Interview With John McCabe, Author of Sunfood Living (Part II of II)

The following is the second and final installment of an interview with John McCabe concerning his book, Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health. Here he ventures beyond his own story and the story of writing this book, and goes on to explain the intentions behind Sunfood Living, and the need in today’s society for the movement that it promotes.

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You call Sunfood Living a “Resource Guide” and have been praised for its clarity and comprehensibility as an “Encyclopedia for Healthy Living.” Is it your intention for the book to be referred to as a reference book or to be read continuously from cover to cover? How do you imagine readers to use Sunfood Living most effectively?

I’ve heard from several people who say they have read it cover-to-cover. I’ll take it as a compliment that anyone did do it.

You never know how certain books will connect with people. Of course, you can’t control what people think of your book. It takes on a life of its own. I’ve heard people describe the book as a “Bible.” I think that might be a compliment.

I didn’t consider that the book was going to be read by people in places like Brazil, China, Australia, and India. But, that is what is going on. I’ve heard from people in those countries, and others. Authors today may want to consider that they are writing for a global market.

I think of the book as a reference book. I suspect that people would most likely read the first half of the book, and then use the resource guide in the second half to look up topics that interest them.

Sunfood Living at once explores both the environment and personal health. Did your interest in writing this book originally stem from one of these two subjects? Or did you anticipate the intimate connection between an individual’s food choices and the health of the environment from the beginning?

I had always been concerned about the environment. Even as a child I liked to plant trees, and I kept a vegetable garden going since I was first able to start using a shovel. As a boy I would go into the nearby woods to clean them of trash. I recently found out that the woods and meadows I hung out in as a child have all been cut down, and most of the area is a large parking lot. Specific trees have been planted, and they are wide enough apart so that a tractor lawn mower can get between them. The dirt pathways have been paved so that people won’t get their shoes soiled. It’s all so pathetic.

By the time I was ten years old I had pretty much concluded that I didn’t want to eat animals. I had no idea that other people avoided meat. I only started to tilt toward a plant-based diet after I saw a deer hanging from my neighbor’s back yard tree, where they had tied it up by its hind legs and slit open its neck to drain its blood. I was alone when I saw this, and it changed my life.

As far as the animal farming industry and the impact it has on the environment, when I was young I had no idea how much of harm animal farming was and is doing to the planet. Now there are many studies concluding that animal farming and all of its related industries cause more global pollution than all trucks, cars, and airplanes combined. The most common use of farmland throughout the world is to grow food for billions of farmed animals, not for people. The most common use of synthetic fertilizers is to grow the food for farmed animals. The fertilizers are the number one cause of dead zones that are now in every ocean. The fertilizers are also major players in the excessive microscopic algae growth that is killing sea coral around the planet. Sea coral support 25% of all life forms in the oceans, and all sea coral have either died, or are growing at stunted rates. The algae is also blocking light in the lakes, rivers, and oceans, which allows bacteria to grow out of control, which is killing all sorts of marine life. The bacteria feed on the sugars from the algae, and the bacteria also feed on the little creatures called polyps that make up the sea coral. Those are some levels of the damage being done by the animal farming industry, and by farms that are using synthetic farming chemicals. I am glad that I am not participating in the animal farming industry.

When we consider what people are eating these days, and what they treating as food, it is easy to make the connection between the health problems they are experiencing (obesity, diabetes, colon cancer, heart disease, arthritis, etc.) and the foods they are eating. This is especially true when you look at people who follow a plant-based diet, and compare them to those who consume whatever commercial culture is advertising as food. If it is advertised on television and radio as food, you can pretty much consider it to be junk food. Real food doesn’t need to be advertised. It is raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, and seaweeds that we should be eating. And not fast food and packaged stuff advertised as convenient, and especially not anything that contains synthetic dyes, flavorings, scents, preservatives, or other chemicals. Junk food makes your life inconvenient because consuming it leads to health problems.

As far as how the book happened, I can’t really pinpoint any one thing. I had written a book about the corruption in the medical industry. It was titled Surgery Electives: What to Know Before the Doctor Operates. That book got me to thinking of ways that people can maintain and improve their health so that they wouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to rely on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and surgery to make them healthful.
I began writing a book in 1994 that was all about the vegetarian diet. Over the years I would work on it a bit, then put it away. Eventually that book is what became Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health.

It wasn’t one thing that got me to write the book. It was many things. Life is a complex combination of intricate details that all play off of and impact one another. Sunfood Living connects the dots. Our health equals the health of wildlife and Earth. We are all connected. What you do each day impacts wildlife thousands of miles away. People should recognize that and adjust their lives accordingly to be a part of the solution rather than carry on being part of the disease we are calling global warming.

