Great Oaks School was intentionally named a “school” of health partially to deflect the attentions of the Ama.  It is, after all, entirely legal to teach about how to maintain health, about how to prevent illness, and how to go about making yourself well once you were sick.  Education could not be called “practicing medicine without a license.”  Great Oaks was also structured as a school because I wanted to both learn and teach.  Toward this end we started putting out a holistic health newsletter and offering classes and seminars to the public on various aspects of holistic health.  From the early 1970s through the early 1980s I invited a succession of holistic specialists to reside at gosh, or to teach at Great Oaks while living elsewhere.  These teachers not only provided a service to the community, but they all became my teachers as well.  I apprenticed myself to each one in turn.

There came and went a steady parade of alternative practitioners of the healing arts and assorted forms of metapsychology:  acupuncturists, acupressurists, reflexologists, polarity therapists, massage therapists, postural integrationists, Rolfers, Feldenkries therapists, neurolinguistic programmers, biokinesiologists, iridologists, psychic healers, laying on of handsers, past life readers, crystal therapists, toning therapists in the person of Patricia Sun, color therapy with lamps and different colored lenses a la Stanley Bourroughs, Bach Flower therapists, aroma therapists, herbalists, homeopaths, Tai Chi classes, yoga classes, Arica classes, Guergieff and Ouspensky fourth-way study groups, EST workshops, Zen Meditation classes.  Refugee Lamas from Tibet gave lectures on The Book of the Dead and led meditation and chanting sessions, and we held communication classes using Scientology techniques.  There were anatomy and physiology classes, classes on nutrition and the orthomolecular approach to treating mental disorders (given by me of course); there were chiropractors teaching adjustment techniques, even first aid classes.  And we even had a few medical doctors of the alternative ilk who were interested in life style changes as an approach to maintaining health.

Classes were also offered on colon health including herbs, clays, enemas, and colonics.  So many of my client at Great Oaks were demanding colonics in conjunction with their cleansing programs, that I took time out to go to Indio, Calif. to take a course in colon therapy from a chiropractor, and purchase a state of the art colonic machine featuring all the gauges, electric water solenoids and stainless steel knobs one could ask for.

During this period almost all alternative therapists and their specialties were very interesting to me, but I found that most of the approaches they advocated did not suit my personality.  For example, I think that acupuncture is a very useful tool, but I personally did not want to use needles.  Similarly I thought that Rolfing was a very effective tool but I did not enjoy administering that much pain, although a significant number of the clients really wanted pain.  Some of the techniques appealed to me in the beginning, and I used them frequently with good results but over time I decided to abandon them, mostly because of a desire to simplify and lighten up my bag of tricks.