BARBARA
Emilie Conrad

I saw her face, her mouth generous, voluptuous, quick to smile; her dark eyes danced with the light of gypsy campfires. All her movements seemed to spring from her hair, quivering electrical filaments. I registered the wheelchair -- what has happened here?
Her story: Barbara was eighteen, a college student, still living with her parents in Buffalo, New York. She was a rebellious teenager, bent on her own way. Lying, she told her parents she would be spending the
weekend at a girlfriend's house. Actually, she was driving to Montreal with her boyfriend, Brian. On Sunday, coming back to Buffalo on the Queen Elizabeth Highway, Brian complained of being very tired. She offered to drive, but he shook his head, indicating that he was OK. They stopped at a gas station to fill up. Barbara got out of the car for a whiff of air and a look at the evening stars. Although she heard Brian's voice urging her to hurry, she sat on a rock, holding on to the night for as long as she could. Reluctantly she got back in the car. Within ten minutes she lay nconscious, tossed like refuse from the car, in a field of broken bottles and rusted
tin cans, her lungs bleeding, her back crumpled. Still alive, hovering far above her body:

twinkle twinkle little star
how I wonder where you are...
An accident? ah yes, I have had an accident.
Turned over in a car many times
turning turning
I have been rotating ever since. I turn in my sleep.
I turn but remain still. I turn and no one is there.
I scream no sound
All is quiet.
My eyes are open, but I have disappeared.
I cannot feel my life.
I cannot feel a touch on my legs.
My thoughts lie somewhere in a smashed radio.
I have died but remain unburied.
I speak from the grave of myself.
I speak from the dirt of worms just eaten.
I am gone. But my memory is here.

Some force in Barbara refused to die. She had extensive bleeding of the pleura and an extreme fracture of the seventh thoracic vertebra, and was
immobilized from her mid-back to her feet. A decision was made in the ethers. She opened her eyes. Drugged, stunned, she knew she had returned. She hung upside down in a Striker bed, being turned
every few hours to maintain her circulation. She hung like a frozen stalactite awaiting a thaw. The best surgeons had been called, the best procedures employed, the best drugs used, and finally, shaking
their heads, the doctors declared her a complete paraplegic. Technology had done its best, rescuing her with surgery, tubes, pumps and a rotating bed, but it could bring her no further.
It was decided she would go to Rusk rehabilitation Hospital in New York City. She was there for six black months, learning to make peace with her
condition. She learned how to bathe, change clothes, change diapers, use digital manipulation for her bowels, transfer herself from wheelchair to bed, to bathtub, to chair, to car.
Her physical therapist would call out "Strengthen those arms, they're your legs now! Better get them good and strong! That's all you've got! Come on! Come on! Get it going! Put your finger inside your rectum like this! Push it in! Start it moving! Come on, get it going! See? That's not so bad!"

Eleven years later, we met.
It was during this same time that my interest in paralysis began. I was drifting away from a career as a professional dancer. I had lived for some years in Haiti and had been a choreographer for a primitive dance company. In primitive dance, undulating movements dominate most of the folklore. In Haitian prayer, the most transcendent movements were those
that resembled dancing snakes. I intuited that these snakelike movements went far beyond folklore, perhaps reaching to the undulating core of our biosphere.
In my own quest, I was seeking movements that were not "culture bound," but were more biologically based. Would such movements allow for a more universal connection to life? Would it be possible for human beings to feel in such resonance with our biosphere that we could become planetary beings primarily and cultural entities secondarily? I had to find out.
I felt the undulations in Haitian dancing and prayer as a biological link, but I sensed that these movements needed to be much more internal and subtle. Watching newborns, I was aware of how fluid their movements were, and how miraculous the process is as they interact with the earth. The earth creates the need for bones and muscles to stabilize our fluidity,
so that we can crawl, rise and walk toward our unknown futures. I began to see that what we were referring to as a "body" was a multiplicity of movements that were stabilizing in order to function and survive
successfully within the earth's atmosphere. This stabilized entity is what we now call the body, but the body is basically movement without
particularized boundaries. Stabilizing localizes and gives the illusion of a fixed boundary. This serves us well in ordinary circumstances, but as a process of existence it may become limiting.
