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Layered Resonance


    At about 9:30 p.m., my mom and I drove into Holy Spirit, a Catholic retreat
center in Encino, California, where the Continuum workshop called "Layered
Resonance" was being held.  The description of the workshop in the catalogue
had said, "The depth of our resonance, cellularly, spiritually and
societally, is greatly determined by our receptivity to accept love,
compassion and healing.  The defended body cannot heal ...the defended mind
cannot grow.  Coupling the elegant, fluid movements of Continuum with the
non-invasive touch of craniosacral therapy brings a profound erotic
permeability that flows into streams of heightened awareness."
    My mom was on edge as she drove in, saying "What the heck?  What?" flustered
about where we were.  She had been nervous for the past several months about
driving in LA.  Her comfort level with driving was limited to back roads in
Maine in the broad daylight, and anything more difficult than that was
usually out of the question.  She was not sure that she would enjoy this
workshop, but Emilie and I had convinced her that she should go.  For the
past half-hour since leaving the airport, all I had heard from her was "Sam,
is this right?  Are you sure?  Sam, where the hell are you taking us? "Oh
shit, Sam!"
    We pulled into a dark parking lot, which, after driving through the city
of lights, seemed much stranger than it would have otherwise.  "Where the
hell are we, Sam?  Why is it so dark?  You suppose they know that we're
coming?" 
    "I don't know.  Why don't you go check it out?"
A few minutes later, we settled into a room with two beds and furniture made
out of fiberboard.  On top of the dresser was a flyer. "Holy Spirit Retreat
Center, a ministry of the Sisters of Social Service, is rooted in scriptural
values, and the vision and spirit of Saint Benedict.  Our mission is to
create an environment of hospitality and peace within which members of the
Ecumenical community seek to nourish their personal, spiritual and
professional lives."
On the wall between the beds, there was a photoshopped  picture of a white
dove flying past stormy clouds.  "Look at how cheap this dresser is," I said
to her, struggling to get the drawer open.
"Hey, it's a Catholic retreat center.  What do you expect?  They try to keep
it as simple as they can.  It's sort of surprising that they even have
beds."   
    My mom looked into the bathroom and said, "They call this room handicap
accessible!?  Look at that toilet!"  I looked inside and saw that there
might be a little problem.  The toilet was situated between two walls, and
there was only about six inches of clearance on either side.  On one wall
was a grab bar, on the other wall a toilet paper holder.  In order to use
the pot, I would have to wheel my chair up so that I faced it, and try some
sort of acrobatic maneuver to flip myself around to face the other
direction.  I groaned.  My mom went to check out the public bathrooms.  She
returned shaking her head.  "The other ones are basically the same, but
there's no goddamn door on them!"
    I lay down sideways on the bed, my legs hanging over one side and my
head over the other.  My back snapped four times, releasing the tightness
from the voyage. I stayed in that position until so much blood had gone into
my head that I couldn't stand it anymore.
    Feeling groggy the next morning, I tried to transfer to the toilet.  I
ended up halfway between it and my wheelchair, with my head smashed against
the wall and my right leg stuck between it and the pot.  I managed to pull
myself out of the mess that I had gotten into, and sat on a seat that felt
as though it were made for someone half my size.  As I sat, I noticed that
there were little ants crawling all over my feet.  Not being able to feel my
feet made me not really care that they were there.  Trying to get off the
toilet looked as though it might be more of a challenge than getting on.  I
would have to reverse the process that I used to get on, but this time I
would have to lift myself up about five inches, because my chair was higher
than the seat.  The positioning of the grab bar led me to believe that it
wouldn't be too helpful in achieving the task. For the first part of my
transfer, I positioned my right hand on the toilet seat, and my left hand on
the toilet paper holder.  Then I realized that I hadn't flushed, and that
there was a good chance that I might fall in.  I flushed and began again.
With a powerful push from my right hand, I began my transfer.  There was a
loud, hollow, sloshing sound as my weight on the seat tore part of the pot
out of the linoleum floor.  The toilet paper holder broke off the wall from
under my other hand, and my head hit the wall as I crashed back down onto
the seat.  My mother told the management about it, and they responded
quickly, patching the toilet so that it would stay in the floor.  However,
that didn't solve the problem of getting stuck in the gap between it and the
wall every morning for the rest of our stay.
