Saving Critters

“I caught the lizard!  I caught the lizard in the garage!” I shout excitedly while clasping the cloth covered critter in two hands and fumbling with the front-door latch to get out. It's scritch-scratching against the cloth, wanting to get free. I hold on as gently as I can. Running outside I let it loose near the big olive tree. The lizard sits still a moment then rustles through the golden oak leaves in short bursts of scurry-stop, scurry-stop toward the low wall at the edge of our front yard. I imagine it sitting on the wall later in full sun to thaw out from its scary morning.

“Long life, li’l alligator,” I call softly and go back inside.

I had been worried about “Lizzy” for two weeks. I saw her scuttle across the garage floor when I drove in one afternoon, and made mental note to look for her behind the folding chairs and under the exercise machine we keep out there. Knowing there were plenty of insects who also make their home in the garage, I wasn’t worried about her starving, but I was mindful to keep the door between garage and kitchen closed so critter and humans wouldn’t surprise one another. Never found her until today, while exercising on the Power Plate machine. I’d finished the strengthening exercise and was about to pick up one of the straps you hold onto while inclining your head to one side to stretch neck muscles. Looking down, I saw the eight inch dark gray reptile next to the handle of the strap. It looked stunned and still, next to the base of the Power Plate with just the tip of the tail under the machine. 

The shaky-shaky machine makes lots of noise. It increases G-force which amplifies whatever exercise you do on it by shaking the part where you stand side to side, front to back and up and down. It makes all your muscle fibers fire, increasing tone and boosting bone density. If Lizzy was under it, or worse, up in the machine, she must’ve had quite a ride, poor gal.

I wondered, as I set the lizard down outside on the leaves if it were a guy or a gal… and how can you tell with reptiles? I like to think of her as Lizzy and I’m glad she’s free.

Growing up in a house designed to bring nature in via floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors, I learned early how to save birds which sometimes flew in, as well as spiders, potato bugs, lizards and other creepy crawlies so we wouldn’t step on them or otherwise hurt them accidentally. 

A rattle snake crawled into that Echo Park house when I was ten. I’m glad my mom handled it. Bravely, she got it outside somehow and hit it over the head over and over again with the business end of the shovel, eventually decapitating it. My dad had just left us and Brother Mel was living down in Anaheim. Whacking that snake seemed to be the right thing for Mom to do.  She cried when she buried it. I don’t think I could’ve killed it unless I was really, really, really mad. 

My husband and I keep a cricket catcher by our back door, because we get lots of crawly and jumpy things coming into our Oakland home in the hills. Inverting the jar over the critter and slipping a stiff card under it works well for insects. It would not have worked for eight-inch Lizzy! Although, once on Maui at a cranio-sacral training, a fellow student and I adapted the cricket catcher idea by using a shopping bag and large poster to catch a dragon fly with a fourteen inch wing span. She had been bashing herself against the high transom windows trying to get out. It was heart wrenching to watch. She was gorgeous!  Fellow student Bob and I really wanted to free her. When at last  she spent her strength and rested on the floor, we caught her and took her carefully outside. Watching turquoise, black and yellow wings catching the sunset glow as she flew down the green valley bathed in gold inspired us with awe. 

The lives of critters are important to me. I see lots of skunks, squirrels, dogs, cats, and once a deer hit by cars and in the middle of or on the side of the road. I say thank you for your life as I pass by and offer a prayer for their sweet release. Dead Animal Pick-up gets a call from me when I get home, telling the location where the animal can be found.

Fear and carelessness kill - human creatures as well as non.

I wish we had a better way of living side by side so fewer critters’ and people’s lives were lost.

Death Sucks

“May you lean into the love and support of friends, family, and your community at this time of transition and loss.” 

I’ve been writing this or something like it way too often these days. People I love are choosing their windows of departure; their exit ramps from life are looming large. Adoley just lost her fight with cancer of the tongue. I'm wishing it were otherwise, but that's my selfish desire to continue to be at benefit of her wisdom, courageous acts of sacrifice, compassion, and caring, and her modeling of the possible. I hate that Death takes those who have so much still to give. I hate that cancer is Death's most trusted executioner these days, I hate Cancer. Rest in peace, Adoley.

