Celebrate the Life of
G. Blake Holloway
March 21
1947
December 20
2020
Remembering Blake
This celebration of Dr. G. Blake Holloway, inventor of NuCalm and Renaissance man, is a collaborative project by his family, friends, and coworkers, created with love for those who could not gather in tribute to this remarkable, evolved and eclectic human being.
Full of reminiscences, this project invites your participation through sharing your own comments about Blake’s impact and importance in your life, as a gift to others who loved him. For if you knew anything about his story, it was easy to admire Blake’s genius and his generous heart.
Blake at six months old.
Born on the first day of Spring in 1947
to Dale and Delia Holloway in Palestine, Texas, little Blake Holloway did not wait long to display his besetting characteristic of curiosity. At 18 months, he was spotted outside on the lawn conducting field experiments in gravity and water pressure.
As he recounts in his audio interview above, Blake continued pulling things apart and putting them back together the way he thought they should go, especially anything electrical. Another particular fondness was reading encyclopedias, no surprise to anyone who knew him as an adult. His interests continued outdoors, especially playing with his beloved dog and raising lambs and fawns that needed nurturing.
Blake’s parents were an industrious team, whether farming, raising cattle, running grocery and farm equipment stores, or whatever other work was needed to care for daughters Billie and Martha, and for Blake, who was younger by 10 years.
Blake told the story that, early on, his logical mind gave him a clear sense of right and wrong. When their preacher began saying things from the pulpit that did not agree with what Blake had learned in Sunday School, the young boy stood up and shouted, “Jesus told us to love ALL the little children,” and sang the song as he stomped out of the church. Little wonder that he became a Quaker later in life.
Another influence from his childhood would transform later into his fascinating and lifelong pursuit. Both of Blake’s uncles died from alcohol poisoning due to severe addiction. His father ended up having to support their families, who suffered terribly, as well as his own. Blake knew there had to be something particular about addiction that made it so hard to cure.
In the meantime, with the encouragement of his mother and grandmother, Blake left to study architecture at the Sorbonne in Paris (France, not Texas). Once he tasted the food, however, he also began training in French cuisine. Two friends swear it was at Le Cordon Bleu, which makes sense considering the meals he created. Another friend says Blake got more pleasure out of a meal than almost anyone, because the gourmet in him would start days ahead of time enjoying a meal he was looking forward to having, relishing the taste he was anticipating.
Even his love of buildings and cooking could not make Blake settle in Paris. This was the late Sixties and addictions were flying high as platform heels. Celebrities were scrambling for ways to “get clean,” years before Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison died within 10 months of each other.
Blake’s true calling reawakened. Eventually, back in the U.S., he began working in drug rehabilitation clinics, ending up as executive director of an exclusive treatment center in the Texas Hill Country with a Ph.D. in psychology. In his quest to find a cure for addiction, Blake continued to study and take training seminars with leading researchers in brain wave biofeedback and cranial electrotherapy stimulation. One such seminar was at the Pavlov Institute of Physiology in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida).
“One of things about me is I tend to climb up on the ladder and look over the edge of one box into other boxes and think to myself, ‘What would be fun and interesting to take from those other boxes and experiment with?’” Blake said in A New Calm, the book written about his invention of NuCalm, the first and only patented system in the world for balancing and maintaining the health of the human autonomic nervous system (ANS).
Balancing the ANS ends the fight-or-flight state that can hijack the brain during addiction, chronic stress and other conditions. For more details about Blake’s journey of discovery, read A New Calm or listen to the audio interview on this site.
“Upon reflection, I was putting together a puzzle that previously wasn’t being worked on by anyone,” Blake said, “Maybe it was my holistic approach, maybe it was my continued curiosity to explore new ideas, or maybe it was simply a determination to succeed out of compassion for the people I was determined to help.”
Blake settled in Kerrville and San Antonio, Texas, with his own innovative, private practice in clinical naturopathy, helping people nationwide with anxiety, trauma, depression, pain, addiction and circadian disorders. After 30 years as a researcher in applied and neuro- psychobiology, Blake earned a patent and two patents pending regarding PTSD and evoked potentials in the brain. At his death, Blake remained founder and chief science officer of Solace Lifesciences, which produces NuCalm.
Blake is survived in San Antonio by his wife Rebecca and, in Tyler, by his sister Martha and her husband Arnold Oates; Mark and Christi Oates, their daughters Elizabeth and Rebecca; and Katherine (Oates) and Doug Erickson, and their daughter Taylor Anne Jester of Fort Worth.
Blake practiced active compassion. He volunteered with Doctors without Borders. When the camp was evacuated while being fired upon, Blake did not return but continued as an avid supporter.
Instead, he volunteered with Secondary Trauma Stress Support teams. For example, he dropped everything to fly to Orlando to help victims of the nightclub shooting, and he drove to Waco to treat victims of the Fort Hood shooting.
