I finally got inspired to actually start this blog because a conversation with my friend Liz got me all fired up.
I really hate the New Age and its woo woo ugga bugga psychobabble belief systems. I've learned to hate it because of to too many first hand experiences with highfalutin snake oil 'healer' gurus on the way to becoming a sports massage therapist.
My field of massage is ripe for the pickin and believe me, they're still pluckin low hangin fruit. PT Barnum was right: "There's a sucker born every minute." The massage therapists I've met are generally a kind and gentle group, sweet, well meaning, earth loving, often artistic, people pleasing, wanna help folks, but mostly too gullible in their search for methods of "healing" nonetheless.
Liz's family and her sister's family vacation in Cabo San Lucas regularly. Her sister hired Kirby Brown to do custom faux finish painting on their home. Kirby became a friend of their family in the process of spiffin up the house. She took the kids to her favorite waterfall, just for fun. Taught folks how to surf. Became very close their her brother in law sharing several Baja ocean adventures with him. She worked hard for the $10,000 she spent on that "Spiritual Warrior" transformational seminar that cost her her life.
Dead at 38. What a tragic travesty. The rampant disregard for the well being of his seminar attendees that James Arthur Ray displayed is criminal. Due to the narcissistic negligence of an egomaniac who had no business leading folks in vision quest or sweat lodge experiences in the first place, she's gone. She and two others whose stories I am not privy to.
She was known and loved by the whole town of Cabo, went out of her way to help folks and make them happy, lived a full and rich life of surf and art and adventure. I admired her gumption and I only knew her from stories Liz told me.
She and 2 others were left lying unconscious in the back of that overheated overcrowded under-oxygenated sweat lodge to die of heat stroke or oxygen deprivation organ failure, (autopsy reports not published yet on actual causes of death) while James Arthur Ray sat at the door and ignored the pleas that she'd gone unconscious and something should be done. "Leave her alone, she'll be dealt with in the next round." he reportedly said. There was no next round for those dead and dying in the dark backside of the helter skelter sweat lodge. What if he had listened to that plea, opened the flap and started CPR right then? Would it have been early enough to save their lives? We'll never know.
For him, his agenda of forcing folks past their very real limits to "overcome adversity" "move past perceived limitations" was more important than protecting the well being of his participants. The laws of physics and physiology being somewhat unforgiving regarding when water boils and people too didn't seem to be part of his paradigm of beliefs.
Several others are still suffering the physical and psychological consequences of having been hospitalized with organ failures, still others are no doubt traumatized with PTSD from the horror of seeing a consciousness raising experience go bad...REAL BAD.
When I read that someone who claimed to be a channeler had the audacity to say that she had subsequently contacted those who died and they were just so happy "out there" that they decided not to come back, I wanted to stuff those dismissive new age assumptions down her inflated arrogant throat.
What a crock! My outrage at the loss of this free spirit fuelled the birth of this blog.
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