​Hands at heart deep inhale Ommm
Jump in the car back out as my seat belt goes on, carefully look for people, cars and dogs as I drive slowly but hurriedly down the street turn around at the end of the block, Damn forgot my coffee, make my way back
 
Carefully position my hands, fingers spread, hips slowly back to downdog, stare at my feet, take in each toes.
Grab my coffee, leave again this time more hurriedly
 
Slowly raise one leg in the air, move through thick air, relish it
Speed up, play with the radio, grab my phone make sure it’s nearby
 
Plant my right foot between my hands as I wiggle my toes, left arm reaches up slowly—gaze at my wedding ring, breathe smoothly, eyes fixed
Attempt to merge, annoyed that the car is not moving over to allow me in, holding my breath
 
Left hand returns to the floor, carefully pick up my right foot soundlessly as I bring it to meet the other one at the back of my mat. 
Open the window, adjust the air conditioner, think about the weekend ahead
 
Breath in and breath out, notice my breath
Answer the phone, distracted by the call, miss my exit
 
Glide forward to high push up.  Rounding my back, feel the expansion and effort
Curse
Lower to the floor, turn my head to one side, breath in, relax
 
Do a U turn, is this legal here?
Turn my head to the other side, notice the girl’s butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder
 
Back on the highway, find my exit, take the curve sharply. Notice the police officer he didn’t see.  Sigh of relief
Child pose, deepen into it. Hear the softness of my breath and the person’s next to me.
 
Park, skim the curve with my tire, get out and check it. Looks ok. Race to my office door as I hit the lock button for my car three times impatiently
Shimmy forward to cobra, arch my back feel every vertebrae. Stretch my neck. Feel sleek.
 
Open the door to my office, light a candle, say a prayer of thanks and gratitude
Hands at my heart deep inhale, Ommm….
 

I debated on going to the ‘Gaia Cares’ benefit dinner alone.  I fret that everyone will be partnered up, but in the end my curiosity about the renowned herb farm gets the better of me and I try to sign up on-line only to find out it is now sold out.  I call back to speak with the young woman answering the phone, the one I had spoken with a few minutes before who has directed me to the internet to register.  She giggles as she reassures me I am in as she has put my name on the list and I can pay when I get there.  It seems so arbitrary and I am thrilled to hear, it makes for a fortuitous beginning to the event!
 
I leave my umbrella at the door as a reminder to bring, but of course forget it.  I am not a umbrella person but figured I will probably need one.  The sky looks foreboding when I leave and by the time I hit the exit it’s teeming rain. It rains on and off until I get there but the sun is shining when I walked in.  While inside though it starts to thunder and rumble ominously as we listen, but are reassured by Ric that the weather will cooperate when we are ready to go outside and later we do find that he is right. As we make our way to our seats, we are first given a Gaia Herb tote bag filled with five or six varieties of herbal supplements retailed at $80, a few of which we hear details about.
 
I am relieved to see Jill a fellow  yoga student who I know from class there with her husband Anthony and I go sit by them.  Jill and I had made a connection before class one day discussing Osho.  She was reading a book about him and I filled her in on the gossip and scandal that had surrounded his life when he was alive.
 
The event starts by Ric Scalzo, Herbalist, Founder and CEO telling us about Gaia Cares and their mission to give back to the community at large. Every year they sponsor this benefit, Golden Courage International.  An organization aimed to provide education to Chinese orphaned and impoverished children.  It is run by the Lu Family and Dr. Lu is here to tell us his story. 
 
Dr. Lu is a small Buddhist man who stands before us, as we naturally lean in to hear him speak.  He’s both serious and friendly, with a soft-spoken voice belying a strong presence of dignity, humility and intelligence.
A researcher and physician who espouses both western and eastern medical practices, he tells us that Golden Courage International was started when he was doing research in China on AIDS.  He was working with families who had contracted the virus in rural parts of his country because of selling their blood in the 1990’s to make money to feed their families.  The name Golden Courage comes from one little girl’s story, when orphaned she renamed herself this. When he first met her, most of family was alive, but barely so.  She at 12  had many plans for her future, high school and college to name a few.  

Four years later, he followed up with her and other families and found a very different young woman.  She no longer had any hope for her future and “had stopped dreaming.”He said that in that moment he no longer was a researcher but a person who wanted to reach out and instill hope again in her and all the children who were otherwise doomed to harsh labor and other consequences of poverty if they weren’t afforded an education.  The foundation was named after her and based on her story.  He happily goes on to tell us that she finished high school and college and is now a nurse.  (Ric tells us how polite, hardworking and appreciative all the children in the program are and that once educated they go back to their families to provide them with financial support. We take this in and naturally make comparisons to our own culture.)
 
