Through the Looking Glass: Exhaustive Guide to the Paul Chek Holistic Approach

Presentation Background and Context

• Origin of Content: The presentation, titled "Through the Looking Glass: Holistic Integrative Assessment and Application of the CHEK Approach," was inspired and outlined by Penny Chek, Paul Chek’s wife.
• Setting: The material stems from a private industry conference called "Meeting of the Minds," an annual gathering of approximately $140$ leaders, including gym chain owners, corporate managers, and exercise equipment manufacturers.
• Case Study Format: The presentation utilizes a real-life client named Alice Z (referred to as Lisa during the lecture), who was selected via a raffle to be evaluated by a panel of industry experts, including:
  • Paul Chek
  • Mark Verstagen
  • Lenny Paracino
  • John Berardi
  • Greg Roskoff
• Pedagogical Goal: To understand the "$1-2-3-4$" approach to coaching and cultivating well-being, applicable in an hour or less.

The 1-2-3-4 Approach to Holistic Health

• $1$ Love (The Dream): This is the "one thing" a person is willing to change for.
  • Levity vs. Gravity: A dream must provide enough "levity" to pull an individual out of the "gravity" of their problems or "poor me syndrome."
  • The Motivating Force: If a client cannot stick to a plan (e.g., a diet), it indicates they do not love the goal enough.
  • Anecdote - Boxing Career: As a competitive boxer, Chek had to weigh in at exactly $147\,\text{lbs}$. His dream of winning was greater than the desire to eat excessively. He notes that boxers performing "crash weight loss" (skipping rope in a sauna) lack a sufficient dream and face a "nightmare" in the ring.
• $2$ Forces: These are the universal creative forces: the Anabolic (Yin) and the Catabolic (Yang).
  • Anabolic Force: Tissue-building, nurturing, moist, cooling, dark, and inclusive (represented by the female principle).
  • Catabolic Force: Tissue-destructive, hot, fiery, divisional, and expressive (represented by the male principle/the sun).
• $3$ Choices: Every relationship to a person, place, or thing involve three potential actions:
  • Optimal Choice: The choice that is best for everyone on the "dream team."
  • Suboptimal Choice: A choice that may provide immediate gratification but creates friction for the dream team; however, it still provides a learning experience.
  • Do Nothing: Hitting the "pause button." Chek argues this is the worst choice, as it reinforces pathology through indifference.
• $4$ Doctors: The internal guides required to maintain health:
  • Doctor Diet: Managing nutrition and biochemical individuality.
  • Doctor Quiet: Managing rest, introspection, and energy recharge.
  • Doctor Movement: Managing physical activity and the "work-in" vs. "work-out" balance.
  • Doctor Happiness: Managing core values and mental-emotional fulfillment.

The Three Choices of Action and the Concept of Indifference

• Optimal Choice: Represented by a green arrow, this choice benefits the individual and their entire support network. For example, a spouse joining a "dream team" for marathon training results in better shared food and mutual motivation.
• Suboptimal Choice: Represented by a red arrow pointing down. Often driven by a need for instant gratification, such as professional athletes engaging in infidelity, which risks destroying a family for a temporary whim.
• The Nature of Indifference: Chek states the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
  • Psychological impact: Research suggests children raised with indifference (parents who do not care) have higher rates of disease, death, and criminality than those raised with abuse.
  • Stagnation: Doing nothing means failing to participate in one's own life, which holds back the entire dream team.

Case Study: Holistic Profile of "Lisa"

• Demographics: A $52$-year-old single woman who works as a personal trainer and gym manager.
• Primary Stressors:
  • Financial instability and debt.
  • An $82$-year-old mother suffering from dementia.
  • Conflict with her brother regarding the mother's care and nursing home costs.
• Clinical Complaints:
  • Chronic fatigue and whole-body aches.
  • Poor sleep (waking up tired).
  • Mental fog; cannot function without coffee.
  • Moodiness and hormonal dysregulation.
  • Poor circulation in hands and feet.
  • Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and occasional migraines.
• Assessment Observation: Despite being a health professional, Lisa was highly "out of alignment." Chek notes it is common for doctors and therapists to be in worse health than their clients because they do not "eat, sleep, breathe, poop, and live" their teachings.

Defining and Qualifying the Dream (The North Star)

• The Concept of the North Star: The dream serves as a compass bearing. Without it, any road will suffice, and therapy is ineffective because there is no defined direction for balancing nutrition, sleep, or exercise.
• Qualifying a Dream:
  • Anecdote - The Marathon Runner: A woman wanted to run the Boston Marathon in $3$ months despite having only completed $5\text{k}$ races. Chek identified her motive was to please/keep up with her husband. He shifted her focus to a $10\text{k}$ first, and eventually, she trained for $15$ months to beat her husband’s time, making the dream authentic to her.
• Illness as a Reward System: Chek observes that in modern culture, people (especially mothers) often get sick (cancer, chronic fatigue) just to receive "permission" to rest or get love and attention.

Psychological and Philosophical Foundations

• The "$90/10$ Rule": Approximately $90\%$ of an individual’s ideas are formed by age $12$. Only $10\%$ of the global population evolves psychologically beyond the ego structure they had at age $12$.
• Conditioned Beliefs: Most internal conflict arises from beliefs given by parents. Chek posits that when people find their parents irritating, they are often seeing a mirror of their own unaddressed ideas and behaviors.
• Internal and External Environments:
  • Internal: The body is roughly $70\%$ water. If an individual eats "junk food" (Red Bull, Chips Ahoy, Oreos), they are viewing the world through a "dirty" internal filter.
  • External: Perception is shaped by how one manages their relationship with the world.
• Anthropomorphizing God: Making God a human-like figure creates spiritual stress (e.g., guilt over sex). Chek argues that if God is "all," then everything—including the body and its functions—is a manifestation of the divine.

