Zen Bender

by Stephanie Krikorian

  In some back-alley-ish room, I let a stranger walk on my back, jam her elbows quite aggressively into my muscles, and pull on my arms in such a way that I felt like the wishbone on a cooked chicken. Strangely, when this Thai masseuse lady finished, she honked my breasts, like put one hand on each one and did a double squeeze—honk, honk. No other way to describe that, and I don’t know why she did it. But it was weird.

  Despite the bizarre and awkward ending, I felt relaxed afterward and was in a daze all morning. So I did what I never do and went home and napped, thereby proving what the numerologist had said: Morning Thai massages rendered me not a writer. Not that day, anyway. I was too tired to write. Thai massage became a weekly, er, twice-weekly thing over that six-week period. Okay, sometimes I went three times in a week, but it was steps from where I was living and half-price, so I was actually saving money.

  I didn’t get the boobie-honker again, though, which was an added bonus.

  Everything’s Coming Up Rainbows and Reiki

  Next on my list: Reiki, a healing and relaxing Japanese ritual for moving energy around. I had considered trying Reiki before, but I’d been skeptical since the healer, as I understood it, never actually touched the patient. He or she just moved energy around, by magic, I guessed. That was initially difficult for me to wrap my head around.

  But I had watched how it paid off in spades for Noah on The Affair. A little Reiki, and, one episode later, he went on to write an internationally revered blockbuster bestseller. It would surely work the same way for me, which would be double points because I’d have a bestseller and prove the numerologist wrong.

  My friend Martha, who lived in Venice, knew of a practitioner who offered something similar to Reiki and who, according to Martha, had changed many people’s lives with her services. I contacted said healer and learned that her technique was not traditional Reiki, but I was told the results would be similar.

  Appointment booked, I was instructed via email to wear bright colors for my session. I had one pink T-shirt with red wine spilled down the front, so I wore that. With black Lululemon pants. That was as bright as I could muster, considering how strongly I apparently needed to protect myself with that black outfit shell.

  The healer’s studio was flush with rainbows. I therefore named her in my head the Rainbow Healer. The two-hundred-dollar-an-hour practitioner had each finger and toenail painted a different color of the rainbow, and rainbow paraphernalia hung on the walls as well. There were also feathery dreamcatchers (yeah, I know my spiritual accoutrement) and crystals hung all around the room. She could best be described as a modern hippie who, as the story goes, found her calling during an ayahuasca-fueled trip to Peru that had her seeing rainbows shoot from everywhere.

  After an initial hello, she began shuffling the Tarot cards and then asked me what I wanted to work on. Before I opened myself up to her, I admitted that I was a major skeptic. With that off my chest, I told her that I was feeling stuck. If writer’s block existed, I had it. I explained that I had spent most of my time of late reviewing the to-do list in my head and very little getting work done.

  She said, “No problem.”

  As directed, I pulled a card from a deck. That card, Flowering, revealed that Zen wanted me living in abundance, in totality, living with intensity.

  A theme was emerging.

  Then, as directed, I hopped up on this woman’s table, and she put her eyeballs almost right up to my eyeballs and stared so intensely that I felt panicked. I thought to myself, If she honks my breasts, I’m leaving. Then I lay down and breathed as I was told: two hard and deep breaths in, and one out, both through the mouth, which I did until I basically began to hyperventilate. Actually, even then, I continued.

  As I remained still, save for the movement caused by my intense breathing, I listened to gongs and her peculiar chants, and my own air going in and out. Then suddenly, uncontrollably, after only fifteen minutes or so, I began to sob with such force I couldn’t catch my breath. I sobbed. Big, ugly, soaking wet sobs, like the kind Viola Davis does when she wins an award. It was overwhelming to say the least, but mostly it was surprising.

  That crying, I was told an hour later, was all the stuff inside me that needed to get out. Bad stuff and blocked energy in me was thick. She told me also that she’d had a strong mother vibe the entire time I was being treated.

