The Anarchist's Shoes

In which I learn why manufactured shoes are bad for you and how to make your own.

At Thanksgiving dinner the Anarchist was admiring the black ankle boot moccasins I was wearing with my sarong pants and I announced that I was going to make my own shoes. 

"I'd be very interested in how that goes", said the Anarchist who was a self designated non-conformist who had, during a discussion at one of our parties, announced that she was an anarchist. A term that fits well for this story. 

Her desire to join me in my shoe odyssey further intrigued me and she told me of her feet woes. How the combination of bunions and toes now curling up over her feet made it increasingly difficult to find footwear to fit. She didn't have good feet to begin with, she explained, but years of forcing them into heels and of being on her feet all day while working at a Hallmark store did them in. Only then did I realize that she always wore Ugg boots even in summer and now she could only wear the right boot of two pairs of Uggs. I showed her the work of a shoemaker who had blogged about making a pair of shoes for a woman with severely swollen feet. This gave us the confidence that we too could solve our shoe problems in the same manner.

I had my own reasons for wanting to make my own shoes. My daily dog walking was wearing out my shoes faster than at any time in my life. The soles of walking shoes did not seem to wear as well as they once did. I was shoe goo-ing them repeatedly (glue used to fix holes in tennis shoes). Then I read an article brought to my attention by a newsfeed I subscribe to called the Village Green Network which usually concerned itself with food and recipes for making something simple like laundry soap. 

The article was by a woman who had decided to make her own shoes because most shoes caused her pain on the long hikes she liked to take. She referenced another article that described how shoes compromise the natural gait of the foot. I was shocked and then not at all surprised. So often did a single assumption lead to misinformation never investigated. Shoes were still built on the same too narrow lasts as they had been for centuries under the belief that feet had to be supported. They were also too heavy, inflexible, reduced surface area of the foot and since they were drawn with a curve rather than on a straight axis forced the foot to an incorrect orientation.

The referenced article described how the footbed of shoes have an indentation under the ball of the foot designed into the shoe to make the foot look smaller. Sure enough I checked all my shoes and every one of them had that indentation built into the footbed. This slight dip compromised the natural arch of the foot especially when other areas of the footbed were compressed with wear. This combination put three important bones out of alignment. The reason arch support was needed turned out to be to raise these bones back into place. The turned up toes of shoes, the lack of flexibility in the sole, the stiffness of the uppers all interfered with the natural ability of the foot to grasp surface area, expand and move the body. 

The article also pointed out that you can tell by the wear pattern of your shoes that the natural gait was being compromised. I looked on the bottom of my shoes and sure enough all of them were worn down on the outside edge of the heels and on a spot in the middle of the ball of the foot as described. I thought it was because of my bowed legs causing my shoes not to land properly. I read the article several times before I could believe that shoes were not helping at all (apart from protecting the foot from pointed rocks) and were more likely reducing the foots flexibility and strength. Feet would be better off in a pair of moccasins the article concluded. 

Earlier in the year I had been similarly astounded by an article claiming that the brassiere seriously compromised the ability of the breasts to get rid of toxins and did not in fact keep a woman's breasts from sagging over time, but had compromised the muscle structure of the breasts to take care of this themselves. Given my personal minimalist topography I could happily give up the brassiere, but I could not do without shoes. Thus I embarked on my shoemaking education and found a book at the library with full color pictures that convinced me of what wonderfully colorful and interesting footwear I could make for myself. This led me to find the author online where I found the aforementioned blog about making shoes for swollen feet. She had also posted an article from the New York Times a bit more readable and less technical that said the same thing—shoes were bad for you.

I consulted my chiropractor and he told me about the body's remarkable ability to adapt. How bones that had been badly set would over time correct themselves. So feet would also adapt to shoes. And he himself would not be giving up the support of his hiking boots no matter what the claims of the new minimalist trends in sport shoes. One could simply train oneself to walk properly he claimed. I in turn told him how I had learned from a masseuse that the Asian squat was not a body position that one could learn in adulthood. That this act of folding the body up and squatting on the heels actually changed the angle of the hip sockets so only those who had practiced this sitting position from childhood could accomplish it so easily in adulthood. So wouldn't a person who had spent most of their time walking barefoot be similarly suited to unconstructed shoes? He agreed that I had made a convincing hypotheses for my new shoe wearing preferences. And given his theory of adaptation it is likely that others who adopted a barefoot lifestyle could over time strengthen their feet too. My karate class was, after all, filled with newcomers learning to exert their body for peak fighting performance while barefoot.

