Namasteman

REAL FOOD: Local super~hero leaps blocked energy in a single bound

By Jan Henrikson (article appeared in The Awareness Journal, February 1999)

Melvin Segal looked innocent enough. Just another tourist taking a bus tour to the Catskill Mountains with his senior citizen group. With one important distinction. “My grandfather Melvin would walk to the back of the bus and spring out from the bathroom wearing a Superman cap and tights,” said Mark Naseck.

In a sense, Naseck has inherited the whimsical tights and cape of the family. He is a healer, photographer, magician, reiki master, yoga teacher, tantric spiritual being and live food chef — just for starters. And all these labels swirl and slide off him as he bounds through the worlds, creating healing through play.

“I’m a shape-shifter,” he said with softly radiating eyes. “The world is a stage and everything is play. Everything is my prop.”

Crystal bowls, chanting, Tibetan bells, tachyon, pressure points, flower essences, all these and more are combined in an energy healing work he created called NamassageTM. In Namassage sessions, he uses his hands and intuition to help people physically, spiritually, and emotionally unblock and open their energy.

“I don’t do anything,” said Naseck. “By being in a sacred place in myself, I bring people to the sacred place within themselves. I’m like a tour guide. If you want to go somewhere, you want someone who knows the path. Not that I know more. Am better. We’re all the same. I just know this path really well.”

His sacred play has had profound transformational effects on people and stems not only from good genes, but ten years of a live food diet and the fervent study and practice of yoga and meditation. At 21, he was a successful real estate broker and mortgage banker on the East Coast, deeply affected by the physical and emotional deterioration of his middle-aged associates.

“They were stricken with heart disease, cancer, I thought, “If I keep doing this I’ll be where they’re at, so I think I’d better turn this boat around pretty quick.'”

He turned his boat toward California and the gifts of new diet. Plagued by years of hay fever and bloody noses, he responded instantly to the Candida diet a holistic practitioner recommended to eliminate molds and sugars from his body. Within two weeks, he experienced deep nasal peace and his whole being awakened into a heightened sense of clarity, self-love, and aliveness.

Over the past decade, he has maintained a diet of mostly live foods. Foods such as sprouted seeds, nuts, legumes, fruits, vegetables, and seaweeds – – not heated more than 118 degrees. Bountiful in enzymes and vitamins, they strengthen the immune system and open the energy channels of the body.

And it is one more arena to play in. As a live food chef, Naseck once created a dessert for 300 people in the shape of a pyramid complete with a spiral of energy made from edible flowers. It was actually the logo of the Steps To Awareness Festival in Colorado. “Each bite awakened a chakra or life center to another level,” recalled attendant Penelope Greenwell.

“My whole world changed with my diet,” said Naseck, who continued sharing nutritional nirvana as vice-president and director of the Ann Wigmore Institute in Puerto Rico.

Intending to begin fundraising for the creation of his own healing center, he ventured to the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, the largest residential center for holistic health on the East Coast. After less than an hour at the ashram, he was invited to travel to India to prepare food for Kundalini Master Amrit Desai (Gurudev).

Already practicing yoga, and enjoying its benefits of increased intuition, flexibility, and energy, Naseck was intrigued by kundalini yoga. Kundalini is a powerful energy force, a gateway into the higher levels of consciousness which, when cultivated, may run from the base chakra to the crown chakra.

Still, when Gurudev told him he could activate Naseck’s kundalini, he declined. “When you’re ready, it will happen to you automatically. Some people who get it before they’re ready can’t handle it physically or emotionally. They freak out.” “I said, okay, ‘I don’t want it from you.’ When I find teachers, I watch them. I read their books and I can see the difference between what they write and what they live. In sales, I found the best sales people and I watched them and I did what they did because they were successful and I became successful. I brought that idea of how to learn from a teacher, from the business world to the spiritual world. So I told Gurudev, ‘I’ll receive it when I’m supposed to receive it.'”

India intensified Naseck’s core life issues so that in just two weeks he desperately wanted to flee. “I had traveled to 24 countries and had never felt that way before. I was always excited to be wherever I was. Now everything was in my face. I just wanted to jump ship, but I was committed to being there.” Naseck stuck it out for two months until finally, Gurudev returned to the states. Naseck was beyond excitement, thinking about all the places he’d explore. “I was so psyched. The day came for me to leave. In meditation in my room in the morning, I’m like ‘yes, I get to go!’ All of a sudden I hear this voice, ‘Stay. Stay. Stay.’ ‘No, I’m not staying. I’m out of here.'” He thought.

Still the soft, clear voice persisted. “Stay. Stay.”

“I said, ‘Okay what’s this voice about? I could leave and never know and it would always haunt me or I could stay and find out. So I stayed — much to my resistance.”

For three days, Naseck meditated in the room directly above the one in which Desai’s guru, Bapuji, formally known as Kripalu, had meditated ten hours a day for thirty years.

Kripalu would only emerge from his meditation for fifteen minutes every week to appear in silence before his disciples. When he died, people from around the world flooded the streets and drove the two hours to his burial site “to pay respects to this guy who wouldn’t speak, who’d write on this little chalkboard once a week. That showed me what can happen when you radiate and hold this energy.”

In this room, Naseck was meditating when he realized he couldn’t move his body. The room felt suddenly alive with non-physical entities and electricity shot through his whole being.

“I thought, ‘Am I dying? But this kind of feels good.’ That was the most profound thing I’d ever experienced in my life and I’d experienced a lot of profound things.”

“Ever since then when I do healing work with people, they have felt this electricity go through their bodies. Real profound things happen when we enter this trance space together and we become one being and allow the energy to work through.

“The biggest lesson is that when you’re quiet and still and listen to your soul and spirit, it will speak so soft, but it is screaming so loud. Really listen because God comes from that place.”

“Now,” added Naseck, “I have this energy that lives in my body and it’s not going to go away. I’ve taken a lot of time and energy to develop and awaken it. Now my work is to manage this energy that I hold that was in me or is me. The live foods, meditation and yoga keep me clear and allow the energy to be, so all I need to do is stay out of my own way and be an instrument of Divine Will. It’s a balance of will and surrender and a balance of the material and spiritual.” Can balancing be more fun?

At the 1998 Natural Choices Expo, he donned a purple top hat, a white cape, and purple pants to perform the Magnificent Magical Mystical Mango Manifesto Magic Show in the guise of a live food demonstration.

Hoisting a wand in the air, he asked everyone to envision something they wanted to manifest and something they wanted to release until the wand was vibrating with the movement of energy.

He is currently manifesting a corporate wellness program to bring more joy, peace, and creativity into the business world. He teaches yoga, contact yoga, is offering trance dancing sessions, and creating a vibrational healing show on cable-access. Who knows what’s next?

Naseck gives the impression of a multi-dimensional tour guide in shimmering coattails, a trail of stars bouncing out from every footstep as he reaches into his bag of cosmic tricks and tosses out seeds of play, abundance, joy, and love.

And you’re all invited. Capes optional.