Now, it has already been over a month since my last post. During this time, we hosted an awesome Pi-Day Potluck celebrating 3/14/15 where we were able to get some great people together to share in food and company. Then soon after that, we had to take a bit of recovery time as it had become cold/flu season and I had a little bit of a cold that made life a little less pleasant.

It is already April, and even after a bit of time distanced from thoughts of Inoqoa, the desire is still strong. This concept of Inoqoa that has now been seven years in the making, still rings true as we seek to bring deeper values back into human consciousness. We have decided that the route to do this is through forging the coin and we found out that our neighbor actually has a forge already, so we are that much closer in making this 'token of the realm' a reality.

Also, I have now received the raw wav session files from Matthew Santos for his songs 'Seven Years,' 'It all works out' , and 'And now the leap.' Several months ago, I pledged some money to his campaign for his new album on which these songs appear, so that we would have access to some music to use for our documentary film. 

I am excited to collaborate with Matthew Santos! Here's a link to his website and  pledgemusic campaign: 
http://www.matthewsantos.com/
http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/matthewsantos
_______________________________________________________________________
Here's some of what Matt had to say about his song, "Seven Years" :

“Seven Years” is probably one of my favorite tunes on this record, as it’s the one that has undergone the most growth and change since its conception. This was a song that was based on a rare occurrence of a lucid dream, wherein I was confronted with an unbeatable enemy of sorts, and I chose the fight over the flight.

I remember being violently beaten, and then waking up in a hospital bed while being nursed back to health. It wasn’t until someone had told me that I had been in a coma for seven years that the gravity of the (dream) situation hit me; like I had lost a major piece of my life and youth and was conscious of the full weight of this loss as if it were real.

The subsequent emotional qualities were in fact, very real. When I woke up (in reality) I immediately starting writing about the dream in detail, and naturally in a song format. There was so much to cover, so many things to capture from the fading vision of this experience that I was frantically typing everything I could recall.

SEVEN YEARS

Late one night / I awoke in a dream / found myself in a fight / and he was stronger than me. 

Could of sworn it was real / taste of blood in my mouth / every blow I could feel / he was an unstoppable force / a storm of violent discourse.

Late one night / I awoke in a hospital / bed with my head / held heavy and hazy.

Was I going crazy? / How long have been under? / The date on the paper… / seven years of deep slumber….

Asleep for seven years,
Asleep for seven years.

“It’s nice to see you again…” she said, / “thought you’d never wake up… / I moved on with my life…this is my husband Jacob…
…and these my two two children, / eldest named Matthew… / I’m so sorry love, but I hope you understand…I hope you understand.”

Asleep for seven years,
Asleep for seven years.

Early one morning / I woke up in a cold sweat / with time like a vulture circling round above my head.

All the days I’ve been wasting / unfocused and lazy / how I take it for granted / time is an unstoppable force / (all things must run their course).

Asleep for seven years,
Asleep for seven years.

And I couldn’t shake the feeling / of an underlying message / that came to me through this tragedy turned miracle awakening.

Tables keep turning / we’re gone before you know it / let your love be your beacon / live and breathe it / work to grow it / gotta’ work to grow it.

And it all works out / just not like you thought it would.

Michael and I both went back to work this week. He went back on Monday, 2/2 and I went back the following day.

During this time of re-incorporating old routines into new ones, we noticed a few things. Michael said work feels different to him now. This is probably good because he didn't have very good feelings about work before, but now I think he feels more like it's a place where he can be productive and focus. This is good because we have a lot of projects that we're working on that need our attention.

For me, I realized that I lost some weight during these weeks of little sleep and little food. This is difficult for me to accept because I hardly make it over 100lbs normally and we don't have a scale at home, but I'm sure I was floating around in the mid to low 90s because I could noticeably see that my clothes were not fitting the same as they used to. And my belt-- wow. This is not okay and it didn't help that I had fell out of my normal work-out routine as I was trying to incorporate a new work schedule and decided to limit my food budget this month to $300.

Several years ago, I spent a few months using Dave's Ramsey's envelope system from his 'financial peace university' course to help me get a hold of my spending. This entailed pulling out all of my funds for the month in cash and spending from several different envelopes labeled with different categories such as food, gas, supplies, entertainment etc. This is a bit much for me now, so this month I decided to at least do my food budget in cash because that is easily where I can spend way over what I would want to in a month.  ---- more later!

