THE EXTRACT OF POMELO ROOT (contd)

No one came to the door. I rang the telephone number on the site. No response.

I thought that perhaps I had made a mistake. Checking my reservation, I saw that my time and the address were in fact right. Perhaps she was deep in a session; they hadn’t come round yet.

Eventually Emanuelle appeared. She reminded me of my first love, Rebecca – who now lives in France. Spritely, full of empathy; sparkling eyes; but an appropriate professional distance.

The house ; seventies ; wooden hallways and staircases, the Japanese father-in-law an Irish literature scholar. Yeats and Joyce books liking every bookshelf. Careful art and collected trinkets on shelves and on walls – but not too precious, or pretentious. Winding up stairways and corridors (my knees!) – and then to the therapy room.

Big enough to contain a narrow bed; a stool either side (she served me green tea with osmanthus flowers she had collected and dried herself).

For a claustrophobe, the space was a little tight, but I decided to gird myself.

Light-framed as a bird, she asked me some introductory questions and the floodgates were open. Past traumas; present anxieties ; the problem at hand :

WATER.

I told her I thought I could not be hypnotized. Too alert to every stimulus ( she agreed; you are extremely sensitive to noise; you come back up every time there is a noise outside), but the pungent smell of what I had thought was wintergreen upon entering – a smell I happen to love – was, she said, actually pomelo root oil – as pictured at the beginning of the previous post.

Penetrating, green, astringent, there was a boldness to the oil being vaporized in the corner of the room that both nulled and boosted my senses; and it made for an effective icebreaker (it is never the easiest just pouring your heart out to a stranger ; so we zigzagged around for a bit ( it turned out that she had worked at perfumeries and essential oil producers in Grasse, enfleuraging tuberoses among other wonders; we both shared a like of Fragonard’s opoponaxic Reve D’Inde; she avidly took tons of notes).

I could see why this wasn’t cheap : she was putting an impressive amount of energy into every moment ; nothing rote; pure empathetic reaction and suggestion).

An hour passed. She began to have an idea of my situation.

”Let’s try some reiki’.

*

I have never been a huge fan of massage. The head of physiotherapy in this ward has a firm hand ; I get irritated by a wispy touch. Emanuelle herself is very ethereal ; light as a feather; and at first it felt as though she were merely waving a magic wand.

She was whispering throughout ; sometimes beyond earshot, in heavily French accented English. I could barely hear.

She was manipulating my left arm; bringing the energy back, or at least recentering it. She could feel immediately where I had had accidents ; teenage broken wrists; bike falls, where the muscle memory trauma was still stored. She unlocked it. She gauged that I had been having bad stress headaches, right at the back of my neck. She endeavoured (successfully) to release some of that negativity, that stored up tension.

Then she asked me to lift up my right arm and compare it with my left – the one she had just spent about thirty minutes manipulating.

It felt whole; solid. Connected. The right one felt about half the weight : wizened, pathetic.

I could hardly believe it.

More than two hours had already passed. I could see the clock when I looked to my left.

She then counted to ten (I think) and told me I would be coming back.

I didn’t even realize I was out.

But I had been in a definite half trance.

I was groggy.

I felt vastly calmer going out than I had coming in.

When I got out onto the street I could smell the piercing scent of early spring plum blossoms.

It had started to snow.

The Second And Third Sessions

I have conflated them in my mind and cannot distinguish them.

I know that I became too self conscious, and therefore less suggestible (and there was no pomelo root being atmosphered, a more standardized aromatherapeutic blend in the air, probably more suitable for a wider audience – there are always other clients coming in before and directly afterwards)

Your Inner Cactus

The therapy could not have been more tailor-made.

The goal : for me to be able to get through the pre-operative two hour no water edict. Laughable to many – but like asking a confirmed arachnophobe to sit in a room with a tarantula on the wall (for me).

Just the thought of it made my saliva dry up; my heart to race; my mind to panic ( I still don’t quite know where all this has come from: my mother just taking a glass of water with her to bed every night ? Can it really be so very simple ?)

We talked. She moved energy. She opened up chakras. Maybe it is wacky ; unbelievable; perhaps there could have sometimes been more silences ; as I drifted into another sphere of consciousness sometimes the words would bring me back :

At others I fell deep.

And I had the most peculiar sensation.

I could feel the imprint of her hands on my shoulders.

But she was standing on the other side of the room.

I could feel three pairs of hands now on my body.

Had I entered another dimension? I felt safe with her, but almost as though I were in a seance. Were those hands that were cradling me definitely benign ?

*

We talked of waterfalls. About how much water there is in the human body. About cacti: how they survive in the desert with little water because they don’t need it.

I would have to be like a cactus.

I know, it sounds kind of ridiculous. ‘Rely on your inner cactus’. You can do it. You have to do it. Otherwise you won’t be able to have these operations. Which you obviously do need’.

She had been hypnotizing me without my realizing it, with specific techniques. I wasn’t completely under, but in and out ( and possibly beyond, given the previously described spooking experience, which nevertheless mesmerized me beyond the core).

The next day, at my patents’ sensible suggestion, I decided not to wait until the day of the hospitalization to try water-fasting, but to start practicing.

That day, I couldn’t possibly.

The next day, I went into a zone that I think Emanuelle had either suggested or enabled in me ; though I kept swallowing – as I am writing this in hospital bed – let me just reach for some water thank you very much – I guided my mind to a different place ; I got to two, then three and a half hours.

The following day, I did it again.

It could be done.

The Real Thing

On the day of the first operation in May, when I woke up, I knew that I could do it.

The hospital had specified a time when I could drink, and a time when I couldn’t.

I sat with D in the corridor, talking and laughing, or reading a book, until three and a quarter hours had passed.

The operation had been brought forward by an hour or so; the time would soon be up.

I took gulps from the bottle – but not excessively – until the last possible moment.

And then, I went off with the nurses.

I did not drink any water.