All tied up: some scarves help a former hippie open up.
I grew up in a house of therapists--my father used psychodrama to help Vietnam vets and my mother worked with students with behavioral disorders. Many of our other co-op members were Buddhist and trans-personal psychologists. What I'm saying is, I'm no newbie to alternative therapy.My editors knew nothing of my upbringing when they sent me to The Center for the Living Arts, an art-based therapy organization in Oakland, Calif. To them, it was just another assignment. For me, it was the perfect opportunity to connect my hippie upbringing with my writing career.
Pushing open the heavy wooden door, I found myself in the waiting room. After a few minutes of waiting, Amanda came out and greeted me. She had a familiar look, with her urban hippie outfit and generous smile.
We started the session like most therapy begins--in opposing chairs. I told her about my recent move, how I had traded the stability of my Seattle life for the chaos and excitement of my San Francisco one. We decided to focus the session on bridging the gap between the two worlds.
"Why don't we lie on the floor?" Amanda asked. So I joined her on the berber carpet. This is where the session really began. She grabbed a pile of multicolored scarves from the corner and laid them on the floor. "Show me your new world," she said.
I grabbed most of the pile, tied it up in knots and threw it on the floor. It was a mess. "Now show me a peaceful place," she said. I picked up the remaining scarves, folded them into a pile and lined the outside with a soothing pink. "It looks like a nest," Amanda offered. "Why don't you sit in the nest?"
For many people, this is the moment that would send them running, but I spent every summer in a hand-built sweat lodge with my mother, so the idea of sitting in my nest of scarves is not completely out of my comfort zone.
I played along. I nested. I roosted. On Amanda's suggestion, I looked to the pile of scarves and tried to embody it. "I am a mess," I said. "I am without order. I am chaotic. I am disorganized." It was a strange act of personification--a sort of antithesis to Stewart Smallie's affirmations.
Amanda then asked me to sit in the pile of disorganization and begin naming the nest. "I am orderly. I am clean. I am peaceful. I am stagnant." Hmmm. Realization number one: my former life wasn't as perfect as I had thought.
Amanda told me to visually connect the two worlds and to imagine that there was a guard on each side. She asked me what I would say to each gatekeeper.
It was hard not to ask Amanda if she was "the key master." But I put that scene aside and held up the disorganized pile saying, "I like you, but I can't be with you forever." And then I picked up the nest and said, "I'm leaving, but I'll be back." It was a weird puppet show, and I kind of wish that Amanda and I had acted out the gatekeeper/key master scene instead. But hey, that's a different kind of therapy.
Finally Amanda asked me to take things from the comfort to the chaos. What could I bring (represented in scarves, of course) from my old life to the new? I started with the mundane--a candle, my wooden boxes, some lamps, and then it dawned on me. I wanted to take my cat. But my cat, which had stayed at my partner's parents' house during the transition, had run away.
I wasn't expecting it, but I began to cry. I cried into my nest of scarves and thought about the cat that I had lost. And then I cried to think that I was on an office carpet, crying in a pile of scarves.
I hadn't expected to be moved by the experience. I knew I was open to alternative therapy, but what I didn't expect was that in being open to alternative therapy, I would open up a part of myself I had kept hidden--a loss that I had not talked about. I walked out through the heavy door and I felt lighter.
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| Author: | Smith, Kristin A. |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Curve |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Mar 1, 2008 |
| Words: | 713 |
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