Richmond IONS Meeting, March 19, 2016

Featuring a Talk by Krista Springer

“Moving from Mental Mind Chatter into a State of Relaxed Beingness.”

krista springerOur March program will feature a talk and experiential presentation by Richmond-based sound healing therapist, Krista Springer. Sound healing, both with vocal tones (sometimes referred to as toning) and with a variety of musical instruments, is a very powerful healing modality that very few of us have directly experienced.

Through Krista’s unique and versatile voice, along with various instruments, individuals are invited during this experiential presentation to move away from the day to day stress and chaos into a place of relaxation and inner peace.

Quieting the mind and body, while at the same time facilitating mental and physical restoration, allows us to return to a state where we can then bring and manifest that which we have received into the now. Through taking time daily to quiet the mind and body and moving into a place of inner peace we can actually accomplish more of that which we are trying to achieve in our lives.

Participants are encouraged to bring any personal intentions or concerns to hold or contemplate within the energetic vibrations of this sound experience.

At the end of the program there will be a brief time of silence and then time for those who would like to share any thoughts or feelings they may have had in regards to the presentation.

About Our Presenter:

Krista Springer is a certified sound healing practitioner and a certified hands-on integrated energy therapy practitioner (IET). Krista is an accomplished multi-eclectic musician, singer, song writer and composer.

She incorporates both western and eastern instruments, such as Tibetan bowls and gongs, along with the human voice as a healing tool in her practice, and conducts a healing practice under the name of Bio-Energetic and Holistic Therapeutics.

Richmond IONS Meeting, February 20, 2016

Featuring a talk by Richmond nutrition and vitality coach Sally K. Norton

“Dietary Paradox or Evidence?”

Richmond nutrition and vitality coach Sally K. Norton will discuss how dietary myths are hurting your health and what you can do about it.

Fat will give you a heart attack, and vegetables will protect you from disease, or so they say. Think again.

Is kale really your best friend? Could a healthy habit like green juices an smoothies make you sick?

Get some answers during our meeting.

Richmond IONS Meeting, January 16, 2016

20th Anniversary Celebration

Featuring an appearance, via Skype, by Apollo 14 Astronaut and IONS Founder Dr. Edgar Mitchell, and a talk by Richmond Neurologist Anna Hristova, M.D. (“Dr. Ani”)

Edgar Mitchell, IONS• A Celebration of Central Virginia IONS Community Group’s 20th Anniversary a Skype appearance by Dr. Edgar Mitchell, IONS Founder and Apollo 14 Astronaut, to help us commemorate and celebrate the 20th Anniversary and Birthday of our Richmond and Central Virginia IONS Community Group, “born” in January 1996.

We are especially thankful for this opportunity since few community groups endure this long and continue to enjoy the broad base of community support ours has. That itself is exciting, gratifying and worth celebrating, and we are doubly excited and gratified that Dr. Edgar Mitchell, IONS’ distinguished founder, will join us on this happy occasion.

Anna Hristova, Richmond IONS• A talk entitled “The Coming Era of the Cosmic Human,” by Richmond neurologist and spiritual philosopher, Anna Hristova, M.D. (“Dr. Ani”). Dr. Ani’s talk will focus on exciting new developments in science and spirituality and the interface between them that signal the dawn of a new era, one she refers to as the era of the cosmic human.

She will explore with us some of the anticipated breakthroughs of this new era, such as how to discover and master the universal energetic matrix, how science, philosophy, religion and other institutions are likely to change, how human consciousness and human potentials are likely to expand, and how we can integrate this new knowledge into our own lives and become transformed from citizens of Earth to citizens of the Galaxy and larger Cosmos.

Dr. Ani is back by popular demand, and we can scarcely imagine a more fitting speaker and topic to launch our second twenty years.

