Crosstraining for Body, Mind & Spirit; Integral Life Practice: Interview With Terry Patten

Rob Kall: And welcome to Rob Kall Futurehealth Radio, WMJC 13:60 a.m. Tonight, our first guest is Terry Patten, coauthor of "Integral Life Practice," who has a blog at integralheart.com/blog. Terry, we've known each other for a couple of decades.

Terry Patten: That's right.

Rob: And when I first met you, you were involved with Tools for Exploration, which was about technology for helping people to find out more about themselves, take more control. How would you describe what Tools for Exploration was?

Terry: Well, it was a unique category of consumer products. I think we were sort of a cross between The Sharper Image and catalog as Dada Art. We were really trying to stretch people's minds to a whole different level by bringing consciousness technologies and subtle energy tools, things that broke the current scientific paradigm completely and made use of mindbody connections in unique ways, and also subtle energy possibilities in interesting ways. So we built a pretty decentsized catalog. It had over 100 pages, over 1000 SKUs, during the decade that I built it up until I sold it.

Rob: And it was based, to some extent, on the work of Michael Hutchinson, right?

Terry: Well, Michael Hutchinson wrote the book "Megabrain," and "Megabrain Power," and he was a friend and associate. And he and I worked on a newsletter, a "Megabrain" newsletter, back during the late 80s and early 90s together. And he really popularized some of the early consciousness technologies in some important ways, and so the energy that surrounded his work was an important part of tools. But he actually had a separate business before that and then again later, afterwards, but we ended up being a much larger concern.

Rob: Now, that was twenty years ago?

Terry: Yeah.

Rob: Something like that, right?

Terry: Part of it was as long as twenty years ago, that's right.

Rob: And, I think I could say there's been a lot of integral water over the dam since then.

Terry: I sold the company. I think that there was a tremendous surge of energy in the consciousness technologies during those years, and a lot happened. And through your good work with the Winter Brain meetings and the whole surge of interest in neurofeedback, there have been a lot of advances in the whole state of the technology. It's really transformed, particularly in the area of neurofeedback.

Rob: But you've gone in a different direction. You've got this new book out, "Integral Life Practice," which you coauthored with Ken Wilber, Adam Leonard, and Marco Morelli. Tell us a lot about it. I want to hear a lot about this because I've read a little bit of Ken Wilber, and I've been delving into the book a little bit, but I'd really like you to share with our listeners what it's all about.

Terry: Well...

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