I shocked Yoni today. (Have I told you about Yoni yet? She’s my inner feminine- my vagina, uterus, ovaries, and little voice inside. We’ve become friends, and we chat from time to time.) I didn’t mean to, but I think I snuck up on Yoni, taking her a little off guard, when she was reading a book or maybe watching some old Sex and the City reruns. I’m spending two days at Harbin Hot Springs, a retreat center in Northern California, near Calistoga, just north of Napa Valley. Because the wildfires are burning through Big Sur, rumor has it that displaced Esalen folks have high-tailed for Harbin,so I thought I’d check it out.
Within minutes of arriving at Harbin, I unveiled Yoni. The sign at Harbin’s natural mineral hot springs says “Clothing Optional,” but as it is at Esalen, you’d feel like a real prude if you actually wore a bathing suit, since everyone else wears their birthday suit. The first time I visited Esalen, the baths were empty when I arrived early in the morning, and I wore the slimming black and white one-piece bathing suit I bought when I was sixteen weeks pregnant (which, sadly, still fits me). Within an hour, about two dozen men and women showed up, all prancing around naked. I felt ridiculous, like a toothache that draws all the attention, even if it’s just one measly tooth. Trying to slip into my towel without exposing my bathing suit, I snuck back to the co-ed dressing room and started to slip off my suit.
Yoni said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, sister?”
I explained my embarrassment and told her she had nothing to hide. Half the people in the pool had yonis themselves, and you didn’t see them being all proprietary about it. She acquiesced. Since then, she’s gotten more comfortable being unveiled, so when I disrobed at Harbin Hot Springs, she only balked a little, saying, “Oh my goodness, just look at my hair! You haven’t shaved me in weeks. I must look a fright.” But she settled down, when I slid into the 97° Warm Pool, which is a pool of silent meditation, in which Harbin therapists practice Watsu (water shiatsu). Apparently, this is the birthplace of Watsu, a type of warm water massage dance, which requires complete surrender and evokes amniotic memories of childhood release.
I have experienced Watsu only once, at a resort on Coronado Island, just a couple months after I delivered my daughter and lost my father within the same month. Watsu sounded healing. After carrying a child, I could be one. After losing a parent, I could find one. My therapist was a slightly heavy, matronly woman with kind eyes and a soft voice, just the type of therapist I would have chosen out of a line-up. She explained how it would work. We would both enter a private, body-temperature pool together, free from curious stares or self-consciousness. Then she would attach little floaties to my wrists and ankles, the kind the kids wear in the pool to splash around, only without the butterflies and fairies. Next, she would hold me in a warm, motherly hug, with my back to her front and her arms laced under my armpits. Finally, I would close my eyes and let myself hang loose. Hanging loose has never been my strong suit. I’m more of a tense-every-muscle-until-you-gain-control kind of girl. But my Mama Watsu was so gentle and nurturing, encouraging me with her lilting voice, that I found myself letting go, releasing my muscles and collapsing into her arms, while she swirled and dipped and folded me, like a dolphin dance of coordinated movements. I completely regressed, in the arms of this stranger, vulnerable and cradled in that womb. Not long into the session, I was crying, not the delicate, pretty Nicole Kidman cry you might be able to hide in a pool of warm water, but the sniveling, mouth-breathing, blotchy-skinned weeping children succumb to. Mama Watsu made reassuring cooing sounds, while she kept spinning me in spirals and guiding me into a vortex of vulnerability. In that moment, she was my father, holding me from heaven. She was the mother I had just become, nursing my baby during my father’s funeral, when she was only a few weeks old. Every muscle in my body filled with loss and mourning and deep, wounded sadness, but as we spun and circled, I felt myself releasing the pain into the warm water.
Then, with almost no warning, the nausea hit me. Waves of it, stronger and stronger, until I was pretty sure I was about to throw up all over Mama Watsu. I didn’t want to spoil my special massage. After all, it was my birthday present from Matt and he paid a lot of money for the gift. Why hadn’t I just gotten the regular old Swedish massage? Who ever heard of getting pukey during a spa treatment? Mind over matter, I told myself. Don’t think about it- release the nausea. Focus on the moment of nurturing, on this woman who is holding space for me, cherishing me, holding me the way my mother hasn’t held me for years, not because she wouldn’t do it, but because I wouldn’t let her. Who spends an hour in her mother’s arms at the age of 36?(That’s not me in the photo, by the way, although I kind of wish I had a kickin’ tattoo like that…)
I thought about Siena, about my perfect, peach-fuzz newborn with her gigantic blue eyes and her sweet little bird mouth that puckers when she’s hungry. I felt my breasts well up with milk at the thought, so I switched the TV channel in my mind to Grendel, my little white puff-ball of a dog. That helped. The nausea died down, and I was able to relax into the dipping and swirling again. But one wrong spin and all of the sudden I felt exactly like I did when I was nine, and we were driving the back country roads of Georgia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, while I was devouring Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time, even though Mom told me I would get car-sick if I read. One minute, I was happily reading and the next, Dad had to pull over so I could vomit all over the pine-scented road. I imagined the scene- particles of salad from my lovely lunch floating around the hot tub, clinging to our bathing suits. I felt bile in my throat and finally I yelled, “Stop!” hurling myself against the floaties, trying to stand up. Mama Watsu witnessed my panic and quickly untied the floaties, so I could stand up, on solid ground. I composed myself and explained what was happening. She apologized. She wished I had said something sooner- she could have done less spinning, more massaging. But enough was enough. Like a sea-sick sailor finally grounded, I desperately clung to the earth. That was the end of Watsu for me.