Shoemaking

I had been a seamstress all my life and I once made jester slippers from wool felting, but I hadn't a clue how to choose

leather or what a millimeter in thickness felt like. In order to become acquainted with the medium I ordered a three pound box of leather scraps from e-bay for $30. And what an assortment of cowhide did I receive. I picked over the fake crocodile in unnatural colors, the fake pink ostrich that came in lime green, red and turquoise, some shiny red metallic gold and copper pieces, floral embossed ones and weird ones that looked like flocked wall paper. I was both repulsed and intrigued and spent an afternoon art date putting together combinations of blue crocodile and lime green ostrich. Most of the scraps came in pieces too small to use so I would have to make a crazy quilt shoe.

I felt more compelled to meet the needs of my Anarchist friend for her need was greater and I still had shoes a plenty. Plus the caveat of making shoes for a "customer" excited me with visions of a new shoe making add-on to my services. Who could resist custom made shoes? Another of my clients also had problems with bunions gradually eliminating all but men's running shoes for her. She said she could have had an operation to correct her feet, but there was no way she would have been able to be off her feet for six weeks. (My Anarchist friend had said the same thing. It occurred to me that the abuse of women's feet in heels and the failure to correct them surgically was probably quite common among women, especially those that took care of others as women so often did.)

I watched a video on my shoemakers blog on how to make a last upon which to build a shoe and went to visit the Anarchist with duct tape and homemade play dough in hand. The play dough was for filling the spaces over the toes to make a shoe like shape. I had her slip on a pair of knee high nylons I had brought with me and she stood on the cardboard soles I had made with a little wall of duct tape around the perimeter. I went to town ripping off pieces of duct tape and wrapping them across her feet attaching them to the side wall.  After I was done I carefully cut the duct tape boots off down the top of the foot. The results looked like a pair of boots left behind by the Tin Man after a thorough beating.

Instead of flattening out my duct tape pieces to make patterns for a last as instructed, I decided to skip that step and just drape the leather over the duct tape forms themselves. I cut up an old black t-shirt to make a prototype. The Anarchist loved the pixie shape I had devised to accommodate the unusual shape of her feet. My challenge was to make the shoe for the more normal foot look the same as this high profile one. It would not be possible to make them identical, but I could mimic the same shape and hold the foot with a hidden piece inside the shoe. I had brought my bag of leather scraps so she could choose what kind of leather she wanted her shoes made from. She admired how soft and flexible some of the pieces. As they were to be her first pair,  were and chose black which would go with most of her outfits and hats for she was a snappy dresser.

She then showed me the pair of shoes she had had custom made by a professional shoemaker. They hurt her feet she

said and cost $500. They were so stiff and ugly they made me angry. There was no flex to the sole at all. Whoever constructed these shoes had decided that her feet were too crippled to be of any use and had made what was essentially the foot part of a wooden leg.

I ordered more leather from e-bay—remnants from upholstered leather sofa making. And I made adjustments to my t-shirt mock up until we were satisfied with the fit. Then I took apart my model and used the pieces as a pattern to cut the shoe parts out of the black leather. Next I had to learn how to sew leather together with the prescribed synthetic sinew. I bought myself the proper needles, a stitching awl, sinew and some non toxic cement. I could use my sewing machine to make holes in the leather that could then be enlarged by the stitching awl; the hand sewing went much easier once I made the holes large enough.

Hunting down material for the soles would be a challenge since this was a material only available to professional shoe makers in bulk rolls. My shoemaker blogger suggested going to Home Depot to look for rubber floor tiles used in workout rooms and garages; they were made from recycled automobile tires. The pack of 6 tiles I found would be enough for 12 pairs of shoes, but they were the right thickness. I was very pleased that they were a recycled product. 

The insoles were also challenging because my customer's feet were of such a shape that no conventional insole from the drug store would work. So in the end I used some square sheets of rubber I had on hand that came as knee pads inside gardening pants. I covered these thick pieces with scrap upholstery material I had gotten from FabMo a non profit that collected samples discarded by interior design stores. For shoe laces I decided to use gross grain ribbon from the fabric store was in order. These ribbon ties along with the pointed pixie toes made the shoes look magical. 

