MEATH, IRELAND – December 21, 2009 – Do stones have stories to tell? Spirals Within Spirals: Stones Have Stories to Tell, prepared by James Nemec LMT, CST-D for the World Heritage inspired site, Knowth.com, demonstrates how to approach ancient places with a sense of invitation and utmost respect. What happens when we include the wisdom in our bodies, not just our minds?
Spirals Within Spirals: Stones Have Stories to Tell
We all take the gifts of the Earth for granted, even on our best days, and we take our own bodies for granted. We have as many theories and ideas about the proper care of the Earth as we do about the proper care of our bodies, some more accurate than others, but what can we learn from our bodies, or even from old stones?
Ready to get connected?
Travel with celebrated, light touch facilitator, and founder of CraniOcean, James Nemec, to ancient Ireland and explore how light a light touch can be! The author of the books, Touch the Ocean: The Power of Our Collective Emotions, and Journeys: Stories Our Bodies Can Tell, visits the ancient Knowth. “It was an awakening,” he says, “to purpose. Authentic purpose.”
Knowth and Newgrange are the oldest, most sophisticated upper Earth structures known on Earth, predating even the pyramids of Egypt. Since they were first unearthed from a farm field, or “grange,” in the early 1940s, painstaking research has gone into the communal use and purpose of these mounds. The ancient mound of Newgrange was set up specifically to calibrate the position of the sun at the time of the Winter Solstice. Each year, at the same time, the stones in the deep, inner chambers of this mound are lit by the light of the Sun.
Why, and for what purpose?
Were they burial mounds? Places of worship? Astronomical laboratories? After decades of fine theories, ideas, and opinions about Newgrange and Knowth, what is it to appreciate the beauty of these ancient places in a fresh, new way? And what of other World Heritage Sites, such as Machu Picchu and Sarnath in India, also included in the adventure, not to mention the ancient stones of the Holy Land, itself a colossal World Heritage site for planetary designation, in the author’s view?
What are we not seeing? Nemec proposes there are worlds of insight we might have missed by neglecting to ask what these places might mean to each of us, personally, in our own experience. Whether we have light touch palpation skills or not, he encourages us to observe the very real sensations and impressions in our very physical bodies when we visit ancient sites, such as Knowth or Machu Picchu or Tikal, and not just depend on ideas alone.
Inspired by the light touch palpation skills Nemec applies in complementary medicine and the “blending ‘ taught in the new healing art of Craniosacral Therapy, developed by Dr. John E. Upledger, Spirals Within Spirals: Stones Have Stories to Tell, is as much an education in light touch “craniosacral therapy,” as the recently unearthed sites of Knowth and Newgrange. In his 2007 book, Touch the Ocean, Nemec observes that when he would perform craniosacral therapy with clients in the ocean itself, the bodies would spontaneously unlock and move in wide circles or arcs, then later he found these were not circles, but spirals.
With a background as a playwright, and a natural funny bone that keeps us turning the pages, we journey with Nemec’s journal on a reading adventure we will not soon forget, from Dublin to ancient Knowth, to the spiraling Joyce Tower in Sandycove, Ireland, and finally to return the United States to discover what it is to apply a light touch to the stones of a modern church or cathedral in South, Florida, where Nemec now practices.
Along the way, aficionados of the fine literary structures of Irish author, James Joyce, will enjoy an extra treat, with thoughtful references to Nobel Prize winning, Doris Lessing, and her soft science fiction series, Shikasta, also, the Giants mentioned in the Book of Genesis, Ben Stein on evolution, Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and a list of illustrious spiritual teachers and thinkers.
And what of gravestones?
With the subheading, “With a Light Touch: Spiralling Impressions from Knowth to the Joyce Tower,” Nemec asks, if he can experience this, can others experience this too? Can you? You won’t know unless you find out for yourself, Nemec suggests. And don’t forget to bring along your sense of humor! When we take ancient and sacred sites too seriously there is much that we can miss!
The first page of, Spirals Within Spirals, went live on the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2009 because according to Nemec, “this time was honored in ancient Ireland, and it’s the way the Irish like to do things.” For our preoccupied 21st Century, each of the 9 pages of Spirals Within Spirals posted over 9 weeks on FaceBook, Twitter, Knowth.com, http://knowth.com/knowth-nemec1, the Author’s website, http://craniocean.com, other online locations, through February, 2010.
This event marks a milestone or midpoint for Nemec in the writing of his four book series, to be followed by, Awake and Asleep, and finally a book he describes as, “a total and delightful surprise!” At the end of Spirals Within Spirals, he washes his hands of it all and walks away, standing his personal, serendipitous discoveries upside down, to again challenge us to find out for ourselves!
James Nemec, LMT, CST-D, grew up on the ocean in South Florida, is an award winning playwright, and has also worked with very well-people of all ages, from infants to the elderly, as a licensed massage therapist and certified craniosacral Diplomat for more than 15 years. An innovator in his field, the Harvard Coop notes, “Nemec is celebrated for his ability to combine science and intuition to heal those previously beyond help.”
Knowth.com/CraniOcean Media
http://knowth.com/articles.htm
http://craniocean.com/media
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