So here I am, at Watsu’s birthplace, in the warm pool, where two practitioners, who are both naked, swirl and dip and massage two naked clients, while a dozen other people line the edge of the pool, like eggs on a polycystic ovary. And I’m curious. Could I possibly do it again? I wasn’t sure. I vowed to consider it, while enjoying the series of pools. After soaking in the Warm Pool, while gobbling down Anne Lamott’s latest book, Grace (Eventually), I climbed into the HOT HOT Pool, which is 112.° I inched in slowly, and when I got as far in as my crotch, Yoni said, “Youzer! What’s going on down there?” I told her to shut her trap, that we were relaxing, and that this was good for us. She didn’t believe me, but after a while, she lounged back and yawned and took a little nap in the so-hot-it-hurts springs. After about four minutes, I stood, weak and jiggly-kneed, and tiptoed into the Cold Plunge, which feels like glacier water, especially after you’ve just boiled yourself like a lobster. Yoni woke with a start and bellowed at me. “Are you f-ing kidding me, already?”
Then we eased back into the Warm Pool, which at this point, felt completely amniotic, all perfectly comfortable and easy on the toes. I watched the two people getting Watsu. Their naked body parts were exposed, above the water, while people around them pretended to ignore them. Could I do that? Could I just submit, surrender into the arms of another Mama Watsu and just forget all the strangers watching my vulnerability? I wasn’t sure, but I decided to check it out.
So I went to the massage desk, where I found a list of dozens of different types of available bodywork, including many mysterious options- Fluidics, Amanae, Chi Nei Tsang, Embodiment, and Trager. How would I choose only one session? I settled on Fluidics. The receptionist described it as “deep tissue massage in warm water.” I expressed my previous reaction to Watsu and asked if she thought this would be a suitable alternative. She nodded, but explained that they only offered Fluidics on Thursdays. I was leaving Wednesday. So I tiptoed around the Watsu idea, explaining my previous reaction, and she explained that Todd (Watsu Daddy?) could see me at 6:30. Then she glanced behind me to a grizzled man, saying, “Ask him. That’s Mr. Watsu himself.”
Fumbling over my words, I explained my mixed experience of genuine nurturing mixed in with the pesky nausea. Mr. Watsu didn’t understand why I might want to avoid a reaction so profound. He said Watsu takes us back to a place of childhood, in a safe, loving way. My nausea was merely a child-like symptom, like a baby spitting up after breastfeeding. He thought I should embrace it, rather than fear it, especially given the circumstance of my Watsu, in a postpartum time of great loss. He called it “Process,” and suggested I try it again. I had a hard time handing over my credit card for a treatment that might leave me hurling. I settled on Hypno-Massage with Nirakar, a treatment that combined massage with hypnotic suggestion to facilitate self-discovery. Mostly, I picked it because my brain buzzes with so much annoying activity during a regular massage that I imagined the hypnosis part might distract me from thinking about whether my agent has found a publisher for my book or whether the new gallery was going to kick me out if I didn’t sell enough paintings or whether Matt’s upcoming surgery was going to bum him out and recall all his past trauma. But I said I’d think about Watsu. Maybe later that day or the next morning. They said I could think about it and schedule after my Hypno-Massage, which turned out to be weird but really friggin’ awesome.
When I entered my treatment room, I got a good look at Nirakar, who was probably sixty-something, with a grizzled beard and long grey-white hair, like some skinny, New Age Santa Claus. He spoke with what sounded like a German accent and smiled with big white teeth, as he stood shirtless, wearing tie-dyed shorts. He asked me what I hoped to gain from our session. I said, “Relaxation, balance, quietness, an escape from my spazzy brain.” He nodded and went on to tell me how my body was an illusion, that I was really a being of light, not of body, that my body was just a vehicle, not the real Lissa. He spoke about both of us in the third person, as in “This Lissa is just an illusion.” And “Nirakar will help you. Just listen to Nirakar’s voice.”
Then we moved on to the best part, the massage, which was deep and nurturing and intensely relaxing, since his steady, quiet voice drew attention to my breath and each muscle as he released it, never allowing it to stray into stressors. The whole time, he kept reminding me that my body had nothing it needed to do- no deadlines, no muscular activity, no expectations at all. I could give it permission to just let go. An hour and half passed, and my brain floored me by barely detouring from our goal of relaxation. Nirakar called my state of relaxation “Bliss.” He promises I can achieve it at home, within minutes, by remembering his voice. By the end, I felt so blissed-out that I knew I could tackle Watsu. I read up on Todd, the practitioner who would guide our session. The idea of another male practitioner seemed a little strange, but it made sense. I had already experienced Mama Watsu. Maybe this time I needed the Daddy. Maybe it would help me release my father, let him go and surrender the mournful spirit still buried within me since he died.
I told Yoni what we were going to do, and she pitched a little hissy fit. “You’re gonna do what? And the whole world is gonna see?” I told her it was professional, like going to the gynecologist, but she wasn’t having it. She ran into the closet to hide, so I prepared to step out without her. But when I asked the receptionist to add me to Todd’s schedule, she informed me that the slot had been filled. I had missed my chance for a session with Daddy Watsu. Maybe next time.
For now, I’m going to surrender to being blissed-out. Nirakar suggested that, since my body still has nothing it needs to do, perhaps I can go to the baths, close my eyes, and work to sustain my bliss for the rest of the evening. But it’s only 4:45. Evening yoga starts at 5:00, and although I’ve already done an hour and a half of morning yoga, I’m calling my body into tree pose. Maybe I’m not quite ready to get totally blissed-out yet. Maybe I need to regain some semblance of control over my body and my life, after a lovely but vulnerable day. Either way, I’m excited. Each day feels like it moves me one step forward to becoming the kind of doctor I wish to be, the kind who can face my vulnerable patient and help her surrender into the kind of blissed-out woman she wishes to be.
