relaxation

When I was in Pittsburgh ('83) I was introduced to a woman who did self-hypnosis, relaxation techniques.  For pain control this became one of my main tools.  She had a calm, soothing attitude and voice like you would expect from such a person.  I worked on one visualization with her for a long time that came to be my mainstay-- a path in Tilden Park in Berkeley hills I used to walk before I got sick in graduate school.   The walk begins heading west on a level path through a cool, quiet Eucalyptus grove and then breaks out into the open grassland and makes its way north.   You can see the top of the path from here, a lookout where there is a small, low stone wall that surrounds a designated spot to take in the view of the bay.  The path takes you north past this viewpoint, then dips down into another Eucalyptus grove before turning west and rising steeply to the lookout.   The walk is a short twenty or thirty minutes, but the steep part would make me breath hard even when I was healthy.  In my visualization, I could wander this path as slowly as I liked, looking for salamanders and snakes in the rocks across the path, and judging the season by the color of the grass--  shades of fading yellow for summer to autumn, spectacularly bright green when the grass returns after the winter rain.

In 84' one of the first things I did was organize a walk with friends (Peter for sure, perhaps also Tycho) on one of the first clear spring days of the year.  We celebrated my recovery with the Tilden Park walk and lunch at the lookout.  (Me, water;  others wine.)

Today I had an MRI which is a pretty easy test but it does require you to lie still for about an hour in the MRI machine.  If you focus on that itch that you cannot possibly scratch, you can get into trouble.  They give you a panic ball to squeeze if you really start to loose it;  and I suspect that just having the ball allows most people to keep a grip.   The machine makes odd, loud noises in varying patterns, not so different from the sounding of the shofar.  I wonder what is rattling and banging to make such noises?  I make a mental note to look up how the Gadolinium contrast works later (some interesting quantum mechanics here).  I am commanded "take a deep breath, let it out, take a deep breath and hold it".... Teruah..."breath" over and over.  Was I really watching "The man in the iron mask" (1998)  last night?  Ugh, what a bad coincidence!

(Take a deep breath in and let it out) I am standing by the side of the pool with David, preparing to jump in.  (Take a deep breath in and hold it)  We jump into the pool.  I sink way down trying to touch the bottom, I drift slowly up, looking straight up at the shimmering air-water interface and brilliant New Mexico sunshine filtering down.  My head pokes through the surface of the water.  (Breath!)