Crash Course

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NU: But arriving at that openness is a process, right?

MS: That's true. The really negative effect of trauma is that it dulls you, it deadens you. You're no longer in pain, but you're numb, and most people who have been through a lot of trauma at first have to be numb and only later can the trauma be transformed into possibility, into hope.

If you've had your heart broken in love and you just shut down and never let yourself love again-then you're really injured. The initial pain you felt when someone broke off a relationship that mattered is difficult, but it's the denial of life that comes after it that is the real injury.

NU: How do you get past that denial?

MS: Stories play an important part. The stories you tell about the world and the way you think about the world. They can be both positive and negative. For example, what happened to me is unfair and a really sad thing. I wish it hadn't happened. I wish my father hadn't died at 47. I wish my sister hadn't died at 20. I wish that I was still walking. All that's true, but if you stay with that story of unfairness, the effects of trauma are going to stay with you.

For me, a simultaneous story has taken hold. My life thus far has been like a river gaining current. I wouldn't be the person I am if what happened to me hadn't happened. And in fact I like who I am now. I think that I'm a better person than I would have been, although I don't know. My whole life's work is based on the relationship and fluctuation between mind and body, and no amount of bookwork would have given me the insight and intuition that were forced on me as a 13-year-old.

NU: Tell us about those insights.

MS: I was told by a well-intending medical model that the mind-body relationship below my point of injury, my chest, was basically over. I was paralyzed and I could learn to compensate for my paralysis and drag my body through life. What I've discovered through yoga is that there is a more subtle, invisible connection between mind and body that makes me feel whole. And this isn't just psychological stuff; I mean literally. I feel fluctuating energy between my legs and my upper body now. You squeeze my ankle, I feel a flow of energy up through my spine, like squeezing a tube of toothpaste.

No doubt this level of presence is more subtle. Is this level of presence ever going to make me walk again? Lift my leg against gravity? Probably not. But it restores a sense of wholeness. If you tickle the bottoms of my feet I can't feel it the way you feel it, but there's another level of connection in the silence of my paralysis, and I was trained by the medical model to stop listening to it. Yoga has helped me to believe in it.

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