I asked myself, if movement is what we are, can this ever be stopped? I wondered about people who were paralyzed. Perhaps paralysis is not what we think it is. I began to explore movement with various people who
were demonstrating different aspects of stasis. In a diagnosis of paralysis, function appears suspended although movement is still continuing at many other levels. I wondered, if these other levels of movement were invigorated, would they provide a basis for new function?
My questioning led me to consider wave motion. A human being is at least 80% water, and has emerged from an undulating, watery environment. It seemed reasonable to me to explore internal wave motion as a
primary movement.
I examined movements that were much like the ripples created when we throw a pebble into a lake. I found that undulations were stimulated by breath and sound, seeming to arise from an internal reservoir of primary
organismic responses. I came to believe that wave motions are an essential biological link for all organisms. They represent the watery substance of our origin. Life begins in the aquatic and later becomes terrestrial. Life processes flourish in fluid states.
I saw that non-linear, omnidirectional, fluid movements, so richly varied, could potentially activate new spectrums of mobility. Such movements,
when strengthened and stabilized, might take on new functional activity, might create a process of innovation.

In 1974 I met Dr. Valerie Hunt, who was a Professor of Kinesiology at UCLA. Dr. Hunt was intrigued with my postulate concerning innovation. She began a research project using electromyography in unorthodox
ways to further analyze simple and complex fluidity. Her studies showed that the undulating wave movements that I was demonstrating recorded frequencies that were 200,000 cycles per second, as opposed to muscular
movement recordings that showed 250 cycles per second. We were looking at another organization of movement, one in which new implications might be realized.
Excited by this research, I wanted to explore paralysis using the modalities I was developing. From my perspective our conservative culture had
produced a restrictive, mechanical model for spinal rehabilitation which could not conceive of innovation along the lines I was proposing.
I wanted to see if I could find someone with a spinal injury adventurous enough to join me in my vision.

There she was, sitting in front of me, a perfect candidate. Before Barbara's paralysis she had loved to move, in ballet dancing, ice-skating, sports.
Since her accident she had gone through every sort of rehabilitation...acupuncture, fasting, prayer, physical therapy, magnets, crystals...on and on.
I was very clear about our project. I could not promise she would walk again, but I could guarantee we could expand her overall mobility, and perhaps new function would come about. I told her very frankly that I held no medical degrees and I had a very limited knowledge of anatomy. I did have some previous knowledge of paralysis from working with a few people with spinal injuries. I clearly stated my training was as a dancer, with a strong background in primitive dance. What I could offer was my capacity to elicit fluid movements that were both discrete and complex. I could also bring my highly developed kinesthetic sense, my empathetic ability and my patience and a passionate vision.
What I was proposing made sense to her, and she was more than willing to try. She asked, "When do we start? The sooner the better!"
As I came to know Barbara, I saw not only a spine that was paralyzed, but also a life that was like a barren tundra -- isolated, lonely -- a vast expanse in which no footsteps were heard. Her life had stopped with a click. At the time of her accident Barbara was a vibrant, defiant young woman, full of life. She was hardly equipped for life as a mummy.
Her isolation was excruciating to me. A few acquaintances lingered from her past. Now and then came the obligatory phone calls, the voices less
frequent, the connections becoming weaker as time wore on.
Her incontinence consumed most of her day. Lying on the floor, making herself urinate, took a long time. Digital bowel manipulation took a long time. Sometimes feces would get in her hair, and she'd rinse and rinse, praying that no remnants hid among her dark curls. She was fastidious, worrying about any diaper odors, always using talcs and perfumes to calm her concern.
