Yesterday I painted my nails red. Understand, I am not one to grow long nails, never really have been and certainly not now when I’d never want a client to feel anything even remotely like a long nail on a shoulder, on a back, or while I’m fulcrum-ing their head at that hurts-so-good spot where skull meets neck…

But, the other day, walking past CVS, I was taken back 20 years… And yesterday, on the eve of my birthday, my fingers practically begged me, “Please, can you paint us red?” I just had to oblige. Also, something about now must be reminding me of then…

I was living at 211 Beacon Street in Boston, in studio 3D, although I can assure you that the words “three dimensional” utterly belie the Lilliputian size of the studio I called home for several years in my mid 20′s. It was a shoebox of a place, with a ladder I climbed up to where my futon fit, just barely, in the sleeping loft a couple of feet from the ceiling… a place where you were likely to bump your head if your dared to stand up tall, and a place where, too many times to tell, something like a ceiling fell. Yes, that’s right, a ceiling.

Fairfield Realty was the name of the management company for the building of my shoebox studio, and for $475 a month in the Back Bay of Boston they would practically look you in the face, laugh, and proceed to tell you you were lucky —yes, lucky— which was shorthand for they’d not be fixing your bathroom ceiling anytime soon. Like I said, it was not a place where a girl could stand up tall.

But I had a friend. Her name was Katherine. She lived on Marlborough Street, a block away, in a studio with an actual bedroom and ceilings that didn’t fall.

“Waterstones later?” Katherine would ask.

“Yes!” I’d reply.

Waterstones was an enormous, three-story, palace of a bookstore in a beautiful, old, stone building on Essex Street. It became my second home, a place I could while away long New England winter weekend afternoons, a place where I could, for a few hours, not notice that it was dark:thirty in the afternoon and oh-so-cold and getting colder.

This is how it went: after a quick hi-how-are-you kiss in the lobby Katherine and I would split up to do a walk-through, each of us perusing our favorite shelves and sections, gathering our stack for the day. Mine would invariably include new fiction, or women’s studies, or poetry, or psychology, the latter to find out what the hell was wrong with me. Thankfully, at Waterstones I also met many poets, alive and not, and they made me feel understood in the way that even the most perfect psychological diagnosis never could. Discovering Letters To a Young Poet was like finding a pack of letters in a bottle just for me. Mr. Rilke got me. And there’s nothing like feeling gotten, nothing. Mr. Neruda had grown up in the very city I had in Southern Chile. He knew endless rain, the kind you could feel in your bones, and he talked about love being round like a watermelon. And oh but I wanted a melon like that. And on and on… At Waterstones poets became friends.

After our walk-through, Katherine —who, whatever else she may have ended up carrying, always had at least one book, if not five, from the Humor-Comedy shelves in her stack— and I would meet at our predetermined spot by the big comfy chairs by the windows on the third floor —choice #1—  or, if the window chairs were full, in the quiet corner over by psychology, sitting cross-legged on the floor —choice #2. And there we’d read the afternoon well away into the evening, every so often looking up to tell each other something we’d found.

Those were paycheck to paycheck pay the rent and just buy food kind of days, so I never did buy many books at Waterstones, but please believe me, dearest palace of a bookstore, that any extra money I ever had did go to you and I was heartbroken the day I went back to visit you, after I’d moved to a place where I could stand up, and I saw the closed-for-business sign on your front doors. My heart sinks all over again just remembering.

Often Katherine and I read until 11, practically closing the place down, but sometimes, getting back to nails, we’d hop across the street to CVS, the drug store, to try on shades of red polish. Usually it was at Katherine’s urging, but I can’t say she ever had to twist my arm all that much.

There we stood, making single streaks of red on our nails, trying on a million shades, until we found the one we liked. We’d leave the store, our nails looking like bloody zebras, but our hearts warm with laughter.

