Waking

by Matthew Sanford

  I decided to move home to Minnesota. It was time for me to return. I came to California, to graduate school, looking for something, for a form of expression. I found what I needed—yoga, healing, and a sense of purpose. My work was ready to focus not just on myself but on helping others. I wanted to complete the circle and begin my work where it had all started.

  Upon returning, I found that waving my hands and talking passionately about an institute of consciousness was not a very good door opener. My family and friends were happy for my return but didn’t quite know what to make of my plans. They nodded blankly at my monologues and received me with open arms.

  I also believed that there was a business application in what I was doing. I began to imagine a program that would help employees connect more deeply with their bodies. Not only would this program help people revitalize their sense of well-being in the workplace, it would save money for employers by curbing both rising health-care costs and workers’ compensation claims. Unfortunately, what seemed to me a no-brainer for businesses wasn’t quite that simple. For the time being, I had to put my imagination on hold and fondly put the institute of consciousness on a thirty-year plan.

  My plans have indeed taken their time in developing. Eight years later, in 2001, I founded Mind Body Solutions, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization dedicated to the simple notion that minds and bodies work better together. As I write this in 2005, I do a wide array of public speaking engagements, and we do have a program that goes into the workplace, called “Bringing Your Body to Work.” Mind Body Solutions also operates a yoga studio and offers workshops in the health-care field. It may not be an institute, but there are still almost twenty years left in my timeless thirty-year plan.

  When I first returned to Minnesota, the grandiose scale of my ideas took a hit. The business application stalled. I did, however, join a small, fledgling sustainable investment group. The Investor’s Circle is a national organization that tries to simultaneously invest in sustainable, Earth-friendly, socially responsible start-up companies while also pioneering a sustainable investment model. I continue to work with the Investor’s Circle because I believe that the sustainable investment movement is itself a movement of mind-body integration. It attempts to make the generation of money more Earth-friendly, increasingly humane, more connected to body, and thus more sustainable over time.

  Besides my involvement with the Investor’s Circle, I temporarily put aside my plan for an institute and returned to the basics—an almost exclusive focus on my yoga practice. After a couple of years, I decided that it was time to share my experience with yoga and paralysis. If nothing else, I could help others who lived with disability. I started teaching an adapted yoga class at the Courage Center, a leading rehabilitation facility in a suburb of Minneapolis.

  My idea was that by teaching this class, I could give something back—an obvious means to make my experience useful. What I found was much more. I thought I was teaching these students, when, in fact, they were teaching me. Neurological deficit is a frontier of mind-body integration. Working with these students has taught me that the principles of yoga are nondiscriminating—they can travel through any body. It has also made me honor and appreciate even more profoundly the innovations of Sri B.K.S. Iyengar. His increased focus on alignment and precision in individual poses and his use of props has made yoga accessible to anybody, regardless of their level of ability.

  In this adapted class, I also get to witness the amazing ingenuity of mind-body integration. What these students are capable of, the relief that comes across their faces when they connect in new ways through such difficult bodies, makes everything else I do worthwhile. Moreover, the progress they enjoy from our working together affirms what I have learned. I teach them the subtleties of sensing energetic sensation, about moving inward and connecting through their bodies on a level that includes the silence, and it works! They experience gains in strength, balance, and flexibility. They too gain a measure of calm and a feeling of wholeness. The practical benefits of energetic realization are not just flukes of my particular experience. They apply to a wide range of abilities and disabilities.

  Finally, teaching these students has shown me the different forms that healing can take. I have a student named Chris. He is now in his mid-twenties and lives with cerebral palsy. He gets around in an electric wheelchair but can stand on his feet briefly, with help. His fingers do not follow his instructions very well; his hands cannot bring food to his mouth. His tongue and speech are slowed by his condition, but not the glint in his eyes and never his laughter.