As the Foreword describes, this book is infused with ethical consciousness. In what ways do the ethics of global health become linked to politics? Do you see this relationship as productive or problematic?

We are all politicians. We are all campaigning for how we believe the world should be. We do this by our daily choices. We should start being what we want to see.

If we don’t change our ways very soon, we won’t have to worry about any of this. The ice caps will melt – they are melting. The ocean currents will change – they are changing. The ocean life will collapse – it is collapsing. When there are no sea creatures to support the circle of life of the land creatures, the land creatures will die. The nuclear power plants on the edges of rivers and oceans will flood. The world will be poisoned beyond anything covered in Al Gore’s documentary, The Inconvenient Truth. Massive extinction will take place – a massive extinction is taking place.

Is that a problem?

People need to become involved in their lives, in becoming part of the solution. The number one way humans interact with Earth is by what we eat. Change what you consume to be more environmentally sustainable.

In Sunfood Living, you present a system with which to approach the world: challenge, action, resolution. Why is this course of action important and what does it achieve?

I try to provide information that will educate people, both through my writing, through quotes I include, and through Web sources and suggested reading material.

The best way for getting people to act is to get them to understand. If they don’t understand something, they are not likely to act on it.

We are Earth and we are each other. We absorb things that are around us. There are substances constantly passing through our skin and bodies that then travel into other things. There is no separation of us and Earth. Thinking that we are separate from each other is fallacy. We are breathing in gasses, drinking water, and eating food. We are taking in wavelengths of light from Sun that are used by our bodies as nutrients. We are producing molecules that leave our bodies and saturate the people and things around us. If you look at us under a supercharged microscope, you can see that nothing in us is actually touching. There is space between the smallest substances. The energy fields of the planet are playing into the energy fields inside of us. What we choose to do impacts other things on subtle levels.

We are alive at an amazing time. We have the opportunity to transform ourselves and to transform the Earth into a much more healthful state.

You are achieving something with every choice you make. But, is it what you wish to be achieving? Are your achievements part of the solution?

You just touched on the fact that we are alive at “an amazing time.” Can you please expand on the particular reason for this book to be written now, for the world today? Are there any changes on a global level that you hope to see resulting from the distribution of Sunfood Living and other books on related topics?

If now isn’t the time to transform human culture to be more Earth friendly, than I don’t know what time it is.

I hope Sunfood Living turns people to a whole new level of health, a different way of dealing with their every day decisions, and gets people to set new standards of how we treat Earth and the web of life on Her.

And I hope Sunfood Living plays a part in getting us to restore and protect wildlife habitat so that we no longer have to worry about another creature or plant going extinct.

CLICK HERE to read Part I of the interview with John McCabe.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Sunfood Living: A Resource Guide for Global Health.

CLICK HERE to visit John McCabe’s new Sunfood Traveler web site, a simple and free guide to raw food and sustainability.

Interview with Mark Borax, Author of 2012: Crossing the Bridge to the Future

2012: Crossing the Bridge to the Future is an engaging personal narrative through Mark Borax’s apprenticeship with master astrologer William Lonsdale, who teaches him how to access a source of great power and creativity buried within the human soul.

2012 begins in August 1987 on the slopes of Mount Shasta as author Mark Borax witnesses the Harmonic Convergence. This famous astrological event sparked a 25-year countdown to 2012, the year that marks the “end of history” in the Mayan calendar. Borax tells of his apprenticeship with a master astrologer to study how the period between 1987 and 2012 can be used for a cosmic purging of negativity to release humanity’s core forces and restore universal balance. Borax and his fellow students discover truths about life after death, karma, reincarnation, past lives, human evolution, and the purpose of existence on Earth.

The following interview with Mark Borax gives an inside look into what inspired him to write 2012, how he became interested in astrology, who his mentors were and how they shaped his life, and what he hopes readers will learn from reading 2012.

CLICK HERE to order a copy of 2012.

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2012 is a unique title that holds appeal for different kinds of readers. Which audiences do you think respond most to the book? What will readers find?

