Waking Within: Alchemy and Shamanism

Mother Nature Deserves Rights and Reparations in Ecuador

2011-12-30T08:57:00.000-08:00

Recently (in 2008) the government of Ecuador granted "nature" consitutional inalienable rights and has been in court against the US born oil company Texaco (now Chevron) over damages to the Amazon and its people living in Ecuador. Well the good news is that Ecuador and the Rights of the Amazon won and Texaco was liable for $18 billion in restitution. The bad news is Texaco is trying to get out of pay back the wounded country and appeal the case on US soil.

Please help us to enforce the laws of a country with great respect for nature and encourage Texaco to pay back damages to the Rain Forest. As a fellow guardian of nature and shamanic practitioner, I request the following of you and anyone you share this information with:

Please boycott Texaco and Chevron!
Please read more about this topic.
Please Sign the Petition!
Please write to the U.S. District Judge, Lewis Kaplan and describe the injustice of Texaco against the Amazon.
Help to Respect Nature everywhere and look to your local governments to grant rights to the Earth!

Visit AmazonWatch.org and donate to this cause!

Plants (and Fungus) are people too, if you don't believe me try meeting one. I recommend that you check your local laws and respectfully have an encounter with Ska Maria Pastora (Salvia Divinorum Extracts).

Hugh T Alchemy
619-663-HUGH
WakingWithin@gmail.com

Driving Out The Darkness

2011-12-04T20:14:00.001-08:00

Recently I started practicing a style of exorcism that combines with Shamanic Plant teacher work. Under the tutelage of my ancestors of Mexico I am able to offer services of "soul recovery" and negative entity removal while allowing my clients to imbibe the Sacred Mint aka Ska Maria Pastora.

As an astrologer, I understand that there are recommended things to do on special days of the month. During the time of Bharani my tribe offers specials on exorcisms and other shamanic rites for purification of evil. Bharani is described in the Hindu system of astrology (Jyotish) as the best time to correct behaviours in unruly ancestors as well.

Our document describes Bharani as follows:

Perform tasks that must be done but are not generally enjoyable.
Doing things considered destructive, cruel, severe or warlike.
Driving out "evil" influences.
Beginning a lawsuit, divorce, initiating an attack.
Entering a competition, beginning a campaign against a rival.
Activities that involve toxins, chemicals, fire, poison, etc such as apply pesticides or begin chemotherapy.
Begin agricultural activities and drilling for water as well as burning things.

To become involved with a plant spirit path and shamanic guardianship of Salvia the Shepherdess please follow the link to our friends'

2 for 1 Sale! Salvia Live rooted Plants $60.00 $40.00 Save: 33% off

Yule Gift and The Dark Times

2011-11-29T00:19:00.001-08:00

On this ever expanding quest to live the most inspired life, my friends and I are offering amazing services for the holidays plus a Yule Gift for you with purchase of any healing services. During this amazing time of year we are called to be compassionate, loving and to have healing communication with Family and close friends in order to weather to "dark" times before the return of the Sun on the Winter solstice.

The Astrology for Changing Times:

Mercury is in Retrograde so it's a time to complete old and unfinished tasks. For many, this retrograde can bring communication breakdowns, technology failures, travel and timing awkwardness. For me and my son, retrograde is time when our luck changes because we were born under Mercury Retro. From Thanksgiving until Jan 1st, Mercury will be in this state of causing confusion in most peoples schedules. Try to be understanding and let go of the communication problems associated with this season.

AND IF ALL ELSE FAILS, come and get a healing treatment or an Astrology or Design session with me or other members of the Sacred Spiral family. We are offering much of our healing services in San Clemente or North County San Diego.

Healing Services Highly Recommended:

AromaTouch or Raindrop Aromatherapy (one hour table session) by Xana Moonflower*
Reiki Session with Ellie Benfatti PhD*
Family Constellations Therapy (amazing!) with Ellie Benfatti PhD*
Human Design with Hugh T. Alchemy (aka Trevahr)*
Vedic Astrology with Xana Moonflower*

*if you book at least one hour with any of these practitioners, mention Sacred Spiral and you will receive a gift of Wild Orange Essential Oil from Madagascar (mood and health enhancing)!

And if you purchase a Frankincense Essential Oil through me, I'll gift you with a Wild Orange Essential Oil. Our essential oil gift offer applies to you as many times you want to order oils and book appointments. Remember that Frankincense and Myrrh essential oils/resins were the original gifts to the Christ child...that likely make him Christ-like! Check out my page on the healing qualities of Frankincense.

I encourage everyone to buy precious metals for the coming barter economy that will replace the standard US Greenback. Be aware that most of my shamanic ceremonies will now entirely be shifting into TRADE, meaning no US dollars will be exchanged for attendance in 2012. Email me if you need a referral for great gold, silver and copper coins.

Human Design on Waking Within From now through 12/21/11 Human Design readings are $100 flat rate (one or two charts) approx 1hr reading. Free phone consultations so please call with questions about everything!!

Sincerely,

Hugh T Alchemy

619-663-HUGH

Listen to our Radio show!

Shamanism Continues NOT Existing

2011-11-15T11:53:00.001-08:00

To quote a friend Kahuna Lamaku: "The Non-tribal World does not allow shamanism to exist. Shamanism, the idea, only exists within a tribal context. Without a tribe, a Shaman can be a priest, a sorcerer or ritual magician. Even if non-tribal people could learn shamanism, they could not grasp it."

We both agree that the path of "shamanism" is hard for most people to grasp. Even I have troubles when in the average waking world amidst "muggles" or going to the bank on an average San Diego day. I won't go to Wal-Mart anymore because of the sheer ignorance within the consciousness of the people. Lo, we must be compassionate. My interpretative of the reason behind the escape of shamanism from one's understanding in the Western/National world is LANGUAGE Barrier.

For more info on this (and language) please reference my article on "If you can read this, your language killed shamanism!" before continuing in this discussion.

Appreciate your comments,

Hugh T Alchemy

Your Truth Determines If You Walk This Path (Not Your Tooth)

2011-11-14T22:58:00.001-08:00

Readers,

As a Priest in a Neo-Shamanic Order of Alchemists, often times I am challenged along this path and much of my practice and teaching faces strong tests of faith, courage, and trust. Recently my main student of the OSS 7 day training had an accident in which he chipped his tooth.

Now it's important to know that your subconscious thoughts (and some powerful conscious thoughts) affect your reality and all that comes into your life. So when I received a text message from my student who is very interested in this retreat that he may have to back out due to his dental work, I do what any great teacher with Coyote Medicine (aka Jackal Medicine in Africa) by taking the following perspectives:

What's this text really saying?
Where is the fear based creation?
Where's the breakthrough?
How can I show compassion and still make a stand against this student's fear?
What within myself is afraid to teach him?
What ritual actions and prayers do I need to make in order to receive what I'm looking for and offer what's right to my students?

Followed by howling and barking at the Moon (j/k)

Blue Crow Dreaming Blog (C) Copyright 2011 Cat Hooley-Jones
http://myfreecopyright.com/registered_mcn/CX9BT-YM1J9-GM5D2

The lessons and challenges continue and I can't say that my ego is used to them, but I can tell you that I practice a path with much testing and opportunity for personal growth. So in many ways I am reminded on a daily basis that I walk with the Jackal and the Coyote as my guides. I am constantly learning about how our intentions morph and shape-shift as a way of teaching us.

This week I am grateful the challenges of the students and the preparations of the retreat. I will go on with this retreat and lovingly remind my students:

That it is the our "truth" that keeps us on the path, not our "tooth."

In' Lakech,

Hugh T Alchemy

760-713-6710

WakingWithin@gmail.com

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Newsletter 11/14/11

It's been a while since I've communicated but I've been busy with LIFE and my path. This email will be the first in a series of Holistic Newsletters that help to inform you about what's new in the community. If you would like to get together with me and friends to sample teas for RADIANT HEALTH and our THERMOGENIC coffee, please schedule a visit! We are happy to offer complimentary wellness consultations for you and your family.

Our FIRST 7 Day Shamanism Intensive is approaching fast (November 21st through 28th). We want to welcome and invite you to join us for amazing retreat living and shamanic training in San Diego. If you have an interest please let me know. Check out my blog: http://wakingwithin.org/

Also our community is encouraging trading as an alternative to money again, and this time in the form or Silver and other precious metals.

I am interested in seeing you all very soon,

~Hugh T Alchemy.

coyote

jackal

Waking Within Co.
Sales and Marketing Department
760-713-6710

Become a Shamanic Priest or Priestess ~ 7 day Thanksgiving Retreat

2011-11-12T23:03:00.000-08:00

PLANT SPIRIT WISDOM, SHAMANIC MEDICINE PATH and Priest(ess) Intensive offered through the OSS

This is a rare (and limited) opportunity to take part in 7 days of combined learning, nature, ritual and ceremonies with three of the worlds most powerful and important teacher plants: Saint Ysidro, Saint Peter and the Shepherdess. The course includes three ceremonies, hiking and daily outdoor activities, Shamanic storytelling and Socratic Method Teaching.

Training includes:
~Native Sweat Lodge Ceremony
~Daily Nature and Cave Hikes
~Intro to Soul Retrieval
~Power Animal Communion
~Daily Musical Journeys
~Salvia Divinorum Ceremony
~Book Study from: The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner AND Awakening to the Spirit World by Sandra Ingerman and Hank Wesselman
~Daily Healthy Meals
~Hot/Cold Tubs and Steam Room

Please email me for an information pack, questions, scholarships or donations: WakingWithin@gmail.com

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What are Shamanic Herbs and Plant Spirit Wisdom?

AYAHUASCA, THE VINE OF SOULS

The word ayahuasca comes from two Quechua words: aya meaning spirit , soul , or ancestor , and huasca meaning vine or rope - hence it is known as the vine of souls . Its ceremonial use is as old as history itself. One of the earliest objects related to it is a specially-engraved cup, now a museum piece, which was found in the Amazon around 500 BC and shows that ayahuasca has been used as a sacrament for at least 2,500 years.

The brew is made from ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and the leaves of the chacruna plant (Psychotria viridis). Both are collected from the rainforest in a sacred way and it is said that a shaman can find many sources by listening for the heartbeat that emanates from them.

SAN PEDRO, THE CACTUS OF VISION

San Pedro (Trichocereus pachanoi), the sacred mescaline cactus of South America, is one of the most ancient, legendary and magical teacher plants. Its name refers to Saint Peter who holds the keys to Heaven and speaks of its ability to open the gates for us into a world where we can heal, discover our divinity and find our purpose on Earth.
Its use as a sacrament and in healing rituals is ancient. The earliest archaeological evidence so far discovered is a stone carving found at the Jaguar Temple of Chavín de Huantar in northern Peru, which is almost 3,500 years old.

SALVIA DIVINORUM, THE SHEPHERDESS

Salvia divinorum is a visionary teacher plant with a long tradition of religious use by Mazatec shamans, who use it to facilitate new states of awareness during spiritual healing sessions. Most of the plant's common shamanic names (such as Diviner's Sage, Ska María Pastora and Seer's Sage) allude to the Mazatec belief that the plant is an incarnation of the Virgin Mary or Shepherdess who leads users to a new understanding of reality, of healing, and of our human potential.
Together these plants afford you an extraordinary opportunity to change your life: to see the infinite possibilities that the universe offers you and to ground these by understanding what it means to be human and to live an authentic life of happiness and fulfillment.

-Quoted from Ross Heaven/The Four Gates

Often times much of this work can be PRIVATELY FACILITATED, so please inquire further if you are interested in booking a Shamanic session or having a Shamanic Priest from OSS preside over your Weddings, Funerals/Death Rites, Naming, Coming of Age, and Baptism events.

Many Blessings

Hugh T Alchemy
858-333-7676

2 for 1 Sale! Salvia Live rooted Plants $60.00 $40.00 Save: 33% off

November 5th Potluck and Shamanic Journeying

2011-10-27T18:23:00.001-07:00

Shamanic Journey and Healthy Potluck

Come experience a shamanic drum journey into the lower world and non-ordinary reality states!

November 5th, 2011 at 530PM-8pm $20/person & $30/couple

To RSVP Pay Online

4805 Mercury Street suite B, San Diego CA 92111

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This Experience includes:

Ø Drumming, visual imagery and guided meditation
Ø Lower World Journeys and Non-Ordinary reality healing and symbolic messages
Ø Journey will include a visit to the fabled Well of Remembrance to reclaim lost power.

NOTE: Eat only lightly before class and bring a yoga mat or something else to recline on. After we’ll have a potluck dinner.

Two-hour event will include: Lower World Journeys and Non-Ordinary reality healing and symbolic messages. Material for this class is all-levels and based directly from the book by Michael Harner entitled "The Way of the Shaman." Journey will include a visit to the fabled Well of Remembrance to reclaim lost power.

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Presented by Trevahr Hughes, Minister and Neo-Shaman with experience in the field and classroom as an Ethnobotanist, Mycologist, Meta-physician, Religious Studies and Symbolism teacher. Trevahr has experience working with MAPS (Mulidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), a Non-Profit in the State of CA) and at events with experts such as Ralph Metzner, Ram Dass, Julie Holland and Dr. Andrew Weil.

Human Rights Issue in Peru---Shamans Deserve Life and Religious Freedom

2011-10-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

14 shamans were recently killed!!! Read the original article:

http://www.peruviantimes.com/05/report-14-shamans-killed-in-loreto-region/13843/

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Take Action

Please ask authorities to immediately address these atrocities and prevent further murders. Contact one or more of the following:

Office of the President of Peru

President Ollanta Humala

Secretary General Luis Chuquihuara Chil

Minister of Justice Francisco Eguiguren Praeli

Email: secretariageneral@presidencia.gob.pe

http://www.presidencia.gob.pe

The US ambassador to Peru in Lima

Her Excellency Rose M. Likins

Embassy of the United States

Avenida La Encalada cdra. 17 s/n

Surco, Lima 33, Peru

Phone: (51-1) 618-2000

Fax: (51-1) 618-2397

General email: LimaACS@state.gov

The Peruvian ambassador to the US

His Excellency Harold W. Forsyth

Embassy of Peru

1700 Massachusetts Ave., N.W

Washington D.C. 20036

Phone: (202) 833-9860 to 9869

Fax: (202) 659-8124

http://www.peruvianembassy.us/en.html

Email: webadmin@embassyofperu.us

Assistant to the Ambassador

Ms. Sara Barboza

Phone: (202) 833-9860

Fax: (202) 659-8124

sbarboza@embassyofperu.us

Political Department

Head of Department

Mr. Pedro Bravo

Telephone: (202) 261-0269

Fax: (202) 659-8124

pbravo@embassyofperu.us

The Peruvian ambassador to the United Nations

His Excellency Gonzalo Gutiérrez Reinel

820 Second Avenue, Suite 1600

New York, N.Y. 10017

Phone: 212-687-3336

Fax: 212-972-6975

Email: onuper@unperu.org

United Nations Human Rights

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

High Commissioner Ms. Navanethem Pillay

Palais des Nations

CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Email: infoDesk@ohchr.org

Amnesty International

Secretary General Salil Shetty

Phone: +44-20-74135500

Fax: +44-20-79561157

1 Easton Street

London WC1X 0DW, UK

http://www.amnesty.org/en/contact (contact form on their website)

Please let your voice be heard.

Thank you.

Susan Mokelke

Executive Director

On behalf of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies

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Here is what i emailed ALL of the authorities feel free to borrow my verbage:

Please take actions to remove these murderous politicians and their family members from positions of authority in Peru. I recently learned:

According to the newspaper La República: The provincial prosecutor's office said that the murders were allegedly ordered by the mayor of Balsa Puerto, Alfredo Torres, and carried out by his brother, Augusto, locally known as "the witch hunter." Only seven bodies have been found, however - either shot, stabbed or hacked with machetes. The seven other shamans have been reported missing. Roger Rumrrill, a leading researcher on Amazonian issues, said the murders are related to "protestant sects" that Torres and his brother belong to, the daily said. "For these protestant sects, the shamans are people possessed by demons, so they have to be killed," Rumrrill said.

In the name of human rights and religious freedom do not allow these atrocities to continue. My family and I are part of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies based in California and I am a San Diego resident and business owner. PLEASE DO NOT LET THESE PEOPLE CONTINUE WITH MURDER.

Thank you for understanding and acting,

T.R.H

760-710-17**

WakingWithin@gmail.com

30 Day Herbal Hair Restore Challenge (Day 3)

2011-09-02T02:00:00.000-07:00

My hair is about 18 inches long and it has become heavy enough where it breaks...AND I'M OVER IT!

So my friend Totally Traci of BestBeautyFoods.com gifted me with a wonderful two part herbal solution. This is day three and I've been taking the "Hair Restore" product internally (it's an alcohol tincture containing saw palmetto, pygeum root, nettle, horsetail, rosemary, and burdock root), twice daily. Additionally, I'm topically spraying my scalp with the product and taking an over-the-counter saw palmetto extract.

We will see if this strengthens and lengthens my hair. Stay tuned for notes and videos of my progress.

____

Oh and if you have had hair restoration success with NATURAL products, message me or Traci of BestBeautyFoods.com

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Trevahr of Waking Within

Raw Chocolate: A Ritual of Entwined Lovers

2011-08-31T22:56:00.000-07:00

Join us for a nite of LOVE and Tantrik philosophy paired with a sensual eating ritual that honors the deity with the Sacred Cacao...Our Immaculate Raw Goddess of the Chocolate Tree will reveal herself and many secrets about sensuality and aphrodisiacs within the realm of both human and divine consciousness.

Tantalize yourself with an experience that includes:
~raw chocolate and rose petal blessings
~partner play
~delicious edible and drinkable raw chocolate delights fit for King Montezuma prepared by Superfoods Priestess Bianca Eden
~guided tasting meditation by Shamanic Priest Trevahr Hughes
~history of Chocolate as the Elixir of Everlasting Life

This evening will be guided by Bianca Eden, Trevahr Hughes, and Xana Moonflower.
A Sacred Spiral production.

Please pay in advance online with eventbrite because we only have 17 spaces.
Or pay via paypal.com

Price per ticket:
$38 online
$45 cash at the door
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Flow of the Evening:
6pm Arrive and Appetizers
7pm Doors Close, Chocolate Blessing with Incense and Resin
715pm History of Chocolate
730pm Drinking Chocolate w/Mint
8pm Partner play...
8pm Truffles with Spices
815pm Talk on aphrodisiacs and vitality
830pm Yoga Pranayama Exercise
840pm Dessert Body Butter and Rose pedal blessing.
915pm Closing Ritual. Singing bowls.
915pm Social hour and Products/Foods Bazaar
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Gender Balance and Couples are Encouraged. You may get paired up with someone if you come as a single, let us know in advance that your are good with that. -TheSacredSpiral@gmail.com

The Latest Video on Baby Fun-Raiser

2011-08-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

The prizes continue to get even better.

-You can win a juicer from bestjuicers.com

Guess that baby video and the latest guesses!

2011-08-07T16:11:00.001-07:00

(HERE IS AN UPDATE, SEE PREVIOUS ENTRY FOR RULES OF THE GAME AND PAYPAL BUTTON)

WE ARE ALSO ENCOURAGING YOU TO DONATE MORE THAN $5 at a time cause we are less than a week away from the doctor's suspected due date and still need to raise $1600...THANK YOU THANK U THAAAANK YOU!

There will be 3 winners!
~A first prize winner (person who guesses the closest in the most categories)
~Winner who guess closest to the birth time
~Winner who guesses closest to the birth weight of the baby!
The prizes being offered are:

First Place winner- Valued at over $600!
-One hour Vedic Astrology reading by Xana
-One hour Human Design reading by Trevahr Hughes
-15 minute intuitive tarot reading by Deborah Miller
-Bio-mat sessions (5 sessions, 20min each) and an organic fresh green drink with Robin Armstrong in Cardiff
-1 HOUR Massage from Angel Cassidy (San Diego specializes in Reiki, Tui Na, Swedish, & Shiatsu)

Winner for weight category- Valued at over $200
-MRS 2000 mat for bio-energetic and magnetic healing (5 sessions, 20min each) and an organic fresh green drink w/ Rob Armstrong
-20 minute laser relationship report with Larry Michel of MatchMatrix.com

Winner for Birth Time category- Valued at over $200+
Juicer from Best Juicers.com donated by Rob Armstrong

More prizes are coming and periodically updated as friends donate their services to help us raise funds!

You can choose to have your personal charts (Vedic and Human Design) read or you may gift it to someone else. You can also choose to have an additional chart done with yours for your partner, business partner, or family member.

You can visit our websites at: XanaMoonflower.yolasite.com and WakingWithin.blogspot.com

All donations are greatly appreciated! Thank you for your love and support!

There will be 3 winners!
~A first prize winner (person who guesses the closest in the most categories)
~Winner who guess closest to the birth time
~Winner who guesses closest to the birth weight of the baby!
The prizes being offered are:

First Place winner- Valued at over $600!
-One hour Vedic Astrology reading by Xana
-One hour Human Design reading by Trevahr Hughes
-15 minute intuitive tarot reading by Deborah Miller
-Bio-mat sessions (5 sessions, 20min each) and an organic fresh green drink with Robin Armstrong in Cardiff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM1P3Q-HVAk
-1 HOUR Massage from Angel Cassidy (San Diego specializes in Reiki, Tui Na, Swedish, & Shiatsu)

Winner for weight category- Valued at over $200
-MRS 2000 mat for bio-energetic and magnetic healing (5 sessions, 20min each) and an organic fresh green drink w/ Rob Armstrong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANvKbRKldyc
20 minute laser relationship report with Larry Michel of MatchMatrix.com

Winner for Birth Time category- Valued at over $100
Juicer from Best Juicers.com donated by Rob Armstrong

More prizes are coming and periodically updated as friends donate their services to help us raise funds!

You can choose to have your personal charts (Vedic and Human Design) read or you may gift it to someone else. You can also choose to have an additional chart done with yours for your partner, business partner, or family member.

You can visit our websites at: XanaMoonflower.yolasite.com and WakingWithin.blogspot.com

All donations are greatly appreciated! Thank you for your love and support!
If you have made a contribution and taken a guess you will be listed below. If you made a contribution and don't see your name, call Xana Moonflower 760-814-1469:

David Shodowolf - girl
Carolina Godoy -
Melissa Weiss Steele - a girl born on 8-11-2011 at 2:02 pm 8 pounds 2oz...xoxxxx
Deborah Miller - girl, Aug 13th, 3pm
Leslie at Controversial Bookstore - Aug 9th, 6:53 pm, 6 lbs 4 oz
Larry Michel - Aug 13th, 11:18 pm, 6 lbs 14 oz
Evan Morganstern - girl, Aug 13th, 7:30 am, 6.5 lbs
Rob Armstrong - girl, Aug 15th, 2 am, 7 lbs 4 oz
Rachael Johnson - Aug 13th, 5 pm, 7 lbs 6 oz
Sabrina Nelson - a)Boy b)Aug. 16, 2011 c)5:13-5:24 p.m. d)7.9 lbs
Carla Gerstein - Guess 1: a: Gender - M b: Birth Date - 8/11/11 c: Birth Time - 8:11 AM D: Birth Weight - 7lbs, 11oz
Carla Gerstein - Guess 2: a: Gender - M b: Birth Date - 8/13/11 c: Birth Time - 8:13 AM D: Birth Weight - 7lbs, 13oz
Michael Rondini -
JANOS NOVAK -
Christina Holmes - baby girl, born 5:50am August 10th.
Nutritional Health Services -
One Talk Transcript - August 14th, 11:15am, 5lb7oz, Girl!
Monica Gaither - a: Gender b: August 13 c: 3:06 pm D: 7.54 lbs 3 oz
Kelly Bradsher - Boy 8/16/11 7:14 pm 6lb 7oz

Baby Fundraising Raffle!!! You could Win!!

2011-08-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I'm becoming a Father! And Xana Moonflower wants a natural birth and a midwife so we are having a raffle and fundraiser!

The doctor has guessed that the baby is due on August 12, 2011. Yes, that is about a week from now! We're raising money to pay for our Midwife and homebirth. Our goal is to raise $2000 or more. Any additional money will be used for other baby related expenses. Check out our video to follow!

Let's encourage this being to come into life with the support of the community!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2316362589317

Since so many people seem to have a good guess about whether it's a boy or girl, some of our friends decided we should start a betting pool! Here are the instructions to win....