It’s my birthday today. Happy birthday to me! Many things have changed since those shoebox studio days. For one, I can stand tall where I live. For two, I do something I love. For three, there’s you, and this here me writing to you. For four… oh there are more, many more. And yet, some things about now are reminding me of then and, truth be told, it’s scaring me just a bit. So this here is me, ushering in a new life year in the spirit of red —kindness, laughter and friendship— on some gray-feeling days.

Also, I have a something for you. Presents! Wheee! In celebration of the color red and my birthday, I’d love to include a free 1/2 oz. jar of Birthday Suit in any order you place between today, Feb. 10 and next Friday, Feb. 17.

Birthday Suit? you ask.

Why yes! Birthday Suit is the name of the Aardvark Essentials healing base cream (the one all the essential oil potions come in)… People have been raving about its healing goodness… one client told me that it was actually helping his acne, another customer mentioned that her husband is using up her jar, and several clients have raved about how quickly their new tattoos healed when they used it. Birthday Suit is completely organic. So, go ahead and place an order for anything, and I will include a 1/2 oz. jar of Birthday Suit for you, on me. I mean, not ON me. On me, as in, free. Ooof, now that we’re clear about that—

P.S. I’d love birthday wish martinis and wish candles in the comments. Maybe you’ll tell me about your favorite shade of red. Or something you noticed today that gave you joy. Or something that moved you. Or, where you lived when you were 25. Or maybe you’ll pick a beautiful word, or make a bouquet of lines. Or tell me about your favorite bookstore. Or…

P.P.S. On Wednesday, February 15, I’m teaching a teleclass on Essential Oils. Check it out! (Hope to ‘see’ you there!)

Anymore.

I flirted with death when I was young and very sad. But it was not my time and, really, I did not want to die. I just didn’t know how to live and I didn’t understand that it is only life that can teach you how… Funny that. But death knew better, and he just would not have me then. He handed me right back.

Life is a kind, if exigent, teacher. And maybe death is her biggest, grandest lesson of all… After all, we don’t know what comes after. Not really, not for all the guessing in the world. Sure, we can make claims and say we know. But can we really? And ironically, the louder I hear someone claim certainty, the less I believe them, even while I understand the wanting of certainty.

Sometimes there’s a sense of urgency to the tug, a touch of despair about not having done what needs doing, said what needs saying, given what only I could give… Not that I am special, but more that there will never be another constellation of thoughts and cells like this… (Doesn’t everyone have a something so theirs, something the opportunity for which will be gone once they’re gone?)

Why this talk of death, you ask, why now?

Oh, I don’t know, really. I have a birthday coming up this week, maybe it’s that. I am aware of no longer being young, even though I’m not yet old. I’m in the middle here, somewhere, yet feeling the pull of the later acts like I didn’t in my 20′s or 30′s… Really, I have no idea where I am on my lifeline —for all I know it could all end tomorrow— but I do know that death comes to mind every time I see or hear something beautiful. Like Leonard Cohen’s new album, “Old Ideas,” which sounds to me like the best stuff of the hymns I grew up on —harmony, melody, longing, and soothing repetition— minus pulpit, pews and sermonizing.

Something wakes me in the middle of the night. I want you to listen, it says. I turn over, pretending I didn’t hear. I have better things to do, I think, like sleep, for one.

It, on the other hand, does not have better things to do! I want you to listen, it says again. I turn on my iPhone and do my restless checking thing, to no avail.

I lie in the dark doing my best. I realize that it would have spoken to me during daylight hours, if it knew I’d listen, but the world is louder then and it’s harder to make out the sounds of silence. Plus, in spite of having no TV, in spite of watching no news (except fake comedy news that tells me all I need to know and makes me laugh) my days are too full of busy, of argument, of retorts, rebuttals, information and distraction. There is so much trying to talk people into or out of… everywhere I turn. So much advice-giving, so much advocacy for the devil… far too much advocacy for the devil. So much bullshit.

Shhhhh, it says, shhhhh… It’s a calming shhhh, not a shooshing shhhh.

I sigh.

