CATEGORY: THERAPIES

There is another kind of therapy in which the therapist sits beside you while you breathe very short fast breaths through the mouth.  I learned of this one on a trip to the Robert Jaffe school in Sedona, Arizona and then did later sessions with a therapist near Sequim who practiced the same method. It was called “Rebirthing.”  I did some negative “discharging” during these sessions, but mostly, after breathing in this manner for about three minutes, I would start laughing.  I would laugh and laugh and LAUGH until I would finally go to sleep right on the couch.  Ever heard of laughing yourself to sleep?

An interesting thing that happened during these sessions is that I would have a vision.  First I saw what looked like a starry sky, but on a dark blue background instead of black.  It was inside a concave shape like the inside of an egg shell.  Then I saw a place at the bottom of a remote canyon east of Bend where there was the ruin of an old, rather grand (that is, compared to the average deserted homestead cabins one usually finds in eastern Oregon) house that had been used as a strafing target by pilots at nearby Camp Abbot during the Second World War .  When we lived near Tumalo, Eric and Jari and I had gone there to build a fire and roast wieners.  Later fellow college students had helped me clear its concrete floor of rubble in order to have a dance there.  I would see the starry shape and then the place in the canyon every time I started a re-birthing session; then I started having the same vision in my dreams.  I decided to drive all the way from Port Townsend to that place east of Bend just to see if there was something I needed to investigate.  I was not sure I would be able to find it again since it was on a dirt road with other dirt roads forking off of it at various places, and there were cattle guards and wire gates along the way: however I drove right to it.  When I got there, I discovered that cattle had been using the ruined house, and the floor we had cleared so long ago was full of cow manure.  I walked all around the area.  Then I lay down in the long grass at the bottom of the canyon near the creek bed and stared up at the sky.  After awhile I got up and left.  I never had those visions again.  The starry blue one, although a mystery, disappeared along with the one about the old house.