I’m surprised by the diversity of responses I’ve received from readers since the book came out last month. I’m hearing from people in all walks of life, each of whom seem to find something different in the book. It’s quite striking—they might almost be describing twenty different books! Stockbrokers, artists, photographers, astrologers, people in the deep South, in the country, or in big cities, old and young, living many different lives in many different countries are emailing to tell me how the book is changing their lives. Many of them are folks who don’t necessarily know much about astrology or metaphysics, but are open to new ideas. People all over are responding excitedly to the book’s message of hope, to the main theme of our need to become fully embodied and fully human before transcending our humanity and departing the material world for higher planes. It’s very satisfying to me as author to see that my struggle to bring cosmic principles down to earth seems to be working.

What is the significance of the year 2012? What does it mean for different cultures and religions?

The Maya view 2012 as the coming of a new Sun, which marks the start of a whole new cycle of time-keeping. I think time is of the essence here. I haven’t studied the prophecies of all the different cultures, because my book presents a very here-and-now personal human being’s journey through these mysteries. Nevertheless, I believe we’re all being offered a new way to think about time, to conceive time, to use time, that isn’t so limiting. For our culture and many others who live in the present, the present is becoming more than the present. Obsolete ideas about how to use our lives, and about how life itself flows, how earth moves through time and space, are going to give way to radical new forms of perception.

Ultimately I see 2012 as a vital choice point in human evolution. We’re all being asked to find a life that honors our innermost truth, rather than living life at the expense of our inner truth. It comes down to asking yourself: What world am I creating with my thought forms and acts? Is it the world I truly dream of, or am I settling for less? What the hell am I doing with my life? Instead of being hamstrung by the dominant paradigm, can I dream some new dream here, and get to work on it, recruiting others who see similarly?

You are an astrologer by trade. Are there specific planetary events and physical hallmarks that will mark 2012? How is the universe preparing for this transition?

In March of 2010 the transcendent planets Alpha-Omega (Chiron) and Neptune come together in late Aquarius, a strong harbinger of the Aquarian Age. The Aquarian Age is where the slumbering consciousness of the collective awakens and realizes it has power to change things, power to redirect civilization along more enlightened lines. Alpha-Omega unbinds time and ushers multi-dimensional awareness into the normal perception of linear events. Neptune stretches the personal human ego to become more in service of collective evolution. When these planets conjoin in Aquarius, the low ceiling on species awareness that keeps us going around in circles is raised. High dreams flood into our normal consciousness.

Suddenly we’re aware of more than we used to be. Our vision of what we’re capable of as a mass organism expands, and this is very contagious. The more people band together to challenge the status quo, the more support we each get from the awakening Aquarian force of the collective.

Then, in 2011, Neptune enters Pisces, sounding a great collective cry for the human being to take its rightful place in the unfoldment of world policies and events. The machine-like existence that has replaced human beings in recent centuries will be challenged by the deeper need to speak up from the soul and be heard. This Cry for True Belonging will no longer be content to be swept under the rug, but will seek out its true place in the role of world policies.

Finally, at Winter Solstice 2012 a yod is formed with Jupiter at the point. A yod occurs when two planets, 60 degrees apart, each form a long pointer toward a third planet which is 150 degrees from both of them. Yod means “Finger of God,” and is the word for the pointer Jewish scholars use when studying the Sacred Texts. In this yod, Jupiter (Species Awareness) is hurtling into fresh territories of seeing and being that serve the living future, while Saturn and Pluto yank back hard, reminding us of everything in the way of change. This will create a powerful wrestling match between those visionaries who know the world is changing and all those who say it can’t be done. Evolutionary forces will wrestle with ego.

The purpose of these three planetary timings, in 2010, 2011, and 2012 is to create a three-stage upending of our limited assumptions of normality, and usher in a more optimal future. At the same time our species stretches toward inhabiting its higher consciousness, the low end of humanity will cry out for belongingness in a world that’s becoming very isolated from its own heart force. This drama of species alienation and isolation is going to play out to its fullest before giving way to something new. It won’t come easy, though. There’s always a price to pay. We have to be willing to sacrifice who we think we are, in order to become who we really are. We have to challenge our own assumptions. Most of all we have to get past archaic belief systems that pit this against that, you against me, all things divided up in opposition against all other things. The next five years will be a very juicy, frictional, and potent period on Planet Earth!

How do you interpret and understand the meaning of 2012? What does the bridge to the future look like?