I had the Anarchist try them on. The problematic right foot was a bit loose in the toe. She got her canes out and took a test drive walking fast into her room and back. The pointed soles on one foot would catch a little as she picked up her feet so I took them home and cut and sewed the toes into a rounded shape. Now they fit better and were easier to walk in. She also commented that they were very comfortable and the soles offered plenty of arch support. That's funny I thought, I didn't build any arch support into the footbed. But the thickness of the insoles afforded enough cushion to feel like it and protected her protruding bones from the hard floor. She was pleased with the that they looked dressy too. 

Stepping off the Grid

Such off the grid journeys, I realized, usually started with a revealing piece of information. Shampoo I found out made your hair grease up which led to hair washing every other day when I really didn't need to wash my hair more than once a week if I used baking soda and an apple cider rinse as was done a century ago. Not to mention that some of the ingredients in shampoo were toxic. 

When I started reading up on what caused my blood sugar to spike I learned that our food supply was compromised by the misinformation of the medical institution creating a world wide aversion to saturated fat. The processed food industry then capitalized on cheap ingredients some of which the body was unable to digest. But as long as a package said low-fat or vegetarian any frankenfood would sell as a health food. 

My interest in electric cars taught me that automobiles could be built much simpler and lighter if it weren't for the demands of long distance travel and the crash test at freeway speeds. Crash test regulations kept other alternatives off the market even if you never intended to drive on the freeway, but at a much slower speed appropriate to neighborhoods. Housing was also controlled by regulations not necessarily for safety but to keep keeping them large. Too large to afford. I had believed that these first world regulations created a superior society, but I now see that it is more about upholding a standard of living. One that would continue to feed the profit margins of industrialized products made with machinery so large it required huge amounts of capital so only mega corporations could compete. Not to mention creating a society where shoes, cars and houses had become status items under designer label brands. These designs were so conventionally limited that there were only minute differences between brands and models creating a sea of choices that really offered no choice at all. Anyone wanting a different concept altogether was out of luck. Likewise anyone with abnormally wide feet or feet already ruined by fashion trends had no shoes at all. 

I too had been taken. Years of reading advertisements specifying the technical improvements of shoes in the sports industry had convinced me that a highly "technical" shoe corrected or at least enhanced the performance of feet. Now I saw that industrially made shoes were coddling feet with padding while undermining their natural ability to function. (Plus the overseas sweatshops with their underpaid labor and toxic work environments to produce these shoes always irked me.)

Others had also realized how the emperor had no clothes given all of the above revelations being passed around and I

was aware that a movement was afoot. More and more people were interested in old ways of doing things—cooking from scratch, finding ways to live in tiny homes, getting kids to school in Dutch cargo bicycles, investigating ayervedic medicine, massage, yoga and other ancient techniques of living healthily. But despite all this re-skilling as it has come to be known, not too many people had taken up shoemaking. In fact leather work as a hobby seemed to have fallen out of favor along with macrame plant hangers. I had found only the one out of print book in my library system. Even on the internet very little information was being offered. Those who had had taken up shoemaking were mostly moms and grandmothers looking for healthy shoes for children that would allow the foot to develop naturally. Shoes for adults were likely more subject to fashion demands and fitting into conventional work settings.

It was also a skill that pushed beyond most people's ability requiring sharp tools, a bit of strength to push needles through leather and thick rubber and an imaginative design sense plus an ability to visualize three dimensionally. Just the sort of skill set I had been cultivating since childhood. And the potential for recycling and making unique fashionitems would entertain me for some time. What better way to upset the paradigm than to make one's own shoes? A village cobbler could help turn a community away from exclusive designer brands to unique one-of-kind efforts in a locally made product. 

It is the Year of the Horse an kick ass time to manifest new ideas. And the horse is the only animal on the horoscope to wear shoes!

May ye all be well shod.

Eighteen Tables For Two

In which I relive my past as a movie theaters projectionist, renew my interest in filmmaking and vie to become a part of my shamanic counselor's movie project.

I Am A Camera

We can see now, that having lost the confidence and wherewithal of my ten year old self only to then loose the passion and faith in life that my 19 year old had achieved, there was little left of me to fend through my twenties. Just a nihilistic, romanticized posing, shored up by a suit of black leather standing in black steel toe motorcycle boots (with the requisite motorcycle to go with it). 

