Christopher Iverson’s Bio:
I was born in the NW in Oregon and graduated from Portland’s Franklin High School. I then went on to study at Portland Community College and Portland State University. While I received no formal degree I did study in many diverse subjects such as entrepreneurship, business, public speaking, psychology and foreign languages.
In 1988 I started my first company called Premier Watersports, which specialized in personal watercraft rentals and instruction. During this time I helped to start and was elected to Director of the Oregon Personal Watercraft Association (OPWA). In my capacity as president of the OPWA I had many opportunities to speak in public and at our states capital in Salem during periods of legislative action. I also appeared in a Jet Ski video that was made for Kawasaki as part of a promotional campaign. I was very involved and active in the Jet Ski racing circuit. Having won many races and competitions I went on in 1989 to compete at the World Finals in Lake Havasu, Arizona at which I placed in the top third.
In 1992 I started an alcohol-free all ages nightclub and café called The Park Avenue (it was Oregon’s first electronic dance music club) located in downtown Portland. Featuring Portland’s biggest dance floor, this club proved to be very successful and was filled to capacity on many nights during its legacy. Within this ‘conscious’ nightclub I opened one of America’s first juice bars which was also a ‘Smart Bar’ called Think Smart. This was my first introduction to growing and juicing wheatgrass and making fresh fruit and vegetable juices. This concept proved to be very popular and within a few months of opening we were featured in Willamette Week, the Oregonian and all of the local news channels, which ran very positive stories about this niche concept for healthy living.
My great-grandfather had owned the building that the club and Smart Bar were located in and eventually I ended up managing the entire building. The upstairs four floors were converted into creative spaces for businesses, artists, musicians, activists and other types of entities. During the six years I was building manager I oversaw the operation of the whole building in every way, shape and form.
During the six years at the building I started many businesses and was involved with projects such as:
-Started a alternative newspaper
-Co-produced cable access TV shows
-Set up the ‘Activists Headquarters’
-Started the Alternative Health Center serving hundreds of AIDS and cancer patients
-Organized Eco-friendly activism
-Helped start an underground radio station serving 40,000 people with commercial free music
-Chief petitioner for the 1996 Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, a statewide voter initiative
-Produced several events and functions
-Started several companies and projects with various people, friends and acquaintances
-Appeared in all the major local newspapers, television channels and radio stations for a variety of different projects and causes.
Also the first Mayan Calendars/Universal Time Calendars were created in our building by Portland P.A.N. (Planetary Art Network). Jose Arguelles lived and worked in the building in the late 90’s. This was an especially important time of activation for our global community. At the time the ‘epicenter’ was in our building in Portland, Oregon.
In 1997 Willamette Week in its ‘Best Of’ issue featured our building calling it ‘the best place to have fun under one roof’. The building is still going after 25 years and a friend still manages it.
In the spring of 1997 I moved to Europe and lived in both Switzerland and Amsterdam. I moved to Switzerland to conduct research with hemp/cannabis for food, fiber, essential oils, seeds and medicine. My company was one of the premier hemp companies in Switzerland for several years. During my seven years in Europe I helped invent a unique, and quite possibly worlds first, hemp-planting tractor, which is featured in the film The Green Goddess. We also invented an industrial hemp-processing machine, and conducted research into building an industrial sized machine for separating hemp seeds from the flowers of the plant.
In addition I oversaw the breeding of many types of cannabis and over the course of seven years I helped to develop almost 40 new strains. Many of the seeds from these original strains were sold on the world market. I also produced a very unique cannabis essential oil, which I personally believe has one of the highest vibrations of anything on this planet today. Its many applications in aromatherapy are astounding and the potential for this product to be used in healing applications is tremendous.
In 2001, while still in Europe I created an independent film company called The Enlightening Film Corporation with the intention of producing conscious films. In my first trip to India in 2001 I attended the Khumba Mela gathering which is the largest gathering of people on the planet. With 45 million people crowded into a seven square kilometer area it was an incredibly intense journey and experience. I stayed at the gathering for six weeks and brought a small film crew with me to capture this amazing ceremony on film in the hopes of creating a documentary. We got incredible, rarely seen before footage of yogis, baba’s, swamis, sadhus, gurus, Hindus and Buddhists. Even his Holiness, the Dalai Lama came to the Khumba Mela! The documentary has turned into a much bigger film project than I had originally anticipated and this film finally released in 2019.
In 2002, I produced a feature film called The Green Goddess acting as executive producer, storywriter and lead actor. This international adventure ‘dramedy’ is about three Americans living in Europe on an adventure of a lifetime. Filmed in several European countries, mostly in the incredibly beautiful Swiss Alps, this film is sure to be a big hit with movie going audiences all around the world. To explain the magic that went into its creation would take several pages so I will just give some of the highlights.