1. Place a donation of $20.00 or MORE (but any amount is appreciated and qualifies you) through paypal.
2. In the message box include your guess of the following:
a: Gender
b: Birth Date
c: Birth Time
D: Birth Weight
3. Include your name and contact information in case you are the winner!

The person who gets the closest or guesses the most of the 4 categories correctly will win! BTW WE HAVEN'T DONE AN ULTRASOUND SO WE DON'T KNOW UNTIL THE BABY COMES OUT.
__________________________________

The PRIZES JUST GOT BETTER!!! (this list will be updated daily)
For the closest guess you will be offered:

-One hour Vedic Astrology reading by Xana
-One hour Human Design reading by Trevahr Hughes
-15 minute intuitive tarot reading by Deborah Miller
-5 Bio-mat sessions (20min each) with Robin Armstrong in Cardiff
-5 sessions with MRS 2000 mat for bio-energetic and magnetic healing (20min each) w/ Rob Armstrong
-1 HOUR Massage from Angel Cassidy (San Diego specializes in Reiki, Tui Na, Swedish, & Shiatsu)

You can choose to have your personal charts read or gift it to someone else. You can also choose to have an additional chart done with yours for your partner, business partner, or family member.

You can visit our websites at:
www.XanaMoonflower.yolasite.com
www.WakingWithin.blogspot.com

All donations are greatly appreciated! Thank you for your love and support!

Paypal link:

Dreams New Moon June 2011

2011-06-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

So my friends I have been dreaming again. It's interesting what's coming up and where I'm popping up. Many of my friends have reported dreams about me and I love some of the sharing of these things. So I started a Dream Collectors Club with regular monthly meetings and dream gatherings on the full moon where people attempt to dream journey in a place together as a group. The following two dreams took place on June 1st (early morning) and June 2nd (early morning) and where related to people in my community and life.

Just to let you know, I live in the Pacific Time region and most of my dreams take place in the mornings after I go to bed quite late. I usually go to bed around 1 or 3am.

The more recent of the dreams was recalled on June 2nd after the moon went into a "New" phase. In this dream, I was at a large residence in an area that felt like San Diego and was attending some event at a this location. I seemed to be invited and to know most of the people. I think something was said to make people a little standoffish towards me. I remember stepping out into the wide open back yard, I seemed to be opposed by another taller person. I found a rolling wooden object that appeared to be parts from a "ship's frame" and used it to push away this imposing character as well as to keep distance.

I believe the location felt like Shodowolf's place and him and Carolina were there, it's just that they didn't seem to be my focus as I was in a shoving match over the ship's frame on wheels. I don't remember who the opposing person was but I do remember being helped with my side. Someone who felt like a brother to me was pushing the frame too.

The frame structure then began to self-construct and the masts of the ship unfolded almost as if called to appearance by magic. This series of changes knocked me and the opposing pusher off of the structure. I awoke shortly after this.

Before bedtime, I chose to meditate in accordance with our meetup's policies for the Dream Collectors' Club by utilizing a blue stone, blue throat chakra mental imagining, and the image of a blue lotus flower. I didn't notice that the symbols and the collect blue were part of my dreams.

_____________________________

The night before the last dream described was June 1st and of course I went to bed late only to receive the following vision in my morning slumber: I was attending a tantric event in Carlsbad CA. and in a neighborhood fictious but yet combined with my Mom's parents' street. I was going to meet with Kamala Devi and she would appear briefly and disappear. Kamala (a friend of mine in real life), was wearing a red sexy nightgown and appear to use sensuous body language as she expressed herself and emboldened the cause of sexual liberation through wholeness. Kamala seems to be making more appearances in my dreams lately as the was the second dream this month with her in it.

At her tantra event, Xana was planning on attending and so was my friend Sarah Hudgins. Somehow, Sarah was around and I was convinced to have her check out Kamala's events to learn more about sexual wholeness. I remember that we were sitting in a circle of sorts talking with Kamala with the feeling of being in Puja. All of a sudden I have to go, and check on my grandparents' house which was in the composite dreamscape, just across the street.

I noticed that Sarah and Xana were with me and that we had the blue camero sports car parked on the street near my grandparents' house. I was also carrying empty water bottles with the intention of refilling them with drinkable water. We all went into my family's house and it was empty with the phone ringing. The television was "on" and the door was wide open, and there was a note by the telephone that read: "Potluck Request: Bring Quish for 8 people."

________________

Hope these dreams and others inspire you to learn and practice: Lucid Dreaming, Dream Symbol Interpretation, and Dream Recording or Journaling.

Paz y Luz,

Rev. TR Hughes

Deepening Relations

2011-05-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Universe,

I met someone who I will forever remember when I hear or sing this song:

"Walking through the Holy Fire.
Raising the Vibration
(2x)
Stepping through the Sacred Flame (with the Sacred Earth).
Deepening Relations
(2x)"

My travels through the American Southwest have been amazing as well as graceful and flowing. I came to do ritual and to connect with community and I found myself dreaming of a woman every time I heard the last line of that song/chant.

Deepening Relations!

i'm deepening relations...

Over the course of a night we must have sang this song lines at least twenty (maybe forty) times. Every time that the last part of the chant would roll around I could look to my right and smile at this darling woman. Who knows what she was going through her mind body spirit and what processes was allowing herself. All I knew and experienced was this profound love for her.

Everytime that the words "deepening relations" were sang, I felt a love eternal and an knowing that held her in my heart as my closest sister, wife, mother, and daughter. I wanted to cry tears of joy.

My sister...

The lesson i received from this experience was compassion...more compassion and more compassion...for her and all women and men and everyone on earth...when i realized what it meant to deepen relations, i could do nothing other than give love and be love.

Later in conversation she told me she was having a difficult time with the medicine and the experience of praying...but in the subsequent conversations it was evident that this experience opened doors in her life and freed her energy from past relations that were not longer serving.

Now the real test for me is to take this wisdom into the world and apply it at all times,

Rev. T. Hughes

Criticism about our show on Shamanism and Men

2011-04-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

“Trevor:

I thought this rambling message more appropriate to send personally rather than to comment on the website. Please excuse its rambling nature.

As an Elder who has been a Pipe-carrier and Sun Dancer with the Lakota for over two decades, I have a few comments (well, more than a few): I too have been initiated into The Mankind Project; however, in this context, I found it inappropriate...it sounded like a pitch...I also found the use of "aho" as sounding like a group of non-Traditional men, condescending to Native Peoples. I too have studied in Peru and Bolivia. and am a chumpi paqo from the only two lineages left with the knowledges of how to use those particular muya kullas. I have spent time with the Q'ero in their tiny hamlets, in ceremonies, initiations, and empowerments. I find very little connection between men's groups (which I do find much value in) and shamanism. In fact, up on the Rosebud & Pine Ridge rez's, the word, "Shaman" is used in a pejorative manner. Shaman comes from the traditions of the Siberian and Mongolian Peoples (I'm glad that distinction was finally made). It is a word that white anthropologists have used in their misunderstandings of Lakota (and other Indigenous Nation's)Tradition, Ceremony, and Spirituality. If you want to reference Altered States of Consciousness, I think you could talk about Inipis, Sun Dances, and, especially, Yuwipis and Lowanpis (you did not address the use of Plant Teachers, either ayahuasca in the South or Peyote in the North). As to how "intimate" the show was, I think it was more an example of discomfort of men who weren't at ease with each other or the topic of "shamanism" in the loose, generic sense of the term. When someone mentioned some aspects of Tantra and shamanism, I would point to Bon (which is the indigenous, animistic, shamanic spirituality that pre-dates the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet) and particularly the practice of Chod. I know this sounds very critical but I do commend you for the topics that were attempted. I think it was unfortunate that no recognized healers (recognized not by whites but their own People, like Crow Dog, or any other Yuwipi men amongst the Lakota, or others from different American indigenous Nations) were present.. As far as communication with the Ancestors, I wonder why it was not mentioned in the connection with Andean cosmology, or ceremonies like, or similar to, the Lakota "Keeping of Relatives," one of the Lakota Seven Sacred Rites. The MKP says they use Lakota terminology but are very vague about who gave them permission from the Lakota, to use the sweat lodge in a Non-Lakota-like manner. Why they think that the Lakota build their lodges facing the East (which is generally, among the Lakota, related to the Heyoka, or Contraries. or the Thunder Beings). I also wonder why they use directional colors that are more often used among the Ojibway, When mkp does a ceremonial ritual to the four directions, they start in the East. I have spent time with many of the Lakota ol-timers (many of whom have now passed on - incidentally, the role of Psychopomp was not discussed), who used the same set of colors (not the MKP sequence used that supposedly correspond to the directions among most Lakota) and began all ceremony in the West. These questions are not directed so much at the gentleman who were nice enough to spend their time talking about some pretty important subjects, like mentorship but I wished they had had time to get more deeply into the subjects...perhaps spending some time in interpersonal group building prior to the show and getting more focused as to their own intent, would have been of value. Remember, as an Elder, I do enjoy the right to be grumpy...however, I do worry about Neo-shamanic practitioners talking about methodologies that were seen up until the past fifty years ago as having no value in Western Culture...as a further turn-off to Native People. As an official 'ol grouch," I do wonder why you had no Elders on yr show...how can you speak developmentally about ages that you have not experienced? When I was taught the Lakota sacred dialect by Pete Catches, Jr., we were taught that teachings (such that you attempted) should also be begun with a sacred song, much like Buddhists dedicating any merit to all those who are suffering). BTW, I am also a Winkte, a two-spirit person. Now THAT is a difficult area to address but your shying away from it (and only alluding to "sexual healing" had an air of evasiveness to it) - a sentence or two would have been sufficient. These are areas I mention as topics to be considered for any future shows. Again, I think it was intended to be good for people who have no idea of the topic matter. But, I'm guessing that newbies are not anymore clear than they were than before the show started. I would be glad to discuss any of these issues with any of you gentlemen, and feel free to email me
jcannon.kc@gmail.com
or look for John L Cannon on FB (from Kansas City). I do hope I offended no one. I should explain that, with age and poor health (chronic pain and several autoimmune disorders), I sometimes allow my thoughts to filter thru my body-in-pain/mind rather than my body/heart to Mind, and I do regret the critical tone of this comment. Please consider this as an unskilled attempt to further dialogue.

Mitakuye Oyasin,

John Cannon” –sent April 10, 2011 at 3:11pm

“Thanks, I just want to let you know I read this. I have no reply at this time other than to convey that I feel overwhelmed by your comments. In the future, I am open to criticism on the show but please ask permissions before you write me a lengthy e-mail.

We do the best with the show that we can and I would suggest that you keep that in mind while listening. Bottom line and my boundary is, that when you feel a need to be received in your "comments" to me, I need you to first ask if its your place to offer feedback. BTW the "I'm an elder" or "I know stuff" phrasing doesn't help me to believe in your words or training. Most of the elders that I know are humble and offering and in my first read of your note I didn't feel that from you. I will read it again in the morning and possibly email you with a more well contemplated response. P.S. my friends on the show have been to the MKP and I would recommend talking to them about their experiences, rather than me. I don't have an interest in MKP but if friends and people I trust have been and are better people because of it....let um say so. Their truth is simply their truth even if it sounds pitchy.

In' Lakech,

Trevahr” –Sent April 10, 2011 10:19pm

Our show that this dialogue is involved with is located on EntheoRadio.com and EntheoRadio.org entitled “Shamanism: a path from Boyhood to Sovereignty.” This episode originally aired live at 10:11am PDT, on April 10, 2011 and starred Thaddeus Wilson, Bradley Buffett, Jeremy Creager, and yours truly. Please feel free to offer your comments, honestly about the show and about the quoted criticism above by John L. Cannon.

Thank you,

Trevahr
http://wakingwithin.blogspot.com/

Listen to internet radio with EntheoRadio on Blog Talk Radio

New Avenues of Research

2011-02-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

Last night, I was gifted with an in-person interview with Ralph Metzner Ph.D. that can has brought my awareness to shine more brightly on other areas of study. My time with Ralph, truly encouraged me to learn about alchemy of the ancient times, divination, expansion and contraction of consciousness, journeying to the well of remembrance, and the possibility of the Annunaki.

Later that night, I went to bed thinking about the possibility that star beings came to the earth and sort of helped genetics along with the humans. Even the scenes of violence in a movie that my roommates were watching were strangely invaded by questions: What if we are hybrids of another race of beings? What if the violence isn't truly human...it's just nature and the brutality of organic DNA that lived here millions of years ago? We do share common ancestors with the dinosaurs, so what of our own reptilian brains?

Check out the interview and post me some comments about what you think or what thoughts arise from listening.

Listen to internet radio with EntheoRadio on Blog Talk Radio

Our Rocking Interview with Charles Shaw

2011-02-06T19:09:00.001-08:00

Yes we talked with Two Buck Chuck from Napa CA. Although, it's not the Charles Shaw that you may know from Trader Joes'. Listen and enjoy this fun interview about drugs, healing and CHANGE! Charles was a little late to interview so please forgive the technical difficulties at the beginning of the show, but if you have time to listen through to the end, you will have found some value or at least some humor in what was said. (Pay special attention to the stuff about ayahuasca for a pop quiz coming to this blog soon)

Listen to internet radio with EntheoRadio on Blog Talk Radio

Trevahr Hughes

An Awesome Ayahuasca Talk

2010-11-16T14:13:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers,

I highly recommend the interview with Richard Meech about the recently released film Vine of the Soul: Ayahuasca

His use of Spirit and direct channels through this sacred herb and his filmaking are priceless and this comes across with you speak with this man. I was truly empressed with the way he is a role model for healers and artists as a filmaker and moreso as a human being.

Honored to call Mr Richard Meech my friend.

Sincerely,

Trevahr Ryan Hughes

Listen to internet radio with EntheoRadio on Blog Talk Radio

EntheoRadio With Thaddeus Sunday 10/24/10 @930am Pacific

2010-10-23T18:44:00.001-07:00

Hi Sacred Spiral Friends,

I am doing ONE FINAL SHAMANIC DRUM JOURNEY with the methods that I learned from Thaddeus Wilson (guest on Entheoradio.com tomorrow at 930am). So tomorrow is your last chance to experience my teachings before i continue to UPGRADE my education and training by visiting Dr. Michael Harner in San Francisco next weekend.

Thank you so much for helping me to learn and teach about shamanism.

Next weekend marks my ascendance on this path as I will be INITIATED by my Teacher's Teacher's MASTER TEACHER.

Some my recent ideas and life long philosophies are expressed in my recent blog entry entitled "If you can read this, YOUR LANGUAGE KILLED SHAMANISM" (http://wakingwithin.org)

I encourage everyone reply, tag, comment and share more of your opinions with the Sacred Spiral and on my FB profile.

So a reminder: Thaddeus Wilson (Shaman, teacher, healer) live on the Radio tomorrow (http://entheoradio.com) 930am Sunday/tomorrow

...and Shamanic Drum Journey at the Farmers Market #2 at the Encinitas Farmers Market from 1030am to 12noon, tomorrow/Sunday.

PLEASE COME and meet friends, have excellent journeys, support local farmers, and make it a great day.

Namaste,

Trevahr Ryan Hughes
Neo-Shamanic Priest
http://goodalchemy.com/
760-713-6710

For more info about Thaddeus Wilson check out http://www.momenteer.com/
For more info about Michael Harner PhD visit http://www.shamanism.org/

If you can read this, YOUR LANGUAGE KILLED SHAMANISM

2010-10-23T00:39:00.000-07:00

Shamanism is Dead! Just like punk rock!

And the next questions are natural: How/Why is it dead? And Who or What killed it?

First let me explain the title of this essay: "if you can read this, your language killed shamanism."

This concept has arisen in my life in two incidents. First, let it be known that I am a shamanic practitioner, neo shamanic priest, alchemist, and fluent English speaker(reader and writer). I also studied science, math, linguistics, and Asian philosophy in college. I became a yoga teacher before I was an ordained Shamanic Minister. The reason that I am so excited about Yoga as a path to free was that I experienced (in college for the first time), a concept of existence without words and thought outside of the languages i knew. This concept of thought outside of the language i knew, wasn't due to a lack awareness of language (remember I studies languages as my major) rather it was an awareness of something i didn't have words for. Meaning that words exist for whatever i was experiencing and they just weren't in English or any of the languages I knew at the time.

That's were Sanskrit came in. I mentioned that I was studying Asian philosophy and everyone who studies broad Asiatic philosophy from a western perspective, studies Sankrit vocab (even more came later when I left college to become a yoga instructor in a town called Encinitas). So Sanskrit had concepts of things expressed in the form of written and spoken words that English never had, but still i thought about those words in English and I applied English translations to them. Needless to say, I was scratching the surface.

The second instance was when I was introduced to DMT, a chemical that is isolated from plants and animals worldwide (in this case and more than likely from the wood of a Mimosa tree). This chemical when used in a SACRED and Spiritual way with ritual, dear friends and pleasant music produces a peak experience within a realm of indescribable visuals and breath and body less-ness. Again and need-less-to-say, English and the english-speaking thoughts in my head had NO IDEA and subsequently no expressions that fit this experience.

Back to the title and the topic: "Your Language Killed Shamanism. How/Why is it dead? And Who or What killed it?" English and other common languages are responsible for the beakdown of true spiritual concepts (the direct ecstatic experience of god through shamanism) as a result of the mutation by "higher-ups" in the caste system. Be aware that in most ancient societies people spoke more languages than the average American, and especially the class of priests whose job was to spread "the word." In that day in age, it was have been foolish to spread "the word" in a single language as many dialects and groups of people simply died off without a means of saving information as we have today.

Meaning that Latin and Sanskrit speakers (the ancient priestly languages) have influenced the sacred teachings and the handing down of the "god experience." This is expressed in the resulting low number of spiritual expressions or "concepts of ecstasy" that we have in modern English (especially American). The less access to creation or creativity through our first language we have, the less likely we are to "do" anything that exists outside The System, THE MATRIX, or the Machine. Neo, the character in the Matrix series, is initially told that is is not "The One" by the Oracle (The One is a title in the series to express that he could bend the Matrix world to his will and therefore be the one human to leverage the war against the machines setting us free as as race). This conversation sets into motion a design that will eventually allow him to believe in himself and his abilities until he "is killed" or as we say in shamanism "led through the death/rebirth initiation" experience. After dying, he comes back in a new concept of "the way things are" and he makes different and more free choices that are outside of the "rules of the matrix" program.

Additionally when you think about death and what may be on the other side of that door, there is no concept (in any language) of what that could be like and even having gone through that experience, it is more than doubtful that human language has the potential to express that which is ineffable. Another fundamental component of all created earthly-human languages is the tendency to focus on the material, the real, or that which "can be" expressed rather than the paradoxical (which science tells us is less than one percent of what's out there and yoga traditions tell us is illusion or "maya"). The experience of the inexpressible is a vital part of life and the first of many steps on the road to freedom or moksha (yoga liberation).

Only recently did this idea of thinking and conceptualizing in english hit me profoundly although my awareness of it has been with me since high school when i asked my Iranian friend Amir, "Do you think in another language?" I was reading the work of Terence McKenna entitled Flesh of the Gods and the concept struck me like a ton of bricks: "if i think in English as my primary function, then i conceptualize in English and if words don't exist in English for certain things that exist, then as long as i think in terms of English (a programmed way of thinking), I will NEVER think of those things." I felt like everything that was ever taught to be was just a distraction or some kind of magician's trick in a Vegas Show to keep me from paying any attention to other things. My brain instantly brought up data on the various methods "hiding of something in plain sight," the burying of an idea, straw-man concept OR the assassination of something by labeling or categorizing it not by it's actual content but rather in an arbitrary way.

SHAMANISM IS DEAD because it never existed in the first place. Shamanism is a word or better yet, it is a concentration camp that we created all the indigenous and channeled practices that exist so freely, that may result in altered states or that are simply inexplicable (in modern language).

Our primary english speaking culture really has no place for the meanings and usage of shamanism or shaman because those things mean different things to different people who have studied anthropology. In this Western society people are so disfunctional and greedy that they utilize Shamanism and Shaman (and to a lesser degree Alchemist and Guru) as JUNK terms that act like a buffet for the practices of peoples that Westerners view as less evolved and less technologically advanced. From personal experience of working with authentic peoples, the word “shaman” amongst American Indians/Natives is not used and it's even joked about as a white man's term.

Furthermore, the shaman isn't an accessible figure for our society as his primary function has been 'down sized' and devalued and even outlawed. The plants and the tools of the shaman is the West have been abused through disrespectful communication. A fundamental component of the shaman is his tribe...a tribe creates a shaman. Just as an artist designates a "thing" as art it is not qualified as art until it influences and affects the senses, emotions, and/or intellect of someone, a shaman exists to serve a family, a tribe, or a community. Additionally, a shaman cannot exist without a purpose (or a "calling").

Our society not only stylized the Shaman as the "show man" but it carries the expectation to be entertained. Modern Western culture expects to be tripped the fuck out, have profound visions, be exposed to weird incense, and hokey poky unity philosophies that more often than not are impractical. All of this stuff is unrealistic and forwards the hiding the truth in plain sight.

If creativity is limited through the mind and the word then the result is no less than bondage, servitude or slavery. The only thing with the ability to save us from our conditioning is that wild concept of soul, spirit, divine intervention or inspiration....I say that this isn't enough and therefore we must cultivate that which we have NO idea of. The practice of Yoga, Shamanism (the concept not the word or it’s English translations), ritual, and tantra along side with the natural mind altering paths and foods. My advocacy is towards freedom in the areas that the least of us might be aware of.

The concept from The Matrix arises as a reflection for our society not just through English but through legal and corporate business (a concept of a prison for our minds that we can't see or touch because it IS the world around us). Ever since those first experiences outside the realm of linguistic understanding, I have been searching for FREEDOM. Freedom of the mind and ideas. Freedom to create whatever it is that exists in the great myriad of things... the premise for this essay is to invigorate all who read this to pursue this level of freedom. Freedom exists in the concept and the realization of all things and paradoxical fullness of emptiness that is all around us.

How many other things were killed in the advent of language and more specifically the invention and application of the English language?

All Language is a system of conditioning and manipulation...in order words: mind control. Ask yourself these questions: What language am i thinking in? When was the last time that you had a thought outside of the language in your head? If you have the concept of thoughts (or symbols) that exist outside the limit of your current thinking language then you are touching the aspects of life, oneness, shamanism, and psychedelics. Places that most of use are afraid to visit or conditioned to misunderstand and treat as less valuable than "other things" that exist within societal standards.

When you start to trip-on this concept, then naturally you shall find that with any language that was controlled by a previous language and a group of people that engineered that language to "have first choice over" the expressions of all who would use the language hence forth...

AN EXAMPLE of this is President George W. Bush. His family has probably spoken English for many generations and for some generations his family has been in the business of controlling people and their opinions.

Well someone told George W's parents how to act in the world, and someone told that person, and someone told that person, and someone mentored that person...most likely all in English (at least 5 generations back). Then before the Bush family learned English (from someone who learned it elsewhere), there was a group of people (such as the Illuminati or the new world order, or the Catholic Church)who created English or manipulated pre-existing languages such that the expression were specifically phrased to prevent people from thinking of things that English has no-concept for....if you don't believe this then study Old English :P

Walk away from this reading with these:
1. All things that you know are hiding the truth in plain sight.
2. Learn a Language.
3. Realize there are things that you couldn't possibly know exist because you have no practice in believing.
4. The visual consensual reality is minuscule in comparison to the power of language.
5. Don't go searching for telepathic abilities in the form of words. (Rather choose symbols)
6. Language is a stepping stone to god.

"Ultimately all things are known because you want to believe you know." -Zensunni Koan (Chapterhouse Dune)

Peace,
Trevahr Ryan Hughes
760-713-6710
WakingWithin@gmail.com

Salvia Meditations

2010-08-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Alchemists,

I am writing out of excitment and satisfaction. Last week we completed class number three and the experiencial portion of the Salvia Divinorum Ethnobotany series. In a well intended, meditative setting with wonderful friends we experimented with altered states of consciousness induced by Salvia Divinorum leaves...

...and we were totally SUCCESSFUL with amazing and fun journeys and deep meditations.

So in honor of Spiritual Growth and with reverence to the Spirit of the Sage we are planning to add regular experiential groups for people like you to experience this God Given Sacrament (while it's still legal).

Everything comes with intentions for the highest good and the most learning so we will offer a lecture on the herbs and the traditional context (shamanism) of the herbal practices and we encourage you to do your own homework and research.

