-Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Some people go through life seeking and never finding. Others seek, find and then assist others in their own quests.
Barbara Mindell started her search shortly after a car crash at the age of 18 left her a paraplegic. While no one at the hospital told her she would never walk again, it was the impression she was left with. "I never really bought the idea that I'd never walk," she says. "If there was a God, there was a possibility that I could recover from this injury."
Conventional North American medical wisdom didn't have the answers she was looking for. "Doctors think about the human body as one would a car or a machine. Once grown, it doesn't grow or regenerate. It eventually falls apart and they just fix the parts along the way." she says. Mindell spent the next ten years exploring the alternative healing methods, including bodywork, massage and acupuncture. She sent out 250 form letters to health and scientific organizations around the world asking people to work with her. She received nothing more than good wishes in reply.
In the course of her search, Mindell met Emilie Conrad-Da'oud and was introduced to Continuum-something she describes as "a primary movement process which explores movement as something we are, rather than something we do." Conrad-Da'oud invented and developed this process, which Mindell says is an ever-changing, ever-evolving inquiry into the nature of what it means to be a human being.
Mindell learned from Conrad-Da'oud to breathe in a manner that created a wave-like motion generated from the part of her body that could move. The wave motion radiates through the body, spreading tiny movements and signaling dormant areas to participate. The concept has been described as 'breaking ice to get to water.' Mindell suggests we entertain the notion that we are open systems with endless possibilities for innovation, and the development of new neural pathways, new connections, new ways to identify ourselves. She describes her experience with the Continuum as having been a way to transform herself. It's like entering into a new life, shedding an old skin-and doing it in a loving environment, she says.
Conrad-Da'oud teaches that human beings develop in an aquatic atmosphere while in the womb and are fundamentally aquatic beings. Our earliest developments take place with movements similar to those of the sea-fluttering, irregular to the eye, and experimental. Undifferentiated movement (wave-motion) allows for nerves to innovate, and the more specific a movement is (such as weight training), the less neural information there is in it. The wave motion process allows for aquatic-like movements within the body.
As the neural information spreads from the wave motion, probabilities for new synaptic activity (to be generated by hook-ups among the thousands of neural signals traveling through the body) develop. Hook-ups between new neural pathways, formerly-used muscles, and as-yet-unknown pathways for movement may also be created.
Mindell realized the healing had to come from within. "It wasn't a process where the 'patient' is passive and the other person 'fixes' them," she says.
"I had a willingness to participate. I was ready. The spiritual aspect of the healing for me was all-important. As I started to get sensation, as I started to move, areas of my body that were paralyzed showed me that movement and sensation were the result of a much deeper process. I went through a long process of letting go of the struggling against the paralysis. There's a lot of that in living a life in a wheelchair, forcing and pushing, struggling..."
Mindell says she was able to become more general in her awareness and not always focus on her legs and wanting to walk. "It's really not a process of dealing directly with the issue; it's much more expansive. In any transformation process, you can't be overly focused on paralysis. It creates more of the same-a loop. So for myself in this process it hasn't been just healing the paralysis; it's more than just that-spiritual growth, development, being able to have a full life, have a career as an artist, being in a relationship and being able to move in many different ways. Through this process, the increase in sensation has been enormous. The feeling of fluidity and movement in my body has been an incredible healing."
Although not quite ambul-atory, Mindell now has sensation and movement throughout her lower body. Her investigation into movement has led to profound insights into the creative capacity of our biological systems and has far-reaching implications for the healing community. To all of us paralysed in various ways, she is an example of what a body can be.
Based on a interview by Grant MacLean.
Barbara Mindell will be speaking on Moving through Paralysis on Friday, Oct. 4, and conducting a workshop entitled The Art of Movement, in Vancouver, October 5-6 at the Holiday Inn, 1110 Howe Street. Pre-registration is required. Contact Doris Maranda, (604) 947-0147 for more information/registration.