Influenza

Last week, after nearly a year of living with good health in Denver, I finally scheduled my annual routine medical checkups. Aside from the annoyance at having to fill out three similar sets of paperwork - one set at each facility - the appointments went smoothly and there were no surprises. And to reward myself for having endured the discomfort of a mammogram and pelvic exam, I went for a pedicure, haircut and brow wax at a local beauty academy.

There I was, healthy as can be and looking a bit sharper than usual when, on Labor Day, WHAM! Without much warning I was hit with a fever, chills, cough and muscle aches. A quick Google search confirmed that my symptoms were flu-like; indeed, rapid onset is one of its hallmarks, unlike a cold which sneaks up on you gradually. I haven't had the flu in decades so, unlike my more familiar visits from colds and sinus infections, I was not quite sure what to do when this virus showed up, tornado-like, and destroyed my plans for the day. Lying down seemed like a good place to start, followed by some Ibuprofen for the fever and aches. I took a nap and a few hours later got up to get something to eat.

Just a few days earlier, in a renewed effort to take excellent care of myself by eating a tasty, varied and nutritious diet, I had gone to the grocery store armed, uncharacteristically, with an organized and comprehensive list of ingredients that would allow me to create some vegetarian recipes. I filled my formerly empty fridge with spinach, mushrooms, green onions, zucchini, cheeses, yogurt, fruit and assorted types of tofu. And some dark chocolate covered almonds. The next day I whipped up some spreads and made a so-called Green Velvet Soup, one of the most startlingly green dishes I've ever seen. And on Monday morning, just hours before the flu whacked me over the head and sent me crawling under the sheets, I had gone to pay for and pick up a bicycle that someone in my neighborhood was selling on Craigslist. The bike acquisition was also part of my attempt to improve the quality of my life by diversifying my exercise options.

While heating up some soup and boiling water for tea I recalled something my meditation teacher often says. She likes to remind her students that once a person has made a decision to take better care of themselves, whether this means changing their diets, getting a new job or choosing not to enable a loved one's destructive behavior, life often responds with an, "Oh, yeah?" and presents the person with a situation that challenges their commitment to their new intentions.

So, rather than kvetch about my sweat-producing fever and sporadic coughing, I will interpret this flu as an indication that I'm on the right track.

In Memoriam, My Father

It's been a long time since my last post. And the longer I go without writing, the harder it is to get back into it.

But tonight begins the observance of my father's yahrtzeit, the anniversary of his date of death according to the Jewish calendar, the 11th of Iyar. And Tuesday, May 13, was the fifth anniversary of his death according to our calendar. He passed away on a Tuesday, so this year marked a rare coincidence of date and day of week. And last Friday, at my synagogue, the rabbi read his name out loud as one of the many people for whom yahrtzeit would be observed in what was the week ahead. To help mark the occasion, I sponsored the kiddush after services and, to elicit his presence, also brought some extra food that my father loved and shared with us: chocolate babka and two large pastries filled with cocoa and poppyseeds, respectively. I would have purchased another poppyseed pastry - which wasn't nearly as moist and flavorful as the ones my father would bake himself - but I got the very last one. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be. Those purchases, plus the special memorial candle that I lit tonight, came to $19.67 exactly. That is the year I was born.

At synagogue last Friday the rabbi, with his eye on the clock, rushed through the mourner's kaddish, the normally meditative prayer we also recite during the yahrtzeit. The fast pace threw me off and left me feeling disoriented, disappointed and somewhat violated, as I hadn't had enough time to properly articulate each word. The moment in the kosher grocery store when the clerk said, "Your total is $19.67" had had more spiritual resonance.

On Tuesday, the American anniversary, I was fully immersed in creating mosaics and preparing for an upcoming art show when my cell phone rang. I saw it was from an old friend, who normally doesn't call.

"Is something the matter?" I asked her, wondering if she had phoned to share difficult news.

"No," she said, "I just remembered that today is the anniversary of your father's death."

"You're right," I said. I was surprised and appreciative that she remembered and surprised and relieved that I wasn't dwelling on it. I was glad to discover that I had been so engaged in what I was doing and in thinking about the future that I was not so focused on his passing, as I had been in previous years.

My father used to quote the passage from Deuteronomy 30: 15-19, "And you shall choose life." My brothers and I had it inscribed on his headstone.

And I honor him tonight, on his yahrtzeit, by again choosing to write.

