Your Body Is Talking Are You Listening? Volume One (ePub)

After five years feeling frustrated with the educational system, he worked for a newspaper for a year. He then became a Real Estate salesman, but found that it was not his calling, and went back to a newspaper.

In 1965, he married Susie, his partner ever since. Their sons, Ross and Ryan, were born in 1971 and 1976. Very few people in the field of therapy work seem to be able to stay in relationships, due to the fact they do not want to deal with their own issues. Art was committed to finding himself and went on a path to do so. He stabilized his own relationship by working out his issues.

In 1968, he and Susie moved to St. Helena, CA, rebuilding an abandoned winery. To clear the land to plant grapes, Art became a logger. To support his family while the winery was being rehabilitated, he purchased a D8 Caterpillar tractor for land-clearing and vineyard preparation. Many people said, how are you going to learn how to operate that huge tractor? He hired a man to work with him and learned how to operate it.

After getting the winery set up, he discovered the big-money interests were pushing grape prices above what was economically viable for a small winery to stay in business, so he sold it.

His next venture was a restaurant which he built himself, but he found the restaurant field one of the most demanding there are. Working twelve to eighteen hours day was not what he wanted to do as a career.

However, Art met his first teacher at the restaurant, someone who planted a seed of doubt about his life path. After closing time, while cleaning up the restaurant, they would spend many hours talking about their paths. He decided to sell the restaurant and retire, since Susie wanted to go back to work. Art became a house-husband, taking care of the children and the house for the next four years.

In 1980, the buyers of the restaurant went bankrupt, so their payments stopped. Art had to return to work and his quest was disrupted. Fortunately, Susie was working full- time, but in 1980, she was laid off, so Art, who had a green thumb, worked as a gardener at a senior citizens complex.

Having closely studied the Findhorn community, he took the opportunity to apply what he had learned about the earth spirits. He found, from the plants themselves, that the landscape architect had put many of them in the wrong places. Over the next year, he transformed the grounds into a magnificent flower gardens, and even built a passive solar greenhouse to grow flowers year-round.

By 1982, he had begun to establish his healing practice, so he quit the gardener job and concentrated on researching healing practices.

Art soon found that Santa Rosa, CA, did not support the type of work he was doing, and when Joshua Stone invited him to go to Los Angeles to give readings to clients, he jumped at the opportunity. He and Joshua found they worked well together as a team, and Art was able to provide a unique and valuable service to many therapists. However, the traveling almost broke up his family, so they moved to Sacramento, CA, and opened a bookstore and metaphysical center.

While Art received considerable support for this venture, he didnt anticipate how few people had the money to support it financially. Having invested all the familys savings, and refinanced their house, he managed fairly well for almost three years until he took on partners in order to expand. However, his partners did not understand the law of cause and effect, and when they embezzled an undermined amount of money, the business went under. They had invested over $300,000 in the Wellness Institute, with their life savings from twenty years in business. They lost it all, and had to start over again.

Knowing that What goes around comes around, Art managed to accept what had happened, forgive them and get on with his life. However, trying to understand the lesson in this was hard to accomplish. Angry at losing his life savings and 20 years of hard work, the clarity and acceptance that he had set it all up came slowly. Even though he knew this at one level, it was a hard lesson to learn. The lesson was that while he had received much verbal validation from those who supported the center, he had been paying over half its operational costs.

The failure was a mixed blessing. It put him on a new path, one in which he traveled and spread the word of his work, and really had to get down to business. He did finally recover, even though they lost their house and one of their cars. Looking back, Art recognizes the many great strides forward that he has made. Today, he travels extensively, giving lectures, seminars and workshops on a variety of subjects. He also has a circuit of cities he visits regularly for individual sessions.

He has set up a publishing company to promote his books (see the list in the front of this book), and these are available through the Wellness Institute. Many of them are in bookstores now and also available through the following website:

http:// www.transformyourmind.com

He may also be reached at:
(916) 663-9178
or by email:
mailforart@gmail.com