The path that led to my creating WINN has been a wandering one.

Although I’ve been interested in how people can live good lives for a long time, there wasn’t one place or one way to learn what I wanted to know. So, I’ve studied many things here and there. I received a degree in social work with a focus on family therapy and worked for more than 35 years with people struggling with themselves and the world around them. Like many psychotherapists I kept looking for more ways – more approaches, trainings, and techniques – that might help me to help them.

In the late 1970s I became interested in mind/body medicine and the connections between mental health, physical health, and lives lived well. Then mind/body approaches became mind/body/spirit approaches. In 1989, when I learned that ISSSEEM had been formed (The Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine), I joined immediately. That truly opened a new world, and I began to learn about the multiple dimensions of reality. I became familiar with the work of Elmer Green, PhD, one of the Society’s founders and a scientist, mystic, and, with his wife Alyce, a pioneer in the development of clinical biofeedback.

In 2007 I became editor of ISSSEEM’s member newsletter (BRIDGES: From Science to Spirit) created in 1990 by Carol Schneider, PhD. I later renamed it SUBTLE ENERGIES Magazine after the Society’s peer reviewed journal ended publication, and I continued as editor until the end of 2015.

Now there is WINN. This online publication is a way to keep gathering and sharing useful information about the nature of reality that includes the material and non-material worlds, about body, mind, and subtle energies.

My wandering path has led me straight to the belief that we can all live better lives through learning what the mystics, sages, and shamans have known for thousands of years – that there are realities beyond this physical world. Those who know this can gain the great wisdom (Perennial Wisdom) that teaches us that the really good life is centered in love, kindness, creativity, and true generosity.

A few people in my family were concerned that I was addled in my thinking and had a foolish view of reality, so one reason I created WINN in 2016 was to set my views before them in a non-argumentative way. Some posts are about my own experiences – that is one reason I’ve come to trust an expanded way of knowing. I am not alone in my take on life. And, I believe this is the perspective, the understanding, we most need now in these complex times.

Celia Coates, WINN Editor