I attended the Whole Life Expo in San Francisco the weekend of September
5-7. Attendance at this latest Expo was much lower than previous Expos.
One reason for this may be that the Fall Expo is usually held in late
October, but was rescheduled to early September because the promoters
are holding a Whole Life Expo in Chicago, in late October. Another factor
may be that there is too much repetition in the speaker set - after you
have been to a few Expos, you look at the program guide for the next one
and think it's nearly the same as the last.
Side note: the 1998 Whole Life Expo in nearby San Jose, usually held in
February, has reportedly been cancelled, and there is only one Whole Life Expo
for San Francisco, currently on the published schedule for next year (April
1998).
I attended two talks at the Expo. The first was a paid workshop by Jacob
Lieberman, who is well known for his work regarding the effect of light
on health (and color therapy). I had high hopes for that talk, as I had heard
tapes of his previous (a couple of years ago) talks at the Whole Life Expo.
Unfortunately, Lieberman's talk was a very big disappointment for me.
The message of his entire talk could be summarized as: to find (self-)
healing, you must live in the present. That is actually a spiritual message
and philosophy; however, Lieberman did not talk of it in those terms.
If you divorce it from spirituality, "living in the present moment" becomes
a thin subject for a talk that is supposed to last 90 minutes. Instead
of spiritual matters, Lieberman talked about "quantum fields" in the style of
Deepak Chopra. I described the talk to a number of people as "Jacob Lieberman
plays Deepak Chopra".
By the way, I have nothing against Deepak Chopra. My complaint here is that
I prefer a more direct approach to spiritual subjects, and I paid for the
Lieberman workshop thinking he would talk about light (a minor topic in his
talk). It seems that others were disappointed as well - several people
walked out of the paid workshop ($15-20) before the half-way point.
The other talk I attended was by Aajonus Vonderplanitz. The notes for that
talk will be in a separate article. Vonderplanitz is a nutritional counselor
who has helped many people recover from serious illnesses, by putting them
on a raw, high-fat, non-vegetarian diet.
Overall, this last Whole Life Expo was a disappointment, and the thought that
there might be only one next year, does not bother me at all. One good
Expo is better than two mediocre ones...
Notes for Internet:
1) The notes for the talk by Aajonus have not been typed in yet. I hope to
get to it this week but cannot guarantee it, as I have many other things
going on now as well. It might be next week before any notes are posted.
2) As Aajonus promotes a decidely non-vegetarian diet, those notes will be
posted ONLY on the raw-food list, and not on veg-raw. After they are posted
on raw-food, I will post a short note on veg-raw, advising that the material
is available, and it covers non-vegetarian topics. I will e-mail a copy of
the notes, to anyone who is on veg-raw but not on raw-food, and who requests
a copy of the notes.
3) I will not bother typing up/posting the notes from the Lieberman talk -
it is not worth the effort.
4) My posting rate on all lists will be low for the next few months. I have
a lot of projects going now, and need to focus on other matters for some time.
5) Note on a different Expo, the possibility of another SF-LiFE Expo next
year (1998). We are now discussing it internally, and I might have an
announcement later this month, or in October, i.e. whether it is go/no-go
for another SF-LiFE Expo in 1998.
Regards,
Tom Billings
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