In 1987 when I witnessed the Harmonic Convergence, I learned of the twenty-five year purging period from then to 2012. In order to bridge our time to the post-2012 future, we’re being asked to clear everything in the way of Truth. We have to purify. We have to be bold enough to face our fears and develop a heart-centered, mystical and very real way to care about this world we live in. Let’s face it—very few of us are living the lives we were born to. To usher in the optimal future for humanity, which awaits us on the other side of 2012, we must confront ourselves rigorously and get out of our own ways. I mean, what are we all doing here anyway, spinning our wheels, making money at the expense of the soul? How has humanity gotten stuck like a dinosaur in such a tar pit? Isn’t there a whole other way to be that uplifts the soul toward the rapture of being? To create a bridge to this future, we have to overcome deep set feelings of helplessness, underlying depression at not being able to live a life that matters. We have to get past our clinging to the idea that someone somewhere is better than someone somewhere else. We have to bust through the Trance of Normalcy that each day leeches soul force out of us, that leaves us drained and numb at the end of the work week.

What began your apprenticeship with Ellias Lonsdale? What about this teacher encouraged you to follow through with the entire apprenticeship?

In 1979 in Ashland, Oregon, for my twenty-fifth birthday a girlfriend got me a surprise astrology reading with a female astrologer who blew me away with the truth of her perceptions, and made me take a deep long look at the ancient art of astrology. In 1984, a later girlfriend, in Burlington, Vermont (called “Elizabeth” in the book) gave me my first astrology book, for my thirtieth birthday, which I studied for four years. At the end of that time my friend Susan (called “Sita” in the book) got a reading from Ellias, (called William then) which astounded me. I stood in line to get a piece of what she’d just received. At the end of that reading, soaked in tears, I got into my car and said, “I want to do for others what this guy just did for me.” Within two days I performed my first professional astrology reading. Ellias led me in a “graduate” course in Star Genesis, the new branch of astrology he was then birthing. I couldn’t get enough. For seven years we pushed the envelope of all that astrology had been. There was revolution in the air, in that little cabin under the redwoods that worked underground in me for twenty years, until I finally found a way to let the genie out of the lamp and spill the story, let others in on the mysteries we studied.

Ellias is one of those big men who carries an enormous resonance in the things he says. You get the feeling that his truths bubble up from some bottomless well of the ages inside him. It’s hard to resist the lure of those teachings at source point, when they come from such a profound place. I hope that the retelling of these mysteries in my own voice does them justice. I labored for six years of rewrite to get the manuscript right in this regard.

Also, and perhaps even more to the point, since the day we met, Ellias has stood guard over my right to take forever to become who I am inside. I’ve seen him do this for hundreds of others over the years. This is what he taught each of us to do—locate a center point, a soul source in each person that deserves to find its place in the sun, no matter how long it takes. No matter how many times through the years I came running to him for insight, he never gave up on me, never lost sight of this soul place. He taught me to paint pictures of the soul, to get past the endless posturing of ego, and expose the deeper version of who we each are. Every person has their own favorite ways of hiding out from themselves. At this point human nature has become a distorted fragmented version of something unified and whole that lies within.

Ellias became the champion of my inner nature. He held out in front of me a soul picture of who he saw me as. He holds out a clear depiction of the man I’d be if I was fully being who I was meant to be. This form of star work is addictive. It’s given me a powerful self-image to live up to, a magically real life to inhabit. No matter how long it takes, no matter how many backslides occur in me and you and all of our species, that stubborn wizard will not give up on humanity! It’s uncanny, how deeply he’s pulling for our race to win through its blindness, and become the species we were born to be. And he holds this picture in such a deep place that heaven and hell themselves could not move it. Could you walk away from a teacher like that?

What practices and teachings did Lonsdale encourage? Who were his teachers and mentors?

Ellias and Sara Lonsdale didn’t encourage any practices, so to speak. It was rather that they themselves were the embodiment of the teachings. The one thing they grinded into us, over and over, is the need to dig our heels into the dirt and release the vast creative force locked inside us. They hammered it into us that there was a soul purpose we had in first choosing to incarnate into these bodies. That each of us has a role to play in the Grand Design.

Ellias, along with his wife Sara—who was very instrumental to the teachings—lived and taught in a way that was positively infectious. Their beliefs were their lives, and everything they did partook of this. Cosmos was infused into earth, and life inseparable from cosmos. Whether you go far enough out into the stars, or plumb deep enough down into your own inner nature, you always get to the same place. The mysteries were brought down to earth, and as such, did not require any special practices to make use of them. Unless my whole life became the spirit practice, in other words, what good was any of it?

The Lonsdales’ belief in alternate planes of existence that coincide with our plane, was immovable, unshakeable, completely contagious and inspirational. That level of faith rubs off on you. Just to be around such devotion to the mysteries once a week gets into the blood and stays there. It got into me so deeply that it took twenty years before I could write about it.