  “Yes, I was thinking about my mother,” I said.

  “Is she still with us?” she asked.

  “She is. Is she going to die?” I asked.

  “Yes, someday. We all are,” she said.

  I left feeling completely drained. Like more drained than I did the day I ran the New York Marathon. More drained than I had felt maybe ever. Lighter and clearer, sure, I felt that, too. But swollen-faced and drained. I slept for twelve hours that night and to be clear: I’m not a sleeper. If I can get in seven hours with just one middle-of-the-night wake-up, that’s a win for me.

  Rainbow-healing-energy-moving-take-on-Reiki: You had me at hello.

  The healer had mentioned a recent client who had paid for the five-pack and knocked them all out in one week. Her intention was to meet the man of her dreams; by day three she had, and they were engaged within the month.

  With such certain results, who was I to not walk to the Bank of America for a brick of cash? Obviously, I signed up for the five-pack.

  By session two and then three, I learned I needed to say what I wanted to say, that, somehow, I was holding back on that. She could tell because my throat, my voice, was blocked. “I don’t care,” was no longer to be my standard answer when, for example, my friends asked what we should order at a restaurant. Or the times when I could do a favor that I really didn’t want to or have time to do, but said yes anyway—I unknowingly (well, maybe knowingly) did that a lot. And the entire time, I had truly thought that I didn’t care about little things.

  But Rainbow Healing revealed that I actually did care. And that, when I let someone else make my decision for me, rather than voice my opinion, the result would always be a lot of time spent stewing in my head. I would stew and stew and stew. I was a stewer (I also make a very good beef stew, but I digress). And stewing caused clogging, and clogging needed releasing. Rainbow Healing was the emotional equivalent of having the drain snaked.

  Later, I didn’t quite execute on the “no” stuff, but I became more aware of it as a shortcoming. Having said that, I was inspired to write my mom a love letter. For no reason other than that I just felt like it after a session one day.

  Also, I truly did suddenly feel clearer and more focused at the computer. I was not only getting work done but also writing some good stuff. I wondered, of course, by continuing with Rainbow Healing, was I simply paying someone to let me go sit in her house and cry? Maybe. But did it matter if it worked? All that junk needed to come out. If this healer could yank it from me, it was worth the cash.

  By session four, the tables really began to turn. At one point during a session, as she was giving me my voice back with her movement of energy, it felt as though a twenty-pound flat weight was resting on my sternum. And then by the end of the session it was no longer there, though I didn’t recall her lifting it off me. I asked her about that weight. She told me there was no weight, that was just pressure being lifted. I would have bet my house that something had been placed on my chest. I could have cheated and looked, but I didn’t want to break the calm.

  I wasn’t drained when I left. Instead, this time, I was energized. I felt even more focused, and it was the first time I had an inkling of the notion that, if I could just remain calm and find peace in everything, I wouldn’t feel so scattered. I felt equipped to set some boundaries with friends and even clients. Later that would falter, but I maintained an awareness of my habits in the months that followed, even as I struggled to keep them in place.

  On that table, my mind would race a little. But, by the end of ea
ch of those last two sessions, I emerged with a mini-epiphany about one thing or another. And on session five, and I’m not making this up, for the first time in my life, I went into some sort of ultra-deep meditative zone. As I breathed, my breath became like a wave—rolling up to my head and then down to my toes. I was the ocean. I could physically feel it. Once I snapped out of that, my mind started racing and spinning like it usually does. But as my session came to a close, I kept thinking of myself splashing around in the ocean.

  Something finally worked on my self-help quest. While I had previously thought of abandoning my efforts, it seemed like leaning in was a better option.