I lie in the stillness that is Somerville, Mass. at 4 in the morning, grateful for my flannel sheets. It shows me how most minds —including, of course, mine— are made up and that minds that are made up can’t listen. It’s just not possible. It shows me how mostly we assume we know, and from that loud place we give advice and blah blah opinions. And that when we think we know, we notice so little, stuck as we are in broken-record ways of seeing and interpreting things.

It has me there. It knows that I love noticing things, that I get off on spying on the ordinary magic that is always everywhere.

I say, but what about my spinning? I can’t listen because there’s too much spinning and I don’t know how not to spin. By spinning I mean my endless distract-y, avoid-y habits, and anxious thoughts.

Ah my love, it says, spinning is just your way of trying to be someone else, someplace else, someway other.

Nuh-uh, I say, spinning is my way of getting some relief.

Ah, it says, how’s it working for you?

I sigh, tired. I was arguing again.

Shhhh, it says. It is the voice of kindness —there, there— and it knows I’m doing my best. I see how tired you are. I see how much you want to listen. I see you visiting The Pause every morning, and most nights before bed.

I say nothing. I feel the tugging on my chest again. My throat feels thick. I want to cry because I see and feel everything it is showing me, and I see how all of it —ALL!— is just all of us doing our best with what we know, with what we have, with where we are. And it all kind of breaks my heart.

Sometimes I look at people on the bus and imagine their thoughts. If all of our thoughts were one day to scroll across a billboard in the sky, we’d each panic thinking they were ours, our own, being made public… So similar, all of us. Solomon was right: nothing new under the sun. And yet:

Doesn’t every last one of us have our own particular taste and smell? Our particular and delightful turn of phrase? Aren’t we all so same, so different, so both?

All of that and more keeps tugging at me.

I turn toward it and whisper, not yet, please, not yet. I am speaking not so much about myself but about people I don’t want taken away. Leonard Cohen, for one. I have cried many a premature tear for the day he is no longer here.

(What can I say, I can be maudlin, OK? One day he was trending on twitter and my heart made what I thought was a full stop, but turned out to just be an end-of-paragraph return. He’d ‘only’ won a big prize, after all. Thank goodness and yay! But, oh my. The heart-stoppage.)

Maurice Sendak, for another. Mary Oliver, for sure. People, all of them, who don’t argue. People who say it like it is, no matter what anyone else says. People who show us their wrinkles, their hearts, their beautiful minds, without photoshop. Such courageous people, they. These are the people I gather round me when I am lonesome as hell for someone to listen in the middle of the night.

I touch people. Every day, I touch people and every day their bodies teach me to listen. I hear the beauty, the fragility, the finitude of life in our bodies. It moves me every time. I touch our scars. I touch the ways our way of holding our pain, our joy, our laughter, our sorrow has become particularized in our bodies. I touch where that pattern lives in someone’s shoulder. I touch pains in the neck and pains in the butt. I touch the knot that holds all the whys of how you can’t sleep at night. I touch what your body started flinching about so long ago. I touch what you say without a second thought and I touch what you don’t ever say but wish with all your heart you could. I listen with my hands.

Bodies don’t bullshit. They know they will end. They have no time to waste.

The other day a client who’s been coming to me every week for about a month told me that he’s been doing the stretches I showed him and that his shoulder and low back had been feeling much better. I nodded, I listened. But, he went on, there were still pains and aches that hadn’t gone away… I said yes. He asked why and what could he or I do about it… Good and obvious question, no?

I took a moment and then I told him that some things in the body aren’t about the bad mattress, or the wrong pillow, or the crappy desk chair. I told him that some aches in the shoulder couldn’t be stretched away even if we stretched our pecs in a door frame for hours… that some of our body’s discomfort is an expression of things that otherwise don’t have expression. I don’t always go here with my clients, but I could tell he was with me, so I went on:

Our bodies have a way of expressing for us things that otherwise don’t get voice, things that have no other way of coming out.

Things?