  He has come to my class nearly every week for eight years, and it is for faces like his that I wonder about our limited conception of healing. It is obvious that yoga and a deepened mind-body relationship will never reverse his condition. He will always live with cerebral palsy. But can he still actively heal, not just psychologically or spiritually, but in practical ways that include his mind and body? Of course he can.

  Not surprisingly, Chris needs help getting into the shower. It is a difficult transfer into a small space. Falling is not unheard of and always quite painful. When Chris starts to fall, he startles. When he startles, his body spasms, adding awkwardness to the velocity of his descent. One such fall resulted in a broken tooth.

  During a class, Chris told me about a fall in the shower he experienced earlier in the week. Apparently this time, as he lost his balance and began his descent, he did not startle. He did not break into spasm but instead dropped ever so gracefully to the floor. He told me that it was because of yoga that he did not startle, that he was able to reach the ground softly for the first time in his life. Chris’s eyes caught mine, and we shared a realization of freedom—the freedom to fall gracefully.

  Healing can travel in so many directions, and Chris’s story is not just about Chris. Barring some sort of miracle, I am never going to walk again. More to the point, my body has sustained a lot of damage, and it is never going to be easy to live in. Especially as I age, I grow more aware of my aches and pains, more aware that I have traveled through a shredder of sorts. Yoga definitely helps. It makes me feel better not just physically, not just mentally, but it helps me feel the core of my existence. Is yoga going to make all of my hardship go away? Of course not—my life is going to be hard. But without these difficulties, I would not be who I am.

  If nothing else, my life has taught me one thing: The mind and body that I have are the only mind and body that I have. They deserve my attention. And when I give it, I receive so much more in return. Learning to fall gracefully through one’s mind-body relationship is not a submission. One learns to fall gracefully in order to roll.

  There is still so much to realize. My experience tells me that the silence within us can be experienced energetically as a nourishing sap. When this happens, consciousness changes shape. For example, I have never seen anyone truly become more aware of his or her body without also becoming more compassionate. A mental state like tolerance can deepen into a three-dimensional state of true patience. Nonviolence can become more than a moral principle, it can become an integrated state of consciousness that includes the body. And, of course, for good or for bad, the silence within us also contains the opportunity for choice.

  Since my original accident, I have felt like a little boy, out of breath, trying to tell his family that something wonderful is awake in the back-hall closet. The silence we carry is not loss. It is the presence of death as it travels within us. The energies of life and death—of movement and silence—integrate within our existence to form consciousness. It requires both a mind and a body. One to open; one to stay present.

  Take a moment, soften your jaw and the inside of your mouth. Close your eyes and let them sink down under your cheekbones. Let the silence spill forward and add dimension to your presence, both inward and outward. Take a gentle breath. Let it fill you up.

  I have but one story remaining. It is the story that set me to writing this book. It is a story of life and dea
th traveling side by side.

  17

  The Births of William and Paul

  A dream healed my heart to Jennifer’s possibility. It was as much a feeling as a dream—a flash of a woman walking away from me. She had long, curly brown hair and a spunky step. I was flooded with a wave of companionship, of a presence that made me playful and at ease. I startled with the thought I can be with her. As she walked away, I realized that I knew who she was but could not place her. I woke up frantically searching my memory but came up empty.

  I re-met Jennifer at our ten-year high school reunion six months before I moved back to Minnesota. I almost didn’t make it to the reunion. Two months before, I had the metal removed from my leg. If I wanted to do certain yoga poses without fear of injuring my knee, the metal had to go. I just barely recovered enough to make the trip.

  I chose to be awake during this last leg surgery and have a spinal block. I wanted to confront the corrective violence directly rather than deal with its unconscious imprint within my yoga practice. I came away knowing that there is some violence for which it is better to be asleep. Orthopedic surgery is brutal. I barely was well enough to travel home and find my life partner.

  Jennifer has mouthwatering eyes like chocolate-brown Tootsie Pops, is five feet tall, and has a small, angel-shaped birthmark on her left calf. She is excited by life, by plants and flowers, by photograph albums and friendship. She is constantly in touch with people and throws a great party. Jennifer reminds me of living.