Check out the British documentary series: "Sacred Weeds" for more info on Salvia Divinorum and other herbs of the sacred sort. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4829797616419921428#

Please read sites like Erowid.org before experimenting with your own consciousness. And always be prepared for "safe journeys." We in no way recommend this or other herbs for any specific individual and we invite you to make responsible decisions with your body, mind, and soul.

For events check out Http://www.goodalchemy.com/

Salutations,

Trevahr 760-713-6710

Ralph Metzner on EntheoRadio.com

2010-08-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was granted the esteemed privilege of interviewing Ralph Metzner on live internet radio...I have included the interview from that experience within this blog post. The highlights of this interview include some awesome perspective shares of experiences the Ralph had at Harvard, with Timothy Leary, and with Ram Dass.

Enjoy this and call in weekly to ask live questions to shamanistic guest speakers and psychedelic celebrity teachers and researchers.

Namaste,

Trevahr

Listen to internet radio with EntheoRadio on Blog Talk Radio

Sometimes I Just Can't Sleep

2010-07-22T02:33:00.000-07:00

About an hour ago I felt my body having a war of three tribes...

My father's tribe with their Druidism and Celtic ways...

My Mother's tribe with Persian influences and Egyptian magick...

This "other" tribe...feral bloodline that I call the Jaguar...which extends into both sides of my family. Recent savages bred in to old blood. I remember the tribes of this land...the Americas...I remember these most vividly (or at least this is where my mind is interested most). Plains Indians of the Americas, Mix-tec and Zapotec Indians of Mesoamerica, and even as far back as the great migrations from Asia...Mongolians...

These ancestors roll around in my joins. They crawl up and down my spine. They live in the TREE that is ME.

One throws a spear from the branch of my shoulder down to his opponent who hides at the roots of my tree near my hips...

These people fight...these genetic memories have their wars and have it out for each...just like my birth parents.

My Father...the racist and prejudice SKY FATHER who was taught by his FATHER and his FATHER BEFORE HIM.

My Mother hiding from the labels of who she is. Hiding in the Earth...covered in mud, with a deep dark tan...covered in sand from the winds of the near eastern deserts.

They are transplants...those places that my parents (my parts) come from...

But the Jaguar remembers me...they hunt me...perhaps they will win my focus.

Our focus...this communal focus that is me.

I choose that tribe...that form...nearly three hours ago my body attempted the transformation..again.

It obvious didn't fully work. I am still up as a testament...writing this whilst i writhe in pain.

I can think like the jaguar man...I can see like the jaguar man...but still I have dysfunction...i can't sleep in the arms of the world tree, or run through the jungles with the grace of the other cats...yet.

I will try again...before I turn 25

...For it has been too far long since i felt like i belonged...too far long since i slept in your arms...

by V. Wak Ek Balam

************************

Friends,

At least now i know that Great Spirit and the Spirits of the Plant Teachers can perform healing miracles. While I have not healed my strange war of opposites and "oldness" of body at the age of 24...i or rather Great Spirit have tackled some daily problems with much success. The alchemical experiments on me tonight have thus far proven effective...meaning i was becoming ill now i am well...my immunities restored.

But of course in this alchemy something must be traded to catalyze such a miracle...

I am wide awake now trading sleeping time in addition to trading a journey to my body, my pains, restlessness, and current discomforts. I mean ouch...my leg muscles hurt bad.

Of Course, the upside of the pain is that I am well (not having a cold/allergies) and that I am AWAKE (at 3am) and inspired to write.

Let's go back...about one month and a week...back to an Ayahuaska experience that i had. This medicine was something i imbibed of two nights in a row and on both nights, i seemed to have the same reaction/remembrance:

My teacher/shaman was holding space and he was playing the flute...i am not sure which type of flute but i know that the native american flute style would be a good guess to what it was...plus it was dark and i didn't have the human eyes to see the flute.

So he was playing this flute and moving around the room and it seemed like his playing took on some higher pitches and some sharp sounds. Both nights the flute playing didn't occur until later in the evening...at least 3 hours into the medicine journey.

Both nights (but more so the first night), the flute sat me up and it was as if the music drew energy up my spine and through my center...my body very much felt like a snake/cobra being danced or charmed by a flute player like videos i had seen.

(oh i wish i could be a snake charmer, like at balboa park for special weekend events...i would make soooo much money...:P)

Anyways, i sat right up on the first night and the music instantly possessed me and somehow (it seemed mysterious but he prolly just saw me sit up) my teacher comes over and starts playing right in front of me...sharp noises and lot's of wind moving in and out of the flute.

I felt this feeling of swirling...and upwelling...and i saw this vision of "my people" (i guess a past life of a tribe that i was living in) and they were a lot like Siberians or Inuit Indians all dressed up in fur to stay warm. They were under hardship...like a winter. These people, my tribe, were freezing cold and hungry or rather resource starved.

My emotions gathered in intensity as i observed others of my tribe (PEOPLE I KNEW AND LOVED) running to their yurts to escape the snowy windblown night. I felt the feeling of being cast out from the cities where other tribes lived. I felt that we were exiled...perhaps not good enough...or even the "wrong" race. All of this separation, desperation, and suffering rose up in me and possessed my body.

Suffering...suffering....suffering as the flute player drew close and spun sharp sounding noises

I grabbed my bucket...

...i had to feel around for it because it was both dark and my vision (my eyes) were so full with the scene of the storm, the cold, and my tribe living in the yurts.

I took the lid off the bucket and threw up...hard

And again...and a third time...and at least one heave in between.

Having thrown up what seemed like more than i put in...i covered the bucket with it's top and set it aside...

I felt amazing. I felt that i had let go of "ALL THIS SUFFERING" and offered forgiveness in the space that was left open after the letting go.

I don't know who or what i was forgiving but i like to think of it as some-part of myself.

For the next hour during that night of ceremony...i sat and watched and listened intently as others received their healings...and made their offerings.

What doesn't serve us, we are bound to Cough UP and OUT, if not in this lifetime then the next.

Namaste,

Yogi Trevahr
Alchemist and Shamanic Priest

Heretic Rising...

2010-06-19T15:14:00.000-07:00

"Most discipline is "hidden discipline" designed not to liberate but to limit. Do not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why...leads inexorably to paradox. How traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite." -Heretics of Dune

Walk Such a Path that You'll Never Have to Wonder Again.

2010-05-06T01:08:00.000-07:00

Tonight while out on the town for Cinco de Mayo, myself and my friend (switchboard operator Lori) interviewed Sara Huntley on EntheoRadio. (http://www.entheoradio.com/)

Sara is a visual artist, art teacher, makeup artist, dance teacher, fire spinner, and contributing author to the MAPS (http://www.maps.org/) bulletin. I included some the art that she contributed by being true to her passion and inspired by psychedelic and entheogenic culture.

Sara's art can be found at http://www.myspace.com/machineagemaya

The interview went great and Sara is a peach! Sara even knew about Frank Herbert and the Dune series which really excited and tickled me. I nearly started dropping phrases that only Dune nerds would know (like the spice must flow and kwizat-hateract). I encourage you to listen the the interview and I assure you that it gets better as we go on late into the show...especially after having such incredible difficulty with getting Sara on the line.

That interview was very in line with my purpose, destiny, and that which i am here to create...and yet with my prayers answers, i am writing you to offer feelings and emotions, perhaps fear that I and this community I am committed to could be grand beyond any stretch of my imagination.

I walk the path the my ancestors requested of me...I can't ignore the lives past that my body remembers which scream for the Initiation. This CALL to the "Golden Path" is incredible. I found myself having a breakthrough with "the brew" and almost instantly knew and was ready to move...to pack up and take exodus of my "home" or rather the place that I have lived for the past year.

I prayed for knowledge. I prayed for prosperity. I prayed for initiation. I am fearlessly choosing these things...but why am i dreaming...what's coming to me from deep within the endless lives and spaces of my dna...

My prayers were answered and "Spirit" had a hand in this one, as I heard the teacher tell me on the phone tonight..."come sit circle. i don't care if you pay. if you want to learn about the medicine and how it's made, you can learn that but you will have to follow me into the forest for weeks at my request. It's one thing to talk about the medicine, mushrooms, lsd, and others of the sort but to teach about the preparation...brother not with my medicine!"

I may have pushed a button....and you know it's the same button that anyone pushes of medicine men who act without speaking. There is no regulation this work (same as with yoga and alchemy) and that's likely why I am attracted to it. I know that my path comes naturally and flows to me from visions and therefore (individually speaking) "needs no regulation." Religious church groups (with their medicines per say) may criticize me for my actions but ulitmately it is the same motivation behind my actions as their actions...the only (old paradigm) difference is they are a little older than me and have been around longer.

Shamanism and truth are not something that someone can covet...truth is unattainable but the selfish and greedy...it flows freely and naturally and is the way of water...(i find it funny that i had just had this discussion with a pagan friend at the village witch in san diego not hours before)

PART TWO: "The Motivation is Faith"

In many ways the medicine man on the phone is right. Remember: "it is he who speaks that does not know and it is he who knows that does not speak."

Ah then why i am i talking...and why are you listening? Perhaps I know nothing and I am simply confirming this by talking or telling. This is true, and...(yes a big fat "AND")...there is truth in the unspoken part of the proverb...hence my question for you:

If he who knows does not speak, then what does he (or she) do... how is that person being?

The answer is listening. (This is listening from both the ears and the listening energy that Grandmaster Doc Fay Wong talks about...listening with all of the body and its chi systems!)

This is where my story shifts...as prayers are always answered, it's simply a matter of if we are offering attention (or "listening"). So thank god that i am abundant and that i get to move and get to learn from a teacher as practiced as the man who cares so much about the integrity of his art that he would test me and tell me "yes" to learning from him and "no" to learning from websites that offer the information on herbal alchemy that I spend some much of my time reading.

One of the ultimate virtues of the golden path is to practice listening (I will attend this man's ceremony to see how he goes about listening).

I am passionate about the path and yes, this is the path that one would walk and thus never wonder again...(special shout out to Adesh Kaur who walks the path of kundalini and who walks it in a way that shall never lead her astray)... and the Jaguar who walks with me and is watching me from the trees and following so close these days.

I am so blessed and grateful that my prayers again where answered as I spoke to a dear friend and brother only to learn that we will soon build lodge and practice chants in the way of the people of the earth of America. I am so full of love and gratitude for these older individuals who stand firm in their words and who take me under their wings until it is time for me to walk across the coals...and to jump through the flames.

Yes my brothers and sisters...I choose to take on the diet, the abstinence, the fasting, the travels, the purge, and all the practices of WAKING WITHIN.

To be continued,

Yogi Trevahr
Herbalist, Yoga teacher, Mushroom Hunter
Priest and Professor of Alchemy and Shamanism

Sacred Spiral Community
Http://www.facebook.com/trevahr (training all summer long...)
Http://www.goodalchemy.com/

Snake DANCE with Rattles and BLOOD

2010-04-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Great Spirit,

I am reaching out to you with my thoughts and prayers because lately and several times this year (and last night) I dream of Snakes...venomous snakes with rattles at the end of their tails...many times they don't pose a threat to me...but rather they are stretched out in passage of the landscape on the dreamworld.

I feel asleep last night reading about divination and praying as usual (everynight that I sleep in my bedroom) with my emeralds and my stibnite to the coyote spirit of the Money of this Nation of the people of the Corn, and to the wolf spirit of Abundance and Collaboration....I remind myself that the YOU are coming, Great Spirit, to play the game of giving and receiving and prosperity with my person and my passion...

...my tiny twin bed near my bearded dragons terrarium, in my humble room in Cardiff California, blinks in an' out of existence as my eyes draw heavy and my muscles give out...in a last ditch effort (effort! so not taoist of me!) to reach across the room and turn off the light. This night (which was last night), I am paralyzed before sleep and the dream world fully embraces me.

Reality melts and becomes swirling pools of clouds, sky, liquid, dark-matter, and light...and i am transported to a house that is large with many rooms and a family living there. This family knows me but looks different that the one I currently live with and they are welcoming but ignorant....unlike teachers and friends in dreamtime...they can't read my thoughts and communicate psychically with me. I supposed I am spoiled by psychic and telepathic linkage in some many dreams...that i am often surprised when people aren't working with that...but in this dream the family seem occupied (or possessed) by excessive thoughts and activities.

I move freely around the dream environment and explore outside. This place/dreamscape looks like a combination of the home/backyard I grew up in, the one that I currently live in, and Liberty Advance retreat center...where in June, our Sacred Spiral will be holding an Ayahuasca Ceremony....hence the snakes that come next...

So I am outside and it's green and soft without too much grass. There are rocks and hills and some small trees. There is a patio overhang with sliding doors where I see persons congregating and possibly watching a video on a screen of color. They speak amongst themselves and aren't interested in my outdoor explorations. Near the patio on a small tool shed, I approach a very distinctly mark, light colored rattlesnake (stretched out and quite long). It was not bothered by my presence.

I turn to look at the ground nearby where I am standing (because I am immediately alert after seeing the snake) and there is another golden/red-orange rattlesnake underneath a shrub. By this time the sky had transmutated from a lovely shade of blue began gathering clouds of a dark water and lightning. Without fear, I distinctly felt the storm coming...and knew that this was park of my initiation...(which is set for this coming week as I attend my first snake dance with the vipers and my father).

I quickly moved to attend the house and pick up my snake stick as I would need a tool to pin the head of these rattlesnakes to the earth as i reached to pick them up. I found a manzinetta branch that appeared to have the appropriate bends in it to act as a "snake stick" but not before i found two clear bags of hognose snakes and assorted colorful snakes (i once owned hognose snakes, kingsnakes, cornsnakes, and rosey boas as pets) from the american southwest...all local species... I picked up the snake stick and the one of the bags with hognose snakes in it and entered the house...

IN this admixture of the the retreat center and my home, I was excited to express my awareness of snakes outside to the occupants and to get my step-dad whom is the snake handler in the family. I didn't find him and when I tried to discuss the retrieval of the rattlesnakes with the other members of the "family". IN FACT, no one seemed to care that I was to handle and dance with these snakes. I looked over my shoulder and gestured to the sliding glass door to express a need to make haste as the dark-lightning clouds were approaching.

No one seemed to care...and I woke up just after looking at the bag of hognose snakes in my hand (which look a lot like rattlesnakes)and I thought to myself that there wasn't anytime to waste. I felt that I needed to feed these snakes and care for them as they had been cold and hungry for a while. I also felt that I must soon catch and feed the rattlesnakes as they were hungry from the winter hibernation and that if it rained their burrows would be full of water... it was time for action and time to set up the snake cages.

Back in this reality, my body pulled my consciousness back to this middle world and present time...I woke up confused that I didn't own snakes and that the hognose snakes no longer lived with me...and the strange urgency of having to feed them and house them left me with a need to take action thus writing this message to you.

I want you to know that I am planning on a hike and an initiation with my step-dad to the ranch near anza this week. We will find snakes and we will hold them as a practice of communing with their strength and "medicine". Great Spirit, I don't know if it is time to start keeping snakes again...and vipers for the first time...but with your divine guidance...I know and trust that my father and I will be safe.

Great Spirit, the vision quest to my totem animal that you have shown me will provide a healthy path to my evolution this coming week, I thank you.

Aho!

To all my relations,

Trevahr (T.R.) Hughes
Yogi, Alchemist, Neo-Shaman
760-713-6710

PS. Check out events on these and related topics on http://www.goodalchemy.com/

Answering the Shaman's Questions

2010-04-21T17:18:00.000-07:00

Question #1:

What is Shamanism? How does this dance with Ethnobotany, the plants of the earth, and the fungi?

Trevahr: As a modern alchemist, teacher, yogi, and metaphysician, I am forced to answer this from a perspective of faith and one who believes in Great Spirit. I am fully aware that there are many no so blessed as to have contact with the holy spirit/soul/source/miracle consciousness/samadhi and each of those...skeptics/scientific method oriented peoples will have a different opinion...and let me say that their opinion matters...in fact many of them are in face my teachers when it comes to plants, fungi, technology, and the sciences.

So what is shamanism? It is something that faithful people experience from the inside out and others simply observe as a tradition. I fully awaken to the differences of opinion and observation people share their definitions of this practice...

Practice. Shamanism is a practice (which involve "all that is" and therefore involves beliefs of individuals and groups). Shamanism is quite similar to Zen Buddhism as it is also a practice that does no necessarily intervene with one's religious faith. For example, my Grandmother and I (Mexico) can both be Catholic and modern and still practice shamanism and herbal medicine together without interfering with active religion.

As many people are defined, shamanism can too be defined by it's actions (in addition to it's words)hence shaman practice these things and observe some/most but not all of these faiths:

Folk Healings performed by a person of faith and practice.

Observational and intuitive knowledge of the spirit, plant, fungal, and animal worlds.

Expanded awareness of the Natural World.

Belief in Spiritual dimensions and spirits as they both exist and play a part in daily roles and human society.

Natural duality exists (i.e. good and evil)

Sickness and disease can be treated spiritually or supernaturally by treating the "evil/dishonored spirits" in each situation as these spirits have created the ailment.

Trance and Altered States on Consciousness can be employed using techniques (of ecstasy) such as drumming, music, rhythm, sound, breathing, body positions (ie yoga), plant or animal spirit medicine.

Trances and altered states can induce/evoke healing or visions for divination.

Direct communication with Great Spirit, God, Creator is possible and does happen fairly regularly...

A shaman believes that the spirit can and does leave the body of a human to journey in search of answers or new perspectives on information to benefit oneself or the tribe.

Shamans observe spiritual communication.

Shamans may take active roles in community as: doctors, counselors, healers, priests/priestesses, leaders or decision-makers(one of the major roles as diviner/oracle is "advisor")

To be continued...and further discussion on tonight's episode of EntheoRadio

http://www.entheoradio.com/

Namaste,

Yogi Trevahr
760-713-6710
Alchemist, Shamanic Priest, Ethnobotanist(in training)

Shamanic Priesthood in Modern Shamanism

2010-03-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

What is it to be a Shamanic Priest? I was called upon to embody this new title recently as Sacred Spiral organization here in San Diego begins an education process of Ayahuasca (an ancient psychedelic healing sacrament from the Amazon Rainforest peoples). Our organization is becoming legally similar to other churches with shamanic sacrament. Thus creating a daily process of ritual and transformation to be “one” with Shamanism and Priesthood becomes a practice that wakes me up early and keeps me up late (and lately, has me answering questions).

What is a Shamanic Priest?

Short answer is that it’s different than a “traditional anything”. So I would like to start by saying even though this path “legally” qualifies as a Reverend, Monk, Minister, or Pastor…it isn’t that as we know or understand in our American Christian Culture. Although as a Shamanic Priest, one can walk those paths (Reverend, Pastor, Minister, or Monk) and feel in perfect service to the Divine, the Earth, or whatever Shamanism he/she practices. I compare Shamanic Priest to the label of Neo-Shaman as it relates to a new tradition for the modern era, the technological shift in consciousness, the spiritual shift in awareness in addition to all the Native practices for ritual, ceremony, and healing.

As a Shamanic Priest, you will be called to meet, greet and create alliances with Christians, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Buddhists, Pagans, Muslims, and all faiths in hopes of “cross-pollination” with these faiths and collaboration on the Earth.

You know when I think about it…just yesterday, I was talking to an older man about being ‘cells’ of the Earth and relating to him how if we serve the planet, and how if we do eco-conscious things then we are creating health in the body of the Divine Mother and the Universe. Contrary, I explained, that if we pollute and create trash we are behaving as “cancer” cells would behave in a healthy body (of Earth and the Universe).

…all earthly organisms are living in a symbiosis with the Planet Earth comparable to the system of microscopic cells and bacteria that live within the Human and Animal bodies.

Shamanism is a practice of centering oneself (similar to Zen) on the Earth, with Nature, with Spirits and “all things” for the purpose of guidance, spiritual growth, learning, or healing within the Self or the Tribe (Global Community or Local Family). Priests and Priestesses create organization and maintain regular gatherings as they communicate to others about the Spiritual realms as well as the Ways of Living on the physical Earth planes.

A Shamanic Priest holds space-daily- for personally development, spiritual growth, education, physical and mental well-being while weaving old ways (Native/Tribal) with the neo-spiritual paths and global society (Religion and Technology).

How do we become Shamanic Priests and Priestesses?

I always considered shamans to be naturalists, herbalists, ancient scientists, and intuitive doctors. Yet many times, shamans are called to communicate for and be in community with Spirits and other worldly/dimensional beings with the intent do provide new information/energies for the Human Tribe.

More and more, I seem to understand that I am asked to live me life in the way of a Priest of the Earth and a Guardian of the Plants and Fungi. Shamanic Priests and Priestesses hold space that the American way and the Religious paths “go Green” and that each politician, Father, Minister, and Monk fall upon their knees, stick their foreheads in the soil and call out “All My Relations” (Aho Mitakyasin).

We are teaching the world about ECO-Medicine and I see things changing and know that within my lifetime and within the trainings our “Church” (religious/spiritual order) creates, there will be peace as our leaders on Capital Hill and in the Vatican drop down to hold the ground in praise as the realize that Jesus taught about Sacred Mushrooms. May the eyes of the greedy and sick be opened by the Earth and her cosmic neuro-network of mycelium.

Throughout childhood and my teen years, there have only been two roles in American society that come close to fitting my dreams/lifestyle…the doctor and the priest (a.k.a. the scientist or metaphysician with a Doctorate level degree and the SHAMAN or YOGI/“Hindu Holy Man”). There is no use for violence and war anymore…and I know any other lifetime the Warrior in me would be executing these greedy people and their ways of Earth-Ignorance…so it’s this lifetime…here and NOW…I decree and create an Order of the Sacred Spiral associated Priests, Priestesses and Shaman for the purpose of developing awareness and dissolving the sickness of corporate greed, banking, credit, pollution, g.m.o.’s, and all in-organic things that fall outside of the Plan of The TREE OF LIFE (which is a real thing that we visit in Shamanic journeys and dreamtime).

No More! Let the Earth speak and let Mother twist and shake us to bring awareness to our folly and egotism. The polls may shift and the most you can do about it is learn to LIVE more fully and to live off the land.

So like Jesus and the Alchemist, we walking and watching as the sun sets over the world of greed and industry. If you wish to join us as the Order of the Sacred Spiral grows, begin living your practice now by holding consciousness with these things:

Plants and Fungi,
Food,
Medicine,
God Within and Without,
As above, so below,
Divination,
Visit the Tree of Life/World Tree,
Learn other languages and visit other lands,
Practice body awareness and mechanics (ie. Yoga or Tai Chi),
Pray Everyday,
Breathe deeply when possible (it’s possible most of the time),
Hike in nature,
Learn about Native peoples,
Be open to non-western medicines,
Recycle,
Plant something!
Grow food (even just a little),
Get covered in the Earth/Dirt (other than the beach!),
Each and Buy Organic,
Trade fairly,
Think outside the Money=FREEDOM/happiness BOX!
Visit with old folks,

LISTEN!

Namaste,

Yogi Trevahr Hughes
Shamanic Priest- “Forever in Training”
760-713-6710

PS.
Your Priesthood begins when you learn and practice with the Earth everyday; cultivating its secrets in your being, in your community, the environment, and all that is….things outlined here are just guidelines and may change person to person.

The Path of The Psychedelic Shaman in 2010

2010-03-12T01:53:00.000-08:00

So the topic has come up clearly amongst my students and friends whose interested around psychedelics and altered states has finally peaked into practice:

Is vomiting good for you? Is it healthy to throw up?

Do the medicines considered Purgatives, have negative effects that throw the body off to the point of dysfunction? Do magic mushrooms have negative/toxifying effects when compared to someone else's so called cleaning medicines (ayahuasca and peyote)?

_____________________________________________
My teacher and I went round and round today in speculation of herbs and healing as it relates to the body's psychoactive breakthroughs and potential healings.

As he spoke, so many memories reminded me of how my primary medicinal study had been with mushroom medicine as it was originally involved with yoga, the rig veda, Christianity, the garden of Eden, and Aryan or Brahman Shamanism (not just psychoactive shrooms but all fungi). We talked about the mellow and medicinal effect of magic mushrooms versus the stimulating effects of Mescalito (Peyote and San Pedro) and purgative effects Ayahuasca.

So the answer seems to be a matter of conflicting research and traditional belief systems. And yes, my teacher replied that too much throwing up is bad for your body and sometimes too little or NO VOMITING is bad for your body.