Yes, things like how we were actually upset about that thing so and so said, even though we smiled and told ourselves it didn’t matter… Maybe our body is expressing that thing we want in our heart of hearts to do, or say, but tell ourselves we shouldn’t. Maybe our body is expressing the despair we don’t want to feel over ever righting that big regret… Maybe it’s about the way we swallow our words, our feelings, for fear of what people will think. Or maybe it’s about how we always joke and become witty when in our heart of hearts we know it makes for a wall between us and the world, the very same world we want to put our arms around… Maybe…

He got it, I could tell, and then he asked, in his slow and sweetly broken English, but couldn’t my body find nicer way of telling me those things?

I laughed. We both did. It was a knowing and rueful laugh.

Sometimes I want to stand in the middle of the road and let every single last piece of bullshit clothing fall away. To say: This. Is Who. I am. I want you to see. I don’t want to hide. And yet, I do. Not as much as in my 20′s when I flirted with death, but still.

It’s 4 in the morning. The world is quiet. And finally I am listening enough to hear. What’s been tugging wants a pen. I get up and find it one. My hand begins to move as if taking dictation. Something wants saying, something wants hearing. Hello, I’m listening.

Thank you, I hear it say, thank you.

It’s almost 6 now. Maybe I will sleep a bit more for having listened, and for having said things wanting saying… Nothing special kinds of things, as you can see, except that I wasn’t saying them and they were breaking my heart just a bit.

My neighbor’s kettle will soon whistle and she will soon clatter the pan that she makes her breakfast in. When I hear her, if I hear her around this time in the morning, it gives me odd comfort. I know a bit about her and hold it in a sweet place in my heart. If something happened to her, I’d care, and, for sure I’d miss the sound of her kettle when I wake early.

After all, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?” Mary Oliver said that bit of loveliness in her poem, The Summer Day. Sometimes I carry her words with me like a marble in my mouth.

Essential Oils 1-OH!-1
a teleclass taught by moi, Heidi Fischbach, wearing my
scent artist & mood detective scarf

Click on ze bottle to sign yourself up!

Are you intrigued about essential oils? Do you need a little shot
of confidence in order to start playing & experimenting with them?

This class is for you!

See you in class, I hope! (And if you want to take the class but can’t make the time, fret not: there will be a recording! Also, pssst, the cost for the recording and class material will be going up after February 15).

Have a question about essential oils? Share it in the comments below!

xo

Heidi

P.S. Sign up here!

Happy hour every day!
Come in any attire,
all moods welcome.

Also? Hottest bartender ever
—ahem!—
Presence is his name.

Be sure to try their signature drink
Patience, I think it’s called—
not sure of the secret ingredient,
but from what I can tell
it’s got some muddled Time,
macerated in oak barrel-aged Joy.
Seriously? Best drink ever.
(And don’t worry about getting drunk
on it, even the hangover is great!)

The Pause, meet me there?

~ * ~

The hoopla and flash of December have passed… the days are short, the nights are long, and the trees are bare.

Ahh, January, hello there. And hello you, curious reader. How are you and 2012 getting on?

I remember a phone conversation with my youngest brother around this time several years ago… Summer girl that I am, I was probably complaining about
winter. Danny, on the other hand, loves winter and I just had to know why.

“The trees are bare,” he said, “and I can see so much more when the trees are bare.”

Interesting, isn’t it?

Danny is right. Bare-branch days give us wide angle lenses, perfect for seeing the bigger picture.

When I take a moment to pause and get a sense of 2012 and what it might want for me, I feel it a-buzz with energy. It’s not the hyper and static-y buzz of television, but a kind of glowing warm hum…

I listen more… Yes, 2012 wants me to fall in love with life. Oh wait, it’s got more… it says you can’t love things you don’t notice, and that you are much more likely to notice things when you pause.

Ahh, to pause. It’s the easiest and the hardest thing to do. And it’s my aspiration for 2012.

And you? Have you checked in with 2012 to find out what it might want for you? Give it a try. Often we think we need to make things happen… making things happen is tiring and usually involves a lot of things we think we should do but in our heart of hearts aren’t fully on board about.

