The Maori Healing Experience Hurts. In a good way.

So my Mom heard that the Maori Healers were coming to Gainesville, so she signed me up for a healing session.  She knows I’m always down for the odd experience (I doubt she’d say “down”).  I’ve seen acupuncturists, reiki healers, hypnotherapists, rebirthers, EMDR techs, psychics, Neuro Linguistic Programmers, all kinds of stuff.  I am a skeptic, but I choose to be an educated one.

(In case you were curious, having dabbled in all of those things, I am unable to dismiss almost any one of them.  Despite my logical/rational mind really really <b>really</b>wanting to).

The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, and they have this… well, I’ll let you find out the way I found out.

My Mom went earlier in the week and warned me “It hurts a fair amount.  People were screaming bloody murder all around me.  Your mother did not of course, because I’m not a wuss.”  (It makes more sense if you read it with her british accent)

I spoke to a friend who teaches Tai Ching, and he said it was.. “Intense”. and “Not Very Private” (among other things), but he said they had a great energy and that his girlfriend, a massage therapist, really benefited/appreciated the treatment.

So.  I showed up at a cute, quaint house in NW Gainesville, and a pixie faced blonde girl was standing at the door.   From inside, someone screamed in pain.  I hesitated, but told her the truth when she asked “Are you Phil McCarty?”

Inside the living room were two massage tables at one end, two tiny chairs at the other, and a mat on the floor.  My therapy was to be fairly public, as there were about seven people in the room.   Two women were being worked on the table, while various people in “hippie garb” traipsed in and out.  The room was roughly the size of a mid-sized sedan, so,  we were all fairly close to one another. The dark skinned Maori stood out from the…gringos, but only slightly.

In my ignorance I was expecting, you know, National Geographic.  People in clothing made out of vines, loincloths, that kind of thing.  Instead they were dressed like people relaxing on a sunday afternoon.

<Photo 1>

The guy, introduced himself as Terrance, and told me to lie down on the mat (lay? I still don’t know. Neither do you though, so we will continue to get along famously).   He asks what my problem is, and I tell him.

Meanwhile, there’s  another patient just…listening to me go on about my neuroses and potential signs of insanity.  Terrance says (“Okay.”) and I lay (?) down on my chest, still confused at the intimacy, lack of privacy, and his accent.  The New Zealand accent is just a bit off from Australian (Which is a bit off from British)… you know Flight of the Concords.

He says to me “This can get a bit intense, so, if you need to yell, scream, or curse, go right ahead, it’s okay.”

I don’t remember which movie it was, maybe an episode of 24, but there was a psychoanalysis of people, and how different people responded to torture.  Some individuals find the torture itself, unbearable, but OTHERS were terrified by the pending threat of torture. The pain that was coming always loomed more dominating, and more terrifyingly over their head.  At the time I wondered which category I fell under.  Now I knew.

More conversationally: how f@#ked up is it that f@#king Jemaine (Or Bret?) was telling me that he was about to kick my ass and I was going to scream like a baby?   But, it wasn’t quite like that.

First, he sat down at chair, at my feet.  He placed his feet on mine, and just…did nothing.  <I>This is stupid…Why am I playing footsy with ..OMG are his feet TINGLING?</I>

Again, maybe I am highly suggestive, but I felt a strong, and strange tingling sensation, coupled with warmth, like…EMANATING from his feet.

% of me freaking out: 65.
% of me in pain: 0

He adjusts his feet slightly, and more of the same.  This happens (or not) for about five minutes. <I>Hmmm this isn’t so bad. Freaky, but not painful.</i> Then he stands up.

Terrence, the masochist, then decides to basically walk all over me. He puts his entire body weight on every muscle below the waist, and slowly…grinds it into the bone.   Takes the heel of his foot, the bulk of his body weight, and just digs into me, slowly, excruciatingly, for minutes at a time. Back, and forth, crushing the muscle into the my very unyielding ossifii.

My calve into my tibia, my hamstring into my humerus (no, it wasn’t), just digging, and digging, and digging.  It was the most excruciating pain I’d felt in… thirteen years.

% of me in pain: 90.

But I didn’t scream.  I don’t know if it’s a high pain tolerance from having a few surgeries, or maybe just the fact that I over intellectualize everything <i>I wonder how long this will last. This really hurts. I wonder if I can find the edge of where it hurts… it definitely hurts where he’s standing, but it doesn’t hurt on (say) my back, so that means maybe I can find the border between pain and no–oow that really hurts </i> I internalize everything (for better or worse) so the extent of my “screaming, yelling, cursing” is… slightly heavier breathing.  People watching were a little amazed, I am more than proud to admit.

