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COVER STORY : Sampling the New Age : A One-Day Immersion in the Cosmic Realm

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It was the sort of thing every small-town, Midwestern mother fears when she packs her kids off to the Golden State, the land of fruits and nuts.

There this ex-Buckeye was, strapped into ski goggles outfitted with blinking lights, listening to bizarre electronic musical tones, all in an effort to have his brain waves tuned by a former chiropractor trying to tap this hayseed’s unconscious mind into the “collective unconscious of the Earth on the DNA level.”

It was an auspicious beginning for a one-day plunge into North County’s burgeoning New Age culture. From Rancho Bernardo to Solana Beach, from Carlsbad to Fairbanks Ranch, North County has become a minor Mecca for practitioners in the cosmic rather than earthly realm.

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A chakra tuning, an electromagnetic aura polarizing and a dive into a flotation tank are also on my day’s agenda. But now, Jeff Thompson at the Brain Waves Institute of Solana Beach’s Center for Total Health is explaining how his techniques combine with Jungian psychology to reconnect one’s cells to this planet.

All sorts of benefits can accrue from this, said Thompson. For example, he has run the sound of a woman’s voice saying, “I love myself,” through a musical sampler to slow it down 30 times and speed it up 30 times until it sounds like crickets chirping. The resulting noises, when played through headphones in a meditative state, will increase one’s self-esteem, he said.

Thompson, 42, uses more than $25,000 worth of equipment piled in a room that resembles the culmination of every 13-year-old boy’s gadget fantasies. Two keyboards, large speakers, a computer, two cassette decks and other stacked gear surround Thompson as he works. There’s even a padded table with built-in speakers that can make you feel like you’re standing in front of the bass amplifier at a Mettalica concert.

Thompson’s main goal is to “iron out disharmonic frequencies” by slowing down his client’s brain waves through the use of his musical compositions. He will do this in four sessions, ranging in length from 45 minutes to two hours and costing a total of $350. If you can’t come to his office to undergo the therapy, Thompson will sell you a series of four cassettes for $100.

The result, he says, will be better concentration and possibly even a spiritual awakening.

Thompson also claims that his techniques may be able to help a variety of medical problems caused by “disharmony” in brain wave frequencies. But, he adds, “it’s still too early in the research to say, ‘Yeah, if you’ve got a bad back, come in and we’ll fix it.’ ”

Thompson’s journey from 12-year-old musician to guru of sound took him to chiropractic school, where he became interested in holistic medicine. He began a chiropractic business in Virginia, but kept searching for other methods, figuring that “the more tricks you have in your bag, the more people you can get well.”

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He eventually connected his love of music to the body’s natural circadian rhythms and the rhythms of brain waves. His experimentation led to the development of his new system, which, he said, is so powerful it became his life purpose.

The next natural step, of course, was to come to California, because “Virginia is too conservative.” Now he sees clients for a variety of physical and emotional complaints, ranging from a desire for increased concentration during academic studies to very real emotional problems.

Next stop on my psychic tour: a chakra tuner in Carlsbad.

Chakras, it turns out, are the whirling vortices in the human aura that distribute auric energy. When one or more of these inflow points is disturbed or clogged, your energy can get out of whack. With me?

Jonathan Field, 40, a former Santa Monica policeman and personal fitness trainer, is working as a “guided healer and teacher” in Carlsbad--a sort of Mr. Goodwrench for your aura. He’ll clean and balance your chakras for $50 an hour, but says he won’t charge if you don’t experience a manifestation.

Field says he can get chakras back into whack by channeling any number of non-physical beings, including the “essences of the Earth and the sun,” which guide his own energy. Not that he needs much guiding. Field said he is actually an ancient healer, and has been doing this sort of thing in all of his 87 past lives.

Anyway, his guides, who speak to him in English, help him see the aura and chakras that may be causing the problems. Once cleaned and balanced, the chakras apparently will last another couple of dozen lives as long as their owner keeps on the path to enlightenment.

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In my case, he said, my upper chakras--those around my head, neck and chest--looked pretty good. Those lower body and sexual chakras, though, were pretty gummy, he said. Clean ‘em up, I told him.

Field begins his therapy by holding a crystal near the palm of the client’s hand so the client can feel Field’s energy flow through it and hit the palm. Once some kind of sensation manifests itself on the client’s palm (cold, heat, pressure, tingling), Field starts to build an “energy bridge.” This energy can stretch across the room or around the world. In fact, Field says, he has clients in other countries who can feel his energy as he stands in his living room.

Field doesn’t actually touch his client as he moves from head to toe, adjusting each chakra. Instead, he uses his energy and the motion of his hands to perform a kind of dental flossing of the vortices. It’s rigorous exercise, and after about 15 minutes, Field is perspiring heavily.

“Wanna hear some channeling?” he asks halfway through my treatment.