We see a brief slideshow about Dr. Lu and Ric’s shared vision, and efforts to bring this dream to reality and how they do this.  Dr. Lu then tells us about his clinic in Michigan and dis-ease that exists today in the States.  He reviews with us the five things of importance’s in health but first asks us to guess what they are.  We are tentative to speak so he points to his first finger and says, sleep.  “Necessary for detoxification and rejuvenation.”   Then he says, “pooping” “what are your poops like?”  He mentions the toxic nature of constipation and the importance of regularity.  Then eating, important to get all the colors of food in the diet.  “When I go to Ann Arbor and see all the angry drivers, I think THE LIVER!”  “They need more greens.” 
 
We lean in once again as we try to catch his words so softly are they spoken.  “Sugar cravings, that is an imbalance in the spleen”…hmmm…The next is stress—“We have too much stress! Why do we have too much stress here?”  He asks us rhetorically, “I see six years old and they say to me, ‘Dr. Lu’ I am stressed.  Why are six years old stressed?”  And finally he says overindulgences.  Our addictions, what we eat, when we eat, how much we eat and how we eat. All important, ”Overindulges includes too much trauma and too much drama.  We need to detox more he tells us. 
 
Ric finishes the talk by going over the dinner menu as my stomach audibly rumbles.  (I don’t write the menu down but notice Jill does.  Apparently she is a foodie and an excellent cook.  I later ask Anthony her husband of 25 years, what her specialty is and he says everything.) Ric says we are going to start with a polenta, herbed encrusted ricotta appetizer topped with a cherry tomato, served at the table followed by a buffet that includes, a fermented bitter melon dish, organic salads from their mammoth organic garden, vegetable stir fry made with eggs, red chicken which have anti-cancer properties, with bamboo shoots, salmon fished by locals who have trek them back from Alaska, organic fruit for dessert and a forbidden rice dish.  Nine courses in all.  (Bitter melons we later learn is an acquired taste, since it gives support to the pancreas and is an incredibly healthy food, we decide to nibble on it tentatively during the meal.  I say, “I don’t not like it, but I don’t like it” and others heartily agree. The rest of the meal is amazing!  Especially the salmon, which is indescribable, the taste just spectacular.) The food is served simply, the favors of every dish able to stand on their own merit.
 
We make our way up to the barn, which houses a building where the cooking is done.  The employees as part of their wellness benefits are served two meals per week as complement to working there.  They have a CSA in which they can take up to 100 varieties of vegetables three times per week home to their families. Their insurance premiums are now in a decreasing cost pattern.  (Maybe other employers should start doing this?) Gaia Herbs also supplies a nearby food pantry with veggies from their 15 acres organic vegetable garden.
 
As we gather in the now parting clouds and settling sun, sipping lemonade infused with holy basil extract or elderberry, hibiscus tea that is deliciously quenching in the humid heat before then heading out for the tour. You can tell this is Ric’s baby and that he is an extrovert, now changed into shorts and a bright blue tank top that matches his sparkling deep blue eyes. We listen as he excitedly tells us that they are the only herbal company in the world that can be traceable seed to end product.  That most of their herbs are grown right in Brevard here on this land or on their farm in Costa Rica.  (Man, wouldn’t it be fun to tour that farm!) As we shuffle forward (the 50 of us) I notice Dr. Lu amongst the group being followed closely by a father who seriously asks is there a biological reason why teenagers are wired to go to bed late and get up late?  (I hurry on chuckling).
 
Apparently Transylvania County, land of the waterfalls is one of the most bio-diverse sites in the country and this is why herbals grow so well here.  It has to do with the rich soil made possible by the intersecting wind patterns that creates for a diverse biome.
 
Ric’s information about their herbs:

• The Ginko Trees have purposely grown with many supporting trunks that give proliferation to their abundant leaves.  Ginko, an herb for memory and cognition—brain (mind) functioning.   (The only company that doesn’t use a toxic solvent in extraction).
• Then there are the Hawthorne trees, with their cardiotonic properties intentionally planted near the Ginko for a mind/heart balance.
• We see the greenhouse recently purchased at an auction where the plants start as seed buds—10 million of them
• We cross a bridge over Carey’s Creek, which we admire for its clear water used in part in the irrigation process feed by Pisgah’s underground springs 
• PassionFlower is next.  We admire the beautiful flowers lorded as symbolic for Christ.  As we get closer we notice the smell of this plant with relaxing and anxiolytic qualities.
• Ric clearly annunciates the next plant Ashwagandha a great herbal to balance night time cortisol levels
• We see the Golden Milk plants and are told what to do with this Ayurvedic powder mix we have been gifted and are promised that it will help to increase our Ojas life force potential. I quickly write down this cocktail to add to the powder:
  • Clarified butter
  • Saffron
  • Honey
  • And nut or other type milk
• Black radish next which is used to open the portal pathway for digestion and to rid the body of stagnation. (Harvested in Oct)
• Before we even get to the Echinacea we see its plentiful purple flowers swaying ever so slightly in the almost stilled air. Ric tells us that they have studied this plant more than any other company in the world, having been given millions of dollar by a NIH research grant. What they found was this plant stops the cascade effect of inflammation caused by the Rhinovirus, and, if taken within a 4-8 hour window of symptom-onset, can block the ILA receptors from triggering the immune response of a cold.  But the herbal needs to be take as recommended, for a full 2 day-period. He begins by asking “did you know symptoms of a cold usually don’t start until four days after exposure?”
• Gotu Kola (I had heard of it but forgot the properties of this Sattvic plant which he reminds us of) “Great for kids with ADHD and for connective tissue problems (I later learn in my own research good for leprosy and psoriasis too.)
• Astragalus—“taste good in soups and works in a deep way on our immune system.”
• Stinging Nettle he says is one of the healthiest herbs we can eat and we will be served this tonight in one of our dishes.  It provides great sources of iron, calcium and potassium just to name a few.  The root, leaves, and seeds are all harvested separately at different times of the year.
• Feverfew works on the Cox 2 and prostaglandin pathways and is medicinal for pelvic and migraine pain
• Lemon balm- “wave your hands over it and smell it.” He instructs us, it smells divine—I thought this plant for anxiety and have used in my practice with kids for that purpose but Ric says it can be miraculous with ADHD symptoms--maybe kids with trauma too who are overactive, I think

We make our way back for dinner and I wish for more…as I gaze at the unusual sky counting my blessing and feeling very grateful for this experience and that I thought to come tonight.
 
The table that I am at turns out to be full of interesting people, a massage therapist on her third career not ready to retire, another woman who just retired and an Herbalist originally from Australia. All three very interesting women—spiritual people with extensive meditative practices one who ironically even studied with Osho. The retiree tells us that she used to be Robert Trent Jones' secretary when she was younger and that he had a terrible temper at work and every time he lost his temper with her, he would later feel badly and give her a huge pay increase. We didn't know to call her fortunate or feel sorry for her!
(I make a note to tell my husband an avid golfer, this story).  

​One of the ladies tells us she used to work at the Deepak Chopra Meditation Institute and we hear from Jill that she worked in the creative department at Disney in LA.  Her husband, extraordinary in his own rite is a cabinet craftsman having recently helped restore (conserve) a vintage piece previously owned by Martha Washington, all very cool.

​ We are the last table to depart and reluctantly leave after exchanging emails hoping to meet up again sometime.

 http://www.goldencourage.com/en/dr_lus_story.html
http://www.gaiaherbs.com/pages/detail/38/Meet-Your-Herbs
http://www.gaiaherbs.com/products/detail/32/Ginkgo-Leaf
https://www.3ho.org/3ho-lifestyle/healthy-happy-holy-lifestyle/healthy/energizing-ojas-chyavanprash-and-kundalini-yoga
http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/herb/gotu-kola

Published Revision in Motherearthliving: 
http://www.motherearthliving.com/natural-product-news/gaia-herbs-organic-herb-farm-zb0z1609.aspx

March 2015
Lenten Travels It is hard to write this, this little thing that has no significance but so much meaning. YesterdayI was driving to one of my six jobs, (yes, crazy isn't it?) and as I was traversing the winding road that leads to their long driveway I saw a groundhog in the road.

He was a little guy, a youngster. He looked so innocent. Stopped there on my side of the road, looking around. I stopped and patiently waited for him to cross. A car was approaching from the opposite direction and must have seen him and I naively assumed that he too would stop for the crossing and we could watch this adorable sight together. I cannot tell you if it was a man or woman headed toward me as my eyes were on the small creature. I still had faith in a safe crossing even though the car continued as the groundhog started to go across the road in the direction of the car’s path.

The car didn’t slow down though, it was meaningfully careless as it ran over the little creature. I stared in disbelief and was still hopeful that maybe he was just hurt. But then he started to convulse and then he stopped moving, a quick death as blood poured from his mouth.

I just stayed there watching, helpless in shock. Stymied by his senseless death, and then thought that maybe if I didn’t stop then this might not of happened and what might the karmic repercussions be for the other car, for that traveler? For all of us? I left the spot disheartened and somewhat depressed as I headed towards the wilderness program where I work. Coincidentally, I ended up giving my notice there later that day.