  I have known her since we were fourteen. I kissed her once in tenth grade, then again as a freshman in college (although she still denies the latter encounter). I would have never admitted to having a crush on her, nor she on me, but we kept coming back for more. Never quite satisfied, always sticking teasingly in each other’s memory, Jennifer and I lost touch for nearly a decade.

  During our first date after the reunion, she gave me a strange compliment. Jennifer was raised by a single mother. In her mind, the need for having a man around to ensure family happiness was marginal at best. She also knew that she wanted to have a child before reaching thirty—with or without a husband. A couple of years prior to our meeting again, Jennifer had lightheartedly perused her memory for men from her past who might make acceptable donors of genetic material. She cross-referenced looks, brains, and kindness. The result of this imagined search: I was her best option. Sure, I was a little banged up, but that was acquired and didn’t affect the quality of my genes. As far as she knew, my family history was generally healthy.

  Jennifer told me this offhandedly within the stream of our conversation. To this day, she maintains that she meant nothing by it. She only wanted to pay me a teasing but heartfelt compliment. Easy to say now. In the moment, I was a little stunned. This was not something I heard every day. I was flattered, but the timing also struck a deeper chord.

  I had just had a checkup with my urologist. Since I am at risk for bladder and kidney ailments, I have one every year to get a jump on emerging problems. Unknown to me at the time, my urologist, Dr. Pryor, is a leading researcher in male fertility, particularly in the potential fertility of men living with spinal cord injuries. Three days before my first date with Jennifer, he informed me that he had pioneered new techniques in the collection of viable sperm. While I was capable of sexual intercourse and even of ejaculation on rare occasions, the quality of my sperm was unknown, and coordinating an ejaculation with a woman’s ovulation possessed odds just slightly better than winning the lottery. But with his new collection technique, Dr. Pryor thought I could biologically father a child. The consultation ended with the offhand comment, “If you ever find someone you want to make a baby with, come see me.”

  I had gotten used to the idea of not fathering children as a defining parameter of my life. I had accepted it as part of my injury. To receive this unsolicited information caught me completely off guard. When Jennifer jokingly told me I had won her imagined sweepstakes, and I told her of my appointment three days earlier, we stared at each other and felt our lives merging.

  Two years later, we were married. Our ceremony was held October 26, 1996, in the unfinished house we were building. This was the house I had been waiting for, the one I could build because of the lawsuit. It has big open spaces, vaulted ceilings, wood floors, low kitchen counters, no upper cupboards, an accessible sink and stovetop, a front-loading washer and dryer, a wheel-in shower, and an attached garage. It has an upstairs, a lift to traverse the change in elevation, a room dedicated to yoga, and best of all, it is on a lot full of beautiful, old maple trees. Building a life of love and laughter with Jennifer has landed me fully into my life. Eventually, we will even make babies.

  William Matthew and Paul Loren were conceived through in vitro fertilization. Jennifer and I did not have an easy time of it. We had six inseminations. That meant six surgeries under a fast-acting general anesthesia for me. Three of those times, Jennifer was given hormones to increase the odds, and six times, even with optimal placement of my sperm near her eggs, we were disappointed.

  Finally, the doctors suggested in vitro fertilization. For reasons unknown, her eggs and my sperm were having trouble getting the job done. In vitro fertilization gave us a friendly boost. The process was far from easy, however, especially for Jennifer: lots of hormones, an egg harvest, a petri dish conception, and an implantation. The first time failed.

  After our second attempt, Jennifer was sure it hadn’t worked. She was having what she thought were menstrual cramps, and we were having a garage sale. When the dreaded call came, she was sitting behind a card table, counting odd change. Her eyes popped wide open in disbelief. She was pregnant. For three years, fertility issues had been looming over us, a period long enough to take on a life of its own. Suddenly, the process was over and another had begun. Our surprise was genuine.

