"Over the past year, my program of resistance stretching has restored much of the flexibility I had lost due to injuries, and subsequent surgeries."
Linda Carstens, 1997 Top Ten U.S. Masters Swimmer

"After three months of stretching, I was released from a two year dependence on preventative migraine medication."
David Jones, MIT Doctoral Student

BOB COOLEY



Everyone is accustomed to reading bios about authors which carefully elaborate on their 'outside' achievements. You can read about this side of me on the Instructors page in my bio.

...But what I would like to do here is tell you what it is really like for me- about my 'inside' achievements.

I'd like to be a lot more and less in many ways.... but I am known for being very sobering with people. Over the years I have learned to temper my frankness so that people can stomach what I feel intuitively they need to know. Most everyone would like to be better looking like someone else, and though this is tempting, I'd rather remove more of my tenseness so that I look more like myself. I love a great numbers of people- the planet can barely hold enough people for me to love.

I am totally impressed by people and feel infinitely grateful to them for everything they are trying to teach me. I know more about the worst things about both the insides and outsides of people, yet I have experienced such a great number of moments of people exhibiting the highest qualities known to man, that are unbelievably positive ways of being, that these far out-weigh what most people view as an almost limitless number of abhorrent things people continue to do to each other and to the planet we live on.

Now, I have learned that everyone's 'windows' into reality are really much more different than most anyone would imagine. That means that when any number of people are involved in some situation, their accounts of what occurred would be very different- everyone already knows this. But what most people do not know is that each of those individuals actually have specific 'styles' and insights into that situation that slip by most of the others. Each has their own truths ... their genius awakes and is connected to some aspect of reality again that the rest of us barley recognize. And it is exactly these truths that everyone needs to know and integrate into their perspective before they can live as fully as they all dream of doing.

Now of course, some people are better with their instincts while others are more confused. So following the confused person's perspective will take you into confusion. It is up to you to be able to know when the genius in someone else is talking and when the 'bad guy' is pulling you in the wrong direction. Knowing how to identify everyone's genius is what I was brought to learn as a result of my pedestrian automobile accident. I've learned that it is equally important to defend, empathize, accept and detach in every situation; just like it is important to have my body, spirit, emotions, and mind always 'up'. In either case which of these four things is in focus depends on the situation.

I've learned that anything that you have ever seen or known another human to do, you too are capable of doing -it is not of matter whether you are like 'that' or not, it is whether you have developed yourself in whatever ways that will allow you to withstand the forces that might otherwise result in you behaving in ways that are unconscienceable. Perhaps it is fate that what people normally feel on the inside is represented as the opposite on the outside, often to their great dismay. And the frequency that synchronicity occurs to you might be one of the best indications of just how on track you are. Oh, don't worry, critical mass has already occurred; everyone has accelerated in their enlightenment.

I only eat certified organic food. No I don't compromise under almost any situation. I'd rather not eat- but I usually have my Living Fuel Super Berry powdered drink that I can mix with spring water almost everywhere I go - so I am almost never without great food that I can eat. You might have already guessed that I also wear Organic Cotton clothing, sleep on Organic Cotton Sheets, stretch on Organic Cotton or Wool rugs- EVERYTHING IS ORGANIC in my life. I spend a disproportionate amount of time traveling to meet organic families where they grow or produce their food and products. The OTA annual trade show and Bioneers Conference are like injections of pure positive life force-go and find out for yourself.

If you spent only a few minutes with me you might notice that I seem to be like everyone else, except for one thing. There is no telling how I am going to be at any moment. I'd lie down on the grocery floor and stretch my hamstrings if that is what needed to happen. I'd be totally still when others would be frantic. I'd forgive someone almost as fast as they wrong me. I talk to people about the dark sides of them and explain how it is not so much about not having these sides, as it is about having something positive that others have, that they have yet learned to have. I am known for telling people that you do not make Olympic Gold Medal winner or successful Professional Athletes by just strengthening their best gifts. There is only one way to go for the gold -search, identify, and transform the worst things in a person and that is what the gold is made of.

I really like thinking. I'm attracted to peace but know it comes out of transforming the feelings that produce war. I like communication but I know it comes from silence and listening. I'm trying to dismantle what I consider enormous unconscious biases: that thinking is better than having good looks; that being objective is better than having subjective attachments; that the body is better than either my spirit, my desires or my knowings. When I am being asked to change, I find that my resistance rises, and the more important it is for me to change, the greater that resistance. To change sometimes I have to yield and sometimes I have to resist. The best inborn qualities everyone is given can only be used to first help other before those same skills can be used to help yourself. Apparently this design facilitates people needing one another.

I'd like to know you for more reasons than I can list. Help yourself. I believe in you.

Love and respect,
Bob