The Green Goddess was filmed in several countries including Switzerland, Holland, Germany, the U.K. and America. Most of the 26-person film crew was from America and most of them had never even traveled outside America. The backdrop for the story is an old farm in Switzerland where the three characters grow a huge field of hemp that is the size of six football fields! They plant the field with the planting tractor that my company invented and the house that I lived in was used in many of the scenes. The plants shown throughout the film were actually plants grown by my company. The film is semi-documentary based on my own personal experiences. Many of the amazing characters seen in the film are actually friends of mine I met throughout the years. The hit music that will be featured on the double CD soundtrack was mostly compiled from diverse musicians and groups that I got to know and that are some of the most up and coming artists on the music scene today. All in all there are over 200 people involved now with the creation of The Green Goddess.
The Green Goddess has a huge production value compared with its meager budget. The high production value is due to the fact that we shot on movie quality digital cameras, which were fully portable, and we were able to travel to several countries living like a community and family in order to create this masterpiece. We even edited on the road due to new computer inventions and expanded capabilities. The Green Goddess has over 100 animated sequences and one of our animators was formally of DreamWorks.
In The Green Goddess I am also playing a starring role as ‘Christian’ who is a sort of ‘Pee Wee Herman meets Einstein’. My character, complete with white hair that sticks straight up like Einstein’s, is a hemp ‘mad scientist’ always inventing one thing or another. My character might be considered one of the stars of the film, other than the beautiful hemp plants, which really deserve all the credit, but believe me as Executive Producer I struggled to do about 10 jobs at the same time. The magic was created somehow, but it was certainly one of my biggest challenges to date.
The Green Goddess is finished and release!
www.greengoddessmovie.com
In early 2004, while living on a converted Rhine River barge in Amsterdam I set up a recording studio with a Dutch friend and we recorded a CD of conscious dance music called ‘Excelsior’. This music is very original and unique and has many conscious elements to it. Excelsior will be released by the Enlightening Music label and will be timed with the release of The Green Goddess. I am very much looking forward to making more music of all genres as I strongly feel this is where one of my main focuses will eventually be. I have been studying Nada yoga, which is the ‘yoga of sound’, and healing with sound. I am also studying many other facets of sound, harmonics and vibration in relation with healing. The study of healing with sound will surely be a main focus of my research for many years to come.
One of my other focuses is on living foods. I set up a worldwide consultation company in 2003 called Raw Temple. During the last several years I have personally conducted several workshops and have designed and conducted several chef certification training programs in places such as Amsterdam, Vancouver B.C. and Maui, Hawaii. Raw Temple does consulting and advising with living foods and the consciousness that comes with it. In the spring of 2004 I helped to open Vancouver, Canada’s first and only 100% live food restaurant called the Living Source Café. In the four months of this project I was in charge of everything from start to finish. We did a full renovation to convert retail space to a licensed kitchen, sourced all the equipment to set up a state of the art live foods kitchen, developed the menu for the café, trained all the staff and management in all aspects of live food consciousness, created and implemented the advertising campaign, conducted many interviews with the media and held a series of workshops for the public about live foods consciousness.
Article about the Living Source Cafe
In March of 2004 I took over as Director of Voter Power, which is Oregon’s largest medical marijuana reform organization. In the year that I was director I was responsible for managing the repayment of over $30,000 in debt that had accumulated, overseeing several employees, working with volunteers, establishing a medical marijuana clinic, testifying at the State Legislature in support and opposition to several bills, working with the State of Oregon DHS to improve Oregon’s medical marijuana program and organizing many activities and events.
At the beginning of 2006 I was appointed by the Oregon State DHS to sit on an 11 person Advisory Committee for Medical Marijuana (ACMM). I sat on this committee with doctors, lawyers and other professionals, and our role was to advise the DHS and recommend changes to the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program. This was a three-year appointed position and my term is now over. I did not seek reappointment because of how busy I currently am and how many other people want to serve on the ACMM.
In the spring of 2006 I wrote and received a grant for $120,000 from the D.C. based Marijuana Policy Project to work on the reform of local laws in Portland. I hired, oversaw and supervised 150 employees over the course of 4 months. I also managed the entire project including all the accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, volunteer coordination, telephone related work, promotion and events. We collected 40,000 signatures in four months but failed to qualify for the ballot.
