Becoming the Bear
Leslie Anne Mcilroy
Brain Spotting
He — the therapist — tells me to trust my body; my body knows how to do this. He asks me to pay attention, to notice where I feel discomfort and how much. When I tell him my right shoulder is twitching, he says good. Focus on that. He moves a wand-like stick slowly across my vision line, telling me to rest my eyes at the place the twitching feels most intense. Where do I feel it more, here or here?
I follow his pointer, noting no variance except degrees of skepticism. I see him in his chair; look above him. I see the corner, the cracks in the plaster, a framed picture of a butterfly leaning against the wall. He has a butterfly on his business card. Left to right, up, down and back again. I mean to concentrate but am consumed with cliché: legs tightly crossed, arms folded, eyes wandering, the butterfly, the twitching.
I think about the video of the polar bear in seizures, supposedly releasing the trauma of being chased and captured, his beautiful, big white body shaking wildly before he gets up and calmly walks away. It is explained that this release of bad energy is natural/organic, but humans don’t always do it; we hold it inside, sometimes forever, and it lives in us like a storm. I wonder what the bear suffered in this experiment, this proof of resilience. I wonder if he is free.
At $85 an hour, I am already putting a lot of faith in therapy, if not my body. Unsuccessful thus far, I am still drawn to the idea that my body knows something I don’t. Brain spotting suggests that you can physically locate trauma inside yourself and integrate it, transform it — you can remember without reliving. At a loss for measuring intensity or eye/twitching alignment, I finally nod and the therapist stops the pointer; tells me to stay here.
Body Memory
I was first introduced to body memory by my ex lover. It never occurred to me that random muscle convulsions were anything but misdirected drama. I am dramatic; when I don’t like something, everybody knows. It