As far as influences, Ellias was greatly influenced by the massive body of spirit work of Rudolf Steiner, who, along with Ellias’s dream of Atlantis, forms the main basis of Star Genesis. In mystery school we studied the twelve senses discovered by Steiner, and linked each to a different sign of the zodiac. Steiner had a vast incomparable intellect that ranged far and wide through physics, metaphysics, education, color theory, chemistry, economy, dance, theater and politics. His contributions to each of these fields were of genius quality, which is hard to fathom.

Ellias was also influenced by his personal work with his former teacher Ann Re Colton, a highly developed psychic who lived and taught in southern California. He also mentioned Sri Aurobindo occasionally. Then there were his two astrology mentors Marc Edmund Jones and Dane Rudhyar, whom he worked with closely for a short time in the 1970s. Beyond these key figures, there’s the usual gang of suspects from spirituality and metaphysics: Krishnamurti, Rumi, various historical Christian mystics, science fiction writers, philosophers, Herman Hesse, Gurdjieef, playwrights and filmmakers of various kinds. Ellias wasn’t just influenced by metaphysicians but by all kinds of writers, thinkers, and historians. He was also very shaped by 1960s spiritual vision, poets, musicians, Beats, and others.

What do you consider the most important things you learned during your apprenticeship? Could you have learned them any other way?

The key piece of my apprenticeship was the idea that the more important part of becoming enlightened is the human part, rather than the transcendent part. Many spiritual teachers get this one backwards, accenting ascension over simply being human. The Lonsdales taught us that it’s all about incarnation rather than transcendence—that in order to evolve we have to become more, not less, fully human. Over and over we kept coming back to the crying need to embody ourselves, to find a way to fully show up in the physical plane, rather than trading Earth for some higher plane. We probed the idea of a limitless source of power hidden inside even the most commonplace human being, which can remake the world. The best way to tap this source power is by daring ourselves to dream bigger, and to learn how each personal dream can link into a cosmic design.

I suppose I could have learned these things in other ways. I was already hot on their track through my personal studies of writing, art, music, love, sexuality, and metaphysics. But the fact is that just as Ellias and Sara were bringing a whole new form of star wisdom into the world, I was hungry for mastery, as a man, a spiritual seeker, and an astrologer. They were in the right place at the right time for me, and I rose to the fullest of my abilities to make use of their teachings.

It has been twenty years since your relationship with Lonsdale first began. How did you know that 2007 was the right time for a book about your spiritual apprenticeship?

I began conceiving this book way back when I was still in mystery school during the time periods in the book. In the years immediately following I tried, once or twice, to put everything into words, but it was too big and unwieldy. I wasn’t sure what story I was trying to tell—a karmic bugaboo that’s haunted me on and off during the years when I’ve picked up the pen. I tried again somewhere around 1995, but it didn’t come out right then, either. Then I took another crack at it in South Starksboro, Vermont, where I was about to become a father, in 2002. It took six years to go from that initial draft, which was later completed and thrown away, to a couple following drafts that also ended up being canned, before I was able to zero in on what became the final draft and published version. In the final years of rewrite, the more I sank into my story, creating and destroying and then composting down whole chapters, bit by bit separating the wheat from the chaff, the more I was captured by the link between 1987 and 2012. As I sifted my own personal experiences for meaning, a greater arc of history took shape in my mind’s eye, stretching even further back through my entire life, and the life of our species. Things we’d discussed in class took on new meaning. Certain statements of Ellias or myself or classmates began to haunt me. Atlantis and modern politics became linked, as I recalled the Lonsdales’ tale of our first fall from grace that set human karma in motion—the karma of the corrupt few lording over the many. I began to feel that I could draw these threads through from my own adventures as a young man, into some clear body of work that could be of service to readers currently striving to make sense of some of the same things.

How do you hope that reading about your journey will provide instruction and inspiration for readers?

There are two main ways my book is intended to work. Firstly, I met Ellias and Sara at a time of great turmoil in my life. The cosmic paradigm they offered me framed life and time in an elegant pantheon of planet gods and historical significance. They kept coming back to a sense of divine order. That cosmic design has fueled humanity’s crazy-quilt journey through the ages. They turned astrology into a fascinating star art with layer upon layer, dimension upon dimension. One of my aims with the book is to ignite the same force in readers that my teachers ignited in me. To inspire others to break out of modern apathy, numbness, isolation, and alienation, and take an active hand in the course of the future.