The channeled message--something about answers being within me--didn’t make much sense. But all was not lost. Toward the end of the treatment, Field gave me my own spirit guide to draw into my chest using my heart chakra.

“That guide will always be with you,” Field explained. “You can call on it whenever you need it.”

Just when I was feeling pretty good about my chakras, Carolyn Mein, a 39-year-old Fairbanks Ranch chiropractor, informed me that I was highly susceptible to electromagnetic energy fields.

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Mein uses transpersonal physiology, a science of her own invention, and crystals that have been painted, blessed and charged with energy by Nedrra, a spiritual healer and associate of Mein.

Mein said the combination of her science and Nedrra’s crystals help her boost the immune system of her clients, treat chiropractic problems and generally speed up healing. According to Mein, her techniques can eliminate the causes of “dis-ease” (the opposite of “ease” and a way to avoid using the word disease , which has legal implications). She charges $105 for an initial visit and evaluation and $45 for subsequent visits.

One of her tools in the fight against dis-ease is a pen-like object filled with kelp and minerals.

The kelp and minerals transmit positive energy to counteract the negative energy in problem areas of the body, Mein says. This energy is transmitted when she touches the pen to the affected regions. Mein said most of her practice is based on transpersonal physiology.

She also uses Nedrra’s charged crystals in working with a client. Nedrra, 38, specializes in seeing the colors and designs of a person’s aura, one’s personal template.

“I connect with the God source and this is what comes through me,” Nedrra explained.

It’s a skill she says enables her to create painted designs on crystal slivers that correspond to each person’s template. Luckily, the templates she sees usually match a design she has already created.

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This special ability happens to blend conveniently with Nedrra’s other occupation as a jewelry maker.

When one wears Nedrra’s “power pieces,” priced from $130 to $165 for tourmaline slices, auric energy is enhanced so one can feel revitalized, she says. Even the immune system becomes stronger, a fact Nedrra says is supported by Mein’s analysis of blood tests.

Mein also uses Nedrra’s designs as “cellular graphics polarizers.” Two or three of the crystals sandwiched between small, black disks are used to counteract the negative effects of the electromagnetic energy put out by copying machines, electrical wires and computers.

To demonstrate how this works, Mein sat me down in front of a personal computer, had me stretch my arm out straight, and asked me to resist as she tried to force my arm downward. She couldn’t make much progress, a fact I attributed to my he-man physique. But no, it seems I was only being protected by the cellular graphics polarizer sitting on the computer’s surge device, for when she removed the polarizer and leaned on my arm again, down went the arm.

Shaken by my susceptibility to electromagnetism and the knowledge that I am a 98-pound weakling after all, I was ready to move on to my next psychic experience.

This one sounded more earthbound: a massage and a dip in a warm flotation tank at the Desert Oasis Wellness Center in Rancho Bernardo.

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The centerpiece of Renald Stettler’s operation is the custom-made tank filled with water heated to body temperature. About 1,000 pounds of Epsom salts are dissolved in the water, which keeps the body floating on the surface. The floating and the soundless environment combine to deprive the brain of most of its normal sensory input.

But, before the dip, comes the massage.

Stettler’s wife, Michele, is an acupressure masseuse. That means she will poke and prod different areas of your body in an attempt to relax and release your emotional imbalances. The idea is to manipulate the body’s meridians--those corridors of energy that acupuncturists say control tension and emotion. To manage this, she applies pressure to various zones of the body. For example, she holds the neck in a vice-like grip that would make Mr. Spock proud. It actually feels good. Especially when she lets go.

As tank time approached, my thoughts turned to “Altered States,” the film in which William Hurt emerges from a covered flotation tank looking like Bigfoot.

At the Wellness Center, the rectangular tank is open and shallow--it is the room that is dark and silent. But Stettler is reassuring. Floaters, who pay $35 an hour for the experience, do not usually writhe in mental agony or confess to being Yankee imperialist dogs. Instead, they find their body parts talking back to them. After a few minutes, their eyelids seem to make loud scraping noises as they blink. Soon, a floater’s heart may be as audible as music through stereo headphones.

The sensation of floating in the highly mineralized water is like lying in a liquid bed free of gravity. The body is free to move in any direction. Bones and muscles seem to unwind. In the absolute darkness, floaters lose any sense of placement in relation to other objects. When the time was up, I crawled out of the tank feeling like a heavily salted but relaxed and invigorated corn on the cob.

MORE ABOUT NEW AGE

Publications:

The Light Connection, PO Box 579, Cardiff by the Sea, 92007; 944-1005. Free monthly tabloid publication specializing in information about New Age services in North County. Available at businesses specializing in New Age.

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Bookstores:

A number of bookstores have sections devoted to New Age material. Among stores specializing in the subject:

Phoenix Phyre Books, 704 North Highway 101, Leucadia; 436-7740.

Mystical Dragon I, 312 South Cedros Blvd., Solana Beach; 481-9141.

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