About Our Presenters:

Dr. Edgar Mitchell was an Apollo astronaut and the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14, which landed on the Moon on February 5, 1971. The transformational experience of space travel and walking on the Moon inspired Dr. Mitchell to dedicate his life to exploring the frontiers of human knowledge, consciousness and potential here on Earth.

With that objective in mind, he founded The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in 1974 and has been its central and most inspiring figure and chief ombudsman ever since.

Anna Hristova, M.D., popularly known as “Dr. Ani,” is a Richmond area neurologist with 25 years of practice experience and training in some of the best universities in the USA and abroad.

As a neurologist, she is trained to diagnose and treat disorders which result from abnormalities in the brain, spinal cord and remainder of the central nervous system. She also has 30 years of esoteric training and practices on three continents. She teaches how science and fate can merge.

Richmond IONS Meeting, December 12, 2015

Featuring a Talk by Tom Coates

“Peeling Away Layers of the Onion – Soul Stories Lost and Found.”

Our December 12 program will feature a talk by Tom Coates, our group’s only still-active original member. His talk will mark the 240th monthly program of our Richmond area IONS Community Group and pave the way for our 20th anniversary celebration in January 2016. Music will be provided by Dan O’Neal.

Tom’s theme will be “multidimensional explorations into who we are, what we are doing here, and how we create and manifest the world we want.”

As his program title suggests, Tom will use what he refers to as “soul stories,” drawn from his own experience and from his lifelong fascination with and study of the human soul, to inform the subject. And, in keeping with the season, those stories also will include a unique rendering of the life of Jesus and the soul which gave rise to his remarkable life, gleaned from many years of channeling inquiries and guidance.

This is a version of the Jesus story no one is likely to have heard before and underscores that his life was even more extraordinary than commonly believed.

We live in a period of intense transition, one in which many of our most long-held and cherished assumptions about ourselves and our world are being swept away, and one in which it often seems the only constant is rapid, unrelenting, unexpected, unforeseeable, dramatic change.

To help ground us and get us through this topsy-turvy cycle, the program will conclude with a group exercise designed to assist all present to rediscover, reawaken and reconnect with their Authentic Self, the true identity hidden within each of us, and to integrate and sustain that Self through and beyond this sea of change in which we are now immersed. As always, Tom promises some secrets known only to a few will be revealed.

About Our Presenter:

Tom Coates is a Richmond-based lawyer who has represented numerous spiritually oriented and public interest groups throughout his career. He was a co-founder of Richmond’s Ekoji Buddhist Sangha in 1985, and has been a member and contributor of the Richmond IONS chapter since its formation in early 1996.

In his spare time he enjoys reading, creative writing, painting, woodworking, alpine skiing, biking, backpacking, sailing, time travel, metaphysics, and relaxing with his family at their ancient Outer Banks beach cottage or their Appalachian Mountains retreat.

He still reports his most significant unfulfilled ambition of this lifetime is to make love to an extraterrestrial female, preferably of Pleiadean or Sirian origin.

Richmond IONS Meeting, November 21, 2015

Featuring a talk by Ray Jarrad, Tim Taylor & Linda Browne

Program Title: “Rediscovering Atlantis, Its Fate and Unique Healing Energies.”

Our November program will feature a talk by Northern Virginia and Maryland Atlantean researchers and healing practitioners, Ray Jarrad, Tim Taylor and Linda Browne.

Each of our presenters has been fascinated by Atlantean lore throughout their adult lives, and each has researched it extensively and encountered what they have interpreted as other-lifetimes or other-lifetime connections in Atlantis.

Aided both by their objective research efforts and their subjective encounters of Atlantean lifetimes, they have attained an extraordinary depth of knowledge about Atlantis.

They also have rediscovered what they believe are Atlantean healing techniques and energies, and will present their hypothesis that our current cycle of intense transition and expansion is fostering a re-awakening of these extraordinary energies within all of us.