And then there was the laundry. The Laundromat was miles away. Several times a week she would bundle a mountain of her soiled things in a huge basket, place it on her lap, wobble out the door, and push awkwardly
down the driveway. She would roll precariously to her car, and, letting the basket down, open the door and hoist the cumbersome basket into the rear. Accomplishing that, she would transfer herself to the driver's seat, collapse her wheelchair and one-arm it also into the back, often spilling the laundry. Once at the Laundromat all these step were reversed. When
I asked why she didn't have a laundry service pick it up, she said she couldn't afford it. I think she was embarrassed by the soiling and didn't want other eyes to see her shameful sheets. She drank very little
water to keep her urinating under control. Often it leaked through her diapers, staining her clothes, as she pulled herself along the floor, dragging her legs behind her.

I felt that after all these years she was still in great shock. I know that medical people think that spinal shock wears off after time. Perhaps some of it does, but only a small part. When we are in a life threatening situation we revert to an animal response by holding our breath in order to stop
movement...to be undetected. No rustle, no stir of the bush, nothing -- silent waiting -- until the threat passes. In cases of severe trauma the threat does not seem to pass, and the protecting breath maintains its stasis. The shock is held in the breath and becomes patterned into the nervous system.
People who have sustained long term abuse sometimes demonstrate a similar behavior. I believe that in order to move the shock you must work with the breath, which is the key to the nervous system. I taught Barbara how I explored my breath.
When we began working together, I found her breath trapped high in her chest. Much like a bird caught in too tight a cage desperately flapping its wings to escape. I tracked how these new breaths began to interrupt the mad fluttering and bring about long periods of quiescence. I showed her how to place breath in different parts of her body, and how to enrich breath with a variety of sounds, rhythms and textures. Some were percussive
and dynamic, centered in the diaphragm, while other breaths were soft, flowing, placed in the epiglottis.
It's not only breath that creates more mobility, but the movement from one breath to another. The greater the shift, the greater the diversity: percussive to subtle, diaphragm to epiglottis. These changes create an internal event somewhat like leaping across the Grand Canyon from a small rock and back again. Another aspect to this array, is the resonance
created by a variety of disparate breaths. This can be seen as 'coupling', as when mutualizing or resonance produces a mysterious third. Much like
placing the color red next to the color green, the color frequencies will begin to merge, which produces an effect that is the outcome of their combined properties. Resonance not only amplifies, but it can produce an event that might be called a "symbiosis," a union for mutual advantage. From the coupling of disparate breaths, a new breath is created, bringing
new attributes. The new breath creates an interference in the closed adaptation. This interference can now become a wedge that can continue
to interrupt the stasis.
In cases of severe paralysis one has to go where movement still exists. Breath is movement. Breath stimulates intrinsic movement. Small undulating movements could be seen all through Barbara's torso and throat, particularly inside her tracheotomy scar. She thought these subtle movements were interesting but of little consequence; after all, what do such twitches in the chest area have to do with walking?
Like most people in wheelchairs, all Barbara's attention went to her legs. She was obsessed with walking, which was understandable, and her question was, how does one get from here to there? I explained that movement begins intrinsically, and eventually, when strengthened, would become extrinsic, more dynamic, and more "functional." In other words,
walking begins with intrinsic movements of the spine, where the origin of 'legness' lies.
Besides teaching Barbara how to expand her breath and find a wealth of internal richness, I held my hands over her spine, sometimes actually touching her, and sometimes holding my hands a few inches above her
spine, allowing for a more subtle energy flow. I knew from the research with Dr. Hunt that subtle movements can be transmitted from one person to
another, particularly when rapport or empathy is present. Through years of exploring, I was able to communicate these subtleties by touch or sometimes by my close presence. Our contact allowed Barbara to feel more discrete, intricate modalities of movement, as well as an abundance of new sensations. Her ability to feel herself moving from the inside was a
revelation. She told me it was the first time she felt herself as whole. In that moment there was no paralysis!