    We had arrived a day early, so we spent most of the day wandering around
Holy Spirit and the neighboring area, enjoying the dry, seventy - five
degree weather. The center was located part way up a hill in Encino, a city
of 40,000 people, mostly rich and upper middle class, located about 25 miles
from Los Angeles, and only a mile from Ventura Boulevard, one of the most
famous streets in LA.  It was made up of a group of buildings situated
amongst eleven acres of protected land, surrounded by gated mansions with
stucco walls and red tiled roofs.  Looking out beyond a row of palm trees
from the door of the residential building, I could see several hilltops with
very few houses on them, a rare sight in a city where developers put houses
everywhere imaginable.
    Between the residential building, the cafeteria, and the conference room
where the workshop was to be held, there was a courtyard with pathways lined
with flower beds, a garden, and a lawn.  Downhill of the lawn was a duck
pond surrounded by trees and shrubs.  The people who ran the cafeteria were
supportive of people taking slices of bread for daily trips to the ducks.
    During our first lunch, my mom and I sat together under a tree outside the
cafeteria.  A fit and earthy looking woman of about fifty walked up and
introduced herself, telling us that she had been to the previous Continuum
workshop and that she was staying on for this one as well.  She was a body
worker herself, and told us that during the last workshop, she had learned
that humans are still in the process of learning to stand correctly.  She
demonstrated proper standing by shifting her femurs back to release some of
the locking in her pelvis and balance her more properly over her feet.  My
mom, looking slightly awkward, tried to do as she was being taught, and then
quickly reverted to her default stance, unable to quite get it or to think
that it was necessarily a useful thing to try to do.  When she left, my mom
said, "Oh god, Sam.  I don't know if I can handle all this.  All these
people are working on their bodies all the time.  They're very nice, but
they're certainly not my crowd."
That night Emilie arrived frantic.  She had forgotten to have someone pick
up Suzanne at the airport, and she was also desperately trying to rearrange
people's rooms so that everyone was comfortable.  A gray haired woman with a
walker who was enrolled in the course told her to breathe deeply.  "Are you
joking?" Emilie replied.  "I'm the queen of breathing."
    Over a chicken and broccoli dinner, the woman with the walker told the
story of a rare vein and artery problem in her back which had led to some
sort of vascular explosion, which temporarily cut off communication in her
spinal cord at the thoracic twelve level and left her paraplegic.  A lot of
her function had returned, to the point that she could use a walker, but she
still used a chair sometimes.  Although the story was interesting, it was
the fourth time that I'd heard it, so I talked to the six German folks who
were also at the table. Two of them were paraplegic from accidents, one of
them walked with crutches, another with a limp, and the other two were in
good health.  Only one of them didn't speak fluent English.  They laughed a
lot, constantly switching between English and German.    Stefan, who was
thirty-two and injured in a motorcycle accident, seemed like a guy who I
could get along with.  I told him about the problem that I had with the
toilet.  "Oh, yeah," he said.  "I was the one who broke it last year!"
    At 7:00, I rolled into a large room ordained with brightly colored paintings
of scenes taken from the Bible.  At the front of the room was a couch where
Emilie sat next to Benjamin Shield, an author, educator, Rolfer and
craniosacral therapist who was to co-teach the workshop.  He had co-edited
and co-created several books, including Handbook for the Heart, Handbook for
the Soul, Healers on Healing, and For the Love of God.  The workshop
participants sat in rows of folding chairs around Benjamin and Emilie.  In
contrast to Emilie's hectic nature earlier in the evening, she was calm and
collected as she greeted both old and new faces, putting a light hand on
their shoulders and smiling as she greeted them, showing that she was
genuinely grateful for having each person there.  She gave us an
introduction to Holy Spirit Retreat Center, with a few jokes about the irony
of doing a practice that has a very erotic element to it in a Catholic
retreat center. 