Secondly, any reader who is left inspired by my tale and hungry for more is welcome to contact me for a soul level reading, so they can receive the legacy of my apprenticeship in the form of deep counsel for their own life. Ellias taught me to champion the right of others to fulfill their place in the grand design, just as he championed mine. And so the cosmic tale of the book can leap off the pages and be of service in your own personal life.

Do you have any recommendations for readers who are inspired to begin or continue their own spiritual journeys in earnest?

I pass on Maestro Rudolf Steiner’s advice: for every step you wish to take to achieve psychic mastery, you must take three steps toward becoming a better human being. Early in my apprenticeship I stumbled upon this saying, which has been my approach to metaphysics and spirituality ever since. I’m firmly convinced that the purpose of magic and metaphysics is to make us more, not less, human. I learned from William and Sara the truth of what this means. In the last twenty years of applying this to my daily existence, it’s true I don’t always succeed. I still tend to get caught in my own karmic traps, and then freed. I’ve been spending less and less time in the karmic tar pits, lately, though, and have come to enjoy life more than ever, especially my role of fatherhood, which has become more satisfying to me than everything else I do. I love my little boy!

Apart from this, read Herman Hesse – his nonfiction is as good as or better than his more well-known novels, and Miracle of Love, by Ram Dass, and Autobiography of a Yogi, by Yogananda. Read anything you can by Rumi, and The Duino Elegies, by Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell. Seek out what the sages have said through the ages, but don’t settle for anyone else’s truth. Wrestle with those high concepts until you make them your own.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Mark Borax.

Great New Books Available This May

May has finally arrived, bringing the beginning of the North Atlantic Books Spring 2008 season. Our new books this month encompass a wide range of genres including metaphysics, anatomy, martial arts, business, and fiction. Enjoy!

To order, please visit www.northatlanticbooks.com

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The Fourth Perspective: A CJ Floyd Mystery
By Robert Greer

$14.95/$16.95 in Canada
Trade Paper
978-1-58394-223-9
392 pages, 6 x 9
Frog, Ltd.
On Sale May 6, 2008

The building of the transcontinental railroad provides a dramatic setting for murder in this lively thriller by Robert Greer, author of The Devil’s Hatband. When bail bondsman and bounty hunter CJ Floyd opens an antique store, the last thing he expects is to be fingered for murder. But that’s exactly what happens after an immigrant student tries to sell him a rare book. The book contains a hidden photograph as legendary—and valuable—as the Maltese Falcon. The seller quickly turns up dead in an alley, and CJ is the main suspect. Before he knows it, CJ finds himself on the dark side of a historical looking glass that has him following eccentric power brokers, museum curators, art dealers and collectors, and academics down a trail of greed and corruption as they all vie for a picture they’re willing to kill for. The Fourth Perspective is a fast-moving, full-dress whodunit based on the last great American railroad construction project and its priceless photographic history.
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Sacred Commerce: Business as a Path of Awakening
By Matthew and Terces Engelhart

$14.95/$16.95 in Canada
Trade Paper
978-1-55643-729-8
152 pages, 6 x 9
North Atlantic Books
On Sale May 6, 2008

Matthew and Terces Engelhart, the owners of Café Gratitude, a popular organic vegan restaurant chain in the San Francisco Bay Area and LA, offer Sacred Commerce as a blueprint for creating a business based on community and spiritual values. Matthew and Terces present the idea that love before appearances is the antidote to our spiritual, environmental, and social degradation. This book explores topics including mission statements, manager as coach, human resources as a sacred culture, and inspirational meetings. Integrating the concept of “Sacred Commerce” into business can provide both financial success and spiritual satisfaction. Sacred Commerce is the ideal mix of the personal and the practical—a guidebook written by people who have felt success, not just spent it.
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Yang Style Traditional Long Form T’ai Chi Ch’uan: As Taught by Master T.T. Liang
By Gordon Muir

$16.95/$20 in Canada
Trade Paper
978-1-58394-221-5
256 pages, 7 x 9-1/4
Blue Snake Books
On Sale May 13, 2008

Gordon Muir began his martial arts studies at the age of twelve, followed by years of serious study of a wide variety of disciplines including judo, kyokushinkai, karate, kempo, several kung fu styles, and kickboxing. Eventually he discovered the internal martial arts, which led to t’ai chi and Master T.T. Liang, renowned teacher of Yang style. Yang Style Traditional Long Form T’ai Chi Ch’uan is the culmination of the author’s longtime study of this style. It focuses on the revered traditional form rather than the more recently created short form, and describes in depth the type of movement t’ai chi strives for that distinguishes it from other martial arts. Numerous photographs and detailed descriptions showcase and simplify the movements, which include the traditional Yang stances, hand and arm positions, and moving and powering. Written in a simple, engaging style, the book is designed to help new students get started in this rewarding tradition and more advanced practitioners deepen their knowledge of it.
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The Gods’ Machines: From Stonehenge to Crop Circles
By Wun Chok Bong