Working as volunteer counselors at Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times, which serves kids with cancer and their families, my husband and I are used to hating cancer on a regular basis. Seeing young ones with parts of their bodies or brains carved away because of the disease, tears our hearts. At camp they get to be just KIDS. Cancer is secondary; not invited to the party as guest of honor, but accepted as annoying cling-on. Chemo cuts, missing limbs, and stroke-like symptoms from pediatric brain tumors are their new normal. Welcome to our "club." Here, you're not odd one out. You belong.

When a child has cancer, the whole family suffers. Siblings can often feel like chopped-liver. Parents necessarily turn all their attention to the sick sibling. Guilt runs family wide. Need too. Camp provides a respite from and haven for families struggling with active treatment or in the wake of what those treatments do to the child. Care and connection prevail. Compassion prevails. Most of all, FUN prevails at camp, as do appropriate challenges to meet.

Seeing kids - even in wheelchairs - up on the highest beam of the Courage Course (fifty feet in the air) is an inspiring sight. Seeing all kids solve problems, care for one another, and support the well-being of all in their cabin is heart-warming and awe-inspiring.

When, as one of the adult counselors, I accompanied WOLP expeditions (Wilderness Outdoor Leadership Program for the fifteen to nineteen year olds) into the wild to have a camp-out, I was always amazed by the generosity of spirit (and bravado and flirting) that I saw our campers shower on one another. Wearing forty pound packs, pushing wheel chairs, carrying guitar cases and other instruments in addition to their packs as we hiked over uneven terrain in the 108 degree heat, these kids would tirelessly sing and encourage one another. 

Heather, the fastest person on one leg, wore the tip off her aluminum crutch within the first thousand feet of our five mile hike. Metal on granite. She was steadfastly cheery and determined not to let anything bother her. She ran, danced, leapt over crevasses. Ka-ching, Ka-ching, we took her song of metal on stone for "granite." All of us rested a bit after the uphill climbs, and again when we arrived at the plateau before setting-up camp. It's always rewarding to look down from the top to see how far we've come.

On one particular WOLP hike, Randy, an adult counselor who lost a leg in a boating accident in his teens, leaned his titanium prosthetic leg against a tree while we all rested. A surprise thunder storm rolled in. Lightning hit the tree against which his prosthesis rested. The smell of ozone gave way to the smell of burnt rubber. The titanium became a lightning rod; the tennis shoe at the bottom of it grounded the bolt of energy right into the earth! On the spot, Randy earned the nick-name that will forever be his: "Terminator." He served as a much beloved counselor for many years.

One of the things that happens at camp is that the size of the whole camp family varies. With each new session, more families join the club no one would voluntarily sign up for. In between sessions, some kids lose their fight with the dreaded disease and are given wings and halos. As a whole, we celebrate the gains and losses - new campers arriving; older campers graduating out or becoming memories in our hearts. Each is a poignant life passage.

Death comes suddenly or slowly, but always with sadness. We respond as best we can. Like gravity, Death sucks. Both keep us in our place, mired with our feet in Mother Earth. Slime mold sucks at our toes. Celestial dreams tug our spirit crowns upward. Elongation is a good thing as we stretch in life and as we leave this plane to hop a new one.

Stardust returning to stardust.

Reese's Story

Reese’s Story rambles across decades and continents. Particulars are changed here to protect the innocent babe born so early that s/he was the youngest babe to survive in her/his country of birth that year. Doctors were amazed. Birth mother was too distraught at the thought of a one pound baby to care for, so she left the content of her womb in the hospital and went to live on a different continent. Reese never saw her again.

Reese's father cared for his child as best he could and, when safe to do so, returned to his country of origin to be nearer relatives who might help him out a bit. He couldn't help but fall in love with the babe, nor with a caring housekeeper woman who'd come to help. So he married her and invited her two daughters to live with them as well. 

Unfortunately for Reese, the step mother turned out to be a wicked witch of Grimm proportions - jealous of every scrap of attention Reese's father spent on the fragile wee babe. As Reese grew, the evil surrogate mother told Reese how useless and lame s/he was and how s/he’d never amount to anything - ever.

Reese took to heart this pronouncement and it struck the core with a dissonance s/he'd carry with her/him seemingly for the rest of her/his days. S/he identified as a no-goodnick, a waste of skin. Deep shame was the overriding affect.