    Benjamin was a quiet, handsome man with graying hair just long enough to
pull into a ponytail.  He wore a white cashmere sweater, a pair of
bluejeans, and black leather shoes.  He spoke in a soft tone, leaving space
between his words so that the German interpreter would have time to
translate them.  Everything Benjamin said seemed to be spontaneous, and, at
the same time, well planned.  During his introduction, he told us that the
most effective touch that someone can use when working with a partner or
client is usually the lightest.  After turning off the lights, he asked us
to place our hands on the sides of our heads, and to feel the skin beneath
our fingertips.  Then we were to feel the bone beneath the skin, the tissue
beneath the bone, the fluid inside the tissue, and finally, the molecules
within the fluid.  I sat on the couch with my hands on my temples, noticing
very little more than I usually noticed with my eyes closed, wondering
whether the little spots behind my eyelids had anything to do with molecules
racing around. 
    Emilie's voice came in, and she suggested that we use the sound of "O"
to create a tunneling resonance in our bodies.  She demonstrated a drawn out
"O," which ended in an intense breathy sound that came from deep in her
throat and filled the room with its rich quality.  The rest of the room
joined in, a chorus with as many different pitches and qualities as there
were people.   Due to the Germans' jetlag, we all went to bed early.
    The next morning, we awoke to another beautiful, sunny sky.  I ate my
breakfast of eggs and chicken sausage (which I assumed was politically
correct sausage) out on the lawn in front of the cafeteria under the shade
of a tree.  At nine, most of the group started to head into the main
building for a "jungle gym" session, which involved hanging sideways off
chairs while panting out the "hu" breath or growling and doing the hu breath
on one's hands and knees.  I chose to stay outside.  I knew that I was going
to be indoors for the rest of the day, and the idea of being inside any
longer than I had to on such a gorgeous day was not appealing.
    I went in a half-hour later, and found a space in the far corner of the
room.  The rest of the room already looked like a typical Continuum workshop
environment, cluttered with mats, blankets, water bottles, chairs and
bodies.  The shades were drawn so that we would be able to concentrate on
our movement and not be too disturbed by the sunlight and flowers outside.
Since I was one of the last people to enter the room, I found myself in a
spot that was right next to the door to the bathroom.  It was only a minute
after climbing out of my chair and finding a place on the floor that people
started climbing over me or coming up in their wheelchairs and asking me to
please move. 
    Emilie stood in the middle of the room, thirty feet away from my spot in
the corner.  In order to provide a context for the work that we would be
doing together for the next week, she began to share her insights into the
human condition. "Our body is an organism that has been around for billions
of years.  So you have a body, but in a sense, it's not really yours.  All
of the structure of your organism has been shaped by other species at other
times.  The process of the organism has a prehistoric legacy.  A human being
is carrying a tremendous history, and it's that history that Continuum is
pointing to.  I want to define body.  Body is movement.  In order to
function on this planet, our movement becomes less and less obvious so that
we are able to coalesce ourselves and move around in this particular
electromagnetic field.  Each cell started out as a sack of water.  As
humans, we started the same way.  Everything in our body has been shaped by
the movement of water.  Fluid systems resonate.  Whenever there is a fluid
system, there is resonance.   In a group of people, when we activate the
fluid system and put it at the forefront, the group itself goes into a high
state of resonance in which we create a larger body, so that all of a sudden
we have access to a greater pool of capacity than we do in a bounded state."
    People listened intently, some taking notes, some meditating on every
word with their eyes closed.  Emilie was the prophet, and everyone seemed to
know it.  Those who knew her from the past were trying to internalize more
of what they had heard during some life changing time before.  Many people
who were meeting her for the first time responded in ways that showed that
they were being forced to be introspective in ways that they hadn't been
before.   
She asked everyone to come in closer so that she could demonstrate
micromovements in her legs.  People crowded around her, some sitting, and
some standing.  I couldn't see what she was doing from my spot on the floor.
My mom whispered over to me, "Isn't it a little ironic that people who came
to a workshop so based on developing awareness don't even realize that
they're completely blocking your view?"
