Colorado Springs seekers find connection at Body Mind Spirit Expo
Julie Loar was a Catholic college student serving families in Mexico when a near-death experience “blew apart” her world and inspired her to explore spiritual traditions that were once alien to her.
“I felt like a different person,” says Loar, a writer and editor who leads tours to Egypt and works with small groups that explore their dreams together.
Her book on dream language, “Symbol & Synchronicity,” was released by Palmer Lake-based Satiama Publishing, which has reserved one of the 100-plus booths for local and national vendors at next weekend’s Body Mind Spirit Expo, an event that has brought together local seekers for decades.
“Everyone dreams,” says Loar, who moved to Pagosa Springs after years of corporate work in Dallas. “And every culture on Earth believes in the importance and power of dreams as guides.”
Most dreams are a form of subconscious processing that review the day’s events. Loar calls these “spinach in the teeth moments,” when the never-sleeping subconscious weighs “things we could have handled better.”
But some dreams, she says, are messengers from the spirit realm, prodding us to consider new directions in life.
“These powerful, spiritual dreams carry messages that people remember their whole lives,” she says, and her book gives people tools, like keeping a dream journal, that helps them to monitor and “form a continuous conscious contact with our soul.”
Portraying the invisible
For Springs-based Sonya Shannon, it was an out-of-body-experience at age 11 that took her “outside of normal 3-D reality” and gave her “knowledge about what I was going to do in my life.”
Shannon says she started creating detailed drawings as an infant. By age 15, she was drawing angelic beings. She also got in on the ground floor of digital animation, working on TV shows and movies including 1984’s “Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock.” She provided animation for the starship Enterprise’s control panels and a Klingon bird of prey.
Today she’s a visionary artist who strives to portray invisible spiritual realities. Her Higher Self Portraits, she says, depict not only a person’s appearance, but also past lives experienced through reincarnation.
She also does spiritual readings that help people receive messages from the higher realms of the invisible spirit world.
Shannon has exhibited at Body Mind Spirit Expos for a decade and feels like the Springs metaphysical community is a family.
She says the expos attract a variety of people whose spiritual beliefs are often marginalized, as well as local military officers and police struggling with PTSD or other issues.
“People that go to the Body Mind Spirit Expo are seeking something, a life path or something holistic that they’re not finding in traditional medicine or traditional religion.”
A changing marketplace
Pew Research Center says many Americans embrace some “New Age” beliefs.
The Springs has long had a significant metaphysical community and numerous local stores — including Springs Spirituality Metaphysical Shop on Fillmore Street, Mountain Metaphysical Shop on West Colorado Avenue and Celebration Metaphysical Center on Garden of the Gods Road — that sell books and other products and host sessions or readings by local practitioners.
Celebration long ran the local expo, but it was acquired in 2012 by Oregon-based BMS Celebration, which was founded in 1986 and runs dozens of U.S. events, including expos in Denver, and Fort Collins in spring and fall.
“Our festivals balance local participation with the inclusion of a selection of the finest regional and national names in the holistic arena,” says the company, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Karen Stuth, a former member of the Palmer Lake Board of Trustees and founder of Satiama Publishing, says “many people are demonstrating a growing interest in energetic or vibrational healing, such as the practice of reiki, the redirection of life force energy.”
She says the industry is in a period of change that requires publishers and stores to find better ways of reaching and serving consumers.
Major U.S. companies have recently embraced astrology as part of their branding. Religion News Service reports that Starbucks recently released Star Signs, which connect customers to content from the astrology app Sanctuary.
Sanctuary also partnered with Google, Pizza Hut and Spotify for promotions, and a partnership with Benjamin Moore helps customers select paint colors that match their zodiac signs.
“Mary Violet Ray” is a Higher Self Portrait by Sonya Shannon that depicts the subject’s spiritual attributes.
Sonya Shannon’s “The Narrow Gate” portrays a woman’s spiritual progress as she lets go of physical, emotional and mental baggage and ascends into another dimension of being.
Sonya Shannon’s depiction of the Trickster character in “Wherever I Go, There I Am” suggests that life brings problems, but we can always find new ways of responding.
Julie Loar and Karen Stuth collaborated to create “Quintangled,” a board game based on heroic archetypes.
Julie Loar’s “Symbol & Synchronicity” gives readers tools to understand their dreams.