What happens when you get quiet for a moment, look through the bare trees, and ask your life what it wants for you?

If it’d help you to write it out loud and tell us what it says, you can add a comment below, or drop me a line. I’m here, and I’d love to hear.

Also? My office is open and my massage table warmer is on. Mmmm… Here are my hours this week:

Thursday 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Friday 9 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Saturday 8:30 a.m. – 1 p.m.

(And yes, there are openings!)

Listening and curious about what’s in store, and looking forward to seeing you soon…

Heidi

We had great fun. I hope you enjoy listening! (Click on the link)

Heidi Fischbach from Aardvark Essentials
on magic potions and getting through the holidays

To get your very own Care Package, go here:

http://heidistable.com/care-package/

(Even though Jean McGillicuddy is not my friend’s real name –she’s a bit shy– and even though LMNO is not a real radio station, I can assure you that everything in the interview is as I say. Well, OK, the elephant’s hoof on my chest? Metaphorical. But then, you knew that, right?)

Heidi's lemonade stand, circa 1976

Mom agreed.

We lived in Wheaton, Illinois, that year. A block from the railroad tracks. Trains in Illinois were looooong and came often. It was not unusual for cars to be stopped for many minutes. Often the waiting traffic would pile up for blocks past the front of our house. And if the insides of their cars got as hot as the inside of our station wagon, of course people would be thirsty.

Exactly two years ago, when Aardvark Essentials was just being born, my mom sent me this lemonade stand picture. Today it’s on my bulletin board above my laptop and it makes me smile. I still like stripey socks. And yes, I still take what I do verrry seriously.

Sometimes I go back and visit Heidi-of-then. I always buy lemonade from her. And I smile. Grin is more like it. I adore her. She reeeally wanted to be selling lemonade, but she also felt shy and self-conscious of the people stopped in their cars, looking over her way.

Before I leave this time, I hand her a potion.

She looks at it curiously and reads, mostly to herself, “Sassypants: “Turn up the volume on fabulous you!” She’s not sure what to do with it.

“It’s a magic potion,” I tell her. I also want to tell her she made it, that it’s ours and isn’t it just fantastic?!, but I don’t want to take the surprises of her life away from her.

“You can roll it on your wrists. People will think it’s a perfume, but you’ll know it’s magic,” I add conspiratorially.

“What’ll it do?” she asks.

“Oh, you’ll have to see. But I promise, it’ll be good, really good.”

The traffic has started to move. “Oh, gotta run! Thanks for the lemonade. It’s fabulous.” I hurry back to my car, turn to wave, and drive back to here. To now. To selling potions that she and I have made. We have gift sets! For the holidays. For you and your people. Come visit our potion store! It’s nowhere near the mall and we will never play Jingle Bell Rock. Promise!

It’s too much: too much pressure, too much to do, too much to keep track of, too much noise, too much work, too many messages, too many things… Too much, you think.

Even while it feels like not enough. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough business, not enough lovin’… Not enough, you think.

And you are tired. So tired. If only you could rest, you think. You try to remember when you last sat in the sun and read for an hour. You want to get away… But there’s so much to take care of, you think.

Maybe you have a business. Maybe you have a family. There are people you feel responsible for, or to… Or maybe it’s just you, and maybe that is the thought that wakes you: I am alone, you think.

Oh sweetest heart, come. What I want to tell you is simple, and yet we forget it all the time. I do. (Why do you think I’m writing it to you right now, before I go to bed?!)

Dearest heart,

You do not need to hold yourself up. You do not need to keep it together. The ground, it is strong. And it’s right there under you at 3 in the morning or afternoon. Supporting you. Let the ground hold you. All of you:

Head? Yes.
Butt? For sure.
Neck? Absolutely.
Arms? Ahhhhrms.
Legs? Mmmmm.
Back? The ground has got your back, for sure!

See if you can let yourself be held.