The story related to me was one of his experience with fighting the "throwing up" urges with Cannibus, only to be met with advice (from Native American Medicine People) that one must allow the purge to occur as part of the healing. At this time, I brought up a question that one of my students posed about, Ayahuasca being more pure and healing to the body than mushrooms. At this, my teacher reminded me that mushrooms rarely create an irresistible urge to throw up and contain an immune system stimulating constituents that help fight off cold and virus.

_________________________________
In the next 60 days, Sacred Spiral and the human Trevahr (me) are going through some testing phases as the organizational body and I "take on" the Ayahuasca and Peyote herbs (always under religious and ceremonial and legal circumstances)in order to better experience and discover the answers to this question and to fully reveal these experiences as a healing path for the community.

I personally feel that my body is going to vomit and that it needs to in order to heal pain, gallbladder and other internal organs.

As I hold faith and step into my power with these medicines and move to create organization in the Sacred Spiral church for this sort of journey work, I am excited but fearful because of stories about being unable to throw up and warnings that I could lose my sanity in this substance.

From the Herbalist standpoint that my teacher and I hold...there is no normal reason why anyone would have to take the Ayahuasca medicine in high doses for several days a week for months or more...this may be where the danger lies...although this statement is opinion.

Weird and unwelcome reflections of shamanism have come out of urban society and San Diego. Nonetheless, I shall walk through the mirror into full "presence and power" and completely heal myself of these physical and emotional pains this year!

In the meantime, my practice, with friends and other healers, deepens into weekly sessions and discipline of time and monetary resources such that I make it to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Sciences Conference in April as well as create abundant funding for our non-profit lawyer fees.

As a weekly mushroom hunter and American of Mexican descent, I am most intrigued with something else that my teacher spoke about today: Magic Mushrooms as Mazatec (ie Maria Sabina) religious sacrament.

I feel that Mushrooms as healing medicine and faith enhancers runs in my blood...or rather my mother's blood.... And may be one of the best manifest destiny paths that I have to offer the world for the next 5 to 10 years(especially the United States).

Theoretically and probably, our church can pioneer a sacred path of religious legal protection and use of Magic Mushrooms through Mazatec customs and traditions (wow what a concept!).

This kind of healing and safe relationship is long overdue in the United States because of some non-sense about mushrooms being a narcotic schedule 1 offense because of their psilocybin content and are therefore expressed in legal language as a drug containing substance or a container that transports narcotics.

Under the same clarity created over Ayahuasca/Santo Daime vs. the Supreme Court, we may create understanding at Mushrooms are "God Given Natural Sacraments" and medicines for faithful healing especially within the religions of the Mexican peoples in the regions of my great grandparents...Zacatecas and the Sierra Madre.

I am a faithful healer, ordained minister, community organizer, and dutiful teacher/researcher and I believe in Earth Wisdom as well as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and many others. My agenda extends deeper into human freedom, rights, and education...

If one takes a long and loving look at history and human anthropology, he or she will certainly discover that altered states (ie. Shamanism) occurs in every faith/religion and in every human life...thus I call you to legalize Nature...not just the Earth and the plants but LEGALIZE HUMAN NATURE...as it is human nature to have shifts of perception and consciousness...and furthermore it's healthy.

Keep Practicing Your Yoga,

Rev. T Hughes
Alchemical Priest
Me@trevahr.com

Help us create this community and pay our lawyer fees (Goal of $2000) https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JM8K9NYRMVEHJ

Journey of Las Medicinas y Church of the Sacred Spiral

2010-03-09T16:02:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

Some of you joined us and many of you heard that last weekend we completed a beautiful series on the Magic Cactus with our Ethnobotany students. I held space along with some of my dearest friends and presented a series of Neo-Shamanic altars and rituals. The divine Earth we walked upon for our journey to healing was a blessed and sacred site that my family owns on the back side Palomar Mountain.

As we got out of the city and into the country, I prayed for perfect weather and perfect community. Sunday throughout the ritual and the hiking that preceded said ritual, I was overwhelmed with GRACE for those who chose to stay behind and not attend this journey. I honored their path and allow them to continued to build trust in themselves and the medicine work and in nature and weather.

When we arrived, the weather was perfect and mild and incredibly...there was rain everywhere except for where we hiked. All week and the day before, people were scared of bad weather and hard times for this journey, when actually nothing of difficulty in the weather crossed us. My inner guides spoke with me and assured me all week and whilst I prayed over and prepared the medicine (for six days I might add), that we would do the ritual and the hike safely "rain or shine" and that even though many people threatened to be absent if it rained that this was a test of my faith in the Father Sky.

Of course, Mother Earth and Father Sky took care of us. And everyone of us had a breakthrough in the bitterness of the medicine, letting go, trust and teamwork, outdoors-manship, honest sharing, music making, dancing,and altar building.

For me the most pivetal stuff was sharing the names of all friends and family who needed healing. By this time it was dark and we had shared so many times that people we really free and felt the trust of our circle and offered boldly the names of loved ones, rivals, strangers, recently passed family, and private names for themselves.

I was touched and honored and will always remember this experience of March 7th 2010 and the Journey of the Magic Cactus. Afterwards we came home to eat and decompress and do one final alter and circular share. Sometime around 3am I got to bed but my dreams have been so vivid and memorable that for the last two nights, I feel like I am living two lives (waking and dreaming realities).

On Monday, March 8th 2010 we contacted the IRS via phone and collected the necessary answers and information about the Sacred Spiral becoming an official church with a Non-Profit status and Organizing Documents of which lawyers will review and submit to the state. This means that in a matter of weeks (and some attorney fees) we will be official conducting Shamanic and Mystic Ceremonies within State regulations under the name "Sacred Spiral".

As we gather resources and I offer healing services and ceremonies as a Shamanic Minister in the state of California, our community organization will dedicate itself to funding the lawyer fees of $2,000 (yes, Universe we are asking you for MONEY for create healing community!) and to partnering with Liberty Advance and the Native American Church (two established non-profit religious organizations)in the Southern California areas.

Check out my brother's blog at http://orderofthesacredspiral.blogspot.com/ and help us collect funds for communities worldwide as we change lives through community and the miracle of altered states, yoga, dance, herbalism, and alchemy.

We are also looking for scholarships to the MAPS conference (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Sciences) in San Jose CA on April 15th-18th 2010.

http://www.maps.org/conference/

DONATE TO OUR CHURCH and help us pay Lawyer fees https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JM8K9NYRMVEHJ

Namaste,

Trevahr R Hughes
Yogi and Shamanic Minister
760-713-6710
"Me@Trevahr.com"

All Things Must Pass

2010-02-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

To All My Relations,

I just recently went for an epic hiking journey to visit my family and Dr. Ralph Metzner. But before I left, I dealt with some epic learnings that as I sip on my Tulsi (Holy Basil) tea today (as it is my new daily habit recommended by my acupuncturist), I reflect and invoke healing towards.

Just the other week, I was so stressed and high strung that I had a shock reaction in my acupuncture session (or rather my body did). Often times, this doesn't bother me but rather triggered in me a space of clarity to think about my life and healing from the past traumas and how that relates to my moving forward.

When I saw Dr. Metzner for the first time this was what he talked about. It was at a hidden hippie gallery in "THE CITY" on a Saturday night when he (now in his 70's) approached to audience to talk about his new book "The Birth of the Psychedelic Culture" (co-authored by Ram Dass). With a passion that blew the younger crowd away, Ralph spoke about the Harvard LSD and Mushroom experience with Timothy Leary as well as Alchemical Divination.

To say the least, I was very impressed by how well spoken this World War 2 child was (especially since he has been in his body for a long time this lifetime). Ralph is a friend of mine, through mutual friends and we speak on the phone sometimes (a few times prior to this event). My learning about his strong teachings has influenced me to move towards shamanism and alchemy in a new way.

Hence, I morn that all things must come to pass. After this recent journey, I am inspired and changed and I know that I must change...maybe relocate...attend some amazing trainings on Shamanism...and most of all be so incredibily dedicated to serving and teaching my friends and community.

My REQUEST is that you do the same: be dedicated to your transformation= your inner alchemy and yoga. Soon you will be ready to join my friends and teachers for what we have to offer if you haven't before...

We have some amazing EMPOWERMENT workshops coming (in a series of 4 basics and 2 advanced). This year expect retreats to be the highest step of learning our Alchemy, Yoga, and Shamanic Ceremony...all of which are woven together with fun transformational exercises and outdoor play...

I would like to introduce www.SandiegoCircle.com as a place for community and events...but keep your eyes on this blog, facebook.com/trevahr and our meetups.

Always join me for interesting chats and give a call or an email with questions about yoga, alchemy, shamanism and HUMAN DESIGN teachings and FREE CHARTS.

Namaste,

Yogi Trevahr
Alchemist, Neo-Shaman, Teacher
760-713-6710

Http://www.meetup.com/alchemy
http://www.meetup.com/sacredspiral
http://www.meetup.com/yoga-fun

Return from a Shamanic Journey

2010-01-11T04:17:00.000-08:00

Through space and time, I returned to myself holding and allowing new principles and deep guidance.

I am guided to work with my family and the medicine people up North and to be open and giving with my gifts even in the face of fear and rejection for I have nothing to lose and everything if I do nothing.

I know that I will be journeying again today as I have done with my teacher Thaddeus in the past and then again on the next day with my friend Lisa (all shaman people and good hearted ones). And earlier tonight, I journeyed with my teacher and my ancestors and I heard their voices. Now I know that I am not alone. Just like in Avatar the movie, our souls live on in Gaia (earth mother) and can be returned to her.

My teacher Leah Tenderfoot taught me the practice the channels and the ritual of the medicine wheel. Her spirit was with me in my journey, as I was considering the ghosts from my partners/lovers, from friends, and from the Old Town Ghost Hunt http://www.meetup.com/sacredspiral

I remember the Medicine Wheel perfectly and now I also realize what I am doing at the nursing home (place where I work and teach Yoga): I am collecting lost spirits to show them the way and to let them cross over. Every now and then, I open a wheel in my bedroom or wherever I am asked to and cross these spirits. Usually I can cross them one at a time if they are polite and ask for it and especially in dreams.

I believe my friends Georgia and Wen have these similar powers and I was shown that my friend Jacob deserved initiations and a cloak...and can complete the shamanic staff that I walk with.

I see into you and with clarity I know that you have incarnated (or passed over) in my life for a reason...and soon, very soon I will guide you and heal you and all of our relations.

To my ancestors and to relatives, I leave offerings of fine medicine, frankincense, blood, and copal. May our lives be rich together and may Gaia and the souls of the World Tree show us truth and love in divine time.

To my friends and spiritual family (those who chose to be with me without blood ties that we are aware of), I love you and I honor you with my drum, with the rattle , with the Feathers, with the Plants and the Fungus, and with the energy passed to me by God and My Teachers.

Namaste to All That Is

T. R. Hughes
Order of the Sacred Spiral
Waking Within

I am that I AM

I am the Roots of the Earth Spilt out upon the Linolum Floor

2009-12-02T15:17:00.000-08:00

Transmission from within "The Matrix"

You are slaves and I know only because I am writing from the slave pits, where we are Duracell batteries and forced to earn countless sums of money for the government, the legal systems and the credit companies!

I know that if I dedicated myself to it I could see what the priests of the Vatican see! The shaman of the Santo dame church see it too!

They see herd mentality, sheep, hardworking slaves and they do nothing directly. These organizations like the Illuminati, step out of the light and into the shadows behind the scenes being played out. So many of my fathers and teachers teeter between being shameless pushovers and honorable thieves.

As I have learned from my fathers, as I remember now as I sit in the courthouse, it's better to outsmart and do as the law makers due in Babylon:

Create loopholes in lost laws based on their creator's hypocrisy!
Maybe this is the turning point when I the alchemist give up my possessions because they are so few, and return to being the student, the guard, and the 9to5er.

Maybe I will flee like so many who are drafted. After all I did just get an out, I can be an Italian citizen soon and leave my America. Freedom lies within the world and under the surface where the shaman describe the underworld.

Tick tick tick time is on a countdown: to 2012 or 17 tickets up from 61 to 78 the number of my birth and death as I am allowed to approach the window of all that is and all that they want to take from my nothing. And the guy next to me (with) a number before mine simply counts the 100$ bills in his hand.

With all his money and all of my relations... Will we be able to leverage the universal aho?

It's time for a change of intention:
To become the priest, the shaman, the alchemist, the adept, and the initiate!

Else my time to be a battery is here until 2012 or longer. Just one moment before me there is 77 and that's all I remember

"I am the Roots of the Earth Spilt out upon the Linolum Floor" was written during a traffic court waiting room experience while listening to Shaman's Eye by Liquid Bloom

Namaste,

Yogi Trevahr

Order of the Sacred Spiral Teachings Go Global

2009-11-24T14:31:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

Tonight we begin our series of conference calls and thus tonight marks the beginning of International community, education and sharing. As a result of this global change, I felt it necessary to communicate some key points.

1. Our community is an education based organization in which we never turn someone away, although we always ask for a donation or trade for our teachings/teachers. Thank you for whatever you give/offer in advance.

2. Please visit our website http://www.meetup.com/alchemy/ to pay through that medium or visit paypal.com and select the "send money" option and enter "TheSacredSpiral@gmail.com" or "Omtrev@gmail.com" if you are able to make a donation.

(Suggested $5 but anything is welcome! If you cannot donate please email us and let us know so that we can send you the conference call information)

3. 11/24/09 at 6pm PST The Intro to Shamanism and Ethnobotany series is a special one and to be part of it from the beginning is an honor.

Tonight we shall talk about: What defines shamanism, our personal shamanic experiences, and the herbs that induce altered states.

4. Remember this forum is a "freedom of speech and respect" space in which we honor all belief systems of compassion, understanding, peace, and healing. Our community is open and welcomes free speech regarding information and research of substances as Sacred/Religious/Spiritual medicines; but we in no way ever advocate illegal actions or activities. If you are a citizen of the world, it's your duty to abide by local rules and regulations and we encourage your safety through these actions.

Namaste,

Trevahr Hughes

Email: Me@Trevahr.com

Waking Within
and Sacred Spiral

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=marketing_us/send_money

The Evolving Sacred Spiral

2009-11-16T13:25:00.001-08:00

An Entry created on the New Moon of November 2009. Monday the 16th in the 11th month about four days after recovering from the flu.

Hello Yogis and Alchemists,

Tonight is the New Moon. It is void of course until after 6pm tonight, therefore a meeting at 7pm would be timely!

So there are lots of changes occurring in our community and with the seasons of San Diego. I have personally been involved in helping friends move, cleaning old stagnate energies out of homes and offices and bodies. I have been sick twice (like many of my friends and fellow citizens of America) with the flu. And yet, my resolve remains steadfast towards creating consistent gatherings, mastermind meetings and conference calls, and including many many more people in our communal vision for peace, healing, and self discovery.

I promise that myself and several select teachers are working around the clock and holding an amazing alchemical space for 2010. Thus, tonight's meeting is about sharing and gathering us in a way that allows all beings to be heard regardless of rank.

So after the call with Mariel Hemmingway (tonight at 6pm) come over to Barns & Noble Starbucks (1040 N. EL Camino Real Encinitas CA 92024) to talk about books, current events, mastermind ideas, and make new friends. Meeting starts at 7pm. We will be outside with some tables or inside if its cold (at the cafe Starbucks).

There will be some Shamanic invocation and intention setting for the New Moon and be prepared to make an offer of wishes and ideas. (Bring a yellow pad or yellow paper with a RED pen to WRITE YOUR WISH LIST.

For more info, check out
http://www.meetup.com/alchemy

Namaste,
Yogi Trevahr
Order of the Sacred Spiral
760-713-6710

Tarot Cards at Radiance Festival

2009-10-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

As you may know, I sometimes fill the shoes of an Oracle and have been seen at special occasions doing readings (usually with Cards) for people. Just over the weekend past, I did a few readings at Radiance Festival for friends and others who were intrigued with this intuitive form of information.

I read with the Animals Divine Tarot by Lisa Hunt primarily and I wanted to share with my friends the meaning of a card that continuously came up on Saturday night (Oct. 10th, 2009):

The World (Gaia, a Greek Goddess, Major Arcana Card #21)

Symbols:
Recognizing and embracing all living things as an important part of universal balance is a reflection of truly becoming in tune with one's being. The snake represents rebirth, renewal, and intuition. The spirals are symbolic of the creative life force. Its eternal rotation echoes the eternal cycle of the seasons, life, death, and rebirth. Leaves are indicative of the universal life pattern: rejoice in their budding and mourn their fall from the cosmic tree.

The ivy creeping up the tree is a symbol of immortality, as is the butterfly, whose metamorphosis shows us how life is ever-evolving. The tree is feminine and acts as a connection between the underworld and the aboveworld. Ferns represent solitude. Flowers are graceful and beautiful. The menagerie of animals represents many kinds of attributes, personalities, and states of being. By appreciating the incarnations of our being- the light, the dark, the beautiful, the ugly- we have arrived at a place of great inner peace and wisdom.

Description:
The great primordial deity of the ancient Greeks was the earth mother, Gaia. Before the creation of the universe as we know it, Gaia, "the deep-breasted one," existed as energy in a limitless pool of unidentifiable chaos. As she drew her initial breath, the chaos around her began to coalesce into mountains, ocean and sky. The sky, called Uranus, became her lover. The two clung to each other in unmitigated passion.

So intense was their love affair that nothing could flourish between earth and sky. Their union impregnated Gaia with all manor of life, including the Titans, but her children were unable to be born. The teeming life could not emerge from a womb cloaked by the smothering darkness of their father.

Gaia grew impatient and angry with her husband's possessive and wanted her children to be born. In frustration, she fashioned a sickle and gave it to her youngest son Cronus. With this instrument he castrated his father, thus enabling Earth to separate from Sky. The blood from Uranus's wound flowed down and fertilized the earth with hideous creatures and monstrous forms. With the birth of their children- the Titans, monsters, and all living things- time commenced and the life and death cycle were set into motion. Gaia's children are many and comprise the beginnings of the Greek pantheon.

This is the archetype of the fully realized self. Wholeness, integration, and individuation are completed. It represents the end of a cycle of endless journeys. Now we are free to dig deeper into our psyches and traverse new waters of self discovery. Like Gaia, who represents the anima-mundi or center of the world, we can now experience oneness with our own beings and the universe.

--Written by Lisa Hunt

The meaning of this card is generally a state of whole-ness, oneness with all living things, and self-awareness. This is an auspicious card and I find it funny how the Tarot begins and ends with the symbols of Divine Sky/Sun Father and Divine Earth/Universal Mother.

You are welcome to attend our next Tarot and Divination Event.

On Meetup http://www.meetup.com/Alchemy/calendar/11578752/
Or Facebook

Namaste,

Yogi Trevahr
Waking Within CO.
Sacred Spiral CommUNITY
760-710-1713

Come and meet us online at www.facebook.com/trevahr

Check out this Love Study...http://lovestudy.yolasite.com/

Light up! LIGHT UP! - "In the Garden of Shadow Masks...(part 2)"

2009-10-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I awoke today after the full moon, the weekend having just passed. I was lit up with a burning pain in my hip and inwardly, as I rolled awake, to scream "let go....let GOOOOO!". In bed I shouted at my Mom, Maternal Grandfather, Grandfather's Father, and all of our shared Ancestors....for release of my pain and of my dysfunctional muscles.

My beloved had left the bedroom already and she was fully dressed when she greeted me as I lay there in bed, pain, and with an Ipod Touch in my hand furiously researching Ayahausca plant medicine in hopes of answers.

I learned what herbs the magical formula needed in a matter of minutes through various sites listed on Google. I was ravenous for answers and solutions. It was suggested to me about three weeks ago to do this sort of Shamanic Medicine Work, as a way of purging my Ancestors' diseases from my body by a dear friend and Hawaii medicine woman.

After my lover stared at me for several minutes, and I slowly sickened of memorizing harmaline alkolodes properties and reactions with human bio-chemistry..."Out OUt OUT..." as I stretched in bed, and felt a strong pull in my psoas muscle on the right. My lover noticed my discomfort and offered some Essential oils...internal and external....and I promptly refused..."I just want to be complete without external things; heal myself with my own bio-chemistry.." thoughts rushed in...

Mr. Iyengar the great master yogi, healed himself of physical ailments, why can't I? My mom said it, a long time ago, "Son, you have to take this medication because you just don't have all that your body needs to be normal."...emotional pain toggled to physical pain again.

I agreed to the capsole of Essential Oils (including Helicrysum Italicum and Basil) and the pain relief blend by Young Living Co. to be applied directly onto my skin, hip and abdomen. I swallowed the pill...I have always done..."in order to be normal"...and drifted back to a memory of the weeks passed.
**********

I am to donate blood today and I just sliced my finger open (Left thumb) in the Kitchen. As my finger spills blood all over the counter, I curse myself for making a Universal Request (just 2 minutes ago) to keep some of my blood for ritual while still knowing that the nurses at the clinic would not let me take some of my own blood home.

So I manifested this and shit it hurts, but I can live with this, heck it's my blood rite...I looked around the kitchen, while holding a paper towel over my finger and holding my finger above my head. I found a wine glass in a cupboard and set it nicely on the counter top near where I was cooking...okay think Aztec-Mayan priest and let go of the pain.

The glass slowly filled up with crimson dripplets as I squeezed my left bleeding thumb with my right hand. It was about one-fourth the way full when my Beloved came into the room and exclaimed, "What are you doing?!?" I explained and she left the room to get something to stop the bleeding.

I remembered the night before our Community Anniversary Ritual (Tuesday night, September 22nd, so equinox 2009--two nights ago) when I was reading a book called "Queztalcoatl: Biography of a Mexican God". I opened it to a chapter randomly which for whatever reason, I deemed interesting and begin reading.

In two paragraphs, I read about the creation myth of deity (of which the name escapes me and I just returned the book to the library so I can't cite it) who rides a "Great Flying Grinning Jaguar"....and I am struck with emotional connection...to Grandfather and my lineage. (Remember the spirit guide that I channel and the same one that Grandfather channels is named Grinning Jaguar, as the entity tends to growl and appear as a North American Mountain lion, who smiles at fear.)

I shook off the chill down my spine and the hairs that stood on end at the back of my neck, and continued reading. The chapter continues to elaborate about the Azteca and the activities of the Priests of Azteca. In less than 2 minutes, I come across the bloodletting descriptions which would sometimes procede a ritual and/or be part of a ritual.

The book stated that a priest would take on the necessary trance state through blood-loss, and for this ritual offering, one would often make cuts on the shins, the tongue, or the ears. The ears for example were bled by pushing an Agave thorn through different aspects of the earlobe...and before I could continue on reading I was struck with a wave of emotion/fear/understanding/tingling that came from the abdomen and rose to the hairs on my head and neck. My eyes began to water and become misty.

Just months ago, when I was on a Tantra retreat to Mexico with the San Diego Tantra Community, I did this very thing...after collecting wild blue agave, and removing the leaves for boiling as medicine. I gathered the thorns and pushed them through my pierced ears. I don't believe that I bled...much; although when my friends questioned why I did what I did, I told them that "it just felt like the right thing to do."
********

The evidence continues to mount, as I map my healing and draw closer to the end of pain for me. I am invested in the mental/emotional/energetic sources and solutions to my ailments but am in no way closed. If you have any helpful healthful suggestions for me, please offer them up and I will be truely grateful. Thanks for listening!

Peace Peace, Namaste...

The Trevahrian Yogi
760-710-1713
Waking Within Co.
Shamanism and Alchemy of the Sacred Spiral

Aside: We'll I am off to begin a food diary and discover and record how I feel after every item I consume. I welcome you to discover and reply to this blog with information from your Ancestors! Which ancestors do you feel you take after? Are there any ancestors that control your actions today? Does your emotional healing/physical involve your blood family? Have plant medicines worked for your healing?

The Masks Can Go But The Hats Remain!

2009-10-02T00:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I have noticed lately the difference between my masks and my hats as a human and a person on the path to healing. First of all, I know that my Masks and Hats are simply archetypes and divine movements of the collective unconscious. It has been an epic journey this 2009, as I have taken on some new hats, put on old masks to see if they still fit (and most of them did), and set aside or packed away hats that were just getting worn out and over-used.