Article about the marijuana initiative
In the summer of 2006 I developed and wrote the curriculum for a series of medical cannabis workshops. I also conducted the first several workshops and trained others to conduct them. The workshops are called ‘Beginning medical marijuana growing’, ‘Advanced medical marijuana growing’, ‘Outdoor medical marijuana growing’, ‘Understanding the medical marijuana law’, ‘Administering medical marijuana safely’ and ‘Hashmaking’.
In 2007 I completed a two-year Seminary program in the Beloved Community called ‘The Seminary of Spiritual Peacemaking’, received a Masters of Divinity (M. Div) and have been ordained as a minister. James Twyman, a world-renowned peacemaker and musician who has been called the ‘peace troubadour’ is the founder of the Beloved Community.
The manifesto of the Beloved Community is as follows: “The Ultimate goal of the Beloved Community is to demonstrate the Divinity of Life that is revealed every moment of our lives, and in doing so, to create a world of lasting compassion and peace. We are a spiritual and educational church organization that strives to align itself with the teachings of inner peace at the center of every religion and sacred scripture.”
The Beloved Community is based in Ashland, Oregon but has tens of thousands of members from all around the world.
In the spring of 2007 I was appointed to the Ashland Forest Lands Commission. The Commission is charged with the responsibility for the implementation of the Ashland Forest Management Plan. Within the Commission itself I was in charge of developing the new community outreach plan. The AFLC works on important models that have and will be replicated around the nation in forest management practices.
Ashland Forest Lands Commission
In the summer of 2007 I produced my second album with my music partner and close friend from Amsterdam. This album was produced in Ashland, Oregon and Amsterdam and contains many genres of conscious dance music. The album is the flagship album for our band. This album will be released in conjunction with the release of The Green Goddess movie.
We combine the senses into the performances by blending conscious dance music with stunning background visual images, aromatherapy scents to raise the vibe of the dance floor and chakra opening heavy bass samples.
Our goal is to channel uplifting healing music and blissful sound currents to spread joy and help the planet ascend. We blend different genres of dance music and combine ethnic world influences to create an organic atmosphere within the electronica. Some of our influences are: psytrance, world beat, future bass, progressive house, breakbeat and ambient.
In the summer of 2007 I was part of a three-person co-creation team that produced the first annual ‘Peace Village Festival’ in Ashland, which was a huge success. This community based free event drew over 1,000 people. The festival had an Elders Circle, a Healing Village, workshops, speakers and of course great music. There were over 40 booths at the event all from the peace, sustainability, healing and arts communities.
Peace Village Festival is now a yearly, free community event.
SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE:
Activism (much experience)
Advertising (some training)
Catering
Chef (Live Foods, Vegan, Vegetarian)
Community building
Computer skills (multiple)
Decision making processes
Economics (some training)
Entrepreneurship (started many businesses)
Events management, coordination and promotion (much experience)
Filmmaking; documentaries and feature films
General contracting (many diverse skills)
Grant writing
Healing on many levels
Health consultation
Industrial Hemp specialist (most facets of the industry)
Live foods consultant, chef, teacher and trainer
Management, both micro and macro
Marketing (some training)
Media outreach (much experience)
Medical marijuana (all facets)
Music composition and production (advanced, computer only, Ableton Live trained)
Organic and biodynamic agriculture
Permaculture (limited knowledge, studying presently)
Project coordinator (projects up to 100 people)
Public speaking (much experience)
Photography
Product manufacture and development (limited experience)
Online personal and business reputation management
Research and development for ‘consciousness’ related items
Sales
Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) for websites
Seed breeding and plant genetics (hemp/cannabis only)
Soil Microbiology (ongoing studies)
Telemarketing
Theory (no degree, specialize in conscious thinking)
Think-tanking and conceptual study groups
Veganic agriculture
Water specialist and researcher (very advanced, writing a book on water consciousness)
Website design
Yoga (10 years experience, can teach)
LANGUAGES SPOKEN:
English (native)
German (conversational to fluent)
Can understand very limited French, Dutch and some Spanish, and only speak basic words of these languages.
HOBBIES:
Strong practice of yoga and meditation (have been doing many types of yoga for over 20 years)
Studied many aspects of healing such as massage, Reiki, sound healing and energy work
Vegetarian and Vegan cooking
‘Uncooking’ and live food preparation
Organic Gardening
World Traveling
Dancing
Extreme snowboarding
All watersports
Soccer
Volleyball
DJ’ing
EDM music production
Singing Bhajans and chanting
Vegetarian/Vegan since 1992
TRAVEL EXPERIENCE:
Traveled extensively in Europe; Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland (lived for 7 years), Lichtenstein, Luxemburg, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland (lived for 7 years), and U.K./London/Glastonbury. Also traveled extensively in America, Canada, Egypt, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nepal and Thailand.