‘We will gather online,’ Bea Marshall wrote, ‘to restore our energy and well-being and to replenish our bodies, minds and spirits.’
‘Oh!’ I thought. ‘Will we, now?
I glanced at the empty space next to the last dwindling bottles of whisky on the shelf, and it occurred to me that replenishing the spirits might not be a bad idea. But of course, Bea meant the other type of spirit – the sort that cannot be replenished online.
Or can it?
This is, after all, Bea Marshall; she has always challenged me. I think it’s because her ideas are often radical and left-field; so unlike anything I’d ever have come up with myself. (Actually, that’s not true – we did start plunging into cold water independently around the same time but even then, Bea chooses to swim wild and naked).
Anyway, Bea is hosting the course that I settled on to ‘sort my life out a bit,’ and this early promotional ‘Sacred space,’ Restore and Replenish, is free. So I signed up in all eagerness and then, rather typically, completely forgot the whole thing. Until just now, when I checked my e-mails to find out that tonight was the night.
It was not a good time. Piano lessons had already finished, but Tiddler was about to go off on her first experience as a Scout; I was supposed to be walking her there. Toddler was doing his trumpet practice for the first time since pre-Christmas. His lip wasn’t as strong as it had been when he’d last played, three weeks before, but no matter. To the background strains of slightly wobbly 4-beats-in-a-bar tunes, I had quietly tiptoed away. Restore and Replenish.
I should have thought this one through, I told myself, firmly closing the door. I am so not in the mood for all this, tonight. But Bea serenely welcomed everyone with such enthusiasm that I was loathe to turn her off, even when she explained that we should make sure to be in a good place to focus. She was going to lock a virtual door, in order to make our space sacred and interruption-free and if we couldn’t achieve this now, then there would be a recording later to watch.
Indeed, I should probably have thought better of it. But hubby had Tiddler trumpeting nicely so I wasn’t going to turn the chance down. I tried to concentrate hard as Bea started to help us to settle. As a simple tune, crotchets separated, sailed up from below, Bea guided us through – what? I can’t even remember. A breathing technique. A pattern of introductory breathing.
Tiddler’s lip really had lost its tone over Christmas. He was only hitting three notes. ‘Come on,’ I thought, slightly harshly. ‘Warm up with small scales!’
There were ten other women in this group, I could see. Did any of their kids play the trumpet? Were all of them closing their eyes, “settling” and counting their breathing? I was reminded of being a child in our school assembly, supposedly praying, but actually peering out through my fingers. I was reminded of the slight nagging fear of closing my eyes, echoed in the relaxation bit of yoga sessions years later. What if the others didn’t all have their eyes closed? What if they could see me, but I couldn’t see them? I quickly checked my screen settings. What if everyone else had crept off for a fag?
I tried to picture Bea’s other delegates, lying on the floor, just like me. I liked to think they were, anyway…. except…. Oh God, that was excellent timing. My period seeped into my knickers. Bea counted. I decided to nip to the loo.
Luckily, I didn’t have to queue for my own bathroom. I finished my breathing exercise on the toilet seat and then, feeling guilty, lay down on the floor of the landing. Bea’s gentle voice explained that sometimes people find settling hard. Reassured, I relaxed and this time was still.
Bea’s voice was flowing over me and – I can’t remember the wording. She started us ‘tapping’ – yes, this is a thing. Pounding resonant collar-bones – and skin, and muscle, and other bones – repeatedly, with your hands.
You might feel silly but try it, if you haven’t done. It actually feels quite good. The rhythm vibrates inside you somehow – resonates in the hollow bits of your body. It’s nice to have rhythm vibrating inside you. Primal, and weirdly comforting. Good.
I zoned out for a while and when I zoned in again, the session had moved on. We were going to do some visualisation.
I think I was supposed to be picturing some recent time when things hadn’t gone very well…. when I hadn’t been particularly proud of me…. (Bea said it so much more artfully than that. When I wasn’t in line with myself, or something). There had actually been nn awkward moment from a couple of days before, when I’d yelled at my husband for ordering a family dessert to share in a restaurant that he knew that two of us wouldn’t actually like. We’d been at a Becky’s (a regular character here’s) birthday party at the time: it had all been ridiculously public. I wished that dessert had completely eaten me up.
Hubby had actually ordered the dessert because I’d told him, in a passive-aggressive way, to get on and order the thing, because I’d been trying to hold a conversation with someone else, and he’d interrupted my conversation twice to talk about the 4-person sharer dessert he was eyeing up, and also the fact that he knew that Tiddler and I wouldn’t want to eat it. At the time, with my stupid brain which can only concentrate on one thing at a time, I didn’t manage to halt my conversation and explain to him that yes, that was right.
Instead, I’d stupidly waved my hand and told him to do it his way, then. Multiple times with increasing intensity, because I was trying to listen to this other bloke. And then I’d forgotten about all that. And then my desert had come along, which I’d been quite looking fwd to – but for some reason I hadn’t got the lovely caramel thing that I’d been eyeing up. Instead I got a bowl hard chocolate, mixed up with ice cream. Not a good choice of ways to spend my carefully saved calories allowance.
And I’d had a go at my husband – far too loudly. It was my fault because at the right moment, I should have asked the man to stop talking and told my husband to order something different. I think you have to have a brain that doesn’t work, to stand a chance of understanding why I didn’t. I was angry with myself. And I hadn’t realized, actually, how ridiculously angry I’d been, until now. Angry with myself for not bothering to be assertive. Angry with myself for shouting. For snatching defeat from a lovely afternoon…..again.
God. How embarrassing. Embarrassing at the time. And now, even more embarrassing still, I was sitting in this woman’s session, crying.
Thank God this group wasn’t somewhere in person now. Was I some kind of a sucker? Or maybe there were twenty other women, all lying on their bedroom floors, and all of them were also crying their eyes out over some minor disagreement with their usually awesome husbands?
Anyway, I had to quieten down a bit because Bea was quietly speaking. She told me to release all that grief….. to let myself heal…. to forgive myself….. and by whatever magic of resonance in my tapped skeleton, in that moment, it actually worked.
And suddenly, Bea invited us to stand up and move – to move ourselves in whatever way we felt fit. And somehow the stupid pent up hurt about letting hubby order the wrong desert, turned into a positive energy. Having seen stoned-looking hippies moving freely to music before (at music festivals, from a distance) I had never been prepared for how glorious it actually felt.
However, I didn’t entirely finish the session: my space wasn’t quite as sacred as Bea might have liked. I was just getting carried away, when Tiddler came knocking on my door. And where, in another world, I might have yelled or something, I opened it, face slightly flushed, but feeling amazingly calm.
‘Don’t worry, Tiddler. There’s a recording coming. It’s okay; I can listen again. Did trumpet go well?’
My Body, My Own 