1/26-1/27:      9 hr              
                         16:30 - 18:00 (1.5hr nap)
                         23:30 - 00:30 (1hr) then 4hours awake.
                         4:30 - 11:00 (6.5hr)

1/27-1/28:     10.5 hr
                         21:30 - 8:00 (10.5hr) briefly waking at 1:30

1/28-1/29:     10 hr
                         23:30 - 9:30 (10 hr)

1/29-1/30:     9 hr
                         23:30-8:30 (9hr) briefly waking at 4:20

1/30-1/31:     8.5 hr
                         23:30-8:00 (8.5hr)
     
1/31-2/1:       9.5-10 hr
                        21:30 - 1:30 (4 hr) MKC waking from 1:30-2:30
                        2:30 -  8:30 (6 hr)

2/1-2/2:          6 hr
                          0:30 - 6:30 (6 hr)
                          6:30-9:00 (not sleep, but resting in bed-- dehydration)

1/26-1/27:      9 hr              
                         16:30 - 18:00 (1.5hr nap)
                         23:30 - 00:30 (1hr) then 4hours awake.
                         4:30 - 11:00 (6.5hr)

     Key progress today:  Implementing morning ritual with music (Amiina).   
     Responding to as many people as possible. There's a lot to catch up on.      
     Took a walk around the neighborhood in the afternoon, then 1.5hr 
     nap. Chest Flies: 15lbs x 12 reps x 1 set // 25lbs x 12 reps x 4 sets // 25lbs x 
     21 x 1 set. Finally ate out for the first time in a couple weeks of not leaving      the house. Went to Mekong Village just down the street and had the 
     most delicious shrimp dish either of us have ever had, plus our normal     
     BBQ Pork on Vermicelli dish, plus some beef wrapped in la lot leaf. So   
     delicious.

1/27-1/28:     10.5 hr
                         21:30 - 8:00 (10.5hr) briefly waking at 1:30

     Key progress today:  Morning ritual today with no music. Strategizing for 
     funding. Took a walk with Stella today around Ravenna Park. Working 
     through emotions about support. Pho Than Bros for dinner. Marco Polo. 

1/28-1/29:     10 hr
                         23:30 - 9:30 (10 hr)

     Key progress today:  Morning ritual today with no 
     music. Oil change. Re- introducing tea and other 
     supplements into regimen. Supplements: green tea, 
     DL-Phenylalanine, Acetyl-L Carnitine, DHA-Oil, 
     Vitamin D, Lutein, Humanofort, COQ-10, Ashwaghanda, shilajit, slin-sane, 
     Reishii. Planning stuff. Workout-- Chins: 2reps@ +35lbs // 2reps @+70lbs 
     // 3reps x3sets +70lbs // 1rep x4 @+70lbs // 5x +35lbs pullups. Went to 
    Gordito's for lunch after workout. Then went to Greg's place to check out 
    Rez and plan video game project. Chicken breast tenders with onion and 
    spices with kimchee for dinner at ~9:10pm. Casein protein shake prior to 
    sleep.

1/29-1/30:     9 hr
                         23:30-8:30 (9hr) briefly waking at 4:20

     Key progress today: Shoulders: Back shoulder flies 25lbs x 12reps x 4 sets. 
     Haircut! Emailed back about video game project (level and two functions.) 
     Yeon-Hee back to teaching today. Emailed Artjom. Marco Polo.  
     Homemade meatloaf for dinner. Supplements: Green tea, DL-
     Phenylalanine, etc. 

1/30-1/31:     8.5 hr
                         23:30-8:00 (8.5hr)
     
     Key progress today: Work on Inoqoa website a lot. Start making SG Video 
     #1 - Comeback Dips. Dips: shown in video. India Bistro buffet after doing 
     dips. Grocery Outlet-- really good buys. Resolving to shop more at Grocery 
     Outlet.

1/31-2/1:       9.5-10 hr
                        21:30 - 1:30 (4 hr) MKC waking from 1:30-2:30
                        2:30 -  8:30 (6 hr)

     Key progress today: Work on Inoqoa website a lot again. Visit from 
     missionaries. They helped us break down boxes and stuff and we had good 
     conversation about openness. Went to get food at Teriyaki & Pho. 
     Mongolian beef and Chicken & Pork. Watched Adam's Apples - Mads 
     Mikkelsen movie. Marco Polo. Worked on SG Video #1.

2/1-2/2:          6 hr
                          0:30 - 6:30 (6 hr)
                          6:30-9:00 (not sleep, but resting in bed)
 
     Key progress today: YH worked on researching Inoqoa and SG official   
     registration and licensing type stuff today. Also worked on Inoqoa website 
     and finished ShadowGym Video #1. Oh, Superbowl was also today. Such a 
     disappointment. For food: Rosemary bread with salmon spread,    
     grapefruit, chocolate guernsey milk, newman's milk chocolate peanut 
     butter cup, leftover mongolian beef, etc. 

