The sweet oblivion of float therapy

My discovery of the true meaning of REST: Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy

float therapy modern gravity scott messenger
Photo by Blaise van Malsen

Salt can hold a certain kind of salvation. All you have to do is dissolve 1,000 pounds of it in a shallow, 34-degree bath. And then you just lie down and drift.

I discovered this at Modern Gravity, a float facility in central Edmonton. Owners Matt Smith and Jamie Phillips hope to establish the practice as a recognized therapy for relieving clients of many of the stresses of modern life.

The challenge: relieve floating of its reputation for being, as the owners put it, “hippy woo-woo science.”

Read more at techlifetoday.ca.

Why I returned to heavy metal in middle age

An unexpected reaction to Heavy Metal Parking Lot, 30 years later

heavy metal parking lot documentary
I hope filmmakers John Heyn and Jeffrey Krulik don’t mind me using this still from Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

Revisiting Heavy Metal Parking Lot when it turned 30 in 2016 was a shock.

At first, watching the cult classic documentary – which explored the inebriated human condition outside a Judas Priest concert in Maryland – was fun. It was a window onto the cringeworthy awkwardness of youth.

Or, was it a window onto myself?

And not my young self. Maybe my middle-aged self of the here and now. I wondered: Should I be worried? In an effort to figure that out, I wrote a short essay.

I hope you’ll enjoy it at eighteenbridges.ca. Rock on.

A knight’s quest to restore pro wrestling’s honour in Alberta

The Gothic Knight brings Pure Power Wrestling to Lethbridge

gothic knight, wrestler, lethbridge, photo by Blaise van Malsen
Photo by Blaise van Malsen

When I heard that a graduate of NAIT, the polytechnic where I’m a comms guy, was a professional wrestler, it was like a bell had rung. As a writer – and a former 10-year-old wrestling super-fan – this was the matchup I’d been waiting for.

The Gothic Knight, a.k.a. Edward Gatzky, finished a diploma in dietary technology in the 1980s before hitting the wrestling circuit, coming ever so close to a career in the WWE. But life had a few surprise moves of its own, and Gothic (as he’s called) ended up in settling down in Lethbridge, the area of the province he’s from, where he started Pure Power Wrestling.

On the eve of his retirement in fall 2016, I visited Gothic to talk about life in the square circle, what it meant to leave it behind, and his dream to bring wrestling back to its heyday in my youth, when the reality was that pro wrestling ruled.

Read the story at techlifetoday.ca.

A short tour of “Albeerta”

Here’s a taste of what the province’s craft beer boom has on tap

Troubled Monk, Red Deer Alberta craft brewerySince December 2013, when the provincial government lifted minimum production requirements for Alberta brewers, the local beer industry has been booming.

Join me on a short but sweet (and sometimes a little bitter – you know what hops can be like) tour through a small portion of what’s on tap across what’s becoming affectionately known as “Albeerta.”

Marni Panas helps bring change to the Alberta Human Rights Act

How a transgender woman’s quest to live authentically benefited more than herself

Marni Panas, transgender rights advocate, edmonton, alberta, legislature
Photo by Blaise van Malsen

For much of her life, Marni Panas was good at keeping a secret: that she was female but had been assigned male at birth. She lived in a small town where she says such things weren’t discussed, and during a time when there really wasn’t the language to do so anyway.

But as she became an adult, and a spouse and parent, she realized she could keep that secret no longer. She had to be who she was; that is, she needed to live what she considered an “authentic” life. So, in her 40s, she began the process of transitioning.

Today, Panas is known as one of Alberta’s, if not one of Canada’s, most vociferous and fearless advocates for transgender rights – and one of the key members of a group that helped protect those rights in provincial legislation.

While she’s accomplished much, but knows much remains to be done. For her, that’s the reward and price of living as true to herself as possible. Read the full story at techlifetoday.ca.