For example, my hat as a yoga instructor has worn out its welcome. I have discovered that yoga is a path that I will definitely support and heal through but is a field of interest that here in America comes with many many many politics and boundary discovering events. Plus there is certainly something to be said about the income of yoga instructors being lame or maybe it's society's relationship to Yoga teachers as under-privileged fitness trainers.

I really have learned about my relationship to the title of yoga instructor as for years now, my family (mom and dad), have referred to me as "just a yoga instructor" and an individual who's job fits into a low income bracket.

I am first and foremost not a yoga instructor...but rather a spiritual teacher and worldly sage who uses the wisdom of the universe to heal others or free the mind through awareness and love!

Yes, i teach and practice yoga but it's not your style or Anusara or Ashtanga-Vinyasa yoga, or true Indra-Devi style like my original teacher. I am a Yogi, with a practice of Martial Arts and Ecstatic Dance for spiritual opening and chi/lifeforce building...and sometimes I invite you to practice with me...and it doesn't matter if you are stuck in a wheel chair....some of my best clients (2 years and going strong) as reserved to a wheel chair.

I am a Shaman following the call of my Ancestors of Meso-America, Europe, Italy, and Persia. I present Neo-Shamanic philosophy to my yoga students, friends, family, and all of my clients of healing work.

I even chant to elderly dementia patients while doing physical therapy on their legs (as of current). I have learned to maintain connection to source (Father Sky...Mother Earth...I am your Child! Give me what I need to heal myself and others. THANK YOU, AHO.) and to tone, channel, make recipes, talk to plants, rocks, and animals; to see spirits and guiding ancestors; and to build community around council of Elders and equal exchange.

I am so passionate about Herbs and the medicine work of historical cultures that I teach it and apply it to my daily practices as well as am involved in study with Master teachers of all Shamanic medicine disciplines.

Before and during my Shaman's training, I learned Alchemy-to be in tune with the Golden Path and about exchange of energy in all things in this world.

My high school English teacher, Mr. Lvingstone, taught me the first principles of alchemy through the works of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. For Mr. Lvingstone, I am so grateful as he inspired me (instead of taking the Vision Quest when I turned 18 at risk of life) to read books by Paulo Coelho and Frank Herbert.

Though Alchemy, I discovered magick, metaphysics, meditation, energy healing, mystery schools, emotional neutrality, equanimity, and a nack for learning languages. Not to mention, it's so much better than Math and Science (both of which were favorite subjects of mine)...but only because Alchemy involves Faith and Intention. Through this practice, I offer channeled formulas and use tools to facilitate healing.

Naturally as an Alchemist and a Shamanic Herbalist, I learned Aromatherapy, Energy Healing, Botanical Medicine, Astrology, Human Design, Yoga, Chi Gung, Tai Chi, Kung Fu, Gardening, Landscaping, taking care of plants and other lifeforms, Team work, ritual, channeling, chanting, sound healing, and how to read energetic messages around an individual...to make a potion or elixir of their Highest Potential.

To date, my favorite hat is that of Teacher (Metaphysics and Holistic Health), Friend and Organizer for Community. With amazing grace and gratitude for my teacher Thaddeus Wilson (http://www.momenteer.com), I am discovering a powerful hat called Energy Healer...(but maybe when you try some of my sessions you will be more apt to call me Energy Medicine Man and Healer---or channel for Source).

I am grateful for the opportunity to wear these hats as they make the Masks of Son, Lover, Hero, and Warrior so much easier to bare.

What masks and hats are you wearing? Do you wear them at our events? Maybe we'll see you at the Massage Party tonight at Lori's Lavender Lounge in Carlsbad at 7pm. If so, will it be you or your Mask on the table!?!

Namaste,

Trevahr Hughes
Yogi, Neo-Shaman, Alchemist, Aromatherapist

760-710-1713
WakingWithin@gmail.com

In the Garden of Shadow Masks, Ceremony and Ancestors

2009-09-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

There comes a time when one chooses to invoke Healing and it perhaps leads us to the past or the areas in our life that we have left behind for whatever reason. It is that time for me. During my recent path to healing and while practicing Shamanic herbs and guidance on my Medicine Path, I was led to do a parasite cleanse. I am in the portion of the cleanse in which most people get sick, from the little critters dying off and decomposing in my body...and it has been interesting.

Let me say this from an Anthropological perspective before I further discuss my specific situation; in many tribes, a tribal shaman is tested for their ability (especially as they are growing up) to transmute toxins or highly trans-formative substances...IE. in Peru they pick a child with shamanic tendancies and start them on Ayauwaska at a young age of 8 (sometimes younger). For this cleanse, during my trek to the White Mountains of Arizona this summer...I was led to gather and prepare Wormwood for consumption in a parasite cleanse that was on my mind at the time...that and black walnut....both of which I found wild harvest in my travels....without seeking them. So maybe it was that they found me...this was oddly verified the other night when I spoke with a friend about it being a popular herbalist recommendation for Wormwood and Black Walnut to be taken in combination...I was a little shocked but felt gratitude instantly on a spiritual realm when I heard my guides remind me that I was being directed by the Ancestral will of something bigger than my ego!

This conversation was after the cleanse became rather trippy so to speak. I was in a fever space for a long while (13 hours about). Since that strange fever day, I have been up and down with the healing. It has been odd in that I am feeling great and almost normal for an hour or two, then depleted and crash with sensitivities to everything and almost a headache. Lots of sleep (and dreams) and water has become my existence these days.

I think that I reached an old plateau in which healing stopped or me when I was a teen, and a section of my past that I often deny as a Yoga professional and Spiritual teacher. Just the other day, I revisited some of the music I listened to as a teen....and wow some of my close friends were appalled and uneasy with my interest and embodiment of the words as I sang the music.

I again recalled the areas of my life that ignore and deny because I am often trapped in "politician excuses" to act in a certain way...perhaps you have done this or even do this now in your life in order to better fit in with a clicke (yoga teachers, business owners, shamanic traditionalists). So I experienced my darkside and sat with it, and enjoyed it.

In this moments of darkness, I discussed my ancestors and the spirit guides that I feel are "ancestral" with my friends whom were most interested in finding solutions for my hip and shoulder pains. To my amazement, I discussed the intuition based theory about having shamanic ancestors who, just have to "help" or intervene in my life and the lives of men in my family...IE Grandpa Grinning Jaguar.

Background on Grandpa: He was my first teacher. Once upon a time, when he would care take my brother and I, we would get scared in his house by a growling sound down the dark hallway on the way to the bathroom. Of course it was him imitating a Cougar, and the having a rousing laugh after he made either my brother or I jump out of fear. Well, it has been that he taught us about the natural world and advocated the Golden Rule, and he further trusted and explained to us that for him, life was painful due to injuries from a long time ago and an individual had to learn to live with the pain...Hip pain.

Well Grandpa and I are older now and have come to an understanding of our similarities. He has hip pain that after "hip replacement surgery" he has not been able to overcome. I have hip pain or back pain depending the day (but everyday none-the-less). He and I look identical at this age; family members have compared his WW2 photos (when he was in his early twenties) to the way I look now and the resemblance is uncanny. Now Grandpa isn't one for the spiritual but Grandpa's Younger Brother (my Great Uncle) is, and I have visited this side of the family that relocated to Northern California only to find extensive talk of Spirit Guides....I even listed to my Great Uncle talk of Entheogens and giving names to the Spirit Guides he carries.

My hypothesis is that Great Uncle is a Shaman and Grandpa is a wounded healer on his spiritual path to become a shaman in fullness...the men in my family Acuna are "called!" There is no other way of looking at this, even a friend of mine from Sante Fe (Melissa Weiss Steele- The Oracle of Initiation) received messages on the subject of Ancestral Shamanism in my line about me, Grandpa, and my blood Uncle (Grandpa's youngest son).

Do you have any spiritual calling that is genetically linked and could therefore be incorprated into your healing this lifetime? Write me and tell me of your past, the connection to family living and dead, and messages that you know are truth but sometimes to afraid to follow to an end!

Story to be continued...

Namaste,
Trevahr Hughes
Order of the Sacred Spiral
Waking Within
760-710-1713

Shamanic Healing and Bhakti Fest

2009-09-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Are you going to Bhakti Fest? Sacred Spiral community and many of our friends are going and we'll probably be camping together. Join us and exchange energy or get some healing. I am with the Amazon Herb Co/Maca Root booth and as you know I have been studying Shamanic Herbs and Energy Healing for the last two years, and this will be an awesome test for my skills as an Alchemist. My master teacher Medicine Deer, will also be present and guiding me in my remedies and recipes (so if you think something is out of my hands or above my skill set--there will be someone who definately knows best present).

I am planning on bringing my Massage table in order to practice healing with Alchemy, Energetic Percussion, Reiki, Aromatherapy, Shamanic Sound Healing and Journey work, and application of Essential oils for healing to Reflexology points on the body. Also join us for meals and fun around the fire.

During the day, feel free to request healing on sliding scale donation basis...or shamanic divination and card readings. Also if you know you want healing and email me or call, and set a time and date...you will get a special gift...please reserve an appointment by tomorrow at 1pm (9/10/09 for the special gift)

If you wish for healing around the Encinitas community tomorrow (before I travel to the grand Joshua Tree) feel free to email or call me and we can do a session before 1pm (Thursday).

All services are Sliding Scale Donations or Trade!

Namaste,

Order of the Sacred Spiral
Trevahr Hughes
Yoga Instructor, Alchemist, Shaman, Channel for Source Energy, Aromatherapist

I, Projector...Moon...and Teachers

2009-09-04T00:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

It is an evening of initiation, reflective healing, and friendly masters. It's also the evening before the moon goes full in September 2009. I am pleased with my choices as of yesterday after completing my class on Frankincense at the Library last night when I took feelings to action by taking private retreat in the mountains near Lake Hodges. I am on Vision Quest and staying at a place where I do landscaping while the residents are off at Burning Man.

Much to my dismay, several months ago, I learned that my Lunar cycle is transmuted from Manifesting Generator to Projector. Almost momentarily after interpreting this information, I recognized that I do this crazy shift around the full moon, and especially as of late, I have noticed that it's better to be by myself and sleep completely alone for the utmost healing.

So many visions came to me this morning in my rest. When I awoke, it was slow to return to this world but none-the-less, I went for a swim and reached out to my Master Teacher of Herbal Shamanism to learn about cacao (raw chocolate) and to arrange a meeting with him.

Sometime around 11am (Konichiwa time), I arrived at Green Medicine Deer's place in Escondido and found him to be cleaning the spines off cactus apples. Somehow he was able to do this without gloves and without getting prickers in his hands; a technique that in attempting the week before, I failed horribly...infecting my hands with spikey sensations.

I learned how to juice the cactus apples to make a divine nectar as we began a friendly learning process that involved me asking many questions quite Socratically. In this process of interview communication, I learned about myself and masterful ingredients to add and blend into a powerful Aztec Elixir of Alchemical Chocolate. Not only that be during this process of herbal selection, I recognized my family's shamanic ties to the Sacred Mayan White Lotus and Jaguar medicine of my Grandfather. Synchronicity and synergy guided me to the recipe and I cannot be more grateful for my teacher and the intuition of my being and my ancestors...

Then I returned to my home in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, in preparation of a visit with two more healers and Master teachers. At about Sunset on this day, I sat and interview my Energetic Percussion teacher and Shaman Thaddeus Wilson. Enlightening myself through the conversation, I once again learned about how called one is to the Shamanic path and learned about the humanity of my friend and teacher Thadd by way of asking about his dreams and his parents. It was neat to learn about Energywork from this background heavy position. I am eternally grateful to Thadd and quite excited about this Moon ritual circle that he is preparing tomorrow (Sept 4th at 8pm) in Pacific Beach. I hope that I can make it as the appeal to Water element is strong in this ritual and in this moon cycle.

Saying "goodbye" to Thadd, and without a phone, I set out to Ponto Beach in Carlsbad where I was intending on meeting Rachael Johnson, Sound Healer, Friend, and Teacher of Alchemy. Upon my arrival, there was no sign of her or anyone I knew, but their energy was there, so I walked alone to the stairs at South Ponto and to the compass where I prepared our up and coming Anniversary ritual (coming on Sept 23rd 2009). After sometime alone on the structure, I walked back to my car...and of course Rachael just pulled up. So reading this as a wonderful synchronicity, I stayed with Rachael and learned some important Alchemy teachings and energy practices on the sand of the beach...but not before seeing a UFO...that Rachael saw too...I mean seriously..."it was like a low flying plane and then suddenly disappeared."

This caused me to be unnerved to say the least but none-the-less, we practiced and toned and played. I saw some strong colors and an image of the lotus rising from the water in my mind...just as I saw the Lotuses in the pond at my teacher Medicine Deer's farm earlier today.
I plan to continue these energy practices in hope to cure long term problems with my own Bio-alchemy and heal my ancestors...perhaps even Grandpa from the daily pain we share.

Love and Fierce Compassion to you as you join me for the moon ritual with Thadd tomorrow night (Friday Sept 4th) or perhaps you will join our community for the Shamanic Magic Mushroom Lecture #2 on Saturday night.

Whatever you do, enjoy this wonderful Lunar show!

Namaste,
Yogi Trevahr Hughes,
Shamanic Alchemist
760-710-1713
WakingWithin@gmail.com
http://www.meetup.com/alchemy

Our Magickal School: Potions 101, Shamanic Herbs, and Yoga Hikes

2009-08-28T00:58:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

It have been a fun and abundant summer. You may have noticed that our meetup.com/alchemy group schedule has grown full and furthermore my own schedule is left with sparse sections of time for myself. Although, I am fully present everyday, creating something new and revealing something old and alchemical to my friends or students. I have being reading novels, learning languages, and studying reference manuals vigorously everyday...except for that delicate time of balance and discovery when I am on the road traveling the coast of California or the Spiritual South-west (without A/C in my car mind you!).

I hope to release more tales of my understanding, awareness, and travels this summer and very soon. Know that I am working intensely on an awareness I have never had before, maybe something that only a few have ever had. I don't remember my childhood (it's a haze between doses of ADD medicine) but every time I set out on the road, I fun myself reaching into the dark void of memory to pull out a new fist of information about self and healing. Sometimes I pull something from the lives before mine.

I am here offering an explanation of our teachings. Our community organization is dedicated to presenting you with wonderful teachings and holistic learnings from teachers who are fair and ethical. Notice that our classes and the teachers offering them have expanded into Yoga, Shamanism, Herbalism, Aromatherapy, Outdoor Activities, Social Gatherings, Tantra Events, Music, Breathwork, Retreats, Divination, and Holistic Marketing.

Our shamanic herbs class has been going strong and doesn't show signs of slowing, rather expect to see this class expand into Mushroom Mythos classes, American Cacti Creative Learning Classes, and then Rare Ethnobotanicals or "Stuff You Just Weren't Expecting to Trip You Out" lectures! We love presenting at the library, all of these classes and we'll continue to do so in order to make this subject public and safe for discussion. If you have a chance, I highly recommend that you make it to a Shamanism class after hours at one of our members houses...as it is a super fun time!

Aromatherapy blending and Potions 101 classes have begun and are strong methods of learning about home medicine and remedies. The classes are unique to subject matter but the intention remains the same: each class is both lecture and Lab, that allows students to listen for learning, ask questions of the teacher and their peers, and continue to explore by getting a hands on experience. For the potions class 101 (our first class) we will discuss combinations of medicine and magick (intention setting) that will transform or transmute our reality into new dimensions or pathways for healing. In our last Frankincense class we mix oils and made blended experiences on the spot! Formulas were given out, and samples were shared amongst the community members in attendance.

Our yoga and outdoor hiking events are there for you to expand your awareness through movement and feeling body. It is the intention that the more that individuals benefit sustainably from the Earth, thus the less they mistreat our planet. Hence feel good in your body and supported by the Earth mother...and get out! Do yoga under a tree or looking at the Horizon. Take a hike friends and we guarantee goodies will follow.

My hope and commitment is that one day everyone will teach teachers/healers and you (my friendly alchemists) will walk this Golden Path with me, in freedom of health, wealth, happiness.

Namaste,

Trevahr Hughes
Yogi, Alchemist, Shaman
WakingWithin@gmail.com
http://www.meetup.com/alchemy
http://www.facebook.com/trevahr

Initiation, Ancestors, and my Grandma

2009-07-03T08:38:00.000-07:00

My Dear Friends,

Thank you for being patient with me as I move through the different levels of my process (all of which have been "out of my comfort zone" as you may be aware from status updates). The truth of the matter was that I planned to journey to Peru between June and July and instead ended up in Sante Fe with wonderful community and a very supportive teacher.

Shamanism and shamanic ideas are ripe and alive here. I have really enjoyed my experience here, usually in retrospect because of all the discomfort. I sense that I am learning exactly what I am ready for. I have processing so much. More than I could have ever imagined here.

To my amazement, learning divination (which was what I planned on doing) has become this very HUMAN process of finding clarity and feeling into my past, my family, my future intentions with Business and Community, my ancestors, my daily body pain, and the healing of my ancestors.

I have chosen to look at the Teachings I embrace and embody and ask "why." Much to my dismay, the answer is always "because it was a lesson that was serving you then and is no longer serving you now. Trevahr, are you ready to let go?" Through frustrated tears and insane commitment to my life goals, I always say "Yes, I choose to let go."

There is a picture (well there are lots of pictures) where I am staying. This one particular picture is of an indigenous Meso-American woman carrying a boom box through the Sonoran Desert in a white dress.

This photo struck me as a reminder of my first teacher of Spirit...Grandmother Amalia E. Acuna. From this space of realization, old information (some older than I) came pouring through me. I recognized some much of my lifetime and how it intermingles and twines with my genetics and the traits of my Bloodlines. I know now that my healing is the Family's healing...and an opportunity to Heal my Grandfathers-literally. I have resolved to spend more time and patience with my family in order to know thyself/myself.

Oddly enough...so much crazy shamanic shit happened to me growing up, and now in this new awareness, I have begun to scratch the surface. My friend Abeja- the Oracle of Initiation- did a reading for me last night that brought me to tears.

I cried of past experiences that were buried and "sent away" from my ego based experience. I knew the joy and frustration of communicating with dead/spiritualized family members...I mean fuck...these people I knew as a child... and loved...and still see when I visit my Grandma because she keeps pictures of them.

I am crying as I write this because I know there is some much to BE now that I am aware and that I have strong spiritual allies...many with genetically linked connections.

I am fully commited and engaged in my life's work...and as always I know where I am going and where I have been. Sometimes though, like many of us, I hide the past and present...and even the future...in trade for some petty comfort.

During this Journey (to Sante Fe and now the Rainbow Gathering), I have been stranded in the desert, stomach sick, surprised by friends, scared out of my mind because every time I hike I see spirit animals, and covered with Earth and Mud and Tree/Plant Stuffs.

Safe Journeys,

Yogi Trevahr R. Hughes,
Shamanic Alchemist Adept
www.facebook.com/Trevahr
www.meetup.com/alchemy

Check out the Latest Classes on Shamanism and Holistic Health!

Ethnobotany and Shamanic Herbs Class July 8th

Divination Class Tuesday July 14th

P.S. The spirit animals I have been seeing were on two consecutive nights in which I was hiking with Abeja in the light of the moon. I saw (and when I say "saw" I mean I sensed it, my neck hairs stood up like a dog, and it moved it's ears and head to look at me) a Cougar/Mountain Lion on a pile of rocks as we walked by. The next night, I saw a Bear in a tree, which also looked at me and moved its ears.

My Magnum Opus

2009-06-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Students,

It has been my life's work since my becoming a man and learning about my path through Shamanic Initiation and rite of passage, to seek the truth and the origins of man and the spiritual experience such that others (of similar intention and commitment to truth) will learn about who they are and where they come from.

Hence, as many have before me, I seek the Tree of Life in Shamanism and the Philosopher's Stone in Alchemy. If you are on this path of seeking with me, I welcome you to share as I am an open source for the information and truth and faith I have experienced. Thank you for your interest in our community and our growing Order of Sacred Spiral members.

Here is some good information about the Tree of Life and other relevant items:

Wiki Tree of Life:
"As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications." -Charles Darwin

Wiki The Fountain

Shamanic Santa Claus

Wiki Full Metal Alchemist (anime/cartoon)

Wiki "The Philosopher's Stone"

As within, So without...
Yogi Trevahr,
Shamanic Alchemist Adept
www.meetup.com/alchemy

May Angels lead you in...to the sleepless space between

2009-06-21T12:22:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends,

It has been about 36 hours since I have had a normal sleep cycle. Some of my community members and I went to see the Hugging Saint in LA on Friday night (june 19th). We were up all night while Amma hugged person after person, body after body. Our hugs were given and received at about 5am and we arrived early (like 5pm and the event opens officially at 7pm).

The energy:

In that room,in that place, in the company of all those people with the same intention for progress and peace there was no sleep or being tired. I had no trouble meditating and experienced (through my usual body pain and tension) a withdrawal from senses and the usual distractions. The room was loud and the was constant movement, and still I was alite with divine fire and experienced peace and purification.

I am certain of my path and joyful in the answers (or rather confirmation of the inner wisdom) that I received on that night. I recall sitting where I was in the audience meditating and experiencing a glimpse of of grateful for the pleasant experiences of my life and how amazing things can be with I surrender.

May you all surrender in a way that opens you to grace...

Yogi Trevahr, Shamanic Alchemist Adept

Waking Within, a Community for Holistic Health
Order of the Sacred Spiral

Let Me Talk To Lisa

2009-06-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

"Let me talk to Lisa...No, not Lisa Simpson--Lisa Starr"

As in the Starr of my Life, at the centre of my Heart & Soul.

Existence...-***

Or be it the Starr (in an early deck of mine) as a woman washing her hair-

STARK- in the Nude-Underneath the Starrs and the night sky

And of course,
Lisa has two daughters with/living/running

Flowing down by the stream-creek-stream by their home...

Going home... home to sisters and women and cooking and eating and feeling

same/safe in the Kitchen

In the Winter and warm always warm. Thank You.

(reader takes a long deep Breath)

So Lisa,

you
you are
YOU ARE
the one that started this
That staRRted (with two r's) this.

Your kitchen, your womb, your invitation=
Shaman on Facebook,
Neo-Shaman whose feminine force (especially at home) makes me put my long black hair down

To hang freely in your presence

Like the presence of God as a Lion+Leo= C.S. Lewis
_________________________

Starred Started me with the Dreaming
Starred Started me with the Oracle
Starred Started me talking/speaking of Intiation

Knowing and Trusting for San Diego.
San Diego Circle. As we sit, in circle, in council with Elders
And Masters and Apprentices
For the betterment of The All-

All that is, Infinite,
All that is, all relations,
Aho,
Ahem,
Amen,
Aum.
______

From a place of purity and strength and from where I am (amen) and to a place that and from which/with- you have brought me-
Borne me,
Birthed me,
Mother,
Love,
Goddess,
Earth
(thank you, No Body, Choked up, Love)

Lisa

See the stars from this Sanctuary.

Team Nature

2009-05-12T17:39:00.001-07:00

Come to the Herb Hike

Bio for Member Trevahr Ryan Hughes

2009-04-13T13:29:00.000-07:00

Trevahr was born and raised in Southern California, has since childhood taken to science and spiritual studies. Beginning at an early age and without aid from his parents, young Trevahr began studing yogic meditation at the age of 9.

Directly following his High School Education in Carlsbad, Trevahr attended college in San Diego where he started a rigorous study of Hatha Yoga and Eastern Philosophy in 2004. In 2005, Trevahr made an active decision to become a teacher of Yoga and Meditation to help others on their path to joy and awareness.

While teacher training, he created a business as a Yoga Instructor and Entrepreneur. His path continued to evolve and a steady practice of Shamanic arts continued to influence his life goals and path from the years of 2003 to present.

Trevahr Hughes intends daily to create new yoga practices infused with the old ways of Alchemy and Shamanic wisdom by being a channel for Source energy. Thus as a teacher of yoga, he teaches so that one class builds upon the previous and gives people the opportunity to recreate their body, mind, and spirit on all levels.

Since the completion of his yoga teacher training in February of 2005, Trevahr's daily practice is community building and the redesign the energetic relationships between people, planets, and the universe.

Through love of being, ritual and research, Trevahr has created a passion for combining Yoga, Tai Chi, and Taoist Alchemy in his classes.

His focus and direction follows a calling to South America where he currently takes interest in building community and practicing the spiritual traditions of the Amazon and the Andes. For San Diego, the intention presently is to create bridges between communities of people interested in Healing, Consciousness, and Holistic Progress.