    Sometimes people would get the picture, and clear a space for Suzanne
and me to see.  One evening, Emilie called everyone to the middle of the
room so that she could demonstrate visceral wave motion.  She took off her
loose cotton pants and sweater and lay down on the floor in her black
leotard.  Suzanne and I dragged ourselves closer, our legs sweeping back and
forth behind us like mermaids until we were able to get a good view.  Emilie
started her demonstration with "O" sounds, using the sound to invoke a
tubular shape, and imagining it resonating out from her body in filament -
like shapes.  After several "O's" and a long exhale, she pushed out her
belly to begin the wave motion.  Her viscera pooched out, making her look as
though she were pregnant.  She moved the wave up her torso, and when it
reached her chest, it seemed to crash and spread out into her shoulders and
up to her throat.  The wave took on a life of its own, and as she worked it
up and down her body, it would spread down through her legs in
micromovements and up to her throat again.  Her toes and fingers curled in,
taking on the characteristics of a prehistoric creature.   When she stopped,
she smiled blissfully.  "I just had a private moment in public," she said.
The room exploded in laughter.
    After the demonstration was over, I went back to my corner.  I shut my
eyes, and as I started to get into it, I felt something rubbing against my
head.  I opened my eyes to see a foot a couple of inches away from my nose.
The woman sitting next to me was hanging sideways off a chair with her legs
curled around behind her.  She had gotten a little close, and I imagined
that she must have realized it and would start to be a little more careful.
I closed my eyes again, and "bam!," her foot struck me on the side of the
head.  I looked over at her, but she just kept right on doing what she was
doing.  I gave up and lay down on my mat for the time being, and only
seconds later her foot began to drag across my stomach.
    In the middle of our dive, Suzanne, who was six feet away from me, began
to cry.  I looked up and noticed that she had a couple of people sitting at
her side with their hands on her.  Ten minutes later there were eight people
at her side.  I went back to doing wave motion, happy that there were some
people there to support her.  A half-hour later, the dinner bell rang.  I
opened my eyes, and found that it had gotten dark, and that now thirty-eight
out of the forty people were either sitting next to Suzanne with their hands
on her, sitting with their hands on somebody who had their hands on her, or
sitting nearby with their eyes closed to send her their energy or pray for
her.  Emilie sat at her feet, with a couple of candles burning at her sides.
The only two people who weren't sitting around Suzanne were my mom and I.  I
could see that my mom was ready for dinner, and I climbed up into my chair
to join her.  As we headed out the door, she jokingly whispered to me.  "I'm
hungry, and being at a wake isn't really my cup of tea right now."
On Wednesday, Emilie announced that we would go into a period of silence for
twenty - four hours, starting when we woke up the next morning.  She told
the group that talking creates a certain frequency and rhythm, and that when
we stop talking, the sounds that we make and the movements that we do can be
more profound.  The last time that I had experienced prolonged silence was
at the Continuum workshop at Omega in August. When I came into the room on
the last night of the Omega workshop, the eighty participants were in three
circles, some facing the inside, some facing the outside, some sitting, some
standing.  The room was dark, except for several candles that burned at an
altar in the middle.  Each person was working on whatever they felt they
should work on.  The only thing that everyone had in common was that they
were all doing Continuum.  There was a chorus of different sounds, "O's,"
"Jacques," "E's," and "thetas." At first, the combination of so many
different sounds was a bit annoying.  But soon after I lay down, they all
began to resonate in me. The O's created an internal darkness and changed my
sense of space.  The thetas spread my tissues.  The Jacques, a combination
of "jjjj" and "zzzz" sounds, vibrated through my bones.  For the rest of the
night, I hardly made a sound of my own, except for those that came with the
emotions that I released.  I cried for over two hours.  I thought about my
fear of surgery, imagining the surgeon cutting open the full length of my
back and my left side, exposing everything that my skin was meant to
protect.  I thought about how poorly I had been treated by the tech at the
hospital.  And I thought about how vulnerable I had been, especially during
the first couple of months of rehabilitation.  I had not known my body, and
I had to trust it to people who didn't know me.
Not communicating verbally to anyone for such a long period of time had been
enough to cause me to experience parts of the trauma that I didn't think
that I would have otherwise.  Silence is a powerful reminder of how much of
an impact verbal communication can have on our lives.


*****


    When I came into breakfast the next day, everyone had done as they were
told.  I sat down at the table next to my mother, and she began hitting her
melon with her knife, implying that it was not ripe and still quite hard.  I
made a gesture of starting up a chainsaw to get through mine, and the table
erupted in laughter.  Throughout the day, the things that people would do to
communicate with one another would frequently end in laughter.  I found that
I started to get to know people a little more.  Without speech, people who
normally relied on it for everything that they communicated couldn't act the
same.  It seemed quite obvious why, in retrospect, but since people are so
rarely silent, one tends to rule out what might happen if everyone shut up
for a while.  At the Omega workshop, there had been several other groups
around, so the silence did not produce the same feeling.  Here, there were
only a few people around who weren't in our group, so when someone spoke, I
really noticed.   