$26.95 / $32.00 in Canada
Trade paper
978-1-58394-207-9
528 pages, 7-3/16 x 10
Frog, Ltd.
On Sale May 27, 2008

Based on Wun Chok Bong’s decipherment of prehistoric carvings and the application of mathematical measurements, The Gods’ Machines shows how “unknown” phenomena from Angkor Wat to Stonehenge to crop circles are actually powerhouses built by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization for tapping electromagnetic energy. The book traces the development of that civilization on Earth over 5,000 years, and reveals how all of these structures are aligned according to a universal formula. These fascinating theories not only explain our distant past, but also open the door to a future of power technology and space travel. The Gods’ Machines is a comprehensive, illustrated study of the extraterrestrial origins of megalithic structures, based on a provocative “stone angle alignment” theory and is certain to stimulate debate among readers interested in alternative history, ancient civilization, and extraterrestrial intelligence.
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Anatomy of the Moving Body: A Basic Course in Bones, Muscles, and Joints Second Edition
By Theodore Dimon, Jr.

$21.95/$25 in Canada
Trade Paper
978-1-55643-720-5
272 pages, 8 x 9-1/4
North Atlantic Books
On Sale May 27, 2008

By the author of The Undivided Self and The Elements of Skill, Anatomy of the Moving Body is a simple yet complete study of the body’s complex system of bones, muscles, and joints and how they function. Beautifully illustrated with more than 100 dynamic images, the book contains 31 lectures that guide readers through this challenging interior landscape. Each part of the body is explained in brief, manageable sections and topics include the etymology of anatomical terms; origins and attachments of muscles and their related actions; discussion of major functional systems such as the pelvis, ankle, shoulder girdle, and hand; major landmarks and human topography; and structures relating to breathing and vocalization. This second edition features all-new illustrations and is ideal for dancers and movement educators, students, therapists, as well as for practitioners of yoga, Pilates, martial arts, and dance.

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Great New Books Available This April

Hello. Talia Shapiro here, Publicity Coordinator for North Atlantic Books. All of our authors have been hard at work perfecting their latest masterpieces. I am proud to announce that we have a great selection of new books available this month. Please read on.

To order, please visit www.northatlanticbooks.com

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Harmonic Healing: A Guide to Facilitated Oscillatory Release and Other Rhythmic Myofascial Techniques

By Zachary Comeaux, DO

$22.95/$29.95 in Canada
Trade paper
ISBN: 978-1-55643-694-9
ISBN 10: 1-55643-694-7
160 pp, 6 x 9
On Sale April 8, 2008

In Harmonic Healing, Dr. Zachary Comeaux introduces Facilitated Oscillatory Release (FOR), connective tissue release techniques that use rhythmic motion as a component of manual therapy. The book reviews the role of oscillatory or vibratory work as an extension of other connective tissue techniques, explains the relevant physiology and the principles of wave propagation in tissue, and then provides illustrated introductory exercises, applications, and cases studies.
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The Intuitive Body: Discovering the Wisdom of Conscious Embodiment and Aikido - Third Edition
By Wendy Palmer

$17.95/$21.00 in Canada
Trade paper
ISBN: 978-1-58394-212-3
ISBN 10: 1-58394-212-2
224 pp, 6 x 9
On Sale April 8, 2008

The Intuitive Body draws on the principles of the non-aggressive Japanese martial art aikido and meditation and presents a fresh approach to cultivating awareness, attention, and self-acceptance. Wendy Palmer explores exercises from the Conscious Embodiment and Intuition Training program she pioneered, including connection movement, meditation, and breathing. These exercises can help the process of integration, of deepening and unifying the self, and learning to deal with fear and anger.
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2012: Crossing the Bridge to the Future
By Mark Borax

$16.95/$20.00 in Canada

Trade paper
ISBN: 978-1-58394-208-6
ISBN 10: 1-58394-208-4
248 pp, 6 x 9
On Sale April 15, 2008