Interrupt Not

Interrupt Not. That is the basic message of an anonymous plea called "Listen", which has shown up in my life twice in the last few weeks. I received a copy at the end of the Hoffman retreat and again last night, at the first meeting of a group that explores a spiritual path to creativity via exercises in the book The Artist's Way. For much of my life I've prided myself on being a good listener, even though - as I now realize - I've often listened with an agenda or with a need to then be able to say something clever or wise to the person who was speaking. That isn't necessarily listening. I've also been guilty of interrupting people; often my comments are motivated by my own need to be heard. And as someone who has often had trouble expressing herself verbally, I've often been interrupted by supposedly well-meaning family members and friends who think I have finished speaking because, simply, I have stopped to take a breath or choose a word or because they simply can't wait another minute to impart wisdom or to chime in with a humorous aside.

It was incredibly refreshing and empowering yesterday evening to be given 10 whole uninterrupted minutes in which to explain to the group why I had signed up for the workshop. Knowing that no one would cut me off, interject a cute comment or otherwise divert the attention to themselves, I was able to say things that I had never said aloud before. To protect my own confidentiality, I will not divulge those remarks here. When the 10 minutes were up, I was asked if I wanted to receive feedback, or not. I said yes. Again, it was empowering to be given that choice. And the interesting thing about allowing someone to speak for 10 (or 15 or 5) minutes without inserting one's two cents is that, chances are, by they time the speaker is done, that previously irresistible urge to give a certain bit of feedback will have dissipated, allowing the listener to offer a deeper level of response.

I invite anyone - particularly those who have felt that they are not truly being heard - to ask their spouse, partner, siblings and friends to try this experiment with them. Set a timer for 10 minutes, allowing one person to speak without interruption for that time. Then the listener has 2 minutes to reflect back what s/he heard, without offering advice or reassurance. It is also refreshing to be a listener, knowing that one is not expected to jump in and save the other person. This kind of listening can also be done by phone. I feel fortunate that I have a reflective listening "buddy" with whom I speak each week on the telephone. We each get 15 minutes to speak and the other person periodically reflects back what has been said, without offering commentary of any kind. This arrangement is organized and facilitated by the Zen Monastery Peace Center in California, if anyone else would like to look into it.

The text of "Listen" follows - author is Anonymous.

When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I should not feel that way, you are trampling on my feelngs.

When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me.

Listen! All I ask is that you listen - not talk, or do. Just hear me.

Advice is cheap; a buck will get you Dear Abby and Dr. Joyce Brothers in the same paper.

I can do for myself; I'm not helpless - I may be discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.

When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy, but......

When you accept as a simple fact that I do feel what I feel, no matter how irrational it appears, then I can quite trying to convince you, and get about the business of understanding what's behind this feeling. When that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice. "Irrational" feelings make more sense when we understand what's behind them.

Perhaps that's why prayer works, sometimes, for some people - because God is mute and S/He doesn't give advice or try to fix us. God just listens and lets us work it out for ourselves.

So please listen and just hear me. And then, if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn, and I'll listen to you.

Inward Bound

It's been awhile since my last post. Thanks to those of you who are still with me, still checking this blog for signs of life. Part of the time I was in California, at a retreat designed to help people reconnect with themselves. And before that I was fighting a cold and a fever, which almost made me consider cancelling my trip. And after the retreat I have been letting my experience sink in, pondering how to write about it. I felt that I had to address it first before scribing about other things.

Inward Bound is the best way for me to characterize this retreat, called the Hoffman Process and organized by the Hoffman Institute. In my class were 39 other people, from across the country and the world, of all shapes, sizes and hairstyles, with a variety personalities that defied Myers Briggs categorization, ranging in age from 20s to early 60s. What we shared was a common determination to free ourselves from, in many cases, lifetimes of emotional pain and suffering that was interfering with the quality of our lives. Many of us were veterans of different therapies and therapists, myriad medications and spiritual practices, as well as practitioners of strict diets and exercise regimes to render medication unnecessary. The collective healing expertise of our group was impressive, even if - as our presence at Hoffman indicated - these complex formulae and heartfelt efforts have not consistently eased our distress. And most of us had learned about the Hoffman Process from other people who had done it and who had experienced meaningful if not lasting results, many of which have been documented in research studies. It was the combination of scientific proof, and the fact that the person who referred me is a Harvard educated CEO, that persuaded my highly skeptical intellect to invest time and a not trivial amount of money in this experience. At the same time, my ego was convinced that it was so special that the process wouldn't work on me, and so there I was, deeply wanting to put an end to my existential and emotional angst yet concerned that I would simply get in my own way, that I would be one of the people for whom this didn't "work".