Sweet dreams, my sweet…

*Kissing your forehead… slipping out quietly*

Oh my! Come say HI to Sprezzatura!

“Spritz-a-whatta?” you ask.

Sprezzatura! Its tagline —Hocus Focus!— sums up what its magic is all about. I’ve been needing (and working on) this potion for a looooong time. Although maybe, true to its name, it will seem to you that I created Sprezzatura in a flash of ta-da!

I’ve been told that just reading Sprezzatura’s page is magical… Just imagine what reading AND experiencing the potion can do for you. OK then. Off you go…

Can’t wait to hear what you think!

xo
Heidi

P.S. When you’re over there be sure to press the Italian pronunciation button for Sprezzatura… I hope it makes you as ridiculously happy as it does me!

Ready? Here, I saved a spot for you on the bench… Make yourself comfy.

Once upon a time there was a Titan named Atlas. The Titans were giants and Atlas, for sure, was gi-normous. Anyway, the Titans had lost a battle with the Greek gods and so, as punishment, the gods made Atlas hold up the sky, and some say, the whole world.

What’s that you say? … Oh yes. That would get tiring on the shoulders even for a giant, for sure!

Anyway… Atlas, poor guy, held up the sky for years and years until one day Hercules came along looking for some golden apples. (Let’s save the story of the golden apples and why Hercules was so desperate to find them for another rainy day, OK?).

Atlas said, “Herc, what’s up? You look distraught.”

“I’m looking for some golden apples.”

“Finding those apples seems very important to you–”

“You have no idea! I’d do anything to get them. Anything.”

“Um, as it turns out, I happen to know where they are.”

“You do?!”

“Yes. If you hold up the world for me, I’ll go get them for you.”

Hercules happened to also be very strong, not quite as strong as Atlas the giant, but very strong nonetheless and he reeeeally wanted those apples. In fact, you could say that getting those apples was more important to him than pretty much anything else in the world. And so it was that Hercules agreed.

Soon Atlas came back and, sure enough, he had the golden apples. As he got closer he noticed Hercules sweating and grunting from holding up all that weight and he thought to himself, “Know what? That there is actually not a job I want to take back.”

Now Hercules could see what Atlas was thinking and he did not like it one bit. So he thought up a trick.

“Wow, thanks, Atlas!” he said.

“No problem, man. I’ll leave them right here for you. Actually, I’ll even tuck them in your pockets… OK then, goodbye. It’s been nice doing business with you.”

“Oh uh, say, before you go… I wonder if you could help me with something.”

“Possibly…”

“As you know, this is some heavy heavy weight to hold and I’d like to get myself more comfortable in this position here… Could you hold the sky up for me for just a minute while I go get myself some padding for my shoulders?”

“Um… OK but just for a minute.”

So Atlas took back the sky from Hercules, and Hercules, of course, did not come back. [Insert expletive!] And that’s the story of how Atlas ended up with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

What’s that?… You’re wondering what happened to him?

Well, no one really knows, of course, but eventually, it is believed, he turned into a mountain. In fact, the Atlas mountains in Northwestern Africa, are named for him. As is a bone in your body! No kidding. Can you guess which one?

Yes, exactly! The very first vertebra (C1) in your spine, the one at the tippy top where your neck meets your head, is also named after Atlas.

Go ahead, check it out. Reach your hand behind you and find your spine at about shoulder level. You’ll know you’re on your spine by its bumpy ridgy stick-y-out-y bits. Each one of those bumps corresponds to a vertebra.

Now inch your fingers up the spine, over the bumps, until you reach the base of your skull/head… Right there, yes. Good.

Now go ahead and say hi to Atlas and his band of supporting tissues (made of muscles, ligaments and fascia).

Hiiiiiii!

Good. Since you’re there, why not give Atlas and Company a good squeeze. I promise, this should feel reeeeally good. While you’re there massaging with your hand, go ahead and roll your head around in slow, small little circles.