The accident left her spine extremely hyper-extended, like a bow perpetually arched for delivery. After years her muscles had become fixed, her bones dry and brittle. One of the breaths I had developed appeared
to increase circulation in connective tissue, making it more resilient and malleable. It seemed to me that one of our tasks was to see if we could soften and expand this bound rigidity.
Although I met with Barbara several times a week, she needed much more reinforcement if we were to penetrate her frozen structure. She practiced her varied breaths and intrinsic movements on her own for hours at a time. The effect was visible. Her core, once suspended, became increasingly resilient. Her breath, which had been so entrapped, began to gain
versatility and become mobile. She had more overall movement as her breath released and softened.
Barbara's original injury was overlaid by years of compensation. This presented a complex problem. We were basically dealing with two levels of stasis, one traumatic, the other habitual. Unchanging compensation can be viewed as another form of paralysis.
For a person fully compromised, who cannot even turn over in bed, the simplest task, like putting on your clothes, becomes monumental. Any trace movement that is strengthened is a lifeline to independence. One
is loath to give up such movements once victoriously achieved. However, any movement done time and again in exactly the same way, even as a means to expedite daily activities, becomes a closed system and forms
another layer of paralysis. Movement then is merely a conveyance to get you from here to there, and is not experienced as alive, growing and changing. We give such utilitarian movement no further attention. To
me movement is information, and using the same muscles in a repetitive way establishes a locked-in compensation in which no further information is received. Therefore, in order to move from this layer of compensatory adaptation, we have to be willing to let go of what we've so carefully mastered.
Barbara, living independently for so many years, had built up her own unique style of compensatory adjustments. Now her habitual patterns, which had been her survival, were being challenged. Everything that she had painstakingly achieved over these years was up for review. Her life raft was moving away; could she let it go? Could she allow herself to
become clumsy, inept and stymied? I encouraged her to see that movement was not just about legs, it was about nourishment and life; it did not stop with her spinal injury.
I saw her as heroic. I knew how hard it was for her; she would tremble with anxiety but continue anyway, seeing these new challenges as a difficult adventure. She had the fresh energy of an undaunted beginner. She discovered ways of courageously discarding her habitual patterns.
Over a period of eight or nine months we found that the level of her injury had lowered from the seventh thoracic to the second lumbar. Her diaphragm had softened, which allowed an array of wave motions to
spread into an ever-widening territory. Waves beginning around her breast bone now spread to her hips. One day her pelvis, dormant for so long, began to move. We both cried for a long time.
The hours that Barbara had spent so willingly, learning to expand and diversify her breath had finally brought resilience to her brittle skeletal
structure. The breaths and movements seemed to stimulate the fluids inside her bones. The wave motions that began in her diaphragm spread out, widened, lengthened and deepened. As she lay on her back, the movement would radiate from her hips into her seemingly frozen legs. When I touched her externally I felt the rock solid hardness of her leg, but inside I could feel a warm and deep pulsation.
As she breathed in a variety of ways, I pulsed her legs very gently, with just the slightest touch of my hands. I experimented with different pressures; interestingly, it was the lightest touch that seemed most effective. One day radiating wave motions could be felt in her legs -- not just pulsations, but rich undulations.
About a year into our process her knees began to move -- micro movements encircling her entire knee area. A micro movement resembles a subatomic pulsation of light, the smallest visible bit of movement.
Seemingly, it emerged from a deep source, modulated the skin and left it iridescent. Her knee had not flexed yet, but it moved. I saw small quivers
permeating her calf. The electrical currents of life sparked deep inside.
After weeks of seeing micro movements in her knees, we experimented with having her sit up and move her knees exclusively. She began a wave motion in her hips, and, as it radiated slowly downward, she coaxed
flexion and rode the wave like a surfer into her knees. There she was, one leg at a time, flexing on her own, purposefully and specifically using her knee.
