Sedona Arizona, boasting four energy vortexes, has been the go-to place for spiritual seekers for decades. But its tourist business has fallen off dramatically over the past year and many are blaming the PR nightmare that was James Arthur Ray's sweat lodge debacle.
“It was a very unfortunate and sad situation that could have happened anywhere,” said Janelle Sparkman, president of the Sedona Metaphysical Spiritual Association, who attributes the woes that New Age practitioners are experiencing to a lack of disposable income for spiritual needs and not what happened that awful afternoon. “It was not indicative of Sedona or Sedona’s practitioners at all.”
But sweat lodges are now far less common, with the authorities shutting some down to avoid further trouble. And the spiritual association is pushing the importance of ethics among spiritualists.
Still, the tragedy of what occurred, along with the barrage of lawsuits, has caused some outsiders to look elsewhere for fulfillment.