If you’ve been sitting for awhile staring at a screen (ahem!) you may well hear little crackly sounds when you do this… that is the sound of your joints saying, “Thankyouthankyouthankyou! FI-nally someone is moving us!”

Movement is what keeps your joints nice and lubricated… Lubricated joints are happy joints. Dry and sticky joints that have not gotten movement, are not happy. (And the lubrication, called “synovial fluid,” is already right there in your joints. You do not even have to get your squirt gun.)

“Ahhhhhh”… I swear I just heard your Atlas moan. “Ahhhh…”

That there is the sound of one very appreciative wee bone that has the equivalent of a bowling ball sitting on top of it day in and day out. Yes, your head weighs somewhere between 8 – 12 lbs. Not counting hair!

That is all for today. Thank you for taking these moments with me and with Atlas.

If you live in the Boston area and would like me to work on your Atlas and Company, please give me a call or email me. I’d love to help.

There are even a few openings left this week: two today(!), Friday. And one tomorrow, Saturday, afternoon.

Until soon, I hope–
Heidi

Muscular Therapy Institute / Cambridge, Massachusetts
Sunday, 26 June 2005 (RJUN05) Graduation

I am often amazed by the number of people who’ve never experienced massage. I was thinking about this as I was gathering my thoughts for today and so I decided to have a talk with my friend Juliette, who might be 5 but is a wise old soul who puts things that we adults can get all complicated about in the simplest of terms. Juliette’s mom, Cécile, also happens to be graduating today, hence Juliette knows a thing or two about this thing we are becoming: massage therapists.

Over chocolate milk and stories our conversation went something like this:

Me: Who is your mom?

J: She is a French person. She is nice.

Me: What does your mom do?

J: She gives people massage.

Me: What is that, massage?

J: She does this thing where she heals people… there’s this special kind of rubbing, with your hands, and people are lying down on a table with a cover over you and you do different hand moves that are supposed to heal. It’s kind of like magic and hands and it feels like a ball rolling around but it’s really just hands.

Me: Why would someone want to heal?

J: Some part of their body is hurting and you try to heal the sore-ing part.

A bit later, while coloring and telling fairy stories, Juliette brought up the subject of being scared, and since fear has been much on my mind —heck! when is it not!— my ears perked up. I asked her what a person should do when they are afraid to do something and she told me,

“It’s OK to be scared but then you can do it anyway – if you just try it you might like it – it’s hard to just think about something and not try it.”

When I woke up at 5:30 this morning, nervous about giving this talk and panicking about taking this leap of a career into an as-of-yet completely empty appointment book I remembered her words:

“It’s OK to be scared but then you can do it anyway.”

Thanks, Juliette!

A few years ago, at another time of fear, indecision and instability, I was trying really hard to figure out and “fix” my life, impatient to attain the things I thought I needed for security and happiness. You know when you keep trying to make something happen but try as you might the pieces just won’t fit? It was like that. At the time, and now, I take courage in the words of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet:

“…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday… you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” (Translation by Stephen Mitchell)

So I tried as best I could to love the questions and not search for answers at a time when my mind was so muddied by fear. And at some point I started getting a stirring inside to become a massage therapist. It’s amazing what can happen when one becomes still. (Or at least, stiller).

When I fist started mentioning out loud the possibility of becoming a massage therapist, people asked me why. Probably these were people who knew I’d been to graduate school not so long ago and would be repaying those loans for many a year to come. The best answer I could give them at the time was a sheepish, “because I love getting massages–” and my voice would swing up a bit at the end, making it seem much more a question than an answer, even though it was utterly true. Some people smiled politely. Others raised an eyebrow as if to say, “Who doesn’t!” And, being a doubter who’d been taught to give much more credence to my intellect than to my gut, I doubted my intuition. You can ask Joleen Barren, MTI’s director of admissions, how many intro workshops I came to… not one, not two, but three… My head kept clamoring for sureness, some guarantee that this was the right thing to do.  I was only just beginning to learn what creative genius and filmmaker Stanley Cubric knew: “The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not the think of it.” Coming to massage school has been all about listening for the feel of things and living forward from that.

