WRITER - Vancouver Lifestyles -
Dr. Mysterioso
Spoooky. Realllly spooky.
He’s been doing his thing for over 40 years now, and he’s still at the top of his game. Hell, he’s at the top of your game and my game!
Dr. Lee Pulos is a high school dropout. He suffered terribly from ADHD and shyness, left his parent’s grocery store and life as he knew it in Calgary to join the American Navy. His best buddy was Hi Eisenstat.
But we know him best as a clinical psychologist, restaurateur, hypnotherapist, high performance sports trainer, writer, lecturer, seller of motivational tapes, investigator of psychic healing and paranormal phenomenon and the man who has always been at the cutting edge of everything new and exciting in the Knowledge Age.
In the 70’s, Dr. Lee and his brothers opened a rambling barn of a place on Water Street, filled it with streetcars and old sewing machines and began a worldwide chain called “The Spaghetti Factory.” San Francisco, Boston, Sydney. That was just in his spare time. That was when he wasn’t teaching volleyball players to leap another 3 inches vertical, using – you guessed it – their imaginations. Years later, when Lee and his brothers sold the whole show to the folks at The Keg, Dr. Lee walked away with a pile of loot. But more importantly, he insisted the new owners give him a Get-All-The-Pasta-You-Want Free Card, dated, “Good until 3028.”
Maria, a functional illiterate, was Dr. Lee’s favourite psychic surgeon. For over 20 years he observed her and others in the Philippines use crude instruments with no antiseptics, no antibiotics, and flies buzzing about, to open bodies and remove “problems.” No pain. No suture. “I believe that I was observing accelerated time, Einsteinian time. A half hour later the patient would be kicking a soccer ball.”
To write his book, “Miracles and other Realities,” about the psychic healer, Thomaz, Dr. Lee travelled 18 times to Brazil.
“William James said we only use 10% of our minds. I believe we’re only aware of 10% because of our belief systems. Thomaz and other are awakening us from our cultural slumber. This isn’t paranormal; it’s paraconceptual, because we don’t have the paradigm. The discovery of real magic isn’t slight of hand; it’s slight of mind. We allow our shamans, scientists, to limit us to a very reductionist, 5-sense reality.”
His other book titles are like flags for The New Thinking. “The Power of Visualization,” “The Biology of Empowerment,” and “Mentally Fit Forever.
He is regularly paid $5,000 for a one-hour lecture. He is one of the best presenters I’ve ever seen.
I’ve known the man for 40 years. He taught me self-hypnosis and I used it to quit smoking in a day and a half. That was 35 years ago. Once, he broke his leg skiing. He was in agony, but he quickly put himself in a hypnotic trance, shelved the pain and got himself to a hospital.
I’m not sure Dr. Pulos has ever had an idle moment. Today, when he walks, as he does every day to Jericho and Spanish Banks and through the leafy curved byways of Lower Shaughnessy where he lives, he is listening to tapes. Not his own; he hardly needs more motivation. Last month it was, “The History of Civilization;” now it’s “The History of Religion.”
For his own spiritual work, he does hypnosis and meditation every day, and he reads a spiritual book every day. For leisurely enjoyment, his last book read was Ervin Laszlo’s “The Re-Enchantment of the Cosmos,” a little discourse on the inner machinations of quantum physics.
In his private practice, he has pretty much abandoned talk therapy. He uses EMDR, Eye Movement Resensitization and Re-Processing, what he loves to call, “Tappy, Tappy.” A couple of quick, pertinent questions, a tap on the temples and the pockets under your eyes and that persistent anxiety is gone.
Or how about EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique? Raise your arm, lower your arm, ask another question and that doppelganger that has been tailing you for the last decade is sidelined.
Like all good Greeks (Chinese, Jews, Italians and everyone else I suppose), Pulos is very big on Family. He and his three brothers are all still close. If one of them and their families are not camping out at Dr. Lee’s beautiful old home near the Ridge Theatre, he is ensconced in their digs in Santa Barbara, Phoenix or Mexico.
No longer the competitive racquetball player he used to be or the lifeguard he was for 9 years, Pulos is still a huge football fan. The Lions, of course. And, after working with a famous Miami player years ago, he still follows the fortunes of the Dolphins avidly. And he still teaches peak performance for a small group of elite athletes.
He looks half his age, of course. (Sorry, it’s in the vault!) And he’s still dating and still crazy after all these years – about lovely girls, that is.
“Einstein was asked, “What is light?” and he answered, “Light is the shadow of God.””
“I’m trying to bridge Science and the Spirit. I’m sure that the ultimate stuff that the universe is made of is energized awareness, consciousness. The problem is that we have so much static in our heads. I just keep reminding myself to listen to the whispers.”