[Amount of sleep previous night: 9.5 solid hours]

Yep, so on the night of 1/25 - 1/26 we got a solid 9.5 hours of sleep. I asked Michael later how rested he felt after waking up from that (on a 0 > 5 scale) and he said 6. I felt about the same.

We were pretty much so exhausted from the previous night of broken up sleep that this huge block of sleep came to us quite naturally. We went to bed at 10pm that night and woke at 7:30am. We remembered also about our morning ritual that we are putting together where we try to recall a list of 7 aspects, which are the interpretations of the aspects of learning. 

These are: Dance, Rhythm, Music, Affinity, Path, Way of life, and Home-- which correspond to the 7 aspects of learning which are: War, Ritual, Magic, Alchemy, Condition, Religion, and Temple (garden). There are several more sets of seven aspects that intertwine pretty intricately and all these aspects add up to pretty much a way to view life. We also found a way to align them to specific scale tones!

More about this Inoqoa philosophy will be posted to  http://www.inoqoa.com/ soon. This is pretty much a placeholder site to hold the content of our ideas until we get someone who is willing to help us with the web design.

We did a lot of planning and strategizing today during the morning hours and we were discussing a simple definition for magic and I ended up making an attempt to prove magic in a geometrical proof kind of way. It was fascinating and I didn't quite finish that yet, because I took a tangent off into considering how language is pretty much the same thing as magic. I ended up spending a good chunk of time creating the following drawings:

It may be a bit difficult to tell what is going on here in these pictures, but in each picture, the small infinity symbols symbolize a word in any given language and how when you group them together in a system, that makes up a language. The upside-down power symbol looking character (half-circle with line through the opening) symbolizes power. Each language on their own have the power of communication when shared among people. (The people are represented here by the little brown pseudo-chinese markings for tree/forest). Also, note that each infinity symbol is contained by a dashed line, which is to indicate that words are containers that have certain properties, but cannot be limited because we know that people create new definitions for words all the time. Words are flexible.

The first picture is meant to show how limiting it can be to exist within just one power structure, that is to say-- to speak only one language. It does allow you access to your single island (or lily-pad, aka continent or culture) of people, but that's all. It's like considering your one culture to be the only culture. It can sometimes lead a person to think that there is only one way of thinking and that the only intelligent thoughts are those from ones own culture.

In the second picture, I pulled out a single person to represent how a multi-lingual person might exist and as you can see, it is a much more connected and beautiful existence that gives you access to more ways of thinking.

Anyway------- that was my little art project for the morning. Then we proceeded to strategize more about how to get Project Inoqoa off the ground.  We are currently juggling several moving pieces to figure out how they all work together and you can expect more and more things to come out into the public sphere soon.

We decided to take a walk outside around 4pm to catch the sun while it was out because the weather was really great and we really needed some fresh air and exercise because we had reduced our exercise regimen by a lot this past week because we were feeling so weak. But, after the walk, we came home and took a 1.5hr nap and then did some more work for a bit before woking out. We were able to do a few sets of chest flies, which was good. Just easing back into working out again.

MKC: Chest flies 
2x10 @ 15lbs. 
4 x 12 @ 25lbs, then 
1 x 21 @ 25lbs to finish.

YHY: Chest flies 
2x10 @15lbs

After being up for another 4 hours, we slept for another 4 hours. Interesting. We fell into a 4 hour wake, 4 hour sleep cycle. At that point, 8:30am, I tried to sleep more, but I couldn't. I was in bed till like 9:30am but I couldn't fall back asleep, so I got up. Michael slept till around 11am.

This gives him a total of 9 hours of sleep between 4:30pm and 11am of 1/26-1/27.

For me, I got 6.5 hours, which is pretty normal for me. I may supplement this later with a nap-- but I will leave those details for the next post.

A domani!
Yeon-Hee

***UPDATE - An Evolving Story and Vision***

In case any of you were wondering, I will be moving most of Michael and My Story to this page: <http://www.sonaesthetics.com/project-journey-to-inoqoa>

We plan to keep a detailed blog of our journey at the following link, and we also plan to film and produce a documentary about the power of healing through community, love & compassion, and inclusion as a path to healing our society as opposed to fear and shunning-- using our story as one example. Thank you Alisa Chanelle Dickinson for your interest in helping us make this a reality!