Why Raw foods and why switch?

2009-04-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

The first thing that is lost when you cook something is its' water content. Our bodies are between 60% and 70% water. Vegetables and fruits are loaded with water, and it is structured water that better facilitates our biological processes. Cooking denatures the proteins in our food, rendering them harder to digest and utilize.

Cooking destroys 50 percent of the protein in our food. Between 50 and 80 percent of the vitamins and minerals are also destroyed. Pesticides break down into more toxic compounds, which are more easily assimilated into our bodies. Oxygen is lost and free radicals are produced.

Most importantly, enzymes are destroyed when food is heated above 118 degrees. Enzymes are the catalysts of every chemical reaction in our bodies. Without them, there can be no cellular division, immune system functioning, energy production nor brain activity. No vitamins or hormones can do their work without enzymes. There are two different types of enzymes in our bodies, metabolic enzymes and digestive enzymes. We produce over 100,000 different enzymes, each doing a unique task.

Interestingly, every food contains exactly the perfect mix of digestive enzymes to break it down completely. These are called food enzymes.

Nature in its never-ending perfection sees that all food whether flesh, fruit or vegetable, decomposes and returns to the earth from which it came. But cooking our food above 118 degrees destroys its enzymes, leaving our bodies to generate the enzymes necessary to digest it.

When our bodies eat the living foods they were meant to, our entire bio-terrain operates in optimal health. All of our cells, organs and systems are able to do the jobs they are capable of in perfect balance. A healthy bio-terrain requires proper enzyme capacity, acid-base balance and a healthy digestive tract. These can be achieved through a living foods diet. With a healthy bio-terrain, our bodies manage all health challenges quite effectively. This is why we rarely see disease in mammals living in nature. It is what we put into our bodies that prevent them from doing what they are capable of. Cooked food destroys our bio-terrain. Living foods support a healthy bio-terrain.

A living food diet leads to a longer, more energetic life. Think of how you feel after a Thanksgiving feast. The burden of digesting a cooked food meal drains our energy. This does not happen with living foods and the extra energy allows the body to focus its resources on cleansing and rebuilding.

Join us for the up and coming Raw Food and Chocolate Bliss Dinner Party Experience...visit our facebook group (Sacred Spiral) or www.meetup.com/alchemy.

Events take place beginning April 2009 New Moon...

Yogi Trevahr Hughes
Waking Within

Newsletter March 12th 2009

2009-03-13T00:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,
We are so very happy as our community expands and the feeling of separation from "all that is," retreats. Our new sense of closeness allows us to create compassionate changes in the world.

One member of our community is currently running a sale on yoga apparel! Check out Bodacious Living as all clothing is now 50% off and all gifts 30% off. Celebrate the changes by helping Bodacious Living with Spring cleaning!

This weekend you are invited to join us for Yoga on the beach and Brunch! Sitara (Cindy) is teaching a donation based yoga class after which we will have a community brunch at our friend Nico's restaurant Crepes and Corks. To join us: rsvp on meetup or show up in front of Crepes and Corks 1328 Camino Del Mar. Del Mar, CA 92014 on Sunday @ 11am.

Two free gatherings and opportunities to experience DoTerra essential oils next week: Free Aromatherapy meeting and business demo by Sacred Spiral (Tuesday night at 7pm, call for details and location in Del Mar) and Dr. Hill presents "Aromatherapy for Dr. Mom" (Wednesday night 7pm at the School of Healing Arts in P.B.)

Love, Sacred Spiral Community (NPRO)Waking Within Yoga CommunityGiggling Chakras (Holistic Events) Have Questions? Reach Out: Trevahr Ryan Hughes (760-710-1713)Sitara "Cindy" Lee (858-964-8834) Events:

This Sunday! Beach Yoga and Crepe Brunch Taught by Cindy Lee and Trevahr Ryan Hughes on the beach of Del Mar Village, meet us at Crepes and Corks (1328 Camino Del Mar. Del Mar, CA 92014) at 11am. One hour yoga by donation and then crepe brunch at our friend Nico's restaurant. RSVP with Cindy 858-964-8834.

Arm Balancing Workshop! March 15th this Sunday with the amazing Kathryn Budig (as seen on the cover of the December issue of Yoga Journal). Workshop starts at 1pm please RSVP before then with Yoga One San Diego

March 17th St. Patrick's Day Aromatherapy Free community event by Sacred Spiral (7pm in Del Mar) to RSVP and receive location details call Cindy or Trevahr 760-710-1713

FREE Aromatherapy Event Wednesday March 18th at 7pm Learn about essential oils from Dr. David Hill chief medical adviser for DoTerra essential oils. Check us out on meetup for RSVP and location address or call for carpool.

Connecting with Your Angels: A presentation and workshop by Mica Monet AATP at the Global Heart Community of Carlsbad, Wednesday night March 18th 630pm-830pm. Learn about Archangel healing from a certified Doreen Virtue Angel Therapy Practitioner, to rsvp call 310-770-2173 (Mica) or mica@angelsdivineguidance.com ($33 price, Global Heart is located at 580 Grand Ave, suite A/B Carlsbad CA, 92008)

Snatam Kaur Concert March 22nd at the Seaside Center for Spiritual Living at 730pm Sacred Spiral organizers will be out of town in Mexico on a Tantra Retreat but this is a very worthwhile concert to attend check it out online and get your advance tickets at www.spiritvoyage.com or buy tickets locally at Soulscape Bookstore in Encinitas CA on the 101 Coast Hwy.

Mexican Dinner Party and Human Design Discussion with Derek Gibbs and Trevahr at Anita's Restaurant in Oceanside, CA. Enjoy food, fun, and learn about yourself and your life through the energetic and multidimensional charting system from experienced teachers/friends. Friday March 27th at 6pm (2251 El Camino Real. Oceanside, CA 92054) RSVP on meetup.com/alchemy

Human Design Learning Class at the Encinitas City Library 930am Saturday March 28th. This class will be lead by Trevahr Hughes and will allow students to learn about energy types and life stradegies. Class by Donation ($15 suggested) Come with a printed chart or print one out at the library (visit www.jovianarchive.com)

Sunday March 29th at 11am Herb Hike with Medicine Deer. This is an opportunity to learn herbal medicine and edible plants with a local herbalist in his element. Learn exponentially and have fun with community as we enjoy a meal in nature after the walk through lower Palomar Mountain. (Suggested Donation is $30, includes dinner at the campgrounds) Check out meetup to RSVP or call Trevahr at 760-710-1713, bring a bathing suit sometimes we go to Warner Springs afterwards for a soak in the Hot Springs!!!

Girish in Concert. 730pm Sunday March 29th. Girish is an amazing artist and singer who presents a truly unique form of kirtan and chanting the divine name. Join us and check out Bodacious Living for advance tickets.

April 17th, 2009 Yoga Teacher Training at Yoga One. Some students are ready to began their work as teachers on this planet and we totally support that, therefore we recommend this yoga teacher training by San Diego's Yoga One. Check it out yoga teacher training

Recommended Yoga Studios:
Palm Tree Yoga (Yoga for all levels in Del Mar)
Bodacious Living Yoga (Anusara Yoga in Carlsbad)
Yoga One San Diego (Yoga in Downtown San Diego)
Yoga Swami (Donation Based Yoga)
Haute Yoga (Hot Yoga in Solana Beach)

Torrey Pines Yoga for Prana Clothing

2009-03-04T14:07:00.001-08:00

Check out these photos of me having fun at Torrey Pines in my Prana Yoga gear.

World Travels of the Yogi Baron

2009-03-04T14:03:00.000-08:00

...my dear friends, hope as always that this note finds you well in body, mind and spirit!

have been spending the last few days and - for that matter the final days of my trip - here in puerto morelos on the mayan riviera...and what a delight it is to be in this cute little community just south of cancun! so grateful to have come, hang out with good friends and let time run through my fingers without much of an agenda!

and off time I needed after letting go of my mom who returned safely to germany. a short but very nice visit with a friend on st helena island in the low country outside savannah, ga, was quite inspiring and brought me back to my world...teaching yoga and taking class, partaking in a video about yoga and movement and having fun doing it! what a delight!

back to miami for a week-end of south beach...beautiful people around me, good food, plenty of drinks and the wonderful company of a good friend...and all of this between the pool-side lounge beds at the delano and the mondrian hotel! what a world, what a dynamic, loved and enjoyed it for a few days...

now, here, there is nothing to do and no where to be...apart from exploring the mayan remains that I found quite suitable for another second home of mine...check out the pics! a perfect ending to this perfect trip of mine, time to contemplate and digest and just sit with what is...and let the caribbean wind blow me over! yeah!!!

will be back in encinitas early next week...and will be open for business, massage business that is! for you guys out on the ranch I will see you for yoga as planned...for everybody else, sorry, no yoga classes scheduled as of now, will keep you posted about what will unfold!

so let me know if you are ready for a massage...you know where to find me!

lots of love and light to all of you!

baron

Newsletter Feb 17th 2009

2009-02-20T00:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more than you love me?
Beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.
I've disappeared from myself and my attributes,
I am present only for you.
I've forgotten all my learnings,
but from knowing you I've become a scholar.
I've lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.
I love myself...I love you.
I love you...I love myself.--Rumi

Last Saturday morning (after an evening of dancing with friends at Claire De Lune), AromaYoga went off as a celebration of love and joy! There were around 60 people in attendance at LuluLemon in La Jolla. Our most gracious praises to Cindy and Trevahr introducing AromaYoga to the community. Students at Del Mar Palm Tree Yoga are getting to know and practice Trevahr's Tai Chi Yoga every Saturday and therefore advancing their practices in a wonderful way. A special thank you to those students who have followed us from place to place and to all who practice regularly.

Tonight is that Penguin Thing....free community gathering...an opportunity to meet friends and social in Del Mar! Now is the time to shift our interactions toward the attractive power of unity for financial security. It is natural to share from the heart and provide for your family with the sustainable warmth of community.

This weekend join our events and experience the healing properties of edible mushrooms and hiking all weekend as we have 3 events--see below for details. After the San Diego Fungus Faire on Sunday please join us for Wah! at Bodacious Living in Carlsbad.

Love,

Sacred Spiral Community (NPRO)
Waking Within Yoga Community
Giggling Chakras (Holistic Events)

Have Questions? Reach Out:
Trevahr Ryan Hughes (760-710-1713)
Sitara "Cindy" Lee (858-964-8834)

Events:

Free Community Building Event @ Mariette Pan's home in Del Mar (Kid Friendly) That Peguin Thing Feb. 17th, Tuesday night 7pm. This an opportunity to connect with like minded people who are willing to share the gift of Giving! Call Trevahr email Mariette to RSVP (seadragon88@yahoo.com). 3684 Caminito Cielo Del Mar (San Diego, CA). Check this event out on Facebook or Meetup

Friday the 20th @ 645pm Pre-"Mushroom Hunt" evening lecture by Donation: learn the basic for mushroom hunting and join us for potluck dinner. This will teach interested and avid minds the ability to identify, forage, and cook edible mushrooms that grow local and wild.

Saturday the 21st @ 12noon: Palomar Mushroom Hunt by donation: this will be an experiencial learning about wild mushrooms, be prepared to collect and eat (cooked) mushrooms out on the trail/campsite (yes we are bbq'ing those mushrooms). Suggested Donation $30

Meetup at San Diego Myco Club's Annual Fungus Faire in Balboa Park (Sunday the 22nd @ 1030am. FREE). These events will be lead by Dennis Medicine Deer and Trevahr Ryan Hughes. RSVP on www.meetup.com/alchemy

Wah! February 22, Sunday @ 7.30 PM Bodacious Living Kirtan! A monthly series of kirtans created by and for the local community in Encinitas, Carlsbad and surrounding areas. Last Sunday of every month. Wah! in February, Girish in March, Sequoia Neptune in April, Korin in May and growing! Come as you are, or participate as a performer, in this community event.Check out Bodacious Living!

Events @ Yoga One in San Diego:

An Intimate Musical Evening with The Guggenheim Grotto Friday, February 27th at 8pm.

Arm Balancing Workshop! March 15th Sunday with the amazing Kathryn Budig (as seen on the cover of the December issue of Yoga Journal).

April 17th, 2009 Yoga Teacher Training at Yoga One. Some students are ready to began their work as teachers on this planet and we totally support that, therefore we recommend this yoga teacher training by San Diego's Yoga One. Check it out

Recommended Yoga Studios:
Palm Tree Yoga (Inspired Yoga for all levels in Del Mar)
Yoga Swami (Donation Based Yoga)
Bodacious Living Yoga (Anusara Yoga in Carlsbad)
Yoga One San Diego (Fun Flowing Classes in Downtown San Diego)
Yoga Tropics (HOT yoga in Encinitas)
Haute Yoga (Heated yoga in Solana Beach)

This is that Song that made me cry and gave me a vision of Egypt...

2009-02-13T16:11:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

It has bee more than a month but I still remember the vision and the emotion to follow with supreme clarity. I am so grateful, and I am found in this world and I know my tribe with clarity of love and heart as all of my being pours out of my chest into the arms of the beloved. It was on the Friday after New Years day (western) sometime around midnight and I was sharing the evening with my beloved Kunti and listening to Snatam Kaur at my brother Dave's house in Cardiff, CA.

I had a vision of Egypt...and I started crying but not in a controlled way...just water pouring out of my eyes and energy of love pouring out of my heartspace. I saw my chest open up and send light up to God and almost instantly light returned from the heavens to snuggle and nest in my heartspace. I cried and Snatam sang...

"I bow my head to God.
And God took all of me.
Every imperfection -
God took all of me.

And every day
God lives
And breathes
Through me

Oh, my Beloved!
Kindness of the heart!
Breath of Life,
I bow to you.

Divine Teacher,
Beloved Friend,
I bow to you,
Again and again!"

In what appeared to be a caravan my tribe/friends walked through the sand dunes on a day in which the sun was setting and I could see the pyramids in the distance. My friends who had strong faith were singing about God/spirit and it awoke in me a sense of love, curiousity, and longing for the union of self and the beloved. I remember this same feeling has been with me before whilst meditating on my Heart and Crown chakras at the Yoga Room in Encinitas. I was so free and to this day intend to move into the Grace as I did as a traveler through the desert with my people.

I love you and I will stand for you as an example of your love and pray that we can share our love with God and all of humanity.

Namaste,

Yogi Trevahr
Waking Within Community and Holistic Health Company
Order of The Sacred Spiral
www.meetup.com/alchemy

Letters from The Yogi Baron (part 1)

2009-02-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

A letter from Bernd Pegels, Yoga Instructor and dear friend of Waking Within Community, as he tours the world in search of new experiences:

“… my dear friends, greetings from this tropical paradise in the caribbean sea that enchanted us all with its warm winds and warm waters…and so much more!

and what a place it is, once we got used to the peculiarities of the place we stayed at that is! roosters and dogs and birds and people entertaining us 24/7 in this interesting neighborhood that we called home for a week! but who needs thick walls and security gates when you can dive into all the flavors and sounds of this british influenced caribbean culture…listening to cricket games all day, being greeted good morning and good afternoon when ever we meet somebody in the street or in town and having a rum shack right next door to listen to the latest news that came along in one version of english or another!

what a delight to see the ladies relax and let go…all the laughter and giggles, some tears here and there…exploring this island together from the beautiful sandy lane hotel and resort to the mount gay rum distillery…if you ever want to completely check out from your world and forget just about everything about it, go traveling with my mom and her cousins…I am happy to arrange it!

and then there is the caribbean sea that carried me so nicely…floating under the deep blue skies and turquoise ground down below, rain drops here and there, warm water everywhere…massaging me gently, ah, what a delight indeed! twisting and twirling, watching the fish chase by, some coral reefs within reach…I will be back caribbean sea!

hope you are all doing well out there and are enjoying life as much as I do, enjoying the journey as such and not worry too much about the destination…

love and light your way…more notes to follow from the road!

Baron”

Hush Now. Don't Cry! Going Out Into the World...

2009-02-05T09:20:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers,

I am so happy and I wish to break away just as I am doing into the freedom and love of the World instead of this United States/San Diego stuckness. I feel supported. I sense it so intently; this will be the year that I travel and break away from provincial to become a citizen of the Earth. I wish you were here, I wish that I was there!

My goal is to create community where-ever I go. I am planning on going and being present to people, towns, and communities: up and down the coast of California and the American Pacific Ocean, Arizona, Utah, Yosemite, Los Angeles, Peru, Brazil, and Ecuador. I also purpose a journey to the orient: China, Mongolia (in search of a "woman with strong legs"), all over Japan, and perhaps India and Egypt.

I crave to be reunited with my past lives and the information that I know was collected then and there in those places by those people who I suspect were also me. The other night, I had a vision of a desert and what it was like to walk with a caravan of "believers" who sung and chanted the great names of God. We walked across the sand dunes with a backdrop of Pyramids on the Horizon. It was very comforting being in the desert amongst the ocean of sand and for the first time again, I knew the feeling of faith and new beliefs. It is the same as seeing an eclipse of the sun at midday for the first time.

Expression,
Trevahr Ryan Hughes

Waking Within Community

Vision Magazine Article--Never Published

2008-12-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

In the fall of 2008, I was feeling as whipped by storms – in my case, emotional storms -- as the coastal pine trees that surrounded me on Neptune Ave near the shores of Leucadia's Stone Steps beach. Barely aware of my environment as I struggled inwardly, I brushed away the spirit tears that dropped from the pine needles above me.

My business partners' voice rang clearly through my cell, "For you, Trevor, regeneration is defined as a loss of your old path, and the spontaneous fulfillment of the void created in that loss through a new inspired idea." . The pine needles were dripping with water as if the tree itself were a rogue cloud. My business partners' voice rang clearly through my cell, "For you, Trevor, regeneration is defined as a loss of your old path, and the spontaneous fulfillment of the void created in that loss through a new inspired idea."

Like all new beginnings, this one started with an end. An end to former beliefs as my true path became clear. For many months, I had been glimpsed this new idea that dived in and out of my consciousness. It was an idea that was to impact my career -- my quest to change the world – and all the facets of my life. The idea was simple in its truth. Everyone I met could be touched by a sense of community, an outreaching of heart energy that would lift one's spirit, calm the mind and heal the body.
That night, my friend's words touched my core. She had witnessed the spiritual pubescence that I had recently experienced and well understood that the growth spurt had only just started. I was aware that those past experiences enabled me to break through my barriers of selfishness into realms of giving from a limitless place. I needed to pass through these layers of my fear and to embrace the opportunities to fail, be vulnerable, and to love.

Out of my own fear I was reminded that earlier this year (first quarter 2008), the yoga school where I once did teacher training had closed due to some issues with and among the community. An internal change began when I heard the news and then saw the empty studio in the heart of downtown Encinitas. In this place that had housed two decades of yoga and teacher trainings, I now saw only paper-covered windows. I asked myself what had changed, and then remembered that it was not so much important what had changed but that something had changed.

Later, I found out that my old school was full of asbestos and had to be entirely torn apart before a new renter could come in. I again realized that teaching there had been unhealthy for me and for my integrity. I was appalled by knowing that I'd been involved with a place that was holding classes for health and advocating the healthy practice of yoga in rooms where it was dangerous to breathe anything that chipped away from the walls. In that moment, I called my words and actions into question, and assessed, as any practicing yogi would do, if I was still in that space of communicating ignorantly. A frightening shudder passed through me when I realized how much more of the asbestos I was likely to have inhaled while cleaning the popcorn ceiling, and how, in encouraging my students to breathe deeply during classes, they were possibly breathing poisons into their system.

It was time for the art of giving and receiving to evolve. I understand then that I was to pioneer a new way of giving as the foundation of my business and to support a new, community-oriented system of donation-based teaching resulting in a community where people respect and honor each other from a place of clarity and love.
Having not yet traveled beyond the realm of San Diego, or for that matter, the United States, I searched for guidance in the memories of my younger days at schools, with their various teachings and apprenticeships that claimed to be "the best" and most deeply rooted in "tradition." I have always been a student in search of a history that made sense, seeking a traditional, logical approach that delivered repeatable results and showed success for generations. I understood and believed that these established schools and teachers would provide me with the depth of study in yoga and business that would not be offered by "run of the mill" facilities or by new "up and coming" master teachers.

The teachers I found and the trainings I attended gave me a sense of depth and training that I felt was necessary to be "the best" or to at least be backed by a certification in an art with a history of success. I repeatedly learned from all my trainings and teachers, from 2005 to 2007, that those who teach and follow their traditions and belief systems in an extreme way, also tended to be extremely inflexible. Their paths in business and life orient them in a way that seemed narrow-minded. Today, I see that everyone must do what is in their current evolution to do and they are only capable of working with the opinions that they think they know.

I, like many others in my life, never considered that which I knew, but only what I was pretending not to know. Hence, I worked for free for much of 2005 through 2007, teaching yoga as an apprentice teacher and learning business, sales, and marketing as an administrative assistant to a local CEO.

In January 2008, something amazing happened. After the collapse of my former school. I took a teaching position at Yoga Swami studio, a donation-based studio in Encinitas on the 101 Coast Highway. I was naive to the ways of donation-based teaching and community organization, but I saw this as a challenge to my natural sense of business and sales, and a challenge of the "way I was being." For months, I was grumpy at the idea of not having a set margin of income from my teaching. I struggled and learned through trial and error that it was going to take way more "genuine giving" to create regular attendance and regular donations.

This is when the shift occurred inside of me, some time near my birthday in July 2008. I realized through a series of conversations with former mentors and other students that I was selfish and abundance had a tremendous opportunity to flow freely if I just let go of the "me" and the "I." I changed the weekly communications in my email newsletters to include other teachers' events. I began to use the inclusive "our" in my written and oral communications, and I began sharing of myself, and then community sharing. In my mind, this process will eventually lead to global and universal sharing. I truly believe that when people are involved in global sharing that all of humanity will find peace.

A great regeneration has occurred within, but only after all that made me selfish and all that I was taught as a business professional was shed and peeled back like the openings of a fresh cocoon by an emerging butterfly. This same regeneration will occur for all of society in America as we move into a conscious future where business will be based entirely on the precept: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

It wasn't until I learned to shed my cocoon of the self and ego, that I could thrive in an environment that has shut down so many businesses who took for themselves what was given to the community. At Yoga Swami, I was given the freedom to grow my community and teachings any way that I felt was honest and true as long as it followed the principles of yoga and Ahimsa (to do no harm).

In 2008, I gave away my perspective of ever really "having" something or someone or some contract and allowed a sense of co-creation and community to grow in its place, a community where everyone was allowed to be at the same level and have the same responsibilities if that was truly desired.

After two and a half years of doing my own taxes and running Waking Within Yoga, now renamed Waking Within Community, I decided that I had the know-how to start a non-profit spiritual organization based in Carlsbad, California. The Sacred Spiral, a non-profit spiritual organization, was founded on the intention to "first do no harm" and to manifest community through honesty, sharing, and faith in holistic living. I envision a 2009, to be a year of success for those who hold the intention to heal the global community all the while symbiotically taking care of the individuals involved.

Now, for us as business professionals, but more importantly as community leaders, we use our time and communications to reach out to businesses and individuals who are willing to play the game of oneness or unity, the meaning of the word: yoga. In the past three months we have spend our thoughts, words and actions encouraging others to give like nothing will come in return except a fullness of one's inner faith and peace that will never run out. Members of Sacred Spiral know that it is in giving we receive and it is in letting go and dying that we will be born to abundant life.

Our dream is that Sacred Spiral will one day provide donation-based spirituality classes, holistic health education programs, including a library of holistic history and metaphysics located on a sustainable farming facility. We hope by doing our best with what we know to be fair, we can offer permission for others to do the same.

Practice Lightly On Our Earth,

Trevahr

Newsletter--Donation Based Retreat Tomorrow

2008-10-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Love forever! Love is Free! I hope you are ready for the Changes that are bound and determined to be in our life over the next 3 months.

We are packing up for this Weekend's retreat to Mammoth Mountain, the first of many more Donation Based spiritual retreats. If you are going with us, how exciting it must be to take this journey into ourselves and to begin the process of Alchemy and Waking Within.

For everyone in our local community, I know that you will be in Good Hands with Sitara as she is teaching on Saturday at Yoga Swami and Palm Tree Yoga in Del Mar. Sitara will be present for me on Monday 9am Class at Yoga Swami so have a fun and amazing Flow!

