A thirteen-year-old hand rides a forty-seven-year-old hand.
For weeks leading up to my trip to London, I have been listening to Pearl Jam’s Daughter. I had not heard this song for years, but found it on YouTube recently. Over and over I listened and it kept moving me in a way that I could feel but not understand. As I listened to the words, I began to realize that the song was about a young girl dealing with a difficult childhood.
Alone, listless, breakfast table in an otherwise empty room
Young girl, violins, center of her own attention.
The mother reads aloud; child tries to understand it
Tries to make her proud.
The shades go down; it’s inside her head
Painted room; can’t deny there is something’s wrong.
She holds the hand that holds her down….she will rise above
(Listen to Pearl Jam’s lead singer Eddie Vedder belt out that last line:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiqgTPmkfek&feature=player_detailpage
Still, my fixation on the song was a mystery to me. Flash forward to my teaching trip to London last week. I am teaching to room full of yoga teachers from around the world, including Japan, Italy, Iran, United Arab Emigrates, and Dakar, Senegal. I am so honored to be there, so grateful that people care about Opening Yoga to people living with trauma, loss, and disability. London is my one international trip a year to interact with a more global audience. I want to offer my very best.
I am working hard to articulate what it’s like to wake up with a spinal cord injury at the age of thirteen. What it is like to encounter a traditional medical model that unintentionally limits sensation to the strictly physical. In a strictly physical world, I am the most disabled. I am sentenced to a life where my paralyzed body becomes something that I must overcome. In their world, I must get really physically strong and learn to drag my paralyzed body through life.
As I am talking, I suddenly say, “I held the hand that (unintentionally) held me down.” As the words leave my mouth, my heart starts to ache and my eyes begin to water. I hear Pearl Jam. It finally dawns of me…I am the young girl…that is why I kept listening to that song. I tried to understand the world that came from the doctors’ mouths. I tried to make everyone proud in a world that didn’t let me feel enough. The shades go down; can’t deny there is something wrong. But for whatever reason, violins were the center of my attention, not the doctor’s words, not the world they projected at me. I started yoga twelve years after my accident. As I am teaching these people in London, I am trying to share the path of rising above.
The fact is: I need the hand that holds me down. I need the traditional medical model. I would not be alive without it. But I must also rise above. I must find a different world, a world where I am not so disabled. This is the work of Mind Body Solutions and I am grateful for music like Pearl Jam.
This coming weekend at Mind Body Solutions, we lead a sold out training of thirty-six yoga teachers. They are from all over the United States and one from Canada and one from Australia. The following weekend we teach a nearly sold out training for healthcare professionals from around the country. My hope is to help them not unintentionally hold down the people they serve.
Finally back to the photo. My son Paul is thirteen-years-old. This is the same age I was when I woke up to a world of paralysis. I want his innocent hand to ride my forty-seven-year-old hand to a different future.