Linguistic and Spiritual Interpretations

• Monotheism: Derived from "Mono" ($1$) and "Theism" (God). Chek points out the irony of multiple conflicting monotheistic religions when the word itself identifies a single unity.
• Religion and Yoga: Religion means "reunion," and Yoga means "union." Both aim at the same core principle of loving all existence as God.
• Sin: Linguistically, "sin" means "to shine" (like a lure/shiner used in fishing). Chek argues Jesus was killed because he "shined" too brightly for the Roman and Jewish authorities. Misunderstandings of this term lead to unnecessary guilt and disease.
• Universe: Derived from "Uni" ($1$) and "Verse" (Song). There is only "one song" being played.
• Metaphysics of Space: Atoms are $99.99999\%$ space. Space (No-thing) is the equivalent of Unconditional Love. It never says "no" and allows everything to exist within it.

The Seven Primary Energy Centers (Chakras)

• Center $1$ (Safety/Security): Located at the lumbosacral junction. Problems here often manifest as low back or leg pain, frequently tied to financial or domestic insecurity.
• Center $2$ (Rhythm, Flow, Sex, Identity): Located in the pelvic basin. Disorders manifest as menstrual irregularities or erectile dysfunction (e.g., $19$-year-old athletes on Viagra due to high stress and lack of safety).
• Center $3$ (Power and Will): Located in the stomach and small intestine.
  • Stomach = Home of Anxiety (ulcers/indigestion).
  • Small Intestine = Home of Criticism.
• Center $4$ (Heart): Giving and receiving love. Heart disease is the number one killer in the US because society has forgotten how to love without competition.
• Center $5$ (Communication and Creativity): Expressing self through the throat, neck, and hands. Tension here relates to being unable to speak one's truth or create freely.
• Center $6$ (Superconscious Mind): The "third eye" between the eyebrows. Accessing universal mind and seeing beyond the ego. Chek uses this center to see energy fields.
• Center $7$ (Spirituality): Relationship with the divine. Disruption here leads to central nervous system disorders, brain tumors, and neurological issues.

The Shamanic and Integrative Treatment Plan for Lisa

• Duration of Session: Chek only had $4$ hours for this case, though he typically spends $16$ to $20$ hours on a first evaluation.
• Shamanic Definition: Chek is a licensed shaman (aboriginal healer/doctor of the soul/mind). He uses natural tools and metaphysics to break people through their "head" or ego.
• Interventions:
  • Art Therapy (Mandala): Lisa drew a mandala of how she felt. The first was heavy and stressed (felt in the viewer's stomach); the second, after treatment, was light and expansive.
  • Tobacco Healing: Used to "blow the garbage" out of the energy field.
  • Plant Therapy: I taught Lisa to connect with plants to remove "chaotic energy" from her field, which she described as a sensation of water draining out of her body.
  • Doctor Quiet: $20$ minutes of daily meditation; "earthing" (feet on grass/stone) to discharge electromagnetic pollution.
  • Doctor Diet: A $7$-day diet with no soy, gluten, or dairy (butter permitted). Food rotation to reduce immune system excitation and "leaky gut" inflammation, which often manifests as water retention or "cellulite."
  • Doctor Happiness: Stating the dream each morning and "drawing the day" (setting the intention using the phrase "my day was" rather than "will be").
  • Doctor Movement: Transitioning from "working out" (which was beating her to death) to "working in." Engaging in slow walks and stretching, and only training intensely when the "inner voice" agrees there is sufficient energy for recovery.

Educational Programs and Resources

• CHEK Institute Training Levels: Exercise Coach, followed by CHECK Levels $1$ through $4$ (a minimum of $4$ years to complete).
• Other Programs: Holistic Lifestyle Coach ($3$ levels), Golf Biomechanics, and PPS Success Mastery ($12$-$18$ month program for mental, emotional, and spiritual success).
• Recommended Media: The book The Last Four Doctors You'll Ever Need: How to Get Healthy Now.
• Upcoming Workshop Detail: "Movement as Medicine for Overcoming Addiction, Obesity and Disease" (July $12$).
• Future Lecture Topics: Vibration training (using body blades) and "Total Body Legs" (metabolic excitation through integrated movements).

Questions and Discussion

• Audience Question on Reiki: A listener asked if Reiki is related to his healing practice. Paul Chek noted that his approach involves direct energetic work and art therapy, such as drawing how a client feels to move stress out of the organs.
• Audience Question on "A Course in Miracles": A listener asked how it fits with his disputes. Chek agreed that it is a course on how to use the mind, emphasizing that God is one, God is all, and God is love.
• Audience Interaction on Guilt/Religion: Chek discussed the paradox of a God of love burning people in hell. He shared an anecdote of getting in trouble in Sunday school at age $6$ for asking "intelligent questions" that exposed this logical inconsistency.
• Audience Physical Interaction: Chek brought a listener to the front to demonstrate that a healthy person's energy and "firmness" can be felt and smelled by others, acting as a "snowball" effect for healing the world one person at a time.