You may call us if you need directions to the Carpool for the Donation Retreat Tomorrow. We will be meeting at the Library at 1pm in Carlsbad (for the first carpool) on Dove Lane or at my Home in Vista (for the second carpool. 212 Washington Street, Vista CA. 92084) 760-713-6710 (or if you are driving to Mammoth yourself call for address or rsvp with this email)

Sincerely,

Waking Within Community (Holistic Health)

http://wakingwithin.blogspot.com/

Yoga Teachers:

Trevahr 760-710-1713

Sitara Lee

Donation Based Spiritual Retreat in Mammoth Mountain Oct. 24th with our Alchemy Group, Enjoy Camping and Hiking and Yoga. Retreat into Nature with spiritual seekers, yogis, and alchemists. Bring a Drum and Camping supplies. We have a place to sleep in a house and full access to a kitchen and a hot water showers. Phone Number for Home in Mammoth (760)579-**** Ian

Waking Within Community Yoga Schedule and Recommended Classes:

Monday: 9am @ Yoga Swami in Encinitas (Donation)

430pm at Bev's in Vista (Invitation)

615pm at MTI of Carlsbad (Invitation)

Tuesday: 11am Chair Yoga in Vista (30min, Invitation)

2pm Chair Yoga At Aegis of Shadowridge (Invitation Only, Every 1st Tuesday)

Wednesday: 9am @ Yoga Swami in Encinitas (Donation)

11am Chair Yoga in Olivenhein (Invitation)

4pm at Cox Communications Oceanside (Invitation)

Thursday: 945am Yoga in Carlsbad @ Alicia's (Public)

430pm Beginner's Flow in Vista (Invitation)

630pm at MTI in Carlsbad (Invitation)

Friday: 9am @ Yoga Swami in Encinitas (Donation)

Saturday: 1030am Sitara's Beginner's Vinyasa Yoga @ Yoga Swami (Donation)

Sunday: 10am at Vicki's of Vista (Public)

Yoga and Alchemy Circles:

http://www.myspace.com/gigglingchakras

Vote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6OsGjelmbo

Waking Within Darkness

2008-09-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

Welcome back. As part of our business model and part of my personal agenda as a writer for these articles I would like to discuss topics that include the shadow self or side of modern media and yoga. So as forewarning this article will discuss the sides of the self that are "not so shinny with goodness."

As a modern day Martial Artist, Alchemist, Yogi, and Teacher of Esoteric Philosophies, I have encountered a great many things, inside and out.

As within, so without....

I this America War driven society, I find some amazing reflections of my shadow self...just the other day I was in discussion with a very aeiry fairy healer type friend. We were in a public place at a store that sells import items in Carlsbad CA and we were discussing the Practice of Kunlun Bliss (Taoist Alchemy).

So without, as within...

Anyways my friend whom I was talking with at the imports shop says to me that she was using the Bliss practice regularly with her meditations and with her planetary gong listening meditations and she came across a sticky space within herself. A dark spot with pain and healing to be had. This place inside my healer friend represented itself as a noise...

You know the noise that you hear when flesh tears...I mean get close to something...like ligaments and/or abdominal muscles and see if you can relate to sound of tearing apart organic structure. In meditation that is what she heard. It can be both horrifying and disgusting.

Then she realized that this was the sound of being born...not traditionally. This was the sound of being born c-section. At the time of her own birth (I know this could be way out for you as a reader to believe that my friend had a memory of her birth), her mothers body was cut open and she as a newborn/fetus heard the sounds of this "cutting open" of the body of which was her home for 9 months.

I was neutral to the description but a little "un-nerved" upon hearing this about two months ago. I was also remembered ( and I would like to remind you reader)...that it has been researched, that during times of incredible distress or trauma...a body/human releases/assimilates DMT from the glands in the brain and this creates a sense of spiritual/hallucination or "being more than reality" such that we do not hold memories that are innately too horrible to "let go of".

(Keep in mind that death is a time in which DMT floods the brain naturally and would be released in lessened quantities as a result of crystallization of the Pineal Gland...which has been associated with Fluoride consumption...in our tap water...hello!)

Shadow Concludes Self...after having gone within...

The conversation moved to other topics regarding forgiveness and healing...my friend told me that she cried relentlessly for a while and hugged her mother after this experience...and again I realized how vital it is know the shadow self and how to observe your mind's processes. I have noted many times this year what my "buttons" are and when an individual/friend pushes them how my self preforms a transmutation to Shadow.

I now know that it is important not to lose shadow...just like Wendy sowing Peter Pan's Shadow to his feet (that story makes a large commentary on the necessity of the shadow). Shadow is vital and to lose a piece of vital/lifeforce would mean to live as a partial being or...artificial...created...not real...(in alchemy) homunculus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus

This is your author reminding you to be and remaining "at one" with Life, Mind, and Spirit.

Trevahr
Waking Within

My Experience Healing on My Birthday

2008-08-12T18:53:00.000-07:00

My Experience in Healing With Your Crystal Grid.

On Wednesday July 30th during the afternoon hours, I experienced and was introduced to a new form of healing work that was facilitated by Healer, business partner, and dear friend Christiaan Sun.

I came to visit Christiaan at his home where the healing work took place during a sunny afternoon in Encinitas and was greeted by a most pleasant scene. Christiaan's home is a lower level apartment behind a house located in a lust ranch yard of fruit giving trees. His complex which I assume is shared with like minded individuals is encircled with trees that provide a barrier like energy for privacy and to enclose his salt water pool. I immediately felt the healing energy coming through the trees and plants and of course the location.

So we talked for a couple of minutes about his background and Christiaan explained to me about the time where he was learning from a therapist who developed a form of Yoga (partner yoga or Acrobatic yoga) that allowed practitioners to manipulate their bones, joints, and muscles into place through contact with their partner. Of course as I am a Yoga Instructor, I found this fascinating. We set up the spare room that he has for his healing work where Christiaan had me lie upon a massage table for a neck adjustment.

Wow/Wah! I never knew my neck could make that kind of noise as it replaced itself.

Then we took done the table and set up this interesting grid of copper wire. (When I say interesting I mean it had some provocative energy on it that was truly unique.) Christiaan told me to "carefully" climb onto the copper grid and lay on my back (Savasana). He surrounded me with quartz crystal points in a special configuration such that all the crystals touched the copper.

At this point we took to breathing exercises. Christiaan asked me to breathe deep and rapidly through my mouth (Breath of Fire/Kabalabati) full and fast. This proved to be a challenge because I was sensing some stagnant energy and the way my being works is that more often than not, my gut and solar plexus hold the blocks from relationships, regrets or emotions.

I felt like perhaps I would pass out or vomit but I was able to maintain the breath work. Christiaan asked how I was doing and what I was experiencing as we took a quick brake from the rapid breathing. I expressed that I was feeling hovering sensation of being just above my body.

Christiaan responded with the idea that it was better for me to be absolutely in my body and present to the experience I was having. At this he suggested that I breathe into my body full and slow. For about a minute, I slowly breathed into my body and the presence of "how I was being". Then we began breathing rapidly through the mouth again this time I definitely felt something shifting, such that my solar plexus was dislodging from the spiritual cesspool that it was stewing in as of the last month.

With the tenacious focus of rapid breathing, I was invited to roar and let out primal sounds or what ever came up for me. At first, simple roars and yells began to emerge and shortly thereafter I was receiving stomach pit dry-heaving or "yakking" noises. What happened next was miraculous. Amidst all the noise and movement, I saw myself in the form of an animal (always a Jaguar/Mountain Lion) trapped and attempting with every fiber to escape from a Tar Pit (like one that Mammoths and dinosaurs were subject to).

The amazing thing was, that I (being in this pit) actually surfaced and took a breathe. This breathe was my first breathe in a long time, it felt fresh and new. I immediately understood that all the "yakking" sounds where my way of removing the tar from my lungs and insides as it had seeped in over time and experience with the real world of illustion (maya).

I laid there in my experience upon the copper and crystal grid, tingling and glorious. For the next few minutes, I was left alone in the room where I experienced my beloved senses and an overwhelming sense of gratitude for my breathe above the tar. I experienced tears and freedom and a glimpse of a master teacher/friend whom I am attempting to meet in the month of August (this teacher's name is Max and he told me in my vision to "look and listen").

In my opinion, this type of work is amazing and would benefit all students and individuals who present themselves as Open, Honest, Loving, and Willing. I am still experiencing profound understanding from this experience and it has helped me to let go of addictions after a recent breakup with my partner/lover ( a few days before).

By Trevahr
Yoga Therapist, Alchemist, Director For Waking Within Co.

Waking Within:
http://wakingwithin.blogspot.com/
http://deathyoga.blogspot.com

The Reasons For My Movements in Time and Space

2008-07-22T16:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I am weaving a larger project together as we speech and it seems that the yoga and my teachings are simply the tip of the Iceberg. So Yoga, Shadow Teachings, Death and Dying, and Alchemy are more obviously a part of this project/life path. See if in the coming months and all of next year you can guess my next movements towards union and spirit. This invitation to research me is and open invitation to become part of my research team. I believe that if someone can obviously guess my movements they can guess the movements of the universial consciousness. If you are interested in research, please contact me at wakingwithin@gmail.com.

Trevahr
Alchemista de Yoga

Events this Month and the MOON

2008-07-16T20:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

We have SOME aweSOME events this week!

First, Oils and Healing and learning in San Diego, call for carpool on Thursday afternoon (2 Carpools leave arround 6pm-ish) We can come to you just let us know where to meet you.

Then SOME fun on Friday we have the Full moon concert brought to you by Rachael Johnson at South Carlsbad Beach, Ponto on the sand. This event will unify two of my tribes and hopefully spark new interest in Astrology as we do "picnicesque" Astrology circle alongside the fire near the drum circle on Ponto.

Friday Drum circle is fun and welcomes all late comers. We will be out 'til about 11pm.

I recieved the gift of subbing at a new studio, Yoga Tropics of Encinitas. I hope to add them to our community in the coming months. My Native American Storytelling...

Sincerely,

Waking Within Company
760*7136710

Thursday July 17th 7pm-9pm Southern California Post Convention Gathering for Young Living Essential Oils. Free Event @ the Weston Hotel in San Diego.

Thursday July 17th @ 9pm Drum Circle at Beacons beach in Leucadia by the Hooping Tribe (Free)

Friday July 18th, 7:30-11pm Full Moon Concert by Dontation & Drum Circle (Free) by Rachael Johnson
South Ponto Beach in Leucadia

"Commune with the setting sun and rising moon as your mind is swept away by a sonic massage with planetary gongs. The energy of the gongs when played outdoors is gently pervasive and their sounds mix beautifully with the rhythm of the tide. The full moon is traditionally a time of celebration, so after the concert (around 8pm) there will be a sacred fire and drum circle. Please be sure to bring blankets and warm clothing, and drums or other instruments. This concert will help in grounding, and connecting our rhythms to those of the earth."

***Astrology picnic with Alchemists Trevor Hughes and Dana Plant (Free and we will be drawing Tarot cards during the gathering) This will take place during the drum circle with Rachael.

Saturday Escondido @ Dusk (Starts Slowly around 6pm): Rainbow Gathering and Potluck. This is month three that we have been present for this event and it proves continuously to be fun and great community. Since this is still a word of mouth event, you must call for directions as we don't have addresses for the potluck that takes place on this farm.

August 1st (Leo Party Day 1) Concert with Rachael Johnson off of Quail Gardens Drive in Encinitas.

August 2nd 2008 Leo Open Birthday Party (Day 2) for all Leo Sun Signs (July 30th...me) and friends of Leo peoples everywhere. San Diego. Pool Party/Dance.

August 3rd Sunday Leo Open Beach Party (Day 3): Let's just celebrate all week. Bring a gift for the Lion of your Liking or if you are a Leo join in our Leo gift exchange. Veggie Potluck. Location Encinitas either Swami's Beach or Moonlight Beach. Dress up like a Leo (we will have extra Lion Masks on hand at the party) Bring normal beach stuff: bathing suit, towels, water,
and sunscreen.
_________________________________________________________________

July 11th Global Heart Communty Carlsbad hosts a Planetary concert: Rescheduled new date to be announced.

July 12th Awakening The Senses Massage Party @ Yoga Swami:
Rescheduled To be Announced.

_______________________________________________________ Trevor's Updated Yoga Schedule (7/16/08)

Monday: 430pm at Bev's in Vista (Invitation) and 615pm at MTI of Carlsbad (Invitation)

Tuesday: 915am at Vicki's of Vista (Public Welcome)

Wednesday:11am Chair Yoga in Olivenhein (Invitation) and 4pm at Cox Communications Oceanside (Invitation)

Thursday: 915am Vicki's of Vista (Public Welcome), and 430pm Restorative in Vista(Invitation) and 630pm at MTI in Carlsbad (Invitation)

Friday (This Week Only): 6pm MTI Private Lesson Moved to Friday due to Young Living Event (Invitation) Drum Circle to Follow.

Saturday: 11am Chair Yoga in Escondido (Invitation) Sunday: 10am at Vicki's of Vista (Public Welcome)

Fun Links:
http://www.doasone.com/
www.feelinggoodplace.com
http://wakingwithin.blogspot.com/
http://deathyoga.blogspot.com

-- "If you fell down yesterday, stand up today." - HG Wells Direct:

Friday Night NeuroPhysics Discussion

2008-05-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

This evening I attended an event with a scientist lecturer and several female friends who teach me about Alchemy and Astrology. This seminar was in Carlsbad. I enjoy scientific topics and this was DEEP. The lecturer, whose name escapes me was the author of a book that cross examined the common aspects between different sciences regarding brain function and biology with mind function and activity. One interesting topic that was presented to me was the lengthy description that highlighted the differences between the brain and the mind and the processing speed that each item takes to activate.

Later I was to discover that the true purpose of my attendence was: I am being challenged and fated to reeducate myself as humanity is plunged into the Shift. I found my self days later sitting on the couch at my lover's house talking to her neighbor about schizophrenia. It was brought up in the lecture while the Neurophysician related to us about humanity's previous shifts and the brain chemistry shifts as a result of this.

Now it has been said before some many times but allow me to expound upon it hear and now. During the days before Christ (so B.C.), humanity heard, felt, and experienced voices as a symptom of unevolved brain chemistry. Therefore paranoia, and schezophrenia were common place. For example (in the west) Homer and his classical myths were written in a way that described most characters as having a direct conversation going on with the gods. This also says that intuition was harder to interpret because of the considerable difference in the volume or loudness of the voices in the human mind.

This has come up in several religious texts and is represented in the Christian texts as a description of the difficulty in humanity's ability to hear the Voice (you know in the beginning there was the Word) of God as populations increase and progress is made. I am not saying that progress is bad or should cease but this leads me to my life path based point of balance.

As modern men and women it is important to balance out our over crowded and sometimes overloaded mind with peace and silence or even the descipline of Meditation.

For the sake of humantity's santity as we approach a time of overcrowding, practice concentration, meditation, and perhaps a "listening" for the call. (Listening for the call of change, love, bliss, oneness, truth, and rite of passage.)

In Balance and Light,

760-713-6710
Waking Within
WakingWithin@gmail.com

Yoga As Preparation For Death and Dying--Chapter III

2008-05-02T13:15:00.001-07:00

Dear Readers,

ASIDE: Regarding our last adventure into the nature of the universe and "everythingness"; I will be on and off at times when talking about this subject and usually it is my intention to talk or write about the nature of the universe as a side note. The nature of "everythingness" is really something that cannot be claimed by words and especially the watered down human English language, therefore I feel that my commentary is limited to my ego. My goal as a being and steward of yoga is not to clarify subjects that defy words but to rather bring people to the space of clarity that I found many years ago that will in due time lead them to the experiential knowing of the path and nature of being, human, tao, and universe (or Christ/Buddha).

Being is experiencing and talking is the symbolic hinting of which actions to take that will lead you to the experience. Keep in mind that every experience is different and every human is unique and in complete balance with universal oneness.

None the less, contact me if you want to have a rousing conversation over satori and tea or attend a work dinner function in which many of these ideas are presented to us. Omtrevor@gmail.com for Events newsletter and holistic gatherings.

(Aside End)

Death and Dying and forbidden knowledge are everywhere. In the Western culture these subjects have been carefully measured, plotted, and planned against. As a way to highlight these "dark" arenas of western thought, I will base this entry on forbidden knowledge with special interest towards soul transcendance and travel upon death. This entry is inspired by my learning of "Bardos" which are highlighted in the tibetan book of the dead.

Bardo: "intermediate phase"

"In the terma discovered by Karma Lingpa, Guru Padmasambhava introduces six different bardos. The first bardo begins when we take birth and endures as long as we live. The second is the bardo of dreams. The third is the bardo of concentration or meditation. The fourth occurs at the moment of death. The fifth is known as the bardo of the luminosity of the true nature. The sixth is called the bardo of transmigration or karmic becoming."

Entire quoted text taken from Wikipedia. For full article see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo

In understanding what the Buddhist community describes as bardo, I begin to understand that which is lost in the west as most of our understanding is based on this life rather than reincarnation. I have an understanding that philosophers in the 1960s made the commentary that culturally, genetically, and societally, that westerners weren't as developed psychically as easterners were. In a lecture that I observed, Alan Watts was made to comment that Easterners due to the nature of their meditation practices were better suited for things such as yoga and past and future life studies. I do think that this commentary is in the process of being dated, thus implying that Westerners will be caught up in psychic development as a product of 2012 shift. Alan Watts was also implying that the Westerner has no business practicing yoga, which I think is becoming more and more disproven by the West's (especially the USA) ability to pick yoga and run with it in a way that out-numbers Indians practicing yoga.

(Yes, more yoga is practiced in the West than India, although I still think that meditation is still more prevalent in the East)

With all phases in Life and Death being represented by a bardo, my research leads me to discuss the bardo of death in which a soul/mental apparrition lingers translucently in this dimension. The Buddhists believe that the thoughtform that represents the individual who had recently passed was around the body or at least around familar people, places and things for at least three weeks. (I felt that presence and experienced the thoughtforms of my recently passed friend George Delgado, especially when myself and Derek traveled to his family's home and the cemetary.)

During this time of unincarnated beingness, an individual's friends, family, or tribe can take an active role in helping the being/deceased to move into the next life or incarnation. (Not everyone reincarnates you know.) It is for these belief based reasons that many Asian cultures observe offering for the dead or the ancestors. Even in Mexico there is the Dia De Los Muertos or Day of the Dead and that is a festival for offering the deceased friends and family guidance or blessings in the afterward of Earthly Human life.

Much research has come into societal focus recently regarding contact with the dead and this research will only stand to be more concrete as technology is improved. Things that weren't considered science yesterday are considered science today. So that which society might consider to be witchery today may be proven science tomorrow.

Furthermore bardo is experienced in near death experiences as well, and therefore ties into the brain chemical discussion about yoga we had earlier as your body reacts to the situation with a rushing release of chemicals that produce trance, psychodelic dreamstate, or enlightenment awareness. Yoga is a way for the individual to reach and practice for the bardo of death and transformation safely without going anywhere or doing anything.

Within the practice of Yoga Meditation and the states that lead to Samadhi (oneness or bliss through meditation), there are experiences that we can choose to have that act and recreate the situations described by the Buddhists in the texts and lectures concerning Bardo. It may be difficult to fathom but Yoga Meditation can generate an experience for the mind that allows it to slow time and lengthen experience of dreams, live life and death, and be reborn even before Savasana (corpse pose meditation) is complete (3 to 10 minutes). On way that people are "born again" or saved from so called "learning disabilities" or mental disorders, is through meditation or even lucid dreaming. I personally encourage every parent to teach their children how to Lucid Dream by the age of 12. I know that when I learned to meditate and to lucid dream around the age of 12, it fostered freedom and functionality that allowed me to cope and thrive (now) with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).

To quote and encourage the experience :
"Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi

(Taoism in China)

To Be Continued...

Waking Within
760-713-6710
WakingWithin@gmail.com

Yoga As Preparation For Death and Dying- Chapter II

2008-04-08T15:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

This is the second entry in our discussion of Yoga as Preparation for Death and Dying. Today we will be addressing a continuation of knowledge from the last entry as well as a tie in to Quantum theory inspired by both David Bohm and Alan Watts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts

Be reminded that this specific type of discussion helps yoga practicitioners to identify their life as a playing field littered with conversational landmines of the taboo. A yogi has discriminative logic and wisdom enough to sidestep these landmines when necessary.

This is a quoted landmine but still a truth coming from the Wikipedia.org website (see link above on Alan Watts): "the whole universe consists of God playing hide-and-seek (Maya or illusion) hiding from himself by becoming all the living and non-living things in the universe, forgetting who he really is; the upshot being that we are all God in disguise."

Yoga and death are systems of liberation from our world, body and minds. As of late I have noticed more often how many Eastern philosophies treat the mind as a place of spiritual entrapment (the mind is a funny thing see blog entry titled Softening The Mind), as the soul is stuck in a rather forgetful state of illusion as it moves though lifetimes of rebirth in different forms over billions of years in order to fully realize itself.

And yet there is little for the wise yogi to worry about. As all rivers lead to the ocean and all paths lead to spirit, the great eventually is that enlightenment will happen or rather transcendance is incur.

It is a great joke as to whether or not all this yoga teaching (that I and millions are involved in)can really make a difference in the speed at which a new world enlightenment is actualizing. There will be besome who say it was us (referring to the universial "lightworker" or healer or indigo or crystal children) that caused the shift. There will be those that say it was destined to happen and that no amount of anything could have changed the pace at which it happened. The truth (and I know this from my solitary meditations upon the concept of death and dying) is that both are parties are correct about what causes the shift (2012, the great conjunction, whatever heaven/hell may come). I know I risk crucifixion for stating this but destiny and free will are both here and do most definately exist (in paradox but still exist).

I learned just today as listening to a lecture by the late Alan Watts: I am simply playing, mind and body, with the belief and the intention of changing the world or enlightening the pool of consciousness. In actuality, I can intend all I want but never truly realize anything because it's all a play. I am happy I realized this because it takes the design of my destiny and the destiny of the universe into a paradox of "in my hands" and "out of my hands." Both destiny and predestination are true but imperfect ways of explaining what is really going on in this dimension/life. I mean to say that I now take comfort in the play of masks that are Yoga, Yogi, Westerner, Trevor Hughes.

I am so comfortable in my so-called Self that I look as this really as the ultimate volunteer work. I realized that is this life is a rather large cheriade then God would most definately appreciate me "acting to the best of my being." So I have begun a policy of teaching people how to act to the best of their beings.

Aside a la Yogi: Since most of my time is spend in meditative practices, I do believe that it is less and less possible for me to accomplish acts which are not mutually forwarding to all beings. Even though I recognize the illusion and comedy of existance, I am not going to make a mockery of it by going out and performing an array of unconscious actions. I have also noticed that things that make life worth "being" are often harmonious and quite relative to the golden mean ratio (nature growth patterns that can be seen in all things, principly noticed in Spirals).

This is a powerful way for Westerners to comment or at least understand Nirvana. Nirvana as explained to me in western college equals (mathematically translates to english as) extinction. Nirvana helps humans to label non-existence. Please allow me to make a mathematical analogy relating to Nirvana. Nirvana is a 0 in the grand equation of the universe, which is made up of matter, which consists of particles which pretend stasis or existance when observed by human science. Therefore Nirvana would be comparable to the energy of nothingness.

If all the universe is, is E=MC^2 (with everything consisting of one side or the other of the equation. That means everything is energy) and what is referred to in the Buddhist tradition (remember Buddhism is a mental yoga that broke away from traditional yoga a long time ago) as Nirvana is Zero or E=(energy)=0.

As a practice of meditation, please sit quietly and try to imagine or visualize the zeroing of all entire in the universe. Or simply envision and experience in your meditation what a universe with Zero energy would be like.

This a Buddhist technique used as a method of sort of tricking the intellect out of itself. Many Buddhist and yoga doctrines profess that them mind is a trickster of existance that was created a a means of greater survival and must be integrated with the cosmic mind in order to serve the ultimate purpose of realization.

Realization in this discussion refers to the mask of Maya or illusionary existance or God's play/staging, noticing and existing in a way that comes to fully know itself and it's origins.

As above, so below.
As within, so without.

To Be Continued...