Shortly after I dropped out of College V, I worked as a projectionist at several movie theaters in Palo Alto. It was more than a job, it was how I was saving my hollow, soul-less, sorry ass self. 

"At least I'm not a heroin addict," I told myself. I had successfully failed all the expectations of my fancy prep school (funded by two frugal working parents and a partial scholarship the school had offered me). The high academic standards (three and four hours a night of homework plus weekend essays) had trained me to meet the goals of teachers who took a personal interest in me. College had been without such structure and my nihilistic peers, having taught me to scoff at passion in anything, had helped in my unraveling. All my equity in advanced placement credit was used up in unfinished classes. I needed a reboot.

I went home and lived with my dad. If I avoided asking my parents for money I felt I could start from scratch to shape my own life, find for myself what interested me. I did not trust my writing to the ethnocentric (and homophobic) literary culture I had encountered so I turned to art. Working nights at the movie theater funded my art supplies and tuition. 

Movies had informed me how life could be lived. I was still in high school when I saw Bob Fosse's Cabaret with its hint of easy bisexuality and tawdry, ominous picture of pre-war Berlin. "Divine decadence," said Sally Bowles waving her green fingernails and giving me my mantra for my youth. While Fosse's Lenny Bruce movie offered me my first scene of women touching each other, naked torsos beautifully shot in black and white. (The disgusted reaction of the audience informing me how such acts would be received.) Thus it was to the movies I returned to feel whole, to feel anything at all. At the movies I could live somebody else's life, house the characters in my body and feel their emotional unfolding. That high lasting for about a week before the effect wore off. 

The first theatre manager who hired me (and dated me) was a screenwriter. He taught me how to look at film from the writer's point of view, how to pick out why the filmmaker had made certain choices. As projectionists, we could watch our favorite scenes over and over. Midnight Express played then at our second run theater. I learned how suspense was created. How much the music and sound mattered so that only a closed door could be shown. What made a love scene unfold. The script said no to the homoerotic love scene, but the filmmaker said yes with the lighting and  the beauty of the two men together thus revealing the truth of the book. This was my film school. My dreams had tracking shots in them. 

I caught myself one day deep into my movie addiction. Walking down University Avenue, my eye tracking down the sidewalk like an establishing shot, I felt a momentary wonder at the 3 D ness of it all. "Reality is just like a movie you can walk in," I thought to myself then laughed at my own topsy turvy observation. But it was not a wake up call to return to reality for I could not imagine a future beyond the age of thirty.

Over the next five years I was a projectionist and manager of the Biograph, the Aquarius, the Bijou and the Festival Cinema. I sold concessions for The Palo Alto Square when China Syndrome opened 12 days before Three Mile Island had a near meltdown. (Life imitates art! Every show a sell out that week.) I also did graphics for The New Varsity calendar. 

All but the Palo Alto Square were within blocks of each other on and off University Avenue. Most showing one flavor or another of independent films, retro films, second run films, foreign films and the occasional left over block buster i.e. The Blues Brothers and Coal Miners Daughter. It was glorious; a renaissance era for movie theaters and we didn't even know it. Although I did refer to the Varsity as the center of the known Universe, my Universe because that's where I would go after closing to talk to my friend Tim, a fellow UCSC dropout, who tended bar there.

Nearly all my life long friends would come out of this period. I was happiest if every possible day could be spent in a movie theatre (especially the awkward, terrible holidays after my parent's divorce). Between working full-time and spending my days off going to see movies via the free pass system for theatre employees, I managed to achieve this goal. I loved nothing better than to stand outside a movie theatre under the marquee lights anticipating a new film.  

Piano Lessons

There was one other thing that I did during that time. I paid for piano lessons so I could imagine Ingrid Bergman sitting down next to me and saying, in that voice filled with longing, "Play it, Sam, play As Time Goes By". Hopeless romantic that I was. Instead I sat in the presence of a nurturing mother figure, a white woman who lived with a black man she wasn't married to and seemed to understand that I was queer without asking. I rode my motorcycle up to her house every week, zipped off my black leather suit down to my preppie LL Bean pinstripe shirt and blue jeans and she never made a comment about my appearance (except for telling me off for wearing jeans and sneakers at her annual piano recital). She grew up on a farm in the midwest, told me how she shrunk her Levi's by sitting in the watering trough and letting them dry on her. She married the first man who would take our out of there.