    During the afternoon session, I partnered with Emilie to work on the
craniosacral technique that Benjamin had demonstrated.  I lay on the floor
first.  For twenty minutes, Emilie moved her hands around my belly, down my
legs, up my chest, and to my head.  My eyes were closed, and I felt a
spiraling sensation wherever she moved her hands.  When the time was up,
Benjamin rang a bell so that we would know to switch.  Sitting beside
Emilie, I thought about how much she had taught me.   Not only me, but there
were eleven thousand people out there who did Continuum, and twenty-three
teachers who she had trained over the past thirty years.  Before even
putting my hands out to touch her, I just sat there and contemplated all of
that.  Then I thought, "I wonder if she gets a kick out of the fact that
this guy who could be her grandchild is partnered with her?  Is she just
thinking, ’Oh, well. Whatever.'  No, she can't be.  That would be completely
contradictory to everything that she has taught me.  Wow.  This is so
intense."  I put my hand out and touched her stomach, placing it delicately
on her leotard, and feeling the softness of her body.  I remembered Benjamin
saying that you didn't necessarily have to touch the person's body to do
this work effectively, so after a few minutes, I pulled my hand off and held
it a foot away from her.  For the last few minutes, it felt as though Emilie
and I were involved in foreplay, my hand running up and down her body, but
not actually touching her.  When Benjamin's bell rang, Emilie, with her eyes
still closed, reached out and wrapped her pinky around mine.
At dinner that night, a gray haired woman named Marilyn, whom I had spoken
with briefly the day before, handed my mother a poem.

Sam likes to ride his wheelchair fast.
Well, what 18(?) year old wouldn't?
The rubber wheels roll over the polished hardwood floor,
And Sam slams on the brakes
Just before he crashes into the buffet table,
Almost toppling the orange juice.


Yesterday Sam moved his leg.
One by one, dressed in sweatsuits and leotards.
We gathered to watch Sam kick the air,
Grinning in his wild dance of discovery.
His mom sat at his shoulder in gratitude and wonder.
Old masters with their countless Madonnas
Never captured the shine in her eyes.
We all wanted to touch her,
While Sam kept on kicking.

So there we were with our own nativity.
Wisemen in workout suits,
Taking time out from Jungle Gym and Hu breaths
To witness a beginning for Sam.


    Aside from having her think that I was eighteen when I was actually
twenty-five, I was touched by the poem.  The people who had watched me had
all been very excited about my progress.  It was inspiring for them, and the
attention certainly felt good.  My mother was visibly more touched by the
poem than I was.
    The workshop ended in silence.  When I came into the room for the last
evening session, chairs were arranged in a semi-circle around an altar made
of a clear plastic bowl of water, with rose pedals floating around and
candles in the center.  Around the periphery of the altar were several
branches of holly, and behind it a folding chair in front of a red sheet
that hung from the ceiling.  Benjamin broke the silence to tell us that each
of us was to sit in the chair and feel the energy of the group that we had
spent the week with.  One by one, people filed up to the chair and sat.
Some cried.  Some nodded their heads as they slowly looked at each person's
face.  Feeling slightly uncomfortable in an intense situation, I pretended
to roast marshmallows over the altar with one of the branches of holly.  It
took close to three hours for everyone to have his or her time at the altar.
    A week before, as the participants of the workshop arrived, there were very
few of them whom I could see myself stopping and talking to randomly outside
of this environment.  But as each person sat in front of the group, I
noticed that no one still had the defended look that they had had before.
Each person had come to the retreat with issues, some psychological, some
physical.  Some had experienced issues during the workshop that they weren't
even fully aware that they had.  During our silence, I had laughed with many
of them at the challenge of communicating without language.  As I looked at
people sitting there, I thought about how so many factors beyond their
control had shaped who they were.  For the first time, I was looking at each
one of them as individuals, rather than as a part of the group.  My mother
remarked the next day that she saw a baby in the face of each person.