Trevor Hughes
760-710-1713
Waking Within Co.
www.myspace.com/wakingwithin

Western Yoga Is "All The Flowery Stuff"

2008-04-08T14:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

I write today with the intention to educate rather than offend, in regard to "all the flowery stuff." All the flowery stuff is the practices that we as Westerners understand to be yoga. The Flowery stuff is impartial truth and can be regarded as watered down. I earlier said the word "offend" because there are some people who hold asana, stretching, breathing, and meditation to be sacred and would have the Western yoga practicitioner believe that these are the end-all, when in actuality those things are merely skills and means that are gifted to the yogi as a way of finding truth enough to cut through the illusion of life/reality on Earth.

What you may hold to be truth or self-evident is simply a mask above another mask. Asana is untruth and truth because of its mis-association with the physical or maya (the best way describe Maya is in the modern film entitled "The Matrix". Maya is the world that has been put infront of your eyes to blind you from the truth.). Asana is but one fold of the eight paths within Yoga and leads to countless variations upon the one path of Asana.

Many Hindu saints explain to us that all is nothing-ness and all springs from non-existence. One key and paradoxical points of yoga and tantra spirituality is the principle of "one substance" relating to the fact that everything is matter as a secondary existance to vibration as a primary existance.

In light of this situation with so many people practicing types of yoga that just don't allow an individual his or her truth in its fullness, let me define something that my particular style of yoga advocates and would be considered to be shadow yoga or unpopular yoga that is usually left out of Western schools. Kumbhaka (the breathless state) is a process of holding the breath on the fullness of the inhalation or the emptiness of the exhalation. The process of breath locking especially the empty breath-lock, likened to the experience of death and dying as it is an obvious assumption that breathing does not occur (or at least in the same sense as earthly breathing) in death. Breathing is universally associated with life.

Many of the items that would be considered unpopularized in the Western styles of yoga are associated with yoga for the afterlife and destructions of the ego and all worldly habits. Many people have drawn associations between Buddhist teachings and the esoteric yoga teachings and since our Western society pretty much has a hands off approach when dealing with religion (main eastern) it would make sense to me that these types of teachings were dismissed as uneconomical and mildly offensive.

But fear n0t unadept Westerner, I am informed and enthusiastic to say that if one was to follow a singular path to its end it still leads to the same place. For example the Yogi who follows his ego to its wholeness or completion will at that point realize a great reversal and lose his ego in the process of melting self into enlightenment.

Trevahr
Waking Within
760-713-6710

Softening The Mind

2008-04-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

In another entry I made a reference to "softening the mind" and in this entry we are going to explore the ways that this yogi knows are practices of softening the mind and thoughts. So sit back, relax, and soften your mind. Also let go of your thoughts, you don't need those and most of the time they aren't yours anyways. Besides your mind and your thoughts are usually just borrowed anyways.

Amanaska (Suspended operation of the mind)

As far as I understand it is vital for yogis to practice softening of the the mind or Amanaska through a process of gradual progress. At first a student must choose a path or method of mediation and learn (logically) its techniques for concentration. Meditation is vast in its methods of concentratory techniques.

Once having learned a style of meditation a student will then begin a practice of concentration. This regular if not daily practice of concentration is to be done with a focus or object of concentration. (IE if you have ever been to one of my yoga classes I almost always open each class with a dialogue or teaching based on concentration. Each time I open class it gets easier and easier for a student to control and discipline the mind in a way that allows him or her the visualizations or at least attention upon whatever the subject matter of my teaching dialogue might be.) As a product of focus and training the mind upon on thing (like breath), an student of yoga can easily move from a state of thought based bombardment to softness or rather judo-like dancing with spray thoughts that may pass through during the period of time for meditation.

One piece of advance that was given to me, rather early in my meditation career (and keep in mind that I have had some strict teachers and a good deal of my training has been solo), was to simply sit and wait for the "thought gaps" or the space and time between thinking or arriving at a place in my awareness in which I realize "I am having a thought." It is also preferable to sit in observance of the thought gaps during or after a period of great calm or peace (externally or environmentally speaking).

This is the essence of softening the mind. When an individual comes to a space where he or she can in essence observe the thought gaps, then he or she has reached a state of understanding of how to apply the practice of Amanaska to the rest of life in its entirety. Such that a yogi or anyone who is softening the mind, can further couple learning and reading such articles as this with the soft mind technique.

It is my understanding of the application of a soft mind to intellectual learning processes leads to an open mind, a light spirit, and considerably less bodily stress.

Thomas Dewar said: "Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open."

Trevahr
Waking Within
760-713-6710

Death from the Eyes of Yogi Trevor

2008-04-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

Readers,

Last week marked a major turning point in my life as Spring and rebirth or at least rebirth perspective came into full view for me. I recently became strong and supported by a much larger community and many more abundant events as Waking Within Company grounded and rooted itself in Carlsbad CA. Feeling very supported by this and a recent awaking to love and nature as a product of the spring vernal equinox, I was altered by one of my Native North American Totem animals that change was imminent.

Rattlesnakes have been a totem animal for many years for me. It was two weeks ago/three saturdays ago when I was at a snake breeder's home in Escondido when I was introduced to about 8 rattlesnakes on display in terrariums in his house. This would have been a normal occurence except for the fact that one of the larger rattlesnakes decided to communicate with me. I walked into the room (a larger room with the snakes in cages up against the walls) and this Diamond Back Rattlesnake immediately notices me and come to the front of its cage, coils and rattles for about 20 minutes. With this instance every red flag in my head went off to tell me "big change is coming."

The second sign, just 10 days ago, came when a good friend Jacob mentioned that he was bringing the body of a rattlesnake to bury out at my family ranch when we next go hiking. Yet another sign. Jacob buried this Rattlesnake body on Sunday 9 days ago. The next day I opened an email that let me know that a dear friend whom I knew from High School died serving our country as an active private in the Army in Bhagdad, Iraqi.

My friend George Delgado died the week before due to an explosive attack on his vehical while out on active patrol. Three servicemen were also in the vehical with him at the time and also passed away.

During the weekend my (former) housemates through a party that set into motion my decision to move out. This choice was made parallel to changing my class teaching schedule in order to trek to Palmdale, CA where Georg's family was living and holding the church services.

Death and Change and Transition are synonymous with Rattlesnakes, moving from home to home, and death. Even the Ted Andrew's Animal Speak Tarot has the Rattlesnake as Death major arcana number 13. So with some mixed human emotions I packed up my stuff and stored it and traveled with some old friends to Palmdale on Wednesday night. We camped out in the back of a van and it rained that night in the desert.

As a yogi, I noticed something about these situations. I noticed that I was still experiencing emotions like and other normal human, except I had both wisdom and discrimination as my allies. I was able to discriminate between my emotions and the emotions of others and my environment. I was very simply able to know when I was just experiencing an emotion as part of a short term event and I could identify if it was false truth.

A false truth emotion is one that I know from the perspective of a meditative observer of my mind that will come to pass like sadness and it will come to pass as a product of ability to cleanse my energy body.

So with false truth emotions I attended this funeral services of George Delgado, beloved friend. I had come to peace with his passing by Thursday afternoon because I had spent all week dedicating my yoga intention and my classroom intentions to his spiritual guidance and travel to the next life.

With the eyes of a practiced yogi, I was appalled to see how much energy the US Military drained from us as observers and honorers of George Delgado in that cemetary. The US Military probably paid for the entire service but I know that I saw more energy (when compared to money) leave the audience than was given by the Army/Military. Therefore I recognized that the psuedo-catholic rituals of the US Military for honoring the dead are simply a disguise for their own pride and self-perservation.

In light of this I still bless everyone involved in the ceremonies, and every day with strong joy and love I practice the intention of Peace such that no one else looses a friend at the young age of 21 or a son at any age. Practice lightly on the Earth and bless all those who come baring the intention of War for they know not what they do.

Jai Lord Krishna,

Peace Be With You,

Trevahr
Waking Within Co.
760-713-6710

Learning New Stuff For Spring

2008-03-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

Readers,

Spring is here and I hope your spending time in Nature. My friends at Waking Within have been attending events and organizing hikes and drum circles and potlucks. Since last week marked the full moon, the first day of the Mayan new year, and the vernal equinox, (and Easter/Good Friday) the energy of community was super strong and still is. With a powerful new community based intention, I set out to help people know themselves in new ways and more importantly to know themselves in relationship with others.

What path is better than this to establish world peace?

So I am a Life Path 6 in numberology and I recognize that my compassion and ability to seek out balance in every situation will lead me to vast success and hopefully be a shinning example for others as the planet heals. Another item that I am researching and helping market is our ability to map your energy system and chart your personality through Human Design. The charts themselves are free...please go to http://www.jovianarchive.com/ to map out your energy body and learn a little more about Human Design.

Expect that with your charts make and read, Waking Within will be able to prescribe yoga therapy postures and essential oils to help maintain a balance or sense of wholiness and improvement in your body, mind, and spirit. Come and try out a personalize program based the energy that you are born with.

As a therapist, medicine man, and yogi on the planet at this time, I am very concerned and determined to move forward in spiritual and energetic medicines as well as healing/health. "Every holistic healing skill that a person can attain and maintain before a cataclysmic event or economic collapse occurs will be worth more than its weight in gold." TRH.

Expect to see Alchemy resurface in the next 7 years as a tide-turning event, regarding healing and spirituality. Yoga is a form of Alchemy that is very useful in the event of being on your own or deserted. Alchemists such as Da Vinci and Albertus Magnus begun a long process that will be continued when modern chemistry, nuclear science, energy healing, and intuitive skills began a long awaited union in our neo-western future.

We encourage everyone to learn meditation and to try some holistic healing methods that allow you to form new belief systems regarding the effects of non-drug based remedies. If you begin now while times are happy and things a fairly good in our "American" society, your mind will have an easier time transitioning to these highly effective treatments when western medicine is unavailable or useless (i.e. in the event of a pandemic flu/disease).

The human spirit and mind have a vast amount of energy to generate transformation when compared to the body and even the Earth.

So let's heal inwardly creating a sense of Waking from Within.

Waking Within Yoga Company
760-713-6710

There will be a hike this week, carpool leaves Sunday at 1130am from Carlsbad CA

Side Notes to "Yoga As Preparation for Death and Dying"

2008-03-14T11:13:00.001-07:00

Dear Readers,

I am thrilled to have watched an inspiring documentary about Ram Dass yesterday, "Fierce Grace." In this documentary many references were made to psychedelics and how they opened the doors for people like Doctors Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass) and Timothy Leary to experience a spiritual oneness or personal god. Let go into greater detail in this blog as I wish to present an important point with regard to meditation.

Dr. Alpert was born to a Jewish family and grew up to become a Professor at Harvard University. At Harvard University, Alpert would come to befriend and work with Dr. Timothy Leary. The two of them worked together on a project at the University that administered psychodelics to volunteers as part of a research study to find helpful medicinal uses for psychodelics.

Soon after the project began to stir up contronversy, Harvard shut it down and fired both Dr. Alpert and Dr. Leary. The pair stayed together a while longer and commented that in the time following their friendship after leaving Harvard University, to take LSD in controlled doses every four weeks. This lifestyle brought Dr. Alpert to go in search of other (less rollercoaster-like) ways to achieve the same state of bliss that he experienced during LSD.

Richard Alpert traveled to India and under the guidance of another westerner was introduced to his "guru" or spiritual teacher (I'll add the name of this Saint when I remember). The day that he met the Guru, Richard was a little heistant to observe the customary greeting of bowing down before the Guru and touching his feet; as his traveling western companion did this he stood with his hands in his pockets and watched. The Guru noticed this and said something that would change his life. The Guru spoke to Richard and told him that he knew that he was thinking about his mother (who had just died) earlier that evening and he also stated that she died from unhealthly kidneys. Richard having stared at the stars nostalgically thinking of his recently passed mother, before arriving at the Guru's monestary, was taken-a-back by this. Shocked Richard stayed to learn from the Guru for many months and soon recieved the name Ram Dass (which I will now refer to him as).

Ram Dass later would return home to America and become a spiritual leader in many communities especially amongst the Hippie generation. Ram Dass is the auther of the best selling book about yoga and meditation entitled "Be Here Now." Anyways the important part of this story came during Ram Dass's stay with his Guru at the monestary. The Guru was (of course) aware of the LSD with which Ram Dass carried with him in his travel packet and expressed interest in trying the tablets of LSD to Ram Dass. Heistant at first, Ram Dass decided, since his Guru knew about most things naturally the Guru would know what effect the LSD would have, that he would give the plastic bag for his Guru to choose from. The Guru looked carefully and laid 12 tablets of LSD out in front of where he was sitting to look at. Then something strange happened, the Guru took all 12 tablets of LSD. Ram Dass was fearful but soon realized that nothing was happening. The LSD seemingly had no effect on the Guru.

(Fierce Grace, Zeitgest DVD 2006)

I truely believe that the Guru was unaffected by this drug/medicine because of his involvement with the yogic superconscious state and it's unlimited and untold of effects on our body, mind, spirit.

Trevahr
Waking Within A Yoga Company
760-713-6710

This is your brain on juice!

2008-03-08T16:04:00.000-08:00

Written on March 6th 2008 by my Friend who underwent the juice fast with me.
-Trevahr

"Living off juice for a week has been an interesting experience. Today is day 5 and I’ve noticed a radical change in my body. I wake up early in the morning feeling perfectly balanced in that I could either decide to stay in bed and take a nap or go hit the cardio equipment. When I walk through my house I feel weightless and I experience a gliding sensation. My skin feels firm and healthy, my attitude is always positive or optimistic and it has not been difficult for me to resist food.

Resisting food is something worth talking about when it comes to a juice cleanse or fast. I had the preconceived notion that I would get very hungry by day 2 and seeing food would be a torture. As it turns out, I have no real need to eat food and seeing others enjoying their meals is a different experience for me now. I’ve realized the difference between wanting to eat, needing to eat, and how superficial cravings can get blown out of proportion. I noticed how not having a food became a feeling of loss rather than an appreciation of the food and after a couple days of not eating anything I really began to value all the aspects of the good foods that are out there. Now when I smell something delicious I truly enjoy it. I smell its aroma and the smell triggers taste and beautiful images of the dish come in to me and it’s such a full experience that I need nothing more. I drink my water and juice to give my body what it wants and my mind gets what it wants when I take in all that food should be.

While I was exercising at the gym before the juice cleanse I would feel heavy and sluggish, like I had to work through a lot of crap before my body began to fit into the routine of exercising. Now I notice that the moment I begin my session I’m feeling much cleaner and energetic than I would on my best day at the gym. The energy I burn moves out of me freely and does not have to work through a thick fog that I now understand I was experiencing before as sluggishness. Working out to get into the “zone” is not an issue really as I feel like I’m always there now. It’s a clean place of focus.

I would recommend this cleanse to anyone wanting to get in touch with his or her body on a deeper level. It redefines what health feels like and crystallizes the difference between what your mind thinks you want and what your body truly needs. "

Derek G. of Oceanside

Check out pictures of Hiking with Derek

Day Five Juice Fast--Hugh's Experience

2008-03-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

Readers,

For the last few days (since Sunday) I have been involving my normal working life with a Juice Fast in order the detoxify and cleanse my body's systems. I am happy to undergo this journey on the premise of helping others go through this activity. Since I am a yoga teacher, I believe in making life and living a flexible experience. Juice fasting is new for me. In fact, at the maximum weight of 140 lbs, I have never wanted to fast because I was afraid of losing too much weight.

I have to say it's day five and I am perfectly fine (and carrot juice has become my best friend)! So, I am absolutely recommending this sort of thing. Some of my other friends and associates from Waking Within are fasting with me and it feels great to have support. Most of the dreams and daily activites are shared experience and my friends and I talk everyday. So, before getting into the sales pitch stuff about how great this is, let me tell you more about days one through four.

Day One: Easy day. The main thing that I notice about myself on day one was how much tension and effort the mind puts me through in order to "take me to food," "get me to go to food," "find food," "buy food," "consider different ways of preparing food of eating," and "subliminal warnings me about how it's not good to skip meals/snacks."

Day Two: A harder day. I definitely wanted to sleep on Tuesday night. I wanted to maintain my usual schedule though, so I simply pushed my energy through the day. I could feel by now what was "me", what were "my thoughts", what were the "thoughts of others", and what were my "emotions". I realized that this division started on Monday night, when I experienced strange old emotions of buried anger. This anger was not intentional and did not seem to know what direction to head in. After about two hours of yoga poses and breathing (I teach on Monday), this emotion was gone. The experience re-started on in the morning then was replaced with a feeling of emptiness. This also forwards my philosophical theory that our mind/body/spirit existence contains weather formations that last a limited period of time--we in the west call them emotions. Like weather formations, emotions change and transform not just themselves but the earth which coresponds to the Self in this theory.

Day Three: Observance. This was by far the most interesting day... I was able to hit an all time low feeling but at the same time I was no longer associating any of my feelings with me as a being. I came to understand perspectives such as the Observer or the Witness. Nothing could be "done" to me at this point because I know that "me or that which I am" was outside the body/mind of Trevor R. Hughes. I had some out of body moments on this day which I consider sacred and will comment on only when asked in person.

Day Four: Senses. I was literally running into auras or human energy fields. This process started yesterday but became more recognizable on day Four. This caused me to intend to only approach those people who felt clear and clean in their energy field. I am slightly antisocial with my roommates and they view my fast as negative...but none of them are doing regular yoga or paying any attention to "what the level of cleaniness of the things that they put into there bodies is."

Hugh T Alchemy
(I am drinking about a half gallon of water a day, too.)

Controversial Yoga---Yoga as Preparation For Death

2008-02-27T13:57:00.000-08:00

Readers,

Yoga can also be a controversial subject and practice. With a larger rate of yogic mutations in style and beliefs, my field is one littered with landmines of the taboo. I have been practicing and studying with in the field intensely for four years now and I am happy to report that the times for narrow minded nonpracticitioners are changing. Yoga practitioners are coming in many more varieties these days:
Psychonauts,
Christians,
Hindu,
Buddhists,
Tattoo Sporting Practitioners,
Professionals in the working and athletic fields,
Tantra (John Friend),
Native American belief systems (Ana Forrest),
Smokers,
and just about every other kind of person or ideal you can think of.

One thing that I came across in my readings and research is a something called Shadow Yoga. Oh, doesn't that sound mysterious. As far as my research tells me, Shadow Yoga is simply a practice of obscure yoga teachings (breathing, aka pranayama, body positions aka asana, and philosophy). This leads me to believe that what I am currently practicing, while derived from Hatha yoga practice, is gradually passing into the realm of Shadow Yoga. I am inviting people from all walks of life to start Waking Within as they do intense personal-questing and inner journey work.

I am blessed to know that the more that I prepare my humanity with light meditations (light in the sense of love or coherent frequencies), the more I am given the opportunity to visit and embrace my shadow side (incoherent tendencies or chaos). Readers can take comfort in knowing that the light/dark side qualities are equal and balanced; so naturally the more that you work on one, the more you shall be working on the other.

I guess what I am trying to say in this entry is that yoga is based on union or the principle of ONENESS. Therefore light and dark (shadow or unpopular/obscure) are simply masks of true life or wisdom that exists in balance.

This aside, let's learn something:

"Yoga as Preparation for Death"
By Trevahr

Since the begining of time yoga has been know as a system of Liberation or freedom. With this I was led to contemplate on the question of "freedom from what?" Modern times seem to be influcening my decision regarding "freedom from what". There is quite a bit out there with regard to humanity and its search for freedom. As a young man in California I was influenced by "the Matrix", "A Clockwork Orange", "The Dark Crystal", "Jet Li's Fearless", "Kung Fu The Series", "Catcher In The Rye", author Joyce Carol Oats, "The Alchemist", and large amount of science fiction stories that really convey the message "that a human is more than meets the eye".

In the words of Yoda (Star Wars): "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes."

In fact to quote Swami Sivananda in the glorious DVD movie Yoga Unveiled:
"Do you want to be master of your destiny? Do not be discouraged in sorrows, difficulties, and tribulations that manifest in the daily battle of life. Draw courage and spiritual strength from within. There is a vast inexhaustable magazine of knowledge and power within. Learn the ways to tap the source, dive deep within!"

Yoga as death prep is a process that combines all the flowery stuff that we in the west practice such as postures, meditation and breathing, and healthy lifestyle; with all the scarrey stuff from the east such as breath locking, diet, abstaining from toxic things, states of no-breath/near-death/never starvation. These things when combined bring in what I have begun to personally experience as "fearlessness" (a godlike quality discussed in the Bhagavad Gita).

Yoga when practiced with these processed from the East and West, is designed to destroy and recreate or transfigure self, time, and space through the mystical experience. Many individuals undergo a psychological shift or a psychedelic flash when faced with the mystical experience. Research points to these "shifted" individuals as having a larger interest in communal, meditation based ascetic life. Yoga looks to destroy the separation between what is self and what is not self...

Death and Yoga are both processed that help a human to understand the most basic level of underlying unity and interdependence of all existence. The unity experience contains past, present, and future in the Now of Eternity. From these spaces of "here and only here" an individual can determine paradox without conflict.

This conversation continues in future blogs entitled "Yoga as Preparation for Death". Inspired by the research of Dr. Rick Strassman.

Please let us know what you think and visit our myspace or send us a direct message via WakingWithin@gmail.com

Namaste,

Waking Within Co.
Carlsbad CA
760-713-6710

Yoga Swami and Encinitas History

2008-02-20T15:12:00.000-08:00

Readers and Yoga Adventurers,

Just recently called the Yoga Mecca of the USA, Encinitas CA and Yoga Swami (where I teach two days a week) are special and are a must visit for any yoga adventurers. See the article in the winter 2008 copy of the Encinitas magazine. http://www.encinitasmag.com/about.html

Encinitas, Swami's Surf Spot, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, and Leucadia...can be consider spiritual vortex hotspots. This evident in the number of places to worship just on the coast (west of hwy 101) near the cliffside beachs or Swami's and Moonlight.

So my mother's family (mexican americans) lived in Encinitas during the period of time when Paramahansa Yogananda (the Swami that Swami's is named after). This time period was about the 1930's- 1940's. At this time Encinitas, was well liked by Swami Yogananda and he settled there for sometime. Swami Yogananda was a capricorn and he was a very involved meditator and yoga practicioner. His foundation still exists in Encinitas to this day even though a large portion of the Swami's temple has since fallen down the erroding cliffside.

I highly recommend that you visit the Self Realization Fellowship Gardens (where the temple used to be) and enjoy the outdoor atmosphere along with the waterfalls and the koi fish. There is also a breath-taking view of the coastline and the Pacific Ocean horizon. This brings me to another point. The SRF Gardens and many of the areas surrounding the Swami's section of Encinitas are considered to energetic (some might say spiritual vortexes). --And you might wonder why there are more yoga studios and spiritual community centers than anywhere else around!

As a practicioner of meditation for several years now and yoga for 4 years(since I was 18 and still going strong), feel that the location has several different healing qualities. The more obvious ones that I feel like blogging are:
1. Cardiff and encinitas naturally draw people to activities that encourage softening the mind and breathing in peace
2. There is more karmic exchange and therefore a faster spiritual evolution and a greater forgiveness rate
3. It honestly slows time. I mean to say that the vortexes of Encinitas are similar to slow time bubbles.

Anyways, more information is soon to come and I highly recommend that you go for a walk on a fair weathered day in the older parts of Encinitas on Highway 101.

My Love and Namaste,

Waking Within Company
760-713-6710

Yoga In Your Chair

2008-02-19T13:25:00.000-08:00

Chair Yoga which is an infusion of exercises which translate from any yoga style to a seated version with from a chair, usually performed and taught amongst groups of people who are recovering or elderly. Chair yoga is usually gentle but can be vigorous and can make a practitioner sweat. This style of yoga is currently alive and kicking. I would know because Waking Within company is associated with teaching and dispatching teachers to over 6 retirement or assisted living communities in North San Diego county.

Postures for chair yoga classes include:

Eagle Arms and Legs,
Back bends,
Prayer Mudra variations,
Arm Raises,
Half Moon (the version that allows one to reach up and lean to the side--stretchs the side body, torso and hips),
Toe and Finger Stretchs,
Alternate Nostril Breathing,
Breath of Fire/Shinning Skull,
Belly Breathing,
Hip Openers,
Shoulder Openers,
Chair Holding Cobra Pose,
Ragdoll,
and coutless others.

I encourage all yoga instructors to teach elderly students and try out some of these yoga stretchs.

Waking Within

Pictures from Sunset cliffs

2008-02-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

All Photography By Benjamin Thewlis