Bodyworker


When I first began doing deep fascia work I made a deal with a body worker named Dub Leigh, who lived in San Francisco at that time. I told him that if I didn't know how to fix somebody, I'd refer them to him for a session, with the agreement that I could watch him work and he'd explain what he was doing and why. The most memorable thing he taught me was that he can navigate in an energy body.

I had worked with Dub a few times and every time I learned something new. The first time it was a woman client of mine, and she was laughing at something and he looked at me and said, "What are you feeling?" I realized that I felt this surge of sadness, and then she started crying. "You felt it before she did," he said. "The laughter was the layer just on top of it." And I realized that I could be more conscious of the fact that emotion is shared, and is the language we use that has no words and needs none.

The second time we were working on a man, and at one moment Dub turned my attention to an irritation in my eyes and even a pale scent. "You're sensing a toxin release from the body," he explained.

One day he told me that he was teaching a deep tissue body working seminar at Esalen Institute, on the Big Sur Coast. He told me I should come and study with him there. I agreed, choosing the cheapest accommodations available: sleeping bags in a community room. I was with an Italian woman who was also a bodyworker, and we had the place to ourselves.

During the night I realized I was in a hypnogogic state. This is a state like a dream, but without any passivity in it. That is, you are not separate from it, and there is no sense of "waking up" because your sense is that you are awake, just in a separate reality. In this state I observed Dub appear in a body made of points of light. He was moving, demonstrating his control over this body. Then he was gone.

I mentioned it to Bianca the next morning. We had been to an orientation session before going off to bed the night before, where we all got a look at each other. One of the men at the workshop was Iranian. She said she dreamed about him and Dub. "He was sitting in a volkswagen, she said, and Dub made it levitate up in the air, and then it crashed down to the ground.

It was during some deep tissue sessions that day when the Iranian man lost it. We all know it can happen; somebody just accidentallly relaxes too much and the tension used to hold back something he doesn't want to know slips and here it comes.

He was shaking and crying and didn't seem to know where he was. Any workshop like this is rich with women who are therapists and healers, and they started moving in to mother this guy.

"Leave him alone," Dub said. "He's all right.,"

"How do you know he's all right?" one of them shot back. "What's wrong with him"

"It's his mother," Dub said.

"How do you know it's his mother?"

"Because it's always his mother."

Posted: Mon - February 2, 2004 at 02:06 AM