Julie and I were both drawn to make The Big Detour, so I guess it’s time I came out about the reasons why.

Many would call it the metaphysical and spiritual capital of North America.  There’s even an old saying, “God created the Grand Canyon, but he lives in Sedona.”  Having been there, we concur. Going through the area on the way back from California was well worth the extra effort and expense, and it’s one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen. Sedona is also, in many ways, our kind of town.

I don’t know how much it comes across on my site, but an affinity for metaphysics has been a big part of who I am for most of my life. I was raised in a very spiritually centered environment (I was actually born in the small campus hospital of a very parochial university) and early on I began to explore within and beyond the belief system I inherited. I never disavowed most of what I was taught in those days, except the concept of exclusive access to the truth granted to any one consensus of outlook.  I’ve merely embraced a broader spectrum.

You see, I believe in magic.  Real magic.  Otherwise known as science we haven’t figured out yet.  Sometimes because of science we think we’ve got nailed but don’t yet know we’ve got wrong.  History’s full of that.  It’s subtle and often difficult or impossible to prove, but I’ve seen and felt it many times.

That may sound a little cryptic but that part of my life has never been done justice by attempted verbal narrative. Suffice it to say that so far it has morphed into certifications in Usui Reiki (recently) and Alphabiotics (since 1990) in addition to projects in shiatsu, remote acupressure (Julie’s horse taught me that one) meditation, shamanism, ESP, EFT, etc. Without question, it was the underlying reason Julie and I were drawn together.

If you do a search on Alphabiotics you’ll get lots of positive hits and a few negative ones, because it has come under attack several times.  Mostly at the hands of chiropractors who are trying to debunk how much better it works, or say that it’s really chiropractic. It is not, in several ways. Quite a few of my classmates were DC’s, and they certainly knew the difference. It’s a difficult technique to learn, and the chiropractors were generally surprised to find that they didn’t have much of an advantage over us laytypes.

It’s not a cult as the new age watchdog sites will tell you, and the stuff about the only big court case against someone doing this work fails to tell you how long ago it was, how outside the mainstream of the work the practitioner was and how little this all has to do with Alphabiotics today.  It fundamentally reunites matter with spirit and left brain with right, with a resulting dramatic decrease in stress and its side effects.

I’m results oriented – about all of this. If it works, it works. I could go on for hours with the stories of people I’ve known, including close friends and family members, who have seen amazing results with this less invasive and more effective modality. My own story was one of a skinny kid who kept locking up with a muscle spasm (usually left trap muscle) that rendered me incapable of holding my head up quite straight, made it hurt to move and hurt almost as bad not to move. Dr. Virgil Chrane, with that first alignment in 1980, opened a window to a new world for me.

As for Reiki, learning Alphabiotics makes your fingers learn things your verbal side can’t begin to address. I’ve always preferred to end an alignment with an aspect of BEST (bio energy synchronization technique) because it cemented the left – right hemisphere balance, and it let me tune in to the new relaxed and centered energy of the participant.  A very palpable sensation.

As Julie and I learned more about equine acupressure (from a great lady we met from East Texas, which led me to the discovery of the remote variant) we came across the subject of Reiki quite often. I had been the recipient of many sessions over the years from Reiki Master Maji Phillips in Arlington (we’ve traded work on each other over the years) but it had never occurred to me to ask her if it was something I could learn. When I inquired about the process involved, she said yes, and Julie and I became certified level 1 practitioners of Usui Reiki last year.  We underwent level 2 training and attunements in February.   This field has always had a remote version, so the match was perfect.

Julie is really amazing at it.  It’s fun to watch as her horse goes all mushy when she works on him, and the dog, the cats, the squirrels and the cardinals all move in very close to soak up the energy.  As for me, my new abilities in channeling Ki have taken what I can do for a participant to a whole new level, to say the least.

Our plan is to incorporate these modalities into a primarily equine practice that will address the fact that a horse will benefit far more from a Reiki session if the owner receives one too, and since I work on humans and can offer the additional option of an Alphabiotic alignment we’ll be offering an unprecedented combination in the field. Come to think of it, any animal/owner situation could benefit from this.

What does all this have to do with snakes? Actually, the snake is the ultimate example of a spinal column, and my understanding in both fields has been a healing influence on my animals – and provided deeper insight into my work with humans.

So on the way home from California we stopped for the night at the home of my friend Dale and his wife Heidi, and left Phoenix determined to take the scenic route. Funny, as soon as we exited 179 Maggie the Magellan GPS unit thought we were lost. When we reached Oak Creek Village just outside Sedona she thought we were still two hours away. That route starts to turn beautiful pretty fast, and as you enter the canyon it gets really breathtaking. There’s a lot of road work being done in the area but it wasn’t all that much trouble and should be really great when it’s done.

You know you’re in Sedona when you start to see the crystal shops, the healing centers, the jeep tour offices and the incredible backdrop of the landscape all around you. How to describe it? A little like being in the Grand Canyon, only someone let you build a pretty little town and actually live there.

We’re thinking about it.

We hiked the energy vortex known as Bell Rock, and I’ve never seen Charlie the dog happier. I had been worried that at 16 this was going to be a hard trip on him, though he has always loved to go along and would, every time we pull out of the driveway, if we let him. He can’t hear very well and is nowhere near as fast as he used to be. It was a matter of carrying him up steps and into the van the whole trip, but by the time we were leaving Sedona on the trip to Flagstaff he was leaping from stone to stone and going up inclines he would have completely avoided two days earlier.

We spent two nights in Sedona (thanks to Dale, we stayed in a killer resort condo) and are determined to make more of them happen very soon. Great food (most notably Ken’s Creekside Gourmet and APizza Heaven, which was) and all of that incredible scenery. Plus, gorgeous weather – in early February. Sweet. If you’ve never seen it, consider this our highest recommendation.

So how to live there?  Well, there are stables in the area and trail horses need even more TLC from dealing with all those tourists than most I’m sure. They’ll love Julie. I’d be the only Alphabioticist in town (the next nearest is in Scottsdale) and lots of those tourists would want to add the new Sedona Serpentarium to their list of stops when they visit.

I could still do big road shows, and could even do stuff as small as parties, scouting events and libraries in the surrounding area, including Sedona, Prescott, Flagstaff – and Phoenix.

We could even learn to be Cards fans.