When s/he came to me, s/he was already in her/his forties. S/he had attempted several careers but seemed best suited to photography which s/he did artfully with considerable skill and some amount of pleasure for the film and television studios in Hollywood. 

The issues s/he wanted to address were lack of social grace, inability to sustain lasting relationships, and deep depressions that s/he fell into fairly regularly. 

Referred to me by one of my teachers, Reese showed up in my office during an episode of severe symptoms on her/his lower legs. Huge purple bruises appeared in splotches between knee and ankle. Not like ordinary bruises, these purplish black marks came and went quickly. 

I was reminded of something I'd seen during a cranial training in 1999. The class was working in pairs. A woman lay on the table near me while I was working on someone else. During a break, I watched in fascination as the woman's temples began to turn purple. Her practitioner, a compassionate and gentle man was applying feather light touch to her shoulders - no where NEAR the head. The purple became bright then darkened all the way to this same charcoal gray color I was seeing on Reese's legs. 

In the case of the woman at the training, all bruising evaporated after 12 hours. The content of her work was based on her forceps delivery and something got resolved during that practice session. In the case of my new client Reese, the bruises came and went fleetingly. There for just a few hours, gone, then back again. Reese tracked them at home.

We set an intention to watch the flow of color to see if it was related to any mind-set, emotion, or activity. Negative on all three counts.

Was the body trying to signal the anniversary of the post birth trauma s/he’d experienced? Was the body trying to heal this ancient wound of pokes and prods  s/he’d received during the time living in an incubator in that European hospital nearly fifty years ago?

Can you imagine living in a clear plastic box for three months, wherein the only touch you receive is painful pricks, jabs and rough handling? The lower leg is about the best target for IV needle insertion in a lethargic, hanging- on-for-dear-life, extremely premature baby. 

As late as 1999, the international pediatric community of doctors didn’t formally recognize that newborns felt pain before one year of age. More current research acknowledges that untreated fetal and newborn stress reactions may be responsible for adolescent aggression, and self-destructive behavior including suicide.

That Reese had only some physical symptomatology, bouts of depression, and trouble sustaining relationships was quite remarkable. S/he was ALIVE! 

Notes I took in 2008 during a phone debrief a couple of weeks after one particularly rich session, illustrate the depth to which this client could go and reemerge with some resilience. By rich session, I mean there was a break-through of repugnant tastes from another time/space that made it into the therapeutic container to be dealt with via bodily responses. I had a bucket ready just incase the ultimate natural response - vomiting - manifested. R did not vomit, but sweated, and shivered and shook and cleared throat and thrust tongue in a sustained disgust response. I normalized that and kept close, my hand making contact as s/he asked for contact - usually on the sole of a foot. Client was curled up on the floor:

In a conversation today with R. about our last session, which was 2 weeks ago, the client laughed and said, in a very up-beat voice, "It’s been miserable! I’m depressed, feel melancholy and am not functioning well at all. Am I on schedule?" S/he wanted to know.

"Yes, and no…," I said. "You are a statistical improbability… being the youngest gestational premie born the year of your birth. The cost was enormous in terms of de-regulating your nervous system. There is a resiliency you’re experiencing now that allows you to handle deeper levels of turmoil without fragmenting into total dysfunction. This is a good thing. But feeling depressed is not where I'd like to land you and I’m not convinced that it is at all necessary. I'm sorry you've had a rough go these past days. Let’s spend next session completely OUT of the trauma vortex and story and stick to building resources, shall we?" I said. 

"Sounds good to me." R said.

Acknowledging when I've taken someone too far, too fast has been helpful to almost all of my clients. For them to hear that landing them in a difficult patch was not the intention and that we both can watch out for 'too much too fast' in the future humanizes practitioner and client and invites collaboration and engagement. This is a team effort. I'm not here to fix anyone, but rather to bear witness to whatever the human with me in my treatment room is ready to deal with and, hopefully, get a new perspective on. 

Healing happens even if the traumas endured came so early in life. Telling the story seems empowering as only a coherent narrative can be empowering. Once the nervous system has down-regulated (discharged some of the fight, flight, freeze), the story of what happened takes the healing from the brainstem upward through the emotional brain and all the way to the cognitive brain where story lives and can be understood.   