Their presentation will be divided into two segments. The first will explore Atlantis, its culture, fate and legacy. The second will demonstrate the Atlantean healing techniques our presenters have rediscovered and put into practice, and all those present who wish to will have an opportunity to experience them first-hand.

About Our Presenters:

Ray Jarrad resides in Northern Virginia, is a former Naval Officer and is presently employed as an IT Project Manager for the State Department. He holds three masters degrees – in International Relations, Education and Business Administration – and he has amassed over a thousand hours in post-graduate study programs.

He has studied a variety of Reiki modalities, is a master in Usui and Tibetan Reiki, and has, in his fourteen years of Reiki practice, developed his own blend called “Ray’s Radical Reiki,” which includes Atlantean energies he has channeled and Atlantean crystal skull energies.

Tim Taylor resides in Northern Virginia, works in the accounting division of a trade association and has a strong avocation in alternative healing modalities.

He is a Reiki Master, and also a master in Christa and Theta healing techniques. In more recent times he has incorporated Atlantean energies and techniques into his healing practice, which were channeled and downloaded to him several years ago.

Linda Browne, M. Ac., L. Ac., Dipl. Ac., resides in Potomac, Maryland, where she maintains a healing practice using a range of modalities and techniques including acupuncture, colorpuncture, chakra balancing, Access Consciousness Bars, plus her own Atlantean healing techniques.

Linda earned her Master of Acupuncture degree from the Maryland University of Integrative Health, in Laurel, Maryland, is board certified in acupuncture by NCCAOM, a NADA Certified Detoxification Specialist, and a certified Access Consciousness Bars and Body Process Facilitator. Her husband Alec and five-year-old daughter Eve were both integral parts of her lives in Atlantis.

Richmond IONS Meeting, October 17, 2015

Featuring a talk by Nick Theo

“Soul Astrology – The Astrology of Self-Discovery.”

Our October program will feature a talk by Virginia Beach astrologer, teacher and regular contributor to the A.R.E. blog, Nick Theo.

Popular Western astrology tends to focus on the interpretation of personality and events. However, as we, as a culture, rediscover our spiritual foothold, we need to reexamine astrology’s true intent.

Astrology’s true role is meant to be a tool for spiritual awareness. Edgar Cayce and several other key New Thought thinkers in the 20th Century reintroduced to us the concept of spiritual purpose.

Thus, the interpretation of your birth chart can indicate what your soul chose to experience in this life. Your chart shows your talents and experiences, and can point you towards a way for you to fulfill these goals by using your free will.

Soul astrology is not a predictive method, but rather, a method that examines your potential expression. You will learn how astrology can be used as a helpful tool for self-discovery.

We are living through a period of intense transition. Many people have met with life altering changes from personal loss through relationships, homes, or jobs. In the second part of the talk, Nick will review and then explain how the current astrological aspects and transits are affecting us individually and as a society.

About Our Presenter:

Nicholas Theo, who works in Norfolk, VA, is a program manager for the UK Alef Trust (www.aleftrust.org), and has done work for organizations including A.R.E. and Atlantic University.

He was raised with the Cayce materials and his interest in astrology started as a teenager. Because the Cayce readings on astrology consistently emphasize the importance of using astrology as a tool for self-discovery and understanding rather than as a primarily predictive system, over the years, his interest in astrology evolved into a side vocation with focused research on the practical application of soul astrology (www.SoulAstrologer.com).

Since 1980, Nick has read charts professionally for individuals and organizations worldwide. In addition, he lectures and teaches in the US and Europe. He is a regular contributor to A.R.E.’s blog at EdgarCayce.org/blog, has an astrology column in Canadian-based Open Roads magazine, and his articles are regularly translated and distributed in China.

Richmond IONS Meeting, September 19, 2015

Featuring a Talk by Dr. Elena Mustakova-Possardt

“Can We Experience Healthy Lives in Our Troubled World?”