As the movement of the knee got stronger it began to radiate to her frozen foot, and we could perceive the tiniest perturbations of movement in her ankle, and very, very tiny micro movements in her foot. Over a period of weeks the movements became stronger, and as she sat moving her knees, bending and flexing, it looked like the movements of a frog. I had seen
this before in others I had worked with. It appears that in the recovery from a severe neuro-muscular compromise, the movements of renewal are like a recapitulation of our biomorphic development. The leg as we know it, begins as a tail, bifurcates into amphibian "legs," and eventually becomes bipedal.
While we were basking in the glow of her progress, other aspects of Barbara's paralysis became evident. Her defenses were dissolving and revealing a core of self-hatred. I knew the vast shame she had around
the circumstances of her accident. She was haunted by the lie she had told her parents. I felt that she punished herself more than any judge or jury. I wondered how far this punishment went. As I became more involved with her life, I grasped more fully the undercurrents of her despair, her emotional storms, her wheelchair bound identity, and her social
isolation. From my perspective, the injury was not localized in her spine, but spread everywhere, reaching out in many directions. Her attention,
however, was still localized, perpetually riveted on her legs, as if by sheer concentration she could force them to walk.
I was incredulous to see how independent she was, considering how long it took to do the simplest things. Bathing, her bowel program and changing the bed took most of the morning; the Laundromat, grocery shopping, diaper hauling and the like took most of her afternoons. She also cleaned her own house. How she managed the vacuum was impressive. This woman was unstoppable. She had received a settlement from the insurance company, something like $60,000, which was carefully invested, and from which she received a small dividend each month. Her parents sent the rest of her living expenses. Such a good girl, always the
smile. "I'm a good girl, see? I can live on nothing. See? I'm no trouble. I clean my own house. I haul my own soiled sheets. I'm smiling. See me smile. Smell my perfume. I am clean." She hated her broken body. It lay collapsed in the middle like a doll thrown from a window -- all lumpy and broken and rigid. Her legs stuck stiffly from her hips, pointing south forever. I asked Barbara to draw her body. The drawings were vague, little chicken scratch figures -- barely there, stiff little sticks, all bunched up. I noticed that in most of her drawings there was a definite crack at the hips. Her pen line would literally break at the hip in every picture. I wondered if Barbara was still punishing herself for that sinful and irrevocable weekend with her boyfriend.
Barbara kept a journal of her dreams, and each time I came to see her I would read them before our session. I felt there were two Barbaras. Two selves, one living and one who knows where? One self was very, very bad, and one self was oh, so very, very good. So very obedient, smiling, agreeing, the "we aim to please" self.
About six months into our experiment, Barbara told me this story. When she first came to Los Angeles, she lived on the ground floor of an apartment complex in Downey near the rehabilitation hospital, Rancho Los
Amigos. One night in her new apartment she awoke to find a man standing over her. He had taken off his pants, and, as he climbed on top of her, she pleaded with him to stop, "I'm paralyzed, please leave me alone!" She wept and pointed to her wheelchair, but he went ahead and barreled himself into her, dug his way inside the unparted flesh, and tore into the cave
of this girl lying in Antarctica. From the ceiling she spun and spun.
twinkle twinkle little star

This event had remained internalized all these years. I could not separate the injury to Barbara's spine, the split selves running around her psyche, her self-loathing, and those stiff drawings with cracks at the hip line. Not to mention the phone that hardly ever rang and all the holidays and birthdays spent alone.

Medicine has come a long way in the last fifty years in providing procedures for spinal paralysis, so that death, these days, is quite rare. During and after World War II, surgical methods were developed for
fusing bones damaged in spinal injury. Prior to that, there was little that could be done if there was extreme damage to the spine. In World War I soldiers with spinal injury were warehoused in hospitals, where they died of various infections that are incurred due to paralysis. Problems with the respiratory system, bowels, or bladder can be life threatening to someone
who is paralyzed. It was Dr. Howard Rusk (Barbara was "rehabilitated" in his hospital) who made the major breakthrough in the hygienic procedures that allowed someone who had suffered a spinal injury to live far longer. Prior to this, people with spinal injuries were considered so hopeless, that they were referred to in medical textbooks as the "scrap heap of human existence."
