Soul's Code

In our mind, a spiritual resort is a place where you can go out of mind. A place that’s therapeutic not just for your body but your most over-worked and over-heated organ in this mad, mad world — your brain. A spiritual resort is a place that chills your brain organ to the point that it releases itself from its compulsion to think.

Here is our ranking of the top 9 resorts on North America’s West Coast, ranging from Vancouver Island in the north to Carlsbad, CA in the south:

1. Harbin Hot Springs, Middletown, CA: Three hours north of San Francisco, this new age community features the only real mineral hot springs in the vicinity of Napa Valley wine country. Equally noteworthy, it is the birthplace of a deeply-somatic therapy called watsu, a word conflated from “water” and “shiatsu”. Think Swedish massage meets reiki meets hypnosis trance — in water. Watsu is as powerful as it gets.

This year, for the first time, Harbin has opened the doors to these domes that look like they’re out of the movie, Dune, to outside guests. To book a room, go here.

Cost: $60 – $160 per night.

Fine print: Harbin is an out-there scene, not some yuppie weekend-massage spa — cell phones, computers, booze and drugs are verbotten.

2. The Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA: Call it the cradle of West Coast civilization. Founded in the 1960s, it was here that figures like Joseph Campbell, Abraham Maslow, Fritz Perls and an Episcopal priest-turned-Zen Buddhist named Alan Watts fused eastern mysticism with modern psychology. They seeded mega-trends ranging from Gestalt Therapy to Star Wars.

If physical place is the dominant force that shapes your experience then nothing compares to Esalen. Its sandstone cliff-hanger mineral baths are fed by a spring on the beach that in earlier centuries were a healing force for the coastal Esselen Indians. Today’s baths are open all night long, and nude lounging is welcome. Entranced by the moon, stars and breakers five stories below, visitors from around the world take full advantage of both options.

Cost: $105 – $180 per night.

Introducing a new Soul’s Code feature, A Book That Changed My Life. Name a book that changed Your life, and tell us how it did that for you in mind, body or spirit

BY KATY LEASK — Everyone should read this book. I’ll come out and say that loud and clear from the start. An Imperfect Offering is not a light read. Nor is it a pleasurable one, though there are moments of triumph and nobility against all odds that serve to both inspire and humble those who seek to better the world around them.

For those of us who thought ourselves well-informed about the world, we stand well-corrected as James Orbinski, past president of the humanitarian aid group Médicins Sans Frontières, leads us through a gripping memoir about the horror of war, the shocking indifference of many to the suffering of others, and a handful of people and organizations trying to do something about it.

BY VICKI WOODYARD — Life is a ballet, and although it looks and feels beautiful at times our toes are bleeding and we wake in the night with muscle cramps. All of this strenuous work creates beauty and it is well worth the effort. I have never danced as hard as when my small daughter was fighting cancer. She took ballet at the age of five although she had a large muscle missing from her right leg. It contained the tumor that had to be removed.

Have a chance to be featured in a Soul’s Code slideshow. The prize, other than Web glory, is a $50 giftcard to www.soundstrue.com

Does the notion of striking a tree pose in the beverage aisle of your local supermarket seem downright ordinary? Then read on.

Here at Soul’s Code, we want to see photos of you doing your mind-body spiritual thing — yoga, meditation, pilates, Tai Chai and so on — anywhere but where we’d expect.

The yoga studio? Forget it. Try the boarding gate at the airport.

This poetic affirmation is beautiful for those moments when you are feeling down about yourself, or whatever . . .We ALL have days like that!

SPECIAL TO SOUL’S CODE, ROB BREZSNY —I first wrote these in a book called, Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. Since then, they’ve become an online viral hit and we’re blessed to share them with the Soul’s Code community.

This text is a sacrament with a spiritual spin: it invites you to make a contract to “marry yourself” — that is, allow a complete intimacy with your day-to-day experience, and essence:

The first in a seven-part SOUL’S CODE series about Codependence

Are you, or have you ever been, a codependent person?

co-de-pend-ent [koh-di-pen-duhnt] – adjective

1. of or pertaining to a relationship in which one person is physically or psychologically addicted, as to alcohol or gambling, and the other person is psychologically dependent on the first in an unhealthy way.

BY DAVID RICKEY and PAUL KAIHLA — That’s the standard dictionary, or in this case Wikipedia, definition. Take out the argot about addiction, and codependency can be summed up with this plain phrase: a mutually-parasitic bonding.

Part 2 of 7 in a Soul’s Code series about codependence

BY DAVID RICKEY and PAUL KAIHLA — In the Disney movie, The Parent Trap, a pre-tabloid child star named Lindsay Lohan manipulates a reconciliation between her on-screen, estranged parents (played by Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson). Yes, it’s a romantic comedy. But this charming film is also a case study of how codependence can take root.

When we ask each other in the Starbucks line-up why Lindsay in real-life has so many addictions, affairs and abuses, it’s the same as asking: where does codependence come from?

Part 3 of 7 in a Soul’s Code series about codependence

BY DAVID RICKEY and PAUL KAIHLA — In our description of the Stage 1 of codependence we talked about how common it is for people who had childhoods with an abusive, dysfunctional or weak parent to carbon-copy that dynamic in adult relationships — or compensate for it.

As it happens, both of the 2008 presidential candidates fit the mold with their fathers. Barack Obama (in the B&W photo with his mother, step-father and half-sister) never really knew his father, except by myth.

Part 5 of 7 in a Soul’s Code series about codependence

BY PAUL KAIHLA — I grew up with a mental illness, my mother’s.

That’s not a very funny thing to say, but it is a really codependent thing to say.

My mother developed schizophrenia when I was a young boy (in the image at left, with parents). The lone psychiatrist in the small, remote factory town we lived in may have been as disconnected as my mother was at times: he prescribed her amphetamines.

The standard treatment for schizophrenia is to administer drugs that tamp down the patient’s dopamine receptors — and an over-active mind that crosses a line into delusional thinking and auditory hallucinations. Amphetamines would have the opposite effect.

Part 6 of 7 in a Soul’s Code series about codependence

BY DAVID RICKEY — From a psychological perspective, codependence is an issue of inappropriate boundaries.

The codependent person has difficulty experiencing adequate separation. As Paul Kaihla describes in the previous installment, you are so psychically plugged into someone else that you experience anxiety any time that person—your partner, mother, brother, lover, whomever—is suffering, or you’re afraid they will suffer.