Once I came in at the end of another student's lesson. She was speaking sternly to this boy and I sensed that he must have said something derogatory about me (probably involving the word dyke) and that she was defending me. I was getting a lot more than piano lessons I realized. Someone, an adult and authority figure was defending my right to be. 

I did learn to play As Time Goes By as well as a simplified version of Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue which was the opening music to Manhattan in which Meryl Streep plays a lesbian and the very young Mariel Hemingway slept with Woody Allen and defined love. "We care about each other. Your concerns are my concerns; we have great sex."  Tim and I joked that it was all true for us only we didn't have sex at all (having already been there.)

Sitting in the ticket booth watching the night life go by was my idea of being in the world. The lobby was my living room. Evenings filled with film buff friends standing around playing games of movie trivia. The walls of the lobby decorated with movie posters. Lots of time on our hands spent staring at those movie posters subconsciously looking forward to the promise of yet another new film experience.

American Ubuntu

The week I met Lenore for the training for the Solstice ceremony, she was in the middle of running a kickstarter campaign for her movie American Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Zulu word meaning I am what I am because of who we all are. The name itself speaking to community and she was asking each of us in her virtual community to contribute "as we found it in our hearts to do so".

I had never contributed to a movie fundraiser before though there had been several friends in my life making movies. I wanted to discourage them from such a Quixotic quest. All the filmmakers I knew were broke. At college V it was great fun being in their films. They were the nicest people I met, but because of their penniless example I did not even consider studying filmmaking myself; it was hard enough keeping film in my camera as a still photographer. So I never gave money to my friends' movies. But Lenore's movie had a poster. This made it half way to being real. All those years of lobby posters, of the promise of coming attractions kicking in.

The American Ubuntu poster was confrontational, gripping and provocative with a blockbustery air about it. A movie with a big story to tell embodied in the details and lives of its characters. A girl holding a drum, a man in a black beret, a man with an FBI badge. Only one of them white. The smoking twin towers in the background on the left; a pastoral scene of hand built adobe houses on the right. The people positioned in an interrelating triangle of strangers, a tiny smiling disembodied face in the center.  I could read it left to right. Conflict, political intrigue, racial tension, spiritual mediator heroine, a mystery from the past, post-apocalyptic resolution. The shamanic drum pulling me into the story. That part I knew something about, at least. And it had a panther on it. Definitely an independent film. In fact it was just the sort of film that would show at the Aquarius theater, the one remaining theater of my projectionist past. 

I knew that if I gave any money I would step closer to wanting to see this film get made, be drawn to get on board in a hands on way, perhaps. I thought about it for a while before I submitted my usual donation amount of $30. The campaign was a cliff hanger winning half the required $30,000 in the last twenty-four hours. This was exciting and significant in itself for it meant that a critical mass of people were on board with the film's story and wanted to see it made.

Detention

Three weeks later, after the solstice ceremony I entered Lenore's office as a client. As I walked in I wondered how many years it would take to spring myself from this change in status — five? However, long it took I would work through it I told myself. I had come seeking community, but now I felt I was in detention, possibly blacklisted from all future ceremonies of any sort. 

In the therapy contrived convention of our times, entering into a consulting relationship with someone who sits in the therapist's chair somehow removed you from life. It was not allowed that the two worlds would cross, the one inside the consulting room and the lived world outside of it. But this was different; a shamanic counselor was part of the community. And before long she invited her community to help her. She was going to do a stage production of the back story of her movie. I wrote in the Facebook comments of the announcement offering my help.

When I next saw her a few days later, it was her turn to look apprehensive. After I gave my report about how the integration of my soul parts was going, she asked what I wanted to do with the energy the returning soul parts had brought back with them.

"I want to do something collaborative," I said immediately, "in fact I want to work on your movie project if you'll let me," I added pleading my case. "Otherwise I'm trapped in this office—in this box," I said looking at the ceiling. I had not made myself into the world's most useful house elf for nothing. I listed off my skills.

She said okay we could discuss it. A shamanic counselor did not follow the model of therapy, she told me, but more the model of the ministry. And it was in the realm of the ministry for clergy people to mingle with their congregation outside of the functions of the church,  join them for tea perhaps. (Pictures of meeting the vicar came to mind. I was photographed with him at my grandparents' church in England when I was eight.) But we would not discuss her project on my time, she directed, marking the boundaries of this new layer of complexity.

