Dakota Beacon

By Chuck Rogér

Want to have your “aura” read? You could have done just that had you attended last Saturday’s Health and Fitness Extravaganza and Open House in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

What is an “aura?” Alternative medicine enthusiasts believe that each person emits a sort of halo of subtle radiation around the body. But conveniently, the aura is not visible to anyone but gifted “seers” or specially trained operators of special equipment. Believers think that analyzing an aura provides an indication of a person’s special attributes and emotional state.

At the Santa Fe extravaganza, an outfit by the name of Dahn Yoga conducted “aura” reading demonstrations using an “Aura Photo analyzer.” According to a reporter, “People were lined up at the table throughout the morning” to see the “on-screen results” of their “aura tests.” If you ever spend time in Santa Fe, you will come to find the willingness of local residents to endure a lengthy queue for an aura reading very easy to believe.

Perhaps if you’d been in Santa Fe last Saturday, you would have discovered from your aura reading, as one man did, that “all the red, yellow and orange dominating the image… means he had ‘a lot of fire going on.’ [and that the man is] passionate and creative, but the lack of other colors within the image suggests he’s also stressed.” I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Indeed.

A Santa Fe New Mexican website post covering the health care event lists four specific lessons which one could have learned by attending. Among those lessons were the following two.

• “Acupuncture can combat allergies.”
• “Be skeptical of ‘miracle’ health claims.”

Interestingly, just as “aura reading” has no basis in reality, there is also zero clinical proof that acupuncture has any effect at all on human allergies.

So then,

• A carefree weekend in the cobalt-blue-sky capitol of the Land of Enchantment: A few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on where you stay, what you eat, and what you do.
• Entry fee to the Health and Fitness Extravaganza and Open House: Free.
• The knowledge that this very same extravaganza warns you to “Be skeptical of ‘miracle’ health claims” while featuring “‘miracle’ health claims”: Priceless.