The name for our Centre comes from a word used by the Kogi Indians, a pre-Colombian tribe who have been living in isolation high in the mountainous jungles of Colombia, preserving a culture and philosophy long thought lost. They refer to themselves as the Elder Brothers of the human race, and to the rest of us as the Younger Brother. They see themselves as the guardians of life on Earth, and they have recently made contact with the modern world in order to deliver a message, a warning to us all that unless we change our ways the balance between mankind, nature and the spiritual world will be destroyed and life on Earth with it. This warning was delivered in a remarkable BBC documentary entitled "The Heart of the World", and in a book of the same name by Alan Ereira. (ISBN 0-224-02908-8)

The concept of "aluna" is central to their spiritual philosophy and their creation story. It appealed to us because it describes a universal energy much like the vital energy which alternative therapists must affect to bring about a holistic cure of body, mind and spirit.

"Aluna contains everything which is past and everything that may become. Aluna is intelligence; it is the concentrated thought and memory which forms a bridge between the human 'spirit' and the universe, but it is also the hidden world of force which govern the world's fertility. Aluna makes possible growth, birth and sexuality; it is the spiritual energy that makes things happen. ..... Aluna was and is the Mother."

"In the beginning, there was blackness.
Only the sea.
In the beginning there was no sun, no moon, no people.
In the beginning there were no animals, no plants
Only the sea.

The sea was the Mother.
The Mother was not people, she was not anything.
Nothing at all.
She was when she was, darkly. She was memory and potential.
She was aluna."