To understand how shame and disgust are linked I recommend watching a brilliant comedienne named Hannah Gadsby. Her show, which she calls "Nannette" is on Netflix and treats difficult subjects with humor but most of all with humanity. She also is ready to graduate from jokes to story telling  which, according to her are very different responses to what happens to humans. Jokes create tension and provide release through laughter, as R was doing when we debriefed that difficult session - laughing at how rotten s/he felt. Story telling has three parts: Beginning, middle and ending. Getting all the way to the other side of the river of healing is our goal - not to be forever floating on the trauma rapids. We want to get to shore. To land. To feel some sense of completion and relief.

Ultimately, Reese married, returned to Europe and lives well enough - if not "happily ever after."  It pleases me still to hear from R from time to time. Resilience incarnate.

With a view toward sharing the information contained within Essential Spirituality by Roger Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., I have been reading the book, and enjoying the idea of what Walsh calls “perennial philosophy.” Every world religion known shares overlaps with every other major religion. These are ideas worth examining. Exercising to build our spiritual muscle with ideas that have worked for millennia makes sense to me.

In his intro to the book, the Dalai Lama affirms Walsh’s reasoning behind sharing these ideas for the purpose of having the world’s population recognize that we are spiritual beings with bodies rather than physical bodies lugging around some vague notion of an etheric or spirit body with which we seldom have any real or meaningful contact. His Holiness believes that Walsh’s book can help steer this out of control ocean liner called humanity from certain wreckage upon the dangerous shoals of greed toward compassion, which is his long-held goal and he’s tended to it with laudable Sisifusian dedication.

While there are no hard and fast rules around who has time for cultivation of spirit, there are discrepancies. People whose first or only priority is survival, whether that is because we are refugees in dire straits in a country that is foreign and perhaps inhospitable, or because we are in a familiar but chaotic circumstance, living on the edge of a wealthy world that assiduously turns a blind eye to our real needs: housing, food, and clothing, are less likely to spend time cultivating awareness that we are all children of light totally deserving of joy, peace, ease as the next person, and capable of handling 

appropriate challenges that engage our unique gifts.

I look forward to employing some of the exercises Dr. Walsh has distilled from a wide variety of spiritual pathways. Because I’m a slow reader, that may be a ways down the path. I wonder how the practices may overlap or be different from what I’m already practicing. My yoga and meditation practices have borne fruit for several years and for that I’m grateful to my most prominent professor of yoga whose teachings have stuck to my heart’s ribs and mind’s ribs to nourish me deeply. Now known as Sri Nirmalananda Saraswati, Rama Berch became my teacher during a Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy mid-term exam which I was assisting in San Francisco in 1994. Rama came with a group of her student’s from Master Yoga Academy in La Jolla, California. She was there to support her students' understanding how to support bodies while caring for their own alignment, boundaries, and intentions for yoga therapy or any therapeutic relationship.

It was evident to me that Mama Rama, as I came to refer to her fondly in a song I wrote during my subsequent teacher training with her, that she had some crucial (for me) deep wisdom about the nature of healing the body. In fact, she had reclaimed her body after two horrific car crashes using yoga - in all its myriad manifestations, from breathing techniques to physical practices to deep and satisfying meditation. 

Her accent on yoga is still my first language. I teach her style of yoga exclusively, and have done since 1995. Before that, I taught what I had learned from an Iyengar trained teacher, Barbara Lang, Richard Hittleman’s television classes in the 1970s, and Ulla Anelie who lived in my neighborhood and taught classes at a Finish sauna and salon space when I was a new mom and suffering from severe back pain. 

Sharing spiritual exercises in classes set to begin this coming October from a book I’m only just now reading seems risky on the surface. But the deeper I get into Walsh’s ideas the more familiar they are. Any practice that helps us slow things down, take stock of what’s happening in this moment and encourages us to take a deep breath will probably support us to be more present, act ethically, less reactively, and interact compassionately with folks rather than fearfully. 

My co-teacher and I will reconvene this week after reading the book and deciding which exercises to share and in what order. 

There's only one thing I want you folks to do...

Talk me out of it!

Nah... just wish us luck!