2012 begins in August 1987 on the slopes of Mount Shasta as author Mark Borax witnesses the Harmonic Convergence. This famous astrological event sparked a 25-year countdown to 2012, the year that marks the “end of history” in the Mayan calendar. Borax tells of his apprenticeship with a master astrologer to study how the period between 1987 and 2012 can be used for a cosmic purging of negativity to release humanity’s core forces and restore universal balance. Borax and his fellow students discover truths about life after death, karma, reincarnation, past lives, human evolution, and the purpose of existence on Earth.
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The Complete Guide to American Karate and Tae Kwon Do
By Keith D. Yates

$18.95/$22.00 in Canada
Trade paper
ISBN: 978-1-58394-215-4
ISBN 10: 1-58394-215-7
201 pp, 7 x 9-1/4
On Sale April 29, 2008

The Complete Guide to American Karate and Tae Kwon Do is an Illustrated guide that discusses the origins of karate and tae kwon do, their philosophical underpinnings, and how they evolved in America. Keith D. Yates explains the difference between karate and tae kwon do, the requirements for earning a black belt (and the different kinds of black belts), the best style to learn for self-defense, the significance and effectiveness of forms, and how to find a legitimate school or instructor. This book also features inspiring short biographies of famous figures in American karate.
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Fresh: The Ultimate Live-Food Cookbook
By Sergei Boutenko and Valya Boutenko

$18.95/$22.00 in Canada
Trade paper
ISBN: 978-1-55643-708-3
ISBN 10: 1-55643-708-0
216 pp, 6 x 9
On Sale April 22, 2008

Fresh is a blend of Sergei and Valya Boutenko’s reflective accounts of their family’s journey from doctor predicted catastrophe to a self-prescribed, holistic approach to personal health. This book is a compilation of simple and delicious recipes with over two dozen remarkable full-color photos and a glossary of little known raw cuisine ingredients.
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CranioSacral Therapy: What It Is, How It Works
By John E. Upledger, et al.

$14.95/$16.95 in Canada

Trade paper
ISBN: 978-1-55643-695-6
ISBN 10: 1-55643-695-5
118 pp, 6 x 9
On Sale April 29, 2008

CranioSacral Therapy explains the gentle, hands-on method of evaluating and enhancing the function of the craniosacral system. This book combines short pieces written by a number of well-known practitioners and experts that explore different aspects of CST: what it is, what it does, how it heals, what the practitioner does during a CST session, CST’s relationship to cranial osteopathy and other healing therapies, and the wide range of medical problems that may be treated with CST.
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The Bardo of Waking Life
By Richard Grossinger

$15.95/$18.95 in Canada
Trade paper
ISBN: 978-1-55643-700-7
ISBN 10: 1-55643-700-5
224 pp, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
On Sale April 29, 2008

An avant-garde set of improvisational essays, Richard Grossinger’s The Bardo of Waking Life is a meditation on the Tibetan Buddhist bardo realm which, in popular culture, is viewed as the bridge between lives, the state people enter after death and before rebirth. This book examines waking life and its history and language as if it were a bardo state rather than ultimate reality, and thus seeks a context for life (and dreams). Bardo takes a new, probing approach to all the important questions of creation, destruction, and existence.
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Maximum Muscle, Minimum Fat: The Secret Science Behind Physical Transformation
By Ori Hofmekler

$16.95/$20.00 in Canada
Trade paper
ISBN: 978-1-55643-689-5
ISBN 10: 1-55643-689-0
157 pp, 6 x 9
On Sale April 29, 2008

Maximum Muscle, Minimum Fat focuses on the biological principles that dictate muscle gain and fat loss. Ori Hofmekler describes in simple terms how under-eating and fasting can trigger an anabolic switch that stimulates growth and rejuvenation; how to reengineer the body at the cellular level to burn fat and build muscles; and how to naturally manipulate the body’s hormones for rapid muscle fusion and faster fat breakdown.
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War Lessons: How I Fought to Be a Hero and Learned That War Is Terror
By John Merson

$15.95/$18.95 in Canada
Trade paper
ISBN: 978-1-58394-209-3
ISBN 10: 1-58394-209-2
133 pp, 6 x 9
On Sale April 29, 2008

In War Lessons, John Merson interweaves his own experiences in war with thoughtful assessments of how to prevent it. He highlights his personal voyage to understand why young people are drawn to war, how it changes those who fight it, why its destructive effects persist on both sides, how former enemies reconcile, and how soldiers want to be treated and remembered by the citizens who send them to war. War Lessons also offers strategies for young people to help the world reclaim its humanity through healing actions.

*All royalties from the book will be donated to a veterans’ service organization and a Vietnamese scholarship program.

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