"I want us to do this consciously," she said.

"Yes," I agreed. This was exactly the kind of border crossing I was used to making, slipping from one paradigm to another, from one defined role to another, one culture, one language, one class to another. I looked forward to the challenge. 

Eighteen Tables For Two

And so we walked outside after my session to the coffee shop next door. She bought us cups of tea because you always feed your crew, she said, and asked me to pick a table. Thus settling the customs of this new relationship, we sat down and she began to tell me what her back story required. It was to be performed at Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland, a theatre in the round experience. The story of young love in Kentucky in the '70s. A bold sixteen year old black girl venturing across the aisle—across the color line—to talk to a white boy. The white boy responding and treating her with such politeness and respect that I was won over by him as I listened to her describe the scene. Respect. How rare that word was in America. And to bring up race in our culture even more rare. (I know because I tried writing about it once and have the scars still from what I learned from the attempt.)

What Lenore was committed to do in a little over a month with almost no resources and no actors found yet, defied normal expectations. This just made it more intriguing to me, not to mention what she was attempting to do with a live audience to create an experience of racism (and healing with elements of shamanic ceremony). I was used to overwhelming impossible situations. Used to listening to the grand picture of what a client wanted to have happen. And then attempting to make it happen because I had been summoned to hold the space for this vision. And it was not just with practical skills that I could offer help. There was a part of my mind that took up watch at the perimeter of the vision and guided the energy to make it happen. Lenore needed videographers, stage hands, sets, props, refreshments, chairs and tables. Eighteen tables in fact to create a schoolroom. Two people sitting at each desk. Three rows of three on either side of an aisle.

I offered my skills as a videographer. She wanted the performance documented with two cameras, but the shooter had to have the skill of a photojournalist able to make a story from whatever was going on with a hand held camera. Very high standards indeed. She herself had been a photojournalist in her past. My experience was with tripod work on equipment that was now obsolete. But I had other skills. Memories of my teen years at the Palo Alto Children's Theatre and school plays coming back to remind me of the excitement of putting on a show. Theater production was where I had first wielded a hammer building sets. 

We did not decide anything at that meeting. She advised us to sleep on it. Then she let me take the initiative. So I wrote her two days later offering my continuing commitment. She wrote back that she would love to have me work on the project. Indeed love was what would fuel this venture. That was the fun part about crushes. How many different ways would love inspire? Transform? How many new things would be undertaken? I was happy now. My mind could be set into motion. 

I kept thinking about those tables. All eighteen of them. And then it came to me how I could get them for free. I could cut them from the hollow core doors that recently arrived, given to me by a contractor who knew how much I liked to make things out of doors. I had more than I could comfortably store. I worked out the details in my head late into the night, thinking about what could be used for legs and how to attach them. I wrote Lenore that I could get tables for free. I did not tell her I was going to make them for fear that she would say no, she didn't want me to go to so much trouble. But she didn't. Instead she asked me if I would be mad at her if this performance didn't come together quite as envisioned and the tables ended up not being used. 

"Well we would have them for another time," I said optimistically, casting into the future a series of events.

Then she told me that when someone makes something it sends energy out into the universe that compels the forces of creation to work in your favor. Well, now we were talking magic. And to be the maker of such magic was empowering. I was on. Suddenly it became exactly the project I needed to pull the stale energy of illness from my life. I cleared off my cluttered workshop bench in a matter of minutes and fixed tools that had been broken for years. What seemed overwhelming before was easily dispatched. I got stuff done in twice the speed and was focused enough to keep track of things I habitually spaced out about. By the end of the week I had a table assembled to show Lenore. I set it in the sun room to photograph.

"I'm going through my Zohar Dance phase," I told Catherine in explanation. Zohar was a non-profit that Catherine had spent a great deal of time helping out, enamored of the lead dancer. I had gone on many of the video shoots she had done for them.

I asked Lenore to tell me the make and model of the video camera she would be borrowing so I could study the manual. I was imagining a hefty professional level piece of equipment costing thousands. It turned out to be a consumer model that could be found used for a couple hundred off e-bay. As I researched it I learned that the Canon Vixia was a camera used by film students; just the mere association with film students was enough to ignite my lust. With digital technology, filmmaking was a medium now well within reach.