So much has been done, and yet there is still no protocol for spinal recovery. Although the injury is to the spine, conventional therapeutic techniques spend most of their efforts attending to the legs and the arms, and not to the core, where leg buds sprout in an embryo. I've seen patients in many spinal wards, struggling in parallel bars, attempting to take steps in heavy metal braces, lurching, forcing, gripping the bars, using every ounce of will, and then, most often, faltering and falling exhausted into
frustrated despair. This battle with gravity is common. When will replaces neurons, a prescription for failure surely follows.
What doesn't exist is the recognition that a living organism contains within its own capacity a vast potential for innovation. Having a procedure that
can stimulate the core to innovate new pathways means activating and galvanizing internal life processes to such a complex degree that the ability for self-organization becomes stirred. In this context, nerve fiber can be stimulated in new ways. What appears to be frozen and dormant can throb with the currents of life, all of it taking place within the profundity of a biological recapitulation.
The intrinsic movements of our bodies -- organs undulating, connective tissue flowing, blood circulating like a great ocean of nourishment --
represent, in my view, our oceanic ancestry. Once surrounded by water, we arrive on land bawling and eager for what we will discover. This very ancestry may be our link to our renewal as well. Movements like sea anemones, the rippling tissue of the octopus, and the rolling movements of kelp signal us from our oceanic past. These very movements exist in us as
currents of our origin, and they have the possibility of stirring us in new and rich primordial ways.

Developing Barbara's intrinsic strength by varied breathing brought ample resiliency with which to access complex wave movements. By degrees I began to introduce changes in her relationship to gravity. Using micro movements seemed to stimulate nerve fiber, allowing her over a period of time enough strength and development to be able to engage successfully with gravity.
I kept her movements close to the ground, engaging only in incremental challenges. Lying on her side and turning over using her hips, holding her ankles and lifting her legs and moving them in circles, allowed her pelvis to gently get used to supporting her in new ways. I felt that by moving in this way, she could meet new gravity situations without becoming overwhelmed. Barbara could feel the small changes that gradually let her pelvis stabilize in different positions. As strength increased, we began to work on all fours, and by moving her pelvis down toward her ankles slowly, she learned to adapt without collapsing.
We progressively increased the challenge. One day, as she was planted firmly on her hands and knees, I asked her to crawl. She began to bring one knee forward full strength, and then the other, and the first knee again, continuing specifically to place her knees firmly on the floor -- going across a forty foot room without once collapsing -- using her legs in clean alternate movements. She was definitely on her way.
The problem with such a severe injury as Barbara's is the tendency to concentrate so specifically on getting things to move, and after a time I saw it could become too localized, overly specific. By concentrating so
intensely on her breath and wave motion and all the practical things we were doing, we were certainly accomplishing a lot...BUT...at some point the focused intensity could become constraining, the goal overbearing. Barbara's commitment, though certainly impressive, could become a trap.
I suggested that she come to Continuum classes. At that time I had a large studio in Culver City and was teaching daily. As well as working with Barbara, I was involved in a whole field of movement experimentation. I had live musicians playing for classes, and the studio was rich with a variety of creative activity. I felt that Barbara needed to balance the intensity of her healing process with movements that were aesthetic and expressive. I also felt it was important for her to be around other people, to make some friends, to have a few laughs, to be a pretty woman and to dilute the intensity of our relationship.
Barbara was the only one in a wheelchair. Unfazed, she plunked herself down on the floor and joined in like everyone else. She adapted what we were doing to what she was able to do, and since we were all exploring in an unrestricted way, it was a fertile place for her to expand her movement vocabulary. I was hoping that by breathing and moving with a group
that it would help to amplify and deepen the work she was doing on her own.
The classes at the Continuum Studio were not about "paralysis," they were about discovering the movement of movement. Movement, as I was exploring it, had no inside or outside, no particular center or direction...it was encompassing. Goals, outcomes, specific needs, create direction, and direction will eventually localize and become self-limiting unless it
can be freshly informed.