Our September program will feature a talk by Arlington author, clinical researcher, developmental psychologist, and spiritually oriented psychotherapist, philosopher and metaphysician, Elena Mustakova-Possardt, Ed. D., LPC.

Her talk will focus on and explore the multitude of existential, metaphysical, moral and spiritual challenges we face in the modern world that often, if not surmounted, impede, impair or undermine our efforts to build healthy lives for ourselves, our families, and our local, regional, national and international communities.

More and more we recognize that our modern world is creating the context for what the World Health Organization has identified since the year 2000 as a Global Social Breakdown Syndrome. This syndrome is ubiquitous and cross-cultural. No socio-economic group, no matter how privileged or well-heeled, is beyond its reach or immune to it.

While we see its most extreme forms today in places like the Middle East and parts of Africa, we also see its effects across Europe and the United States at individual, community and societal levels.

Dr. Mustakova will examine with us the implications of understanding a healthy life on several levels: physiological coherence, as measured by coherent heart rhythms; relational coherence, as measured by coherence of relationships; and societal coherence, as measured by a systemic “social health” approach to creating a framework for mental health and well-being for all.

She brings a unique focus on the nexus between mindfulness as a path to health and dialectical historical understanding as a path to personal empowerment and well-being in an age of anxiety. Dr. Mustakova is in great demand for speaking engagements both in the U.S. and abroad, and we are very pleased and fortunate to have her as our September 19 guest speaker.

About Our Presenter:

Dr. Elena Mustakova-Possardt is an Arlington-based psychotherapist and native of Bulgaria who emigrated to the United States at 29. She has taught clinical psychology and related subjects at five universities in four countries (Zimbabwe, Switzerland, Bulgaria and the U.S.).

Now she devotes herself full-time to private practice and has over fifteen years of clinical experience with individuals, couples and families dealing with anxiety and depression, relational dynamics, addictions, and severe mental illnesses.

As a scholar and educator she has authored Critical Moral Consciousness: A Study of Morality in a Global Historical Context (Praeger, 2003), and recently co-authored a volume entitled Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era. See www.elenamustakova.net for her full bio.

Richmond IONS Meeting, August 15, 2015

Featuring a talk by Douglas Kinney

“Exploring Heaven and the Afterlife.”

Our August program will feature a talk by Silver Spring author, researcher, Newton trained LBL (Life-Between-Lives) therapist and blogger Douglas Kinney.

What (if anything) happens to us when we die? Does some aspect of our consciousness continue? Is there a soul or an afterlife? Is heaven real? Is reincarnation real? These questions and more are the focus of Douglas Kinney’s seminal book, Frontiers of Knowledge: Scientific and Spiritual Sources for a New Era, and will be the focus of our August program.

Organized religions address these subjects as well, but most offer no empirical information about them.

Douglas Kinney’s educational, professional and career background is in science, engineering and systems analysis,
and he approaches these seemingly unapproachable subjects from these perspectives.

Before embarking on his quest to find answers to life’s seemingly unanswerable questions, Doug spent many years working as a systems analyst for Office of the Secretary of Defense, then for Northrop Grumman and other defense contractors, and finally for Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

Doug’s scientific and analytical grounding informs his approach to these subjects and brings to it a seldom seen degree of credibility. Doug’s hypothesis is that through systematic analysis and integration of various information sources, including NDEs, LBL accounts, past-life accounts and others, we now have available to us substantial data and ever greater insights about the afterlife, the existence and nature of souls, the “sociology” of the soul realm, the purpose of incarnating on a physical plane, etc. If these subjects are ever to be demystified and de-woo wooed, it will take people like Douglas Kinney to do it, and we are very pleased to have him as our August 15 guest speaker.

