Just the place to put those auras in a spin

The vast floor of the first yoga expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center over the weekend was a bazaar of spiritual products hawked to the masses by doctors, nuns, yogis and 21st century quacks.

Befitting the times, these spiritual healers have gone high tech; the more than 400 booths offered a hybrid of technology and pseudotechnology married with ancient traditions from the East, packaged and priced for soul-starved, stressed-out, overworked urban dwellers.

Through the weekend, as Indian judges presided over the first major yoga asana (posture) championship held in the United States, visitors prowled the booths, searching for healing.

At the “pranic” healing booth a woman scanned customers’ auras on a PC. Ten dollars for a pre-healing image. Ten dollars for the healing. And $10 for an after-healing image. Glossy postcards of auras and unhealthy chakras spewed from a high-grade printer, transforming customers’ auras into painterly swirls of color as beautiful as National Geographic photos of Mars. (Save it! Take it home and put it on the fridge!)

Near the computer three pranic healers danced in a slow trance before customers who sat, eyes closed, palms to the skies. The healers cleaned the customers’ chakras, rubbing and swirling the air, spraying their own hands with lavender as they became sullied with psychic gunk. At their feet were plastic bowls of salt water to purify between healings.

Asked one expo visitor, Do people ever come in with auras so healthy they don’t need to be healed?

“Generally, everyone’s aura collects a little bit of stuff every day,” said Wendy J. Scott, the aura scanner. “Unless you are living on a Tibetan mountaintop, of course.”

A nun dressed in a burgundy robe, a saffron silk shirt and running shoes surged in, offering healing with her “etheric” healing tool, a “meditrans Vajra Weaver.”

Whoa. Let’s not mix modalities, said Scott. “There’s a lot of energy here. Could you stand away from the computer, please?”

Next aisle over, three women sat motionless in banquet chairs, their bare feet resting on silvery panes of glass, their hands holding baubles shaped like giant lightbulbs. A cord connected the bulbs to some kind of electricity. “The Body Charger,” read the banner above them.

“Is this real?” asked one passerby.

Another scribbled a note on a pad.

“Are you from the FDA?” asked Glenn Frazin, one of the men running the booth. “Because if you are, you have to tell me.”

Participants were given a dental cup of spring water (to enhance the effects of the charger). With the flip of a switch a zap of electricity tingled through the wrists, up the arms. “Lift up one foot if it is too much,” said Zann, a petite woman in a floor-length tie-dyed dress who administered the charging.

After 20 minutes of tingling, Zann flipped the switch off. She gave participants a hug and another glass of water and sent them on their way, some more woozy than others.

The form for purchasing a Body Charger warned that the apparatus is for “experimental purposes only.” But Frazin has ambitions for the Body Charger. Dreams of expansion.

“We are thinking of setting up centers,” he said. “Like clubs. It’s never been done before.”

Near the back of the hall was a pyramidal structure of white metal tubes. On top was an intricate three-dimensional gold pattern. Crystals, magnets and colored gemstones were lashed to the tubes. This is a scale model of the great pyramid, explained Ani Erma, an American Buddhist nun who lives in a monastery in Sedona, Ariz.

Inside the pyramid were two chairs covered with burgundy and gold. A cord looped from beneath the chair coverings and connected to earphones and another intricate geometric form.

“It’s a direct connection to the god within us,” said Ani Erma.

Scott Valentine stepped into the pyramid and donned the earphones.

“Leave the pack outside, please,” said Ani Erma.

He closed his eyes and let himself float off into a world of Tibetan gongs, bells, mantras and monks chanting in his ears. Twenty or so minutes later he emerged, a beatific smile on his face.

“How do you put it into words?” he said, launching into a stream-of-consciousness attempt to convey the otherworldly. “A heightened sense of awareness. Almost an opiatic effect. Electromagnetic flow. Occasionally a jolt. Detachment from my physical side.... “

“That’s it!” said Ani Erma. “That is exactly right!”