Our classes would usually begin with exploring breath in some unique way. In my view, all movement originates with inhaling and exhaling, and movement ceases when there is no longer that delicate thread. The intricacies of our breaths allowed for movements to rise unseen and internal, and eventually ripen into unusual shapes and gestures. Much of what we were doing helped us to release conventional images about
what we thought a "body" was.
I was discovering that fluidity of movement creates more resonance, both in an organism and within a group. Often when we were moving more dynamically, people would dance in pairs or in trios, coming together for a while and then dispersing, looking much like a magnified cellular configuration. Everyone benefited from the amplifying. In a sense we were
creating, for a time, a larger body in which there was an abundance of intrinsic activity for everyone.
~*~
I felt I needed to wean Barbara away from having her attention always riveted to her legs and walking. No matter what we did, her attention kept leaping to her legs, constantly focusing on what was happening below
her hips. Her desperate urgency kept forcing the movement into a premature shape. Her preoccupation with her legs was completely understandable, but I continually had to encourage her to allow her
attention to become more global, less localized. Not either/or, but both.
Creative, non-localized movement is much like a baby discovering the thrill of its own body; to force this baby into walking would be an act of violence. It is the neural abundance of non-localized movement that creates the generative possibilities for innovation.
This subtle activity must stay uninterrupted until it is ready to begin its own stabilizing process. Premature demands will abort the process by localizing
it too abruptly. The timetable for this is not the same as the urgency
of a paralyzed person's expectations and demands. To be willing to wait without demand is to participate with a process as mysterious as the spin of the sperm and egg. The unfolding of life must remain silent, dark, and safe. Casting light upon it too soon will most likely destroy it.
Before her accident Barbara had been an athlete and a dancer. In these activities she'd learned that forcing was a "good" thing. Her will was
indomitable, her commitment enormous, her courage unquestionable. These Olympian qualities needed to become more ambient and fluid. I had constantly to remind her to shift modes. She would comply temporarily, but her basic state was to use her will forcefully. What I was asking for seemed terrifying; in her mind it meant surrendering to death.
For me, this issue was as crucial as achieving wave movements in her diaphragm. I kept with her moment to moment, breath to breath, coaxing her away from her ingrained habit. A molting process appeared to be
taking place in which the web of old values could be shed. Constant vigilance was required. Like a mid-wife alert to the contractions of labor, I watched the contractions of the psyche.
Willful forcing does not allow for a sensual life to flourish. Barbara's driving urgency left her unable to register the undulating lushness taking place
inside of her. Instead, I felt her to be in exile, in a purgatory of sorts, where her forbidden sexy weekend with Brian had become a life sentence. I
felt somewhere in the catacombs of her psyche lay a self that would never be allowed pleasure, or sensuality of any kind. I could feel how thoroughly
she was punishing herself for being rebellious, for having been sensual, and for lying to her family.
Sexuality was the betrayer. It had got her into her terrible trouble. Sexuality was too frightening. Confusion resided below her hips. Coming close to the
sensual her cry would be, "Let me out of here." Again, I intervened, slowing her down, ever so slow. The bird in its cage flapped wildly in protest, but
again, trust prevailed and we slowed down.
In this slowing she allowed herself to begin to register sensual feelings by degrees. "What does this have to do with walking?" she asked. It was
difficult for Barbara to understand what sensuality had to do with paralysis, as if sensuality were a distraction from her larger purpose. In fact, it
opened up the split in her fragmented psyche.
We entered the forbidden city. As Barbara permitted herself more feeling without demand, the level of her self-hatred was increasingly revealed. The room would grow thick with shame and disgust. She would work herself into emotional storms that vibrated the rafters. Sometimes I felt that the walls of her room would be wet with her bottomless tears.