Locally, he was called to help in crises, like the three hours he talked through a door to convince a vet not to commit suicide, followed by two more hours of helping coordinate transition to treatment and therapy. If a psych patient in crises came through his door without an appointment, all plans ceased.
Another of Blake’s callings required a strong belief system and a special kind of heart. One of his friends recalled going to an appointment to find Blake in a state of exhaustion. He had been up several nights in a row helping someone he barely knew with pain control through the dying process, thus allowing the patient to converse with family and without being doped up on pain medications. This happened regularly and was particularly poignant when he helped a member of his Quaker fellowship who had no family except the other members who gathered for prayer.
Blake the Humanitarian
No problem can be solved in the state that created it
Albert Einstein
Blake the Student-Teacher
Blake took his research and studies seriously. He would fly to Houston for continuing medical education or drive to San Antonio from Kerrville to meet with the functional medicine study group. He would look at all the seminar invitations he received to decide which would most benefit his work and research, then he would fly off to Boston for a conference with a French specialist or to San Diego for a seminar on scalar space.
When it came to his own research, Blake was emphatically precise. Once when running a 24-hour stability test on a computer file, it developed a glitch after eight hours. It took five hours of reading the code line by line to find and correct the glitch.
Blake shared his knowledge generously, chatting with clients about their conditions after treatment, answering questions to help their family and friends, or engaging in discussions about the energy of emotions and spirituality in terms that were most comfortable for the client.
More publicly, he volunteered to do in-service training about addiction with public school systems and teacher’s groups all around the Hill Country.
Blake the Lover of Beauty and Good Food
Those privileged to exchange emails with Blake would not get many, but they would be gems about the latest science and health news, gorgeous global gardens, quirky quotes, recipes and restaurants, peculiar political practices, or outrageous religious aberrations.
Blake was not fond of having his own picture taken, but did share his shots of beautiful landscaping or unusual plants for his gardening friends, and extraordinary meals or farmer’s market produce for fellow foodies.
When pictures were not possible, Blake’s descriptions of food set off craving bells. One text on King Cake read: “Actually, it tastes best at a krewe party the night before (Mardi Gras). My friend Francois made the best breakfast French toast with brandy, egg, and cream, then dipped in ground almond meal. I forgot to say Francois used day-old King Cake for the French toast.”
After an exceptional feast of wild rice and mushroom soup, poached black cod with roasted rainbow carrots and limoncello Baked Alaska, Blake extolled the rare champagne but said the small glass of port was “perhaps one of the most incredible things to touch my lips in memory.”
Invited to a warm evening in the company of a highly artistic family, guests were treated to Viennese schnitzel and a performance of Chopin by the nine-year-old son that brought tears to everyone. “In the beauty of that moment,” Blake said, “I said to God, ‘You can take me now.’”
Music was important to Blake. He loved both classical and jazz, with a good measure of gospel thrown in. One story he liked to tell came from his life in Boston. When storms would come through, he would throw open the doors of his roof patio and crank up Mahler full blast. Those who know Mahler will understand. These days, he would ask the home computer to play “Oh, Happy Day” by the Edwin Hawkins singers. He inspired me to add “Happy” by Pharrell Williams.
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
— Edmund Burke
Blake of the Quirky Humor
Blake’s humor could be dry, wry, biting, and witty, but above all, it was quirky. It did not matter if you got it or not, since when he started to giggle, you would laugh anyway.
Once when combining households, a concern was texted from that cook about space available for her kitchen equipment. He fired back with a text listing 11 large kitchen appliances, whether they were boxed, their size, capacity, modes, accessories, performance reviews, and their possible uses. The long paragraph ended with a single word. Spiralizer.
Blake once went on vacation in Mexico with a dear friend. They had expected another friend to come along. The third person was a no-show. Inspired, Blake boldly had his picture taken in various scenic places, all posed with one arm around the shoulders of an invisible person beside him. They were sent with the caption, “you should be here.”
For Valentine’s Day, Blake often would buy one of his dearest friends a box of candy. She would never get it. Blake would eat it, then tell her all about it. Eventually, they decided to buy candy for each other and then eat it themselves.
To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to women. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?
- Mahatma Gandhi
Blake’s Spirit and Legacy
With all of his quirks and endearing foibles, Blake was a rare conduit of inspiration from the divine, sharing his vision and his work to heal bodies and souls.
He did so believing that they would help achieve the critical shift in state needed for the next of evolution for humankind.
His inventions combined hard science, ancient traditions, and a touch of the unbelievable to bring restored wellbeing to tens of thousands of people around the world.
Those blessed to experience his non-traditional brain-body therapies as private clients know that a skilled and compassionate healer graced their lives.
Memories of his brilliant and eclectic mind, his generous heart and his luminous spirit will ever bring smiles to those who knew him. The pain of his physical loss will heal as his loving legacy grows.
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity,
we shall harness for God
the energies of love, and then,
for a second time in the
history of the world,
man will have discovered fire.
-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