In this documentary, we will explain our vision to create a healing center-- this will be a place where those in need of help or are otherwise not well served by the system can go to be surrounded by support and healed. This will also potentially be a place that co-resides with a Montessori Education System so our children can be raised in a community of hope and healing. All-in-all, this is a place where we will collectively join together to be a kind of "Research & Development" place where we create a more grounded and respectful path for education, a loving and compassionate way to approach healing, and ultimately to create a new culture for future generations.

One or more funding campaigns will be coming soon, as we are very passionate about taking the responsibility to spearhead the world's deepest issues of money, power, food, water, healing, and working toward a better integrated and collaborative and inclusive world and we are looking to make connections with people and organizations who feel a similar passion.

When we are a little more prepared, we are planning to reach out to Chris Jordan (a local artist once featured on Ted Talks <http://www.ted.com/…/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_st…>) whom I've met before once at an annual SIETAR conference in 2009 (SIETAR: Society for Intercultural Training and Research). We also would like to reach out to Dr. Vladimir Khavinson who is on the leading edge of nano-medicine, and also Matthew Santos who is one of my favorite musicians (who I have already started roads in to collaborating with). And this is just the beginning.

Thank you for reading. And I am looking forward to building a collective vision for the future with you. Thank you for all your support.

With Deepest Love & Gratitude,
Yeon-Hee

*** UPDATE - Amazing progress!!***
Last night we were able to get the most restful night of sleep in the longest time. We were able to achieve a pretty solid 11 hours of sleep from 10:30pm-9:30am. Today we are working on creating a 'Life Mastery' type of system based on my "Sleep Mastery" system that created when I was exploring poly-phasic sleep a couple years ago. This reflective, observation-based system will help us build strong and healthy routines into our lives and once we 'perfect' the system, we plan to share this structure with the world.. perhaps by selling notebooks made of these sheets as a kind of training manual/journal to help people optimize their lives by connecting to their circadian rhythms, reflecting on the effects that foods and other substances have on our bodies and our energy during the day, and how to optimize healing at night.

There are some profoundly expansive projects that Michael and I have been working on for years that we are finally finding paths for. In order for us to achieve these goals and protect Michael from another bout of intense insomnia (seriously a life or death type thing we're talking about here), we need your prayer, thoughts, support, and collaboration from those of you that have talents you would like to share as support. [[specifically, we are currently looking for someone skilled in web-design and videography.. so if you are skilled in this way and would like to be on the inner-circle of the next big social movement based around Honor, Humility, Patience, Prudence, Kindness, Integrity, and Trust, please feel free to contact me. In terms of web-design, we have some very basic web structure figured out, but we could really use some help with this. If you're interested, contact me and I'll give you a link to the sites, which are pretty bare bones right now.. and we should talk. :P]].

In order for our projects to come to fruition, we are working on creating an online presence for our projects and starting a funding campaign to make things move forward. This is a pretty ambitious world vision and social movement that we will be sharing about sometime in the near future probably on indiegogo. We will also be posting more videos soon so you can track michael's progress to recovery.

This journey has been a great tribulation (so far), and you may be feeling this too because in truth, we are all interconnected. Like, just this week, at least 6 people we know have injured themselves or become sick-- perhaps you too, but I'm confident that the fog is lifting now. And I would like to offer this as a message of hope and healing for all of you out there who are suffering with us. You are not alone.

I hope that this victory that we are feeling over what would have been a potentially life-shattering/life-ending situation brings you hope because these past couple days have been nothing short of a miracle. Being able to heal someone with love, compassion, and community instead of with institution and forced medication is something we usually only see in movies. But this is real-- and all of you reading this post right now have been a real part of saving a life. I thank you all from the deepest core part of my heart for helping me and michael through this difficult time.

Michael is a completely changed person and sees things in a much brighter and more beautiful way. He is a completely changed person like a phoenix born from the ashes, and he is shining brighter than ever before. Let's rise and shine together.

Much Love,
Yeon-Hee

"My fifth bout of severe insomnia struck last week and this is video footage from the morning after the first night of getting normal sleep. I found myself facing death once again by fasting from sleep and from food, but instead of dying, I rose from the ashes like a phoenix, reborn. I didn't know if I would fall asleep forever that night; I didn't know if I would rise to the sun forever and find myself in a waking death.


After my friends helped guide me through meditation to return to my bed and sleep with intention, I fell asleep for the first full night in a week. As I had awoken, this was my experience. This was an incredible journey, but it took nearly every last drop of vitality my body had in order to come back to this planet in a search for its original soul."

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