  I’ll Never Be Saved

  A couple of weeks into that LA trip, I went to hear a friend speak at a party at someone else’s house. Before I could enter, I was told by the host that first I had to be “saved.” It reminded me of a conversation I’d had with a girl in high school with sparkly eyes, a bright smile, and curly hair, named Patty. She was a Bible lover. Not remotely as overt as those I’d meet later in life, who would Jesus-bomb me with group text Bible passages on the holidays, but she brought Jesus up in conversations the way I might have, at the time, brought up a trip to the mall.

  She talked about Jesus and church in ways nobody else did at my public high school. One day, while we were eating lunch in the cafeteria, she told us that her family went to church more than just on Sundays. Over sandwiches that my frugal father had packed for me in recycled milk bags (in Canada, milk comes in bags), Patty explained to everyone at our table that Jesus Christ was our Savior (I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t dare ask).

  She asked me what church my family went to.

  “None,” I explained. “I have never been baptized.”

  She was horrified, of course.

  “If you’ve never been baptized, you will never be saved,” she said.

  I didn’t know what that meant then (or now), but it was upsetting anyway. I was un-save-able. Nothing about that sounded positive.

  It was so disturbing, it stuck with me even thirty-plus years later.

  So, when this woman blocking entry to a party at a private home in LA told me I was finally, actually about to be saved, Patty immediately flashed into my mind. She had been wrong all along.

  I was finally about to be saved in a stranger’s driveway in West Hollywood. Praise the Lord!

  Sadly, I had misheard. Unfortunately, I had to be saged before entering the house. Not saved. I didn’t know what that meant either. But I quickly learned. The woman in charge had a bundle of dried, smoking, smoldering greens that she waved around my head and body. I learned it was dried sage. Sageing clears stuff out too, I was told.

  I made a mental note to sage my house when I got back home. If I was to head back east all clear and revived, I didn’t want to screw up all my efforts with an un-saged home.

  A week later, on my way in to a Friday night Sound Bath Meditation, I found out I had to be smudged before going in. Like sageing, the woman standing at the entry to the yoga studio held a smoldering, red-embered bundle of dried stuff. I assumed that, by smudging, she meant she was going to wipe that thing on my forehead à la Ash Wednesday. I braced, hoping the burn wouldn’t scar. But she started waving the smudge thing all over in the air. I knew what was happening. I knew sageing when I saw it.

  “Am I being saged?” I asked, like a smug sage veteran.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Sageing and smudging were one and the same. Who knew? I was getting saged all over LA, just like a local.

  Once properly smudged-slash-saged, I paid forty-five dollars, then entered the studio on Rose Avenue for Sound Bath Meditation. I had dragged my friend Martha along with me (she had also done the five-pack Rainbow Healing). I assumed water would be involved, but I wasn’t quite sure how, so I just wore yoga gear. As per the directions on the advertisement, I carried in a blanket, a yoga mat, and a little towel for my head. I thought I was well-prepared, but as I looked around at the rest of the floor upon entering the studio, I realized I looked like a total amateur.

  Everyone had essentially moved their entire bedroom set into this studio. Pillows, bolsters, thick pads to lie on, the works. Martha and I set up our subpar napping equipment and settled in to be bathed.

  As a group, we set our intentions, some people out loud, some of us in our heads, and then basically settled in for what ultimately felt like group Rainbow Healing. But with, apparently, pretty musical sounds from bowls.

  Eyes closed, snuggled into my makeshift sleeping set-up, I couldn’t have felt calmer. I’d just done an expedited five-pack of Rainbow Healing, so this was mostly a cherry on the top for me. Once things got underway and everybody began breathing, most of the rest of the room was suddenly an orchestra of tears and pained gasps.

  Every once in a while, we were instructed to scream as loud as we could. That was startling and exhilarating all at once.

  Eventually, the sound bath part started. There was a guy named Guy with loads of wavy light brown hair making beautiful sounds with all sorts of giant glass bowls and a gong. It was incredibly loud; you could feel the sound before you heard it. It was spellbinding and captivating.