As we were told early on in the retreat, there is no way to "fail" the Process. True enough. Simply by showing up one has demonstrated a commitment to heal. But many of us were hoping and wanting to achieve an enormous transformation. Fast. And forever.

Although we didn't scale sheer walls, navigate a rope course or leap blindfolded off of a platform into a safety net of interlinking outstretched arms, the process was probably more intense than what I imagine an Outward Bound course would be like. On several days we did exert our bodies to an exhilaratingly and sometimes painfully sweaty degree, stretching ourselves beyond previously established limits, but we did this indoors, not outside. And the exertion was designed to physically, and ultimately mentally, disconnect ourselves from many of the unproductive or negative thoughts and behaviors that we had picked up when we were children and have clung to us like life-force sucking leeches ever since. Hoffman refers to these as "patterns". Sometimes I've thought of them as programming, or conditioning. Whatever metaphor works is the one to use. Disassociating from the patterns was actually liberating and fun, and most of us looked markedly stronger and more powerful after that emotional and highly physical exercise than we had just a few hours before. In fact, a few of us were ready to pack our bags and go home at that point, having accomplished what we thought we had come for: a psychic purging of negative and self-defeating inner voices, voices that had once protected us but no longer serve us.

But we were only on day three of an eight-day retreat. There was more to come, said the teachers, a group of people of a variety of backgrounds who are trained specifically to deliver this process. I preferred to think of them as guides or shepherds, steering our group of sometimes unruly and resistant sheep from one session or activity to another and keeping track of the handful of sheep who'd inevitably wander off, either mentally or physically. Come to think of it, we were more like cats than sheep. Our large class was divided into smaller groups of eight, which periodically met for more intimate processing and discussion, and each group had its own catherd (if it isn't already a word, it is now).

One reason I had a hard time thinking of the facilitators as teachers is that much of the material they presented was not completely new to me, and sometimes I experienced their delivery as uninspired. Having attended retreats, personal growth seminars and dozens of yoga classes, many of them led by emotionally open and enthusiastic people who willingly shared elements of their own spiritual journeys, I was occasionally disappointed by what and how the person at the front of the room was trying to "teach" us. And at times my intellect would protest, "What are you doing here? You know this stuff already. What a waste of money!"

But then it occurred to me that my broad exposure to all kinds of healing modalities and spiritual writings meant that maybe I was a personal growth junkie who could talk the talk, perhaps even more effectively than these teachers, but, let's face it, still wasn't able to walk the walk. My resistance, thicker than a coconut shell and spikier than a porcupine, had gotten in the way of translating intellectual understanding of spirituality and healing into new ways of being and behaving. And at the times that my intellect was trying to invalidate what it was hearing, I reminded myself that I came for the group energy, which I believed I needed to complete some of the healing work I had started in individual therapy, and because the time had come to just do it. I decided I was not going to let my reactions to the teachers get in the way.

The only way out is through.

I had found that it was quite difficult for me to go through some of the less pleasant emotions in a 50-minute hour. It often would take me until minute 40 to soften and relax enough to let my feelings out. And by then it would be too late, because my ego - eager to protect my appearance at all costs - didn't want me to leave the therapist's office while I was a blubbering, vulnerable mess. And if I did manage to release some deep emotion, it was very difficult for me to sustain a more open and yielding emotional quality between sessions. I'd return the following week, feeling as if not much had happened. And so on. I would stay stuck, out of a powerfully toxic combination of stubbornness and fear, both unable and at times unwilling to free myself from some rather heavy baggage.

The Hoffman Process and the group helped me through, and I was able to tap into, feel and release grief that I didn't even know I was carrying with me as well as reach deeper levels of some more familiar sorrows. How did this happen? The Process is neither magical nor manipulative, but it does creatively utilize and sequence some time-tested tools - guided visualization, meditation, expressive writing, music and physical movement - to allow suppressed feelings to surface and be released, to give voice to parts of ourselves that have been shut down for decades. Equally important is that each person came to this retreat with a strong intention and motivation to allow this work to happen. And the setting - a resort in Napa Valley with gourmet catered meals from a Bay Area restaurant - nourished our spirits and bodies. The food in particular gave me something to look forward to each day after a few hours of riding an emotional roller coaster or two; between my cold and the tears, I probably consumed a full box of tissues each day.

The release of so much negative emotion and energy was palpable, with many people literally blooming, growing taller and sparkling before our eyes. And because each of us was feeling comfortable enough with ourselves to remove our social masks, we could now finally see each other as individual people, rather than as the projections of our fears, hopes and judgments. Many people told me to look in the mirror. I did. I recognized myself again, after years of seeing the reflection of a stranger.