About Paula

As a child, I was a very shy and would often stay home and read books. My first spiritual crisis happened at age 13. I became depressed and lost interest in life… I disliked school and I just couldn’t fit in. I felt the world was crazy. Fortunately, my mother took me to a kind counselor who told me that my ruminations about the world were not crazy…He told me that in actual fact, the world is indeed crazy. He told me to be patient, that I would only need to be in school a few more years, and that soon I could move out on my own and that eventually I would meet people like myself with a broader vision of things. Just having this reality check saved me.

When I was about 20, I read the autobiographies of Mahatma Gandhi and Yogananda. Each of them had faced a similar spiritual crisis at the age of 13. Later I realized that we are all pushed to identify with ego at this point in development, because in normal society, there are no models of how to be real, to come from truth. Because ego is a made up identification created out of illusory thoughts, a young mind senses the lie behind it, and is often frustrated to find very few adults who have even an inkling of this. Later this insight gets clouded over after years of programming and conditioning.

Luckily, while growing up, my parents were very much into community theatre and coaxed me into it. This helped me with my angst. Playing different roles on stage eventually helped me overcome my shyness and soon I was totally wrapped up in acting, writing plays and even directing. The fascination I felt as I explored different human roles played out on stage, inspired me to study the human psyche in more depth. I soon became a psychology major at university in England.

This lead to my concern for healing the psyche. Later, as a part of my doctoral studies in psychology, I explored the ramifications of what occurs when thoughts and their resulting emotions become stored in the body. This helped me realize that we store our memories not only in our brain, but throughout the entire body. For example if someone has suffered sexual abuse, they will store a lot of charge in the area near the sexual organs in the pubic ramus (bone). Heart centered emotions get stored around the heart or sternum, etc.

We learned to look at a person’s body and read it to see where the emotional blocks are stored and then apply pressure at key points or emotional “Gates” derived from acupuncture. With this method, I could help others integrate a number of stored emotions and free the energy charge of blocks which have sometimes been held for lifetimes. I later added the innovation of rebirthing breathing to this method which I later taught to my own students.

Moved by the profound healing effects of this type of bodywork, I was also drawn to study the basics in order to lay a very strong foundation and derive a better physiological grasp of the body through such vehicles as standard Western Circulatory and Deep Tissue Muscle Sculpting. The profound results of point holding drew me further to Siddha Marma which predates Ayurveda, and Chua Ka which Mongolian warriors once used to remove fear out of the body after battle. Through these methods, I learned how to go extremely slowly and deeply into the body, penetrating into the tied knots both on a physical as well as energetic level to bring greater awareness.

At this same time, I came across Reiki, a form of energy work, while in Graduate School working on my Ph.D. in psychology. One of my professor’s who had been a student of Ida Rolf (Rolfing), had created a school called the Institute of Psycho Structural Balancing where I learned all of the above mentioned forms of body work. Intrigued, I took some of the courses on the side. One day a woman came to offer sample Reiki treatments at the Institute. I was skeptical about this simple laying on of hands technique, because at the time, my experience showed that a therapist needed to do very deep tissue work to create profound changes in the body mind. After about ten minutes of feeling the Reiki energy moving in my meridians and the sense of peace it evoked, I decided that I must learn this very simple method and share it with my clients which I then did for a number of years.

I traveled to India for the first time in 1989 to give a Reiki class. In 1992 on my second visit to India, I met my spiritual master Shri H.W.L Poonjaji, who gave me the name Laxmi. Shri Poonjaji or ‘Papaji’, as he was affectionately called, was a Jnani or realized being who left his body in September 1997. Quickened by his presence, I shifted my focus from self-improvement to the self-inquiry or Vichar that awakens the quiet stillness of awakened presence. This inspired me to elicit the same joy and freedom in others, through the vehicle of Core Empowerment, a six-day retreat that incorporates Gnana Yoga, the science of cutting through the mind.

The purpose of Gnana Yoga, is to help people realize the freedom that they are, by assisting them to experience their own true nature. This is accomplished by overcoming the illusion of ignorance (a mistaken belief in a separate self) by transcending the masks of ego that are sense-dependent and bound by karma.

During my time with Shri Poonjaji, I developed a great love for India and decided to follow his suggestion to stay. After his transition I felt duty bound to help others experience their own true nature as he had helped me. Seeing a need for skilled therapists with conscious presence, I created a modular training curriculum in both eastern and western forms of body/mind treatment in 2000. This lead to the founding of the Taosomatics Institute, a school for integrative awareness which attracted a core group of students, who are now highly skilled and accomplished body/mind therapy trainers in their own right. In 2008 I gave up the institute to simplify my life and focus on sharing Reiki and the Core Empowerment Retreat in two, three month periods twice a year and spend an equal amount of time in retreat in the Himalayas.

Another factor in my life which should be mentioned as it could help others, that inspired me to become an avid researcher on detoxification and rejuvenation therapies is my personal success in treating two breast and one ovarian tumor with raw food diet and Reiki. Thirty years ago I also became acquainted with the therapeutic effects and astonishing benefits of oxygen and of its tri-atomic form, ozone, in regard to healing degenerative diseases such as cancer and also as a restorative rejuvenation therapy. My book Heal Yourself with Ozone is about my own experience and research with tri-atomic oxygen.