Somatic moves toward well-being, senior style Part I

This material is copyrighted by M. Kirby Moore. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. Thanks!

By the way, everything I mention in here is meant in a spirit of fun, objective observership. I do not intend to demean anyone or speak ill of them. I am just describing a dynamic and entertaining afternoon.

This is a continuation of a post I wrote earlier, about heading down to Nelson County to lead a group through simple exercises to relax and release stress. Wow! I have been reading Henry Alford’s book, “How to Live,” which is about his search for wisdom in older people. In his book, he mentions one particularly eccentric character (Mr. Eugene Loh), whose chapter full of laughs makes the book worth purchasing alone (seriously!), and Alford is particularly grateful for the opportunity to write about this person, because his eccentricity makes him in Alford’s words, “comedy gold.” Well, in my little excursion into Nelson County, I seem to have come across a similar situation, where I was laughing so hard at times, that the first words to cross my mind upon considering writing about it were, “comedic gold.”

So as I mentioned in my first post, I was nervous this morning, prior to heading down there. And then I was still a little nervous as I drove the 45 minutes into the beautiful rolling hills of the heart of Nelson County Virginia. And then I noticed all the spring foliage that was starting to burst forth. I realized that the trees and flowers, all budding and blossoming must also be nervous. It is only March 20th and we have had spring-like weather for over a month! (Not going to go on a global warming rant, I swear!) So that made me feel better, knowing that Mother Nature may be touched with trepidation.

As I mentioned earlier too, I am not a meditation teacher. I do not have the blessings of any living teachers (nor from the other side as far as I know) to teach more than one individual at a time. So this is what I told the person who invited me down there – she is a nurse. I said, “I’m not a meditation teacher.” She said, “But you are so good! You will do fine.” She has been in a previous class of mine. So I said, “Let me think about it.” That meant, let me ask the I Ching, as I thought it would discourage me. But not to be, the I Ching suggested that going down there would be beneficial. So I hesitantly said yes, on the condition that it would be a small group.

Then early today, she said it might be a group of more than eight, and I began to worry. From what I have learned, primarily from bodywork teachers, is that the most we can comfortably handle at a time, are eight people. Six to eight to be exact – that way we can track the energetic field in the room and see if we notice any red-flags rising for anyone (and therefore pause and take some down time or at least time to express / clear up the subconscious issues). But I was told it might be a group of 12! Oh boy! I asked the woman who invited me, we can call her Barbara, who is a nurse, I asked if she would mind being a form holder (someone who holds energetic space). Although, I knew that she had not had any prior training for this. She said fine. [I will do a separate post about what it means to energetically hold space for someone else.] And I gave her the very expedited version of what it means to hold energetic space. Therefore, I was still nervous!

Anyway, so I am on the road, when I realize, Oh God, I forgot my phone! My phone had the email with the directions… but luckily I have a fairly photographic memory… so I did not actually get lost. Although once I got on the road she mentioned, I passed several extremely dilapidated houses that had brush and vines growing all over them and the road began to narrow, so I thought to myself, “What? There is no way a big school is back here! (Which they have turned into senior apartments)” Luckily I stuck with that road and sure enough, at the end of it, there was the large school-like building.

Also luckily enough, because the building is locked at all times for security, Barbara was right behind me when I pulled in, meaning I would not have to try to “call” her without my phone!

When we walked in, there were two women sitting at a table doing a puzzle. I will call them Beth and Simone. I was introduced to both of them, and I quickly surmised that Simone, who weighs in excess of 200 pounds and therefore who is confined to an electric wheel chair, is someone with an abundance of insecure energy. Meaning, she felt the need to constantly zoom up and down the hallway to check on which people were coming to participate. I decided I had to get the hell out of there! Unfortunately, with most of the doors being locked, I only escaped as far as the lobby, where she occasionally wheeled through on her way to check certain doors. Oh god – was this really happening? Was she really going to be in my class? And yes, what kind of teacher was I to be thinking this way! 🙂 Well, like I said, I’m not a teacher.

So we know a bit about Simone. What about Beth? She was a nice lady, if a bit reserved at first. And in the lobby, I did a quick exercise with myself from Zapchen Somatics (“Patting” to be specific), as that was one of the exercises I was going to lead later, I figured I might as well “self-empower” myself with it. And it supposedly helps with psychological boundaries which I felt I would need if I was to put up with Simone’s invasive words for much longer… Oh – by the way, Beth it would turn out, was the one who delivered on the comedic gold, once she got rolling! See below.

So people started to wander in, not knowing what to expect. They were introduced to me, so I got to know their names. At first, it was all women, which is actually typical with bodywork or somatic processing classes. But I was told that one man would show up, so that was good! It’s always nice to have some yin-yang balance.

See my next post to continue this comedic saga. Thank you for visiting.