(Yes, it’s strange to have people watching you sublimate excruciating pain.)

(At one point, I forgot my pain ENTIRELY because one of the Maori had a tattoo of Indiana Jones on his calf. I saw it perfectly, from my position on the ground, while Terrance pulled my arms up behind my back, discovering that I am, in fact, not triple jointed.  Not even close.)

After about twenty minutes of New Zealand’s Jack Bauer, he stops, (at this point i’ve flipped over), dips his hands in water, and then motions for one of the matrons to come over.  He puts his hands on my stomach and for whatever reason I can STRONGLY feel my pulse, in my stomach. It’s almost as if my heart moved.  % of my freaking out: 91.

He says “There’s only a few people that can undergo that experience the way you just did.  I’m impressed. It means that you don’t carry your emotions with you, in your body, you just let them go through. That’s very good.”  I would’ve rather he said “It means you’re a bad ass” but I will accept that I have Emotion teflon.  (% of me that was looking forward to bragging about this in a blog/note: 100.)

The lady comes over, sits behind me and says “he’s a bit crooked”, pointing at (what I assume is) my face.  I quickly launch into my abbreviated “I had a tumor when I was a child” story, and she says that’s not what she means, and puts her hands on either side of my ears, and he says something about “a little bit of a build up, but not much at all.”

And then they just sit there. And sit there.  It is oddly soothing. Her hands were warm, yet firm, and I would’ve been more than content to just stay there for another hour or day or two.

After a while she asks me what I do. I tell her I’m a writer.

“Hmm” she says, frowning slightly. Maybe she hates my blogs. “What kind of writer?”

I think  “Overly verbose (loquacious) , rambling, and insecure” but say “Screenplays. Books. Short Essays.”

She says “They are telling me you should be a musician.”

% of me that is freaking out: 100.

She then goes into a level of personality assessment about me that is downright freaky, telling me things about myself that she has no business knowing (and neither do you, really) and then nurtures me, and tells me that I’m a good soul, and I have a good heart, and that’s what matters most.  My inner cynic got a word in edgewise (“I certainly hope so.”) and she looked at me with the loving smile of someone who just knows you’re wrong, but knows you’ll figure it out eventually, and said “It is.”

She then kissed me on the forehead and walked back to one of the other tables.

Terrence then continues to work on me, this time basically digging his fingertips into my head so hard I’m convinced I will leave minus a memory of one entire year of my life.  At one point something pops, and I feel liquid flood a corner of my skull (promise) and think “This is how an embolism feels.”  But it also feels great.  He then just hovers his hands over my face for a while, and they were, again, unusually warm. Like super-warm.

Afterwards, I wait for Francis, because I want to get to the heart of this “They”.  Who is this “They?” that told her I need to be a musician.  I initially wait inside, but it’s not…conducive to waiting.

The next patient shows up, lies down on the ground.  I watch Terrance do what he did to me, only this dude is fucking SCREAMING. Growling. Hissing. Cursing.  Terrance asks if he’s okay, and he growls “I’ve walked over hot coals I can do this.” (Yes, that guy) but then he whimpers (maybe they were just warm coals) when Terrance gets to workin on his calves.  I felt pretty pleased with myself, to be honest, and was more than happy to watch this (wuss) guy get beat up but then I glanced to the side I see a girl on the table, and she’s naked-ish.  I imagine if I were that girl I wouldn’t want some strange guy able to see that much of my ass so I go wait on the patio.  As I leave, HotCoalGuy is doing some sort of buddhist chant, in between his fits of blood curdling yells.

Shortly thereafter, Francis comes out with formerly Naked Girl (whose name turns out to be Alexa, who turns out to be an aspiring filmmaker, so that’s nice), and Francis and Alexa chat for a bit, and then Francis and I chat for a bit, and eventually I build up my courage and ask her “Who is they?”

For a (micro)second her face makes a pained expression.  It’s the “I don’t want to tell you because I think you might not like the answer” face.  And she, says “You would probably call it psychic” (And it’s clear she’s not fond of the word), “but basically I ask your relatives, and their spirits the most important thing I need to tell you, and that’s what they told me.”

That was my Wednesday afternoon.

Comments

comments