In another conversation, Patricia began what would become a mantra both from her and to me: “Matt, you need to step forward into the pages. You owe it to the reader.” With this line in my head, I could sense when I was protecting myself, when I was trying not to feel. I am a private person and Waking is a very intimate book. While writing, I kept pushing myself to stand in front of my words and not behind them. To whatever extent Waking is effective, it is because of a hard-earned willingness to share: share not what I wanted my story to be, not what I thought it should be, but what my story was. I needed to share it without judgment, without protection, and without sentimentality. I needed to trust and believe in my experience.
This advice is not just for the writing process. Stepping into the pages of your life, finding the stories that propel you forward is an essential step beyond waking.
III
How does one transform the experience of loss? One of the steps is to recognize it as a mind-body sensation, not simply as an end. Try the following:
Take in a breath, hold it, keep holding it, hold it a little past what is comfortable. Feel the silence. Notice the shrinking feeling you have on the inside, the silent but acute end of your inhalation, the abruptness, the trapped feeling like there is no place to go, the beginning of anxiety, of desperation.
This is what it is like to wake up to paralysis. This is the abruptness of loss experienced like the wall at the end of your inhalation. Remember that time when your arm fell asleep so badly that you could neither move it nor feel it? The startling silence in that unresponsive limb rendered you powerless. But now try something different:
Sit up straight and tall. Feel your sits bones on the chair seat, feel your feet resting on the floor. Feel the back side of your body, the ribs behind your heart, feel your feet again, this time a little toward the heels. Soften the skin on your face, your jaw, your temples, and especially the inside of your mouth. Take a couple of gentle breaths.
I imagine that this felt nourishing, like a reprieve. As in the first example, this too is the silence. It is feeling that underpins the experience of loss. But in this second case, it has become a mind-body sensation, a living sensation. It has been subtly integrated with the alignment of your body and the added dimension of your breath. The silence now feels like a part of you and not just a brick wall.
This is the story I told in Waking, the story of walking from a well-lit room into a dark one. Instead of holding my breath and pushing my way forward, I paused, stayed patient, allowed for stillness, and waited for my eyes to adjust. I kept breathing, and started to work with the darkness (silence) rather than against it.
When I did, when I listened to the silence of my paralysis and allowed it to become a mind-body sensation in its own right, a different world appeared, one with greater depth and potential. My experience of loss became not an end but an energetic truth, an aspect of my mind-body relationship rather than a breathless limit. This transformation deepened my sense of presence and connected me back to the world. It made me feel lighter, especially in my spine. My movements became more graceful, more effortless. My balance increased, my ability to listen and share with others increased. My world shifted from inside to outside.
IV
I carry an insight that transforms the experience of living with a disability. It is simple; so ordinary that it is easily passed over: The experience of presence within the body is a precious gift—a secret to living well. I know this because I lost it through trauma, at least I lost the main vehicle for experiencing it—a fully functional central nervous system. What I now know is that presence within the body can and should be approached from many directions. This is crucial for everyone, but particularly someone living with a disability. When one explores alternative methods of gaining presence, a lightness appears, especially throughout the spine, bones, and joints. This lightness is not accessible through strictly physical action—it takes something more. It also has practical, everyday benefits—improved mobility, quality of breathing, motor planning, ability to manage stress. Perhaps even more important, this lighter feeling of presence brings a new sense of freedom and hope, a new feeling of potential.
Presence, however, is a loaded word, a hard notion to grasp but something pretty straightforward. Try the following:
Slouch in your chair, lean back, and let your knees splay out. Notice what you feel in your legs, the feeling in your feet, the dullness running through your midsection. Notice this as the feeling we often associate with relaxation.
Now try moving from this position to sitting upright. Put your feet squarely on the floor and directly below your knees. Feel your sits bones on your chair seat, broaden across your collarbones, and balance your head over your neck. Notice that as you moved forward into an upright position, you began to feel your legs more, even your inner thighs as your feet connected more consciously with the floor. Take a breath and notice how much more you feel within your body.
Simply put, this change in the quality of your inward sensation is what I mean by presence. When mind and body intersect, the result is the sensation of presence. Refining and expanding this level of sensation in every way possible is essential for someone living with a disability. Gravity already feels extra-heavy for us. A feeling of lightness within the mind-body relationship is more than a convenience. It is a form of healing.
I believe honing this level of sensation transcends the experience of living with an obvious disability. It holds promise for all of us. After reading Waking, I hope this becomes clear.
V
Visions grow from the center outward, not in a straight line. Only recently did I fully realize that the center of my work began in 1997 when I started teaching the adaptive yoga class at the Courage Center. Something wonderful was happening in that quiet, unassuming, yet spectacular Monday night class. Good, caring people—both students and assistants alike—gathered week after week and pioneered new territory. We opened the transforming experience of yoga for a population that all too often gets left behind. Moreover, we developed the mind-body insight that promises to transform how our health care approaches rehabilitation.
I also received something for which I am deeply grateful. I have seen firsthand that our groundbreaking work did not require a flash of genius. It required only trusting time, ordinary week-after-week time. That thirteen-year-old boy who hovered over the Foster frame in intensive care learned something that this forty-two-year-old writer still works to appreciate: Time brings the result—all that is needed is an intuitive sense of direction and a sense of purpose. These, of course, come from recognizing the patterns and stories of one’s life, like a river gaining current. Fortunately, it doesn’t take genius. It only requires paying attention.