  The crying mostly stopped. Then a recording of a voice came on. I’m paraphrasing, but he said something like: If you have trouble knowing what you want, it’s because you already have it. That resonated. I thought back to the recent billion-dollar lottery mania that had been happening at the time. I hadn’t won, but I was okay with that.

  I didn’t hear much else this disembodied voice had to say because I eventually realized he sounded like L. Ron Hubbard of Scientology fame. It wasn’t him, as far as I knew, but I got so obsessed with the voice that I was taken out of the peace and meditative nature of the sound bath. Also, I thought that—considering how seriously I was hitting the New Age stuff at this particular moment and how susceptible I was to believing it all—had the opportunity presented itself way back, I might very well have ended up in a cult, though my mother had often warned me before I left for college to stay away from the Moonies.

  The sound bath lasted two hours. (And there was no water involved, so I was grateful I hadn’t shown up in a bikini.) But the entire experience seemed like five minutes. I felt drugged at the end of it. Afterward I was in a strange and unrecognizable zone. I had found some peace (albeit fleeting), big-time.

  Everyone described their experience out loud to the group. I couldn’t move or open my mouth or open my eyes. I sat cross-legged for fifteen minutes, as still as I’ve ever sat in my lifetime. That stuff worked. Martha said she had the opposite reaction. She didn’t feel calm, she felt terrified. She wanted to bolt from the room for the first half of things, and then she fell asleep and missed the sound bath completely.

  Afterward, Martha said I might not be able to come to LA again because I was costing her too much money by making her join in on my Zen Bender. Though it was her idea for us to drive to Rama to get flowing white clothing for the next sound bath meditation. Wherever or whatever Rama was.

  Celestial Cram

  If you call the Spiritual Dove, she answers the phone, “Hello, it’s the Spiritual Dove.”

  That alone was a strong selling point. That’s deep commitment, sticking to what I’m certain was not her birth name. To add to that, when you meet her, she’s an elegant woman with a British accent, and just listening to her talk is frankly quite calming.

  I’d been told by a couple of people that the Spiritual Dove, a clairvoyant, knew everything. That her visions were incredibly detailed and that she didn’t hold back. One person told me she learned of a cheating boyfriend via a session with the Spiritual Dove and was then given a vivid description of her future life that matched the one she’d dreamed of.

  Bingo. I wanted to know what was coming. Who needed a vision board when the Spiritual Dove could get right down to it with her intuitive r
eading skills?

  My first session with the Dove (that’s what I call her for short) was amazing in its detail. She described the man I was going to meet in such specific terms it felt a certainty that we’d be together. The location (Orange County), where we were going to live (nice home, view of the ocean, but a few houses back from oceanfront), everything down to us holding cocktails as we chatted, watching a sunset.

  The key identifying factor for this future husband of mine was that he was a widower. When I later described this session to my friend Layla, she said, “Widower, like we need to get a bus and take someone out with an ‘accident,’ or is the wife already gone?” Friends like Layla, willing to commit murder to find me a husband, are the kind we all need in our lives.

  The latter, I learned, was the case. The wife was, according to the Dove, long gone, and this man was wandering around waiting for me because, according to the Dove, our life together was a done deal. It’s been years and I have yet to find this guy, so I hope he’s patient.

  The other thing the Dove told me, which was not the first time I had been told this—and it turned out not to be the last—was that I would be world famous. That could have meant all sorts of things, of course—infamous, like I went crazy and went on a three-state crime spree, or perhaps got a little overzealous, like Layla implied, on the creating-a-widower situation, or I could do something great. Or write something great. Who knew?

  Along with Mr. Widower, I’m still waiting for that fame and whatever was to follow.

  So enthralled was I with the Dove that I, along with a bunch of friends, hired her later to come to my rented bungalow and tell me more. What she told me the second time wasn’t so much different than what I had heard the first time.

  That had to be good, right?

  But, after my friend Martha emerged from her two-hundred-dollar session, she said, “You told her my life story ahead of time?”

  Obviously, I had not.