I WANT TO WALK, BUT I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE A BODY. THIS BODY IS MY DISGUSTING PRISON...DON'T YOU TELL ME ABOUT FEELING ANYTHING GOOD...I CAN'T FEEL GOOD...A MOUNTAIN OF SHIT IS IN FRONT OF ME...WHAT HAPPENS IF I GET DIARRHEA? HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO FIND BROWN RUNNY MESS ON YOUR RUG? STINKING SMELLY MESS...ARE YOU AWARE I HAVE TO LIE ON THE DIRTY, FILTHY FLOORS IN REST ROOMS TO MAKE MYSELF PEE? AND YOU'RE ASKING ME TO SLOW DOWN AND RECEIVE THIS HORRIBLE, DISGUSTING BODY?
I would say, "I'm here with you. You are not alone. I am right beside you."
I could be with her because this road was familiar to me. Although I never suffered a spinal injury, I certainly had been covered with ice myself.
Self-punishment was not new to me; I had tortured myself as a dancer and deprived myself of anything pleasurable or even soft. Hair shirts had hung in my closet. Pick a color, any color -- there's gray and gray and gray.
My own urgent need to dance had covered my fear of an encroaching catatonia that was immobilizing me from inside. I had done this for years. My own demise was long and elaborate and this is not the place to
retell it. Suffice to say, I knew every pebble of this road and I knew the edge of the cliff was near. Now, I sat with someone who, much like my own former self, was thrashing and mad, wishing to die. But no matter how hard she fought we stayed the course.
Slowly, so slowly life stirs among the ice-bound. Summer is not far away. Can you see the frost turning to tears? The turmoil and weeping went on
for a very long time. Who knows how one measures such a time? One day it simply ends.

Innovating new neural pathways is similar to the beginning of all life. In a sense, the body becomes a metaphorical vagina; whether new life will take hold depends on the "sensual climate" of the body; similarly, the mucus of the vagina is alkaline so as not to destroy the sperm. In some extraordinary way, our sensual, erotic feelings provide a kind of atmosphere or "mucus" for new life to occur. Slowly, Barbara was able to allow these exquisite feelings to flood her without imposing purposes and conditions on them. The sensual and erotic now provided new possibilities in the process of renewal.
I felt it was important for her to engage in other aspects of her existence that were not about paralysis. She enrolled in art classes at Otis-Parsons in Los Angeles. Her drawings and paintings became richer and more elaborate. No more little chicken bodies. She was drawing from big hefty live models, and suddenly her canvases came alive with breasts and hips and hairy vaginas dusted pink with pastels, with voluptuous buttocks pulsating with sensual nakedness.
Now, in 1997, Barbara no longer qualifies as a paraplegic. Although she is not quite ambulatory, she has full movement capacity when not fully erect:
she has flexion in all her joints, she has quadriceps articulation, and she has continuing strength and innovation in her legs, ankles and feet. What was once an overly rigid spine, poised like a bow, continues to melt into refined and glorious mobility.
We keep in mind that there were eleven years of atrophy before she began her healing process. Barbara's paintings flourish and grow. She has
become a full-fledged artist. Her vibrant nudes with bursting pink hips and burgundy nipples have found an appreciative public. Barbara has been leading movement groups on her own, as well as working with clients privately, taking them through the process that she has been exploring. She lives in a lovely house with a very handsome, sensitive man who loves
her, a beautiful garden in back, and a leaping dog greeting her hand...life is gushing.
Over the years with Barbara, my role needed to transform as well. During the early phases it was important for me to maintain a central position; my
teaching, coaching, empathy, and general midwifery were essential. But as we went through these phases, from her Stone Age into the sweet currents of her present life, my role has become more peripheral. This was done very, very gradually, again, like relating to gravity -- incrementally, without being overwhelming.
Because we are still in a process, I am still involved, but more as a movement consultant, general advisor, and good friend. We often go to galleries and art shows, and spend time just enjoying each other.
I do not think that I have ever lived quite as deeply inside another human being as I have with Barbara.
Our empathic resonance exists in a sphere for which I have no explanation. What comes to mind is how I think of Holy Communion, where the echo of the words "where two or more are gathered in my name" resounds in the heart.