How a journey to Maui led me back to a strange machine I'd acquired nearly a decade earlier.
Several years ago, my partner and I traveled to Maui.
I had two missions.
The first was botanical. I was searching for uniquely Hawaiian plants and ingredients that might someday find their way into a massage oil I was beginning to imagine.
The second was more unusual.
I wanted to learn about the historical roots of lomi lomi, the traditional Hawaiian practice of massage.
We eventually found lomi lomi scholars practicing on the east side of Maui who generously spent a great deal of time sharing their knowledge with us. Among the traditions they described was an ancient practice involving Hawaiian ali'i, or royalty.
As they explained it to us, when an ali'i came to power, an extraordinarily intensive form of lomi lomi could be performed by multiple practitioners over an extended period of time.
The idea fascinated me.
Imagine receiving a massage from two people working in coordinated movements. Even with four hands moving across your body, your brain can do a pretty good job of keeping track of where those hands are.
Now imagine eight or ten people.
At some point, they explained, the mind could no longer keep track of all those simultaneous sensations. The recipient entered what they described as a state of surrender. Within the tradition they shared with us, that surrender was associated with opening the "third eye" - and preparing the new ruler to see and lead differently.
Whether one interprets that spiritually, metaphorically or simply as a fascinating example of sensory overload, the concept stayed with me.
Could I somehow incorporate that idea into the massage oil I was developing?
That oil would eventually become Re-Zen.
An Old Machine Comes Back Into the Story
Nearly a decade earlier, while attending a quantum physics seminar, I had met several practitioners who used frequency-based approaches in their work.
One of them was retiring and made an unusual piece of equipment available to me.
It was called a Holopathic Quantum Modulator, manufactured by the late Theodore Baroody.
And unusual is an appropriate word for it.
The machine has wooden sides, plates, toggle switches, counters and large cylindrical dials. It looks a little like something you might expect to find in an old electronics laboratory - or perhaps as a prop in a 1950s science-fiction movie.
But it came with something that interested me even more:
four volumes of reference material.
From the bandstand, I could watch it happen.
A group of musicians would begin playing and people would start moving. Dancers responded to the rhythm. Faces changed. People smiled. A room full of individuals suddenly shared an experience.
You didn’t have to explain it to them.
They could feel it.
The music quite literally resonated with people.
At 15, of course, I wasn’t thinking about any of this in scientific terms. I was a young musician who loved playing music and loved seeing what happened when the right musicians, the right notes and the right audience came together.
But that experience planted a seed.
852 Hz.
The Holopathic Quantum Modulator I acquired from a retiring practitioner. Here I am using it with a bottle of water while experimenting with the setting I associate with 852 Hz
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