Teaching this adaptive class has also made me practice sharing both my own loss and feeling loss in others. It prepared me to write Waking and showed me how to traverse a path of helping: I am no longer afraid of my own suffering, of my own grief. I know that it will come, that it will pass like a cough, that it will return, and that it will pass again. I realize that this will happen for the rest of my life.
The adaptive class has made me hopeful about the transformative potential of connecting mind and body. Mind-body integration heals on many levels at once—mental, physical, spiritual, psychological, and emotional. Perhaps most important, it also reveals the subtlety and practicality of energetic truth.
I founded the nonprofit organization Mind Body Solutions in 2002 as an extension of what I was exploring at the Courage Center. I had the notion that I wanted to work not just with disabled people, but also with the “abled.” We opened a yoga studio to help people experience the benefits of connecting mind and body. I created a workplace program called Bringing Your Body to Work. This, too, came right out of the adaptive class. I realized that the issues facing people who sit at a desk all day aren’t that different from someone who sits in a wheelchair.
Now, in 2008, the new mission of Mind Body Solutions is to t
ransform trauma and loss into hope and potential by awakening the connection between mind and body. This mission feels like coming home—both a relief and a little scary. A relief because all the threads are finally coming together into a coherent knot. Scary because it is an ambitious vision.
First, we plan to develop curriculum and training so that an adaptive yoga class can become standard at rehabilitation facilities across the country. We are also beginning a two-part documentary film project. In the first month of 2008, we began work on a ten-to-twelve minute short film. This is intended for patients and their families who are living through trauma and loss. We want them to know that a mind-body approach will positively impact long-term outcomes. This shorter film is the first step in making an hour-long documentary.
In the second month of 2008, in partnership with the Courage Center, we began a pilot program to infuse a mind-body approach into all their rehabilitation processes. This is also a research project to collect the outcomes that will help other institutions believe in, and eventually implement, such an approach. Imagine a health-care system where it does not take twelve years to begin to reconnect mind and body.
All of this is preparation. In 2009, we aim to create a mind-body program for returning veterans. The trauma and loss of these men and women must be met head-on. I know we can help. I also believe that the necessary support will come to us when we are ready. I trust time and have faith in the goodness of people. Finally, I also know that each day I am one day closer to creating an institute of consciousness. Perhaps we will call it Waking, perhaps not. What I do know is the general direction in which I am heading. These are my steps beyond waking.
VI
Since Waking was published, I often find myself in rooms with readers, adding my body, my greenish-blue eyes and speckling grey beard to the story under discussion. In many of these rooms, I encounter a similar question, “How do you keep smiling? … How, when so many others do not?”
This question always gives me pause. I want to give a clear, resounding answer because the questioner is looking for a secret and I so want to give it. But I am unable because I do not know. I usually respond with what I already offered in this book: “I was born with a smile on my face.” Of course, this leaves an unsatisfied taste in both of our mouths. It leads to an obvious retort: “What if someone isn’t so lucky? What then?”
Today, as I am writing, it is a sunny, blue-skied winter day and I am willing to try a different answer, a different healing story. My answer today is, “Blame it on the sun.” Or how about “Blame it on my sons.” … for they amount to the same thing. Earlier in this book, I wrote that, “I am both heartbroken and desperately in love.” I was mistaken. I have never been heartbroken. It is not possible. What I thought was broken was actually my heart revealing its depth. It has affinity not just with having and holding but also with silence and loss. It has affinity not just with living but also with dying. Hearts are transcendent. They do not break, minds do.
We are living and dying simultaneously … and we are given time to realize the lightness that accompanies this truth. It is the beginning of the journey. It is the end. If I still need a reason for smiling, then blame it on the sun.
Paul is almost eight-years-old now. He has a mop of thick, brownish-blonde hair. His eyes are brown—not quite as scrumptious as his mother’s, but deeper, darker, and with a sparkle that moves the earth under my feet. Paul wonders about his brother, more this year than in years past. Sometimes, right before bed, I hear him ask Jennifer about William. As our collective heart aches, I hear Jennifer pause briefly in the darkness of his bedroom, and then kiss him lightly on the cheek. In this moment, we all step more deeply into our lives.
MATTHEW W. SANFORD has been exploring the intersection between body and mind since becoming paralyzed more than twenty-nine years ago. He founded the nonprofi t organization Mind Body Solutions, and he teaches yoga, specializing in adapting it for people living with disabilities. He resides with his wife and son in Orono, Minnesota.
For more information about Waking and Sanford’s public speaking engagements, visit www.matthewsanford.com or www.mindbodysolutions.org
Notice
Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book, the author, or the publisher.
Internet addresses and telephone numbers given in this book were accurate at the time it went to press.
© 2006 by Matthew Sanford
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
Rodale Inc. makes every effort to use acid-free , recycled paper .
Book design by Christopher Rhoads
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sanford, Matthew.
Waking : a memoir of trauma and transcendence / by Matthew Sanford.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59486-302-8 hardcover
ISBN-10: 1-59486-302-4 (pbk.) hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-1-59486-845-0 paperback
ISBN-10: 1-59486-845-X paperback
1. Sanford, Matthew. 2. Paraplegics—Biography. 3. Yoga--Health aspects. I. Title.
RC406.P3S26 2006
362.196’8420092--dc22 2006009370
Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 paperback
We inspire and enable people to improve their lives and the world around them
For more of our products visit rodalestore.com or call 800-848-4735
Waking Page 20