Often, way before we know something consciously, we know it in our bodies. Our bodies don’t lie. They say it like it is. Pain—physical or emotional or whatever kind—is a great motivator and when I was in enough of it, I began to look more deeply inside myself. But it can be hard to look inside when you’re in a lot of fear and pain—I think most of us keep running away (we all have our ways) until by some grace we stop and turn around and have a look inside at what’s actually there. Looking anywhere else really doesn’t work in the long term. Usually what’s there, what we were afraid of, when simply looked at and felt as it is, isn’t so bad after all. In the light of day we can see that the snake in the corner, the one we stayed up all night chattering our teeth over, was really just a curled up rope. The rope didn’t scare us, our thoughts did.

But anyhow, back to our bodies, it can be painful in our bodies not to be who we are, not to live our truth. In the words of Jungian analyst and writer, Marion Woodman:

“This is your body, your greatest gift, pregnant with wisdom you do not hear, grief you thought was forgotten, and joy you have never known.”

It is no coincidence that I wanted to help people by working with their bodies. My body has been my most direct path to feeling better. And my body not feeling good has been a lighthouse telling me I’m getting too close to the rocks. My body signals me in different ways that something is off in my thinking or in my actions and it tells me through things like stiff necks or a contracted piriformis (more commonly referred to as a pain in the ass!) that maybe, just maybe, I am being a bit unyielding in my beliefs about the ways things “should” be rather than accepting them the way they are. Or a sense of unease might let me know that it might be helpful to stop scurrying about and simply sit still and listen, to be and experience what is there to be felt.

Our bodies are like the canaries miners used to carry with them as they descended deep into the earth: when the canary stopped singing—or worse, died—they knew that Oxygen was getting too scarce and that it was unsafe to proceed. But we don’t need to let any canaries die to tune into our bodies — the more we listen the more we can learn the very distinct language of the body’s wisdom.

While each of us is different and each of our bodies speaks its own language, with its own expressions, dialects and accents, there is one way that is my favorite way of living the truth of who we are. It’s so simple, as truth usually is. Kids, before they’ve been schooled and conditioned too much in the ways of adults, are naturals at this way of being.

There is a poem by Mary Oliver called “Wild Geese” which says it beautifully:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

It is probably the most simple and yet the most courageous thing you can ever do: Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

My wish for every one of my stellar classmates today is that we may love what we love with no apologies or regrets. That we know in our very bones our place in the family of things. And that we feel empowered to live our lives from our place of integrity, being true to who we are first and foremost.

As people who, in Juliette’s words, “heal the sore-ing parts,” most of us have a high degree of compassion for suffering, for pain. As we have learned over and over in these two years: it is a well-nourished self that can best nourish others –nourishing others when we haven’t taken care of ourselves doesn’t hold up for very long. Putting the life preserver on yourself before helping your child, as we are reminded to do on airplanes, can just as well be applied to our work with clients.  May we make taking care of ourselves a daily practice. Here are some ideas:

Get curious about what the soft animal of your body loves.

Let it play. Let it work. Let it move. Let it rest.

Help it stay grounded, whatever grounding might look like for you.

Listen to music.

Watch and listen to a thunder storm.

Get drenched in the rain.

Go skinny dipping.

Spend time with people who feel like family.

Watch kids run through the fountain at the park.

Sleep under the stars.

Dance.

Sing out loud.

Sculpt.

Bake.

Cry.

Sit downwind of flowers. (Thanks to Tara Brach for that image!)

Sit under the trees and watch them: Notice how they change. Notice how they stay the same.

Trust the tides of your breathing.

Take comfort in the change of seasons.

Come back to your breath again and yet again.

And, in a panic or when you get lost, as Tamar Myers, our beloved Technique teacher always said, “go back to ‘basic back’ and ‘heart’”—the names of those techniques say it all.

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My practice, Heidi’s Table, is located in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Come see me! I am open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.