About Our Presenter:

As mentioned above, Douglas Kinney’s educational, professional and career background is in science, engineering, and systems analysis. He spent many years working as a defense systems analyst and engineer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Northrop Grumman and other defense contractors, and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

His spiritual background includes being ordained as a New Thought (Religious Science) minister, a certified spiritual hypnotist in past-life and between-lives-regression, and a Newton-trained LBL therapist. He has authored two books, Frontiers of Knowledge: Scientific and Spiritual Sources for a New Era and Framework of Reality: Understanding Our Subtle Spiritual Nature.

Richmond IONS Meeting, July 18, 2015

Featuring a Talk by Lillie Leonardi

“A Field of Angels.”

Our July program will feature a talk by Pittsburgh author and former law enforcement professional Lillie Leonardi, author of three books, entitled In the Shadow of a Badge: A Memoir About Flight 93, A Field of Angels and My Spiritual Homecoming, plus The White Light of Grace: Reflections of a Spiritual Intuitive, and Messages from the Plane.

As of September 2001, Lillie Leonardi had been a law enforcement professional for nearly twenty years, first as a Pittsburgh police officer for more than 15 years and then, starting in 1998, as a community affairs liaison officer with the FBI. In that capacity with the FBI Lillie was a first-responder on 9/11 at the Flight 93 crash site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

What she witnessed and encountered there – literally, a host of angels or angelic-like beings of light securing and protecting the Flight 93 crash site as if it were sacred ground – changed and transformed her life forever, and the many-layered mystical and spiritual aspects of that experience are explored and processed in each of her three books.

Lillie will share her experiences of that day and those which followed with us, as well as the multitude of ways in which those experiences have changed her perspective and altered the course and trajectory of her life.

Lillie’s emotionally riveting account offers profound lessons for all of us, and we are deeply grateful to have her share her story with us.

About Our Presenter:

Lillie Leonardi is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and continues to reside there today. After nearly thirty years in law enforcement, first with the Pittsburgh police department and then with the FBI, she resigned in 2010 to dedicate her full time and attention to processing and sharing her 9/11 experiences.

Lillie has received much acclaim for her three books about her experiences, and has been a featured guest on many television and media talk shows to discuss them.

Richmond IONS Meeting, June 20, 2015

Featuring a talk by PMH Atwater

“Proof of God in the Near-Death Experience.”

Our June program will feature a talk by world renowned Charlottesville author and NDE researcher, PMH Atwater, on her most recent book, entitled Dying to Know You – Proof of God in the Near-Death Experience (September, 2014).

After publication of Near-Death Experiences, The Rest of the Story: What They Tell us About Living and Dying and Our True Purpose in 2009, Ms. Atwater announced: “This is my 10th and last book on my findings in near-death research. It summarizes and completes 33 years of work with nearly 4,000 adult and child experiencers.”

Fortunately, however, she has since blessed us with two more offerings, Children of the Fifth World: A Guide to the Coming Changes in Human Consciousness (2012), which she spoke about at our June 2013 meeting, and her latest, Dying to Know You – Proof of God in the Near-Death Experience, the topic of this month’s program.

By some accounts, Dying to Know You – Proof of God in the Near-Death Experience is the most emotionally poignant and intellectually engaging book Ms. Atwater has yet produced on the subject of NDE studies. We hope it will not be her last, but it definitely will be a hard act to follow.

This program will mark Ms. Atwater’s sixth appearance as a guest speaker before our Central VA Ions Community Group over the last 20 years, making her the most frequent outside guest speaker we’ve ever had. We are excited as always to have her back and greatly appreciate her continued support for our group’s programs.

About Our Presenter:

PMH Atwater is the world’s most prolific NDE author, as well as one of its original, most indefatigable and highly respected researchers. Inspired by three NDEs of her own, Ms. Atwater began her research in the mid-1970s, nearly 40 years ago.

Since then she has investigated more than 4,000 NDE cases around the world and authored a dozen books on this fascinating subject. Ms. Atwater has won many awards, appeared on numerous TV shows and spoken around the world – always inviting people to look beyond the surface appearance for the deeper truths underlying what we think we know.