  During our first ultrasound, the doctor calmly said, “How many kids did you say you wanted?” Jennifer was pregnant with fraternal twins—two separate embryos. There we were, a girl five feet tall and a boy in a wheelchair, and we were having two babies. Jennifer turned to me and said in a voice that mixed fear with joy, “Why can’t we do anything normal?” We left the ultrasound and went out to an unplanned lunch. There was silence and laughter and hand-wringing and long exhales. We kept telling each other a healing story: “Well, it may be more work up front, but we can be done having kids now.” Two children were as many as we wanted. “Look at it this way—we are getting two for the price of one.” In vitro fertilization is not cheap.

  By definition, having multiple babies involves higher risk. We were sent to a specialist in high-risk pregnancies, but he did not expect any problems. His plan was simply to monitor the pregnancy more closely than usual. We experienced quite a few ultrasounds.

  We gave our children their names early on. William Matthew, the baby usually in the lower left section of Jennifer’s belly, presented his gender early—at about fourteen weeks. Suddenly, there he was, all boy and facing outward. A few weeks later, Paul Loren followed suit, as Jennifer watched the ultrasound screen in disbelief. As an only child raised by a single mother, she had always imagined having a girl—she knew nothing else. On top of that, we had recently gotten two boy kittens from the same litter. By Jennifer’s count, that made five boys and one girl in the household of her future. Her initial dismay turned to laughter and then to love as her life kept changing before her eyes.

  Although Jennifer’s presence makes her seem tall for her size, twins in her stomach were quite a stretch—literally. Each night, I would rub vitamin E ointment into the skin of her exploding belly. This was my time to give, both to her and to my two sons. I would tell William and Paul stories about their mother, about our life together, about the life we would all share. There are many reasons why a pregnancy lasts nine months. One is so there is ample time for a family to dream of their life together. This was one of our strong suits.

  In retrospect, Jennifer and I can now recognize the first signs of trouble.
At night as I rubbed her belly, Jennifer would give me a report on our sons’ activities: “William had hiccups again today,” or “Paul was awfully rowdy this morning.” Over time, however, she noticed a difference between the two. William’s personality felt softer, quieter. This mirrored my experience when I put my hands on him. One day, as Jennifer was giving her nightly report, she referred to William as her sweet child, and Sweet William became his name. We imagined how this early difference between William and Paul might manifest in their personalities. Each night, as Jennifer and I listened to William’s emerging silence, it innocently lit our imaginations.

  Our routine ultrasounds had become greatly anticipated—another opportunity to see the boys. That all changed when, out of nowhere, fluid appeared on William’s brain, a condition called hydrocephalus. This development was surprising because we were already thirty-two weeks into the pregnancy. Problems of this kind typically appear much earlier. The doctor assured us that the condition is not usually fatal. There are four ventricles in the developing human brain. They are a reservoir system for the flow of spinal fluid. If there is a slight variance between input and output, the fluid accumulates. The brain’s tissue, then, becomes over-saturated, causing damage. The severity depends upon the amount of fluid that accumulates, which in turn depends upon the discrepancy between input and output.

  The causes of hydrocephalus are many. Any kind of blockage could be the culprit, ranging from a microscopic defect to a clot to countless others. The doctor’s strategy was to let the pregnancy move forward unchanged—the safest place for William and Paul remained in their mother’s womb. After the birth, William would probably undergo a procedure to insert a shunt. Basically, a drainage tube would be surgically inserted into the problem ventricle. The long-term prognosis was impossible to know—being dependent on far too many variables. The only things we were consistently told were that William would most likely live, that there was no obvious risk to Paul because they were fraternal twins, and that William would probably have some disabilities—both mental and physical—the extent of which was unknown. Jennifer and I watched as another possible life passed us by. It was the week after Christmas, and we had to make plans, not just for a new year but a new life.