a soft, unfocused gaze after dumping the thoughts of the day and feel what rises in you, your unique offering will emerge. We all hope you enjoy our expression.

We also hope you will take the time to read Universal Principle 8 and create something special for yourself.

After our day together, I had this image arise in me as an expression of the day we shared together.

This is Vidya’s expression of our day together. She always amazes me with her ability to create such delicate beauty.

Hopefully, looking at the art we are sharing takes you into the experience so you can feel our joy and friendship.

There’s something deeply fulfilling about being with friends that are comfortable with you as you are, and offering that experience to them too.

Angie wrote this poem to go with Vidya’s mandala after seeing it:

The sun is a circle
The earth is a circle
The moon is a circle
The drum is a circle
We are a circle

After we finished our art, we went for a nice hike in the hills behind my house. It was great to get out into nature and pump our bodies with some good hill climbing and walking. We ended our day with lovely shared dinner.

SATURDAY

Our meditation on purpose worked so good for me I actually went to my office and worked on fulfilling my purpose on a day off! While at the office, I enjoyed a lovely, quiet deadlifting session.

I did six sets off the box for 6 reps with 315 and coupled that with reptilian crawling. I left the gym feeling young and vital again!

I enjoyed a relaxing evening watching a movie and enjoying organic popcorn with Penny and Vidya.

Saturday night, before Brent and Rory arrived, I had this vision of our day together. It really encapsulated the experience we shared.

Enjoy feeling the image with a relaxed gaze and you can be there with us if you like!

SUNDAY

Sunday morning, Rory Mullin arrived to stay a few weeks with us. Brent Meier, a friend and one of our best trained CHEK Practitioners who lives and practices in Los Angeles came down to spend the day with us too.

Vidya and I had so much fun doing the art project with Angie, we thought we’d offer Rory and Brent a similiar experience.

Instead of reading a Universal Principle, we did some toning together. We chanted “OM” for some time until we were all harmonized, then we began drawing.

This is our combined creation.

Again, we were in harmony as we worked for a few hours on this mandala together. We all really enjoyed the process.

It was a beautiful, sunny day and Brent was enjoying the view of the rock garden, the hills, and all the birds and animals in the garden with us.

Here we are celebrating the completion of our day before Brent had to head back to LA. If you would like to know more about Brent and his work, you may visit his website: http://globalhealthperformance.com/

Vidya drew this beautiful picture in the evening as we were all relaxing after dinner. I’m always amazed at how beautiful Vidya’s art is! I hope you enjoy it too!

It was an amazing day! We were all energized and ready for a productive week.

Tomorrow, I’ll share a piece of art that I created over several days.

I wish you all an abundant, productive day!

Love and chi,
Paul Chek

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Happy Friday to You!

I’m taking the day off to do some inner-work today and enjoy my garden.

I hope you enjoy this Tao Te zen sutra today and I’m sending you my wishes for a beautiful, fun filled weekend for you!

To Know Everything . . .

Between each “thing” is empty space – without which there can be no “place”.

Astronomers draw a series of lines – insects follow along the vines.

Under your feet are worlds gone by – above your head- infinite sky; are these things not pieces of a much larger pie?

Have you ever seen a man act like a woman – only to wonder why?

Tao-Te-zen practice is a simple “I don’t know?”

Zen does not choose – but asks the rocks where they’d like to go.

Zen is knowing that the old oak tree is wiser than you or me.

Zen is as no-mind – eyes open wide – a knowing that in nothing – nothing can’t hide.

Zen is the gardener with shovel in hand, knowing that handle and blade are but tree and land.

In zen, “can’t see” + “can see” = “IS”

Zen “IS”

Love and chi,

Paul Chek

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