I bid on the camera and won it. Then one thing led to another in rapid sequence. I found a night course in videomaking that was happening during Spring Break when my martial arts school was closed. How perfect was that? It was taught at the Midpeninsula Community Media Center which turned out to be a terrific mentoring resource with equipment to loan out and its own cable channel. 

Two weeks later the table making project was nearing completion. And I had learned enough from my crash course to make my student video—a four minute movie about creative reuse, making —guess what?— tables from doors. You can see it on youtube.  (And I still had time to cook, entertain a house guest and help a client move.) Unbelievable. I impressed even myself.

But I was only one part of the elephant. How the rest of the performance was coming together was still a mystery to me, but coming together it would. Join me and see for yourself how it turns out. Cross borders. Be a part of the story. Sunday, April 28th at 3 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland. It's free. 

The Sum of Us

In which I seek a shamanic soul retrieval in an attempt to reconcile the severe episode of dissociation I was left with in my previous post. The seeking of this ceremony offering me an unexpected exploration into a long neglected period of my life.

The Interview

"So this is where we first met," said Lenore Norrgard as she invited me into her office which she shared with two therapists of the conventional kind. We took up the usual seating arrangements. She in the armchair and I on the couch. 

She had one of those expressive, quirky faces that looks different from one visit to the next depending on what was going on. Right now it was professional. A bulky turtleneck sweater, warding off the winter chill swallowed most of her up.

I seldom allowed myself to take up residence in a therapist's office. Therapy was my British mother's profession (until she retired and became a watercolor artist). Nor could I be helped by the majority of therapists because they were so rarely equipped to handle the three cultures I was constantly juggling. 

And the study of western psychology itself, by definition, lorded it over any other culture's perspective of the human condition. It took me most of my Buddhist meditation practice just to reclaim the territory so handily dismissed by the phrase "village mentality" that the discipline had given my mother to describe the interconnectedness of community identity in an Asian culture. (That the term was seldom used now did not erase this cultural hegemony.)

When I stepped on the path to follow the practice of shamanism two years ago, I had been enthralled by the connection between the world of spirit and the earthly world of individual choice as we make our way in life. And so I had come to humbly seek help, guidance or further teaching from this shamanic counselor. I had long followed her on Facebook, but only just met her three weeks ago at the solstice ceremony where my mind had somehow been  hijacked and I was left with no memory of nearly the entire evening.

The purpose of this interview was to probe into any incident of trauma in my history to discover if there was indeed reason for soul loss that would justify a soul retrieval. It was also, I could see, a chance for me to earn Lenore's trust. I had, after all, stepped forward from the crowd of seventeen hundred plus followers on her Facebook page and she was hardly expected to know me at all. Shamanism was so off the beaten path it was likely to attract all manner of thrill seeking tourists. 

And here I had come to an event she was running where I knew nobody and had to be put back together for an hour afterwards before she felt it was safe for me to drive home. I pressed for these details of my missing narrative. What did it look like? Per the slim details she gave me, I didn't have any memory of having come to the event. I kept asking over and over again "Did I come with somebody?" and then forgetting that I had asked the question. I didn't know where my car was parked and someone went with me to look for it. Someone else wrote the directions that later became my only proof that I was even at the event.  

To my ears hearing this, I sounded like a royal pain in the ass when everyone was trying to go home, but all of that care had left me filled with complete reassurance and love for the next three days. While everybody involved was likely left wondering who was this person and what caused her such dissociation?

I had been following Lenore since she was living in Germany. This in itself intrigued me since so seldom do Americans live abroad, but it was key to me trusting her. She also, I later learned, had a certificate in Chinese language studies from Peking University in China. This feat knocked my socks off, but there was no further clues of why such a young life was headed to China in the '80s. The purpose of her "about" page was to support a twenty year career as a Shamanic counselor based on the same teachings of Michael Harner as I had been studying. Her postings communicated a highly sophisticated political awareness of social activism. While at the same time she was committed to the arts with a movie project for which she had written the script with a shamanic plot-line of healing. Being able to speak movies, especially independent films, was what held my community together.

It was Catherine (my life partner) who set me on the Shamanic path, having seen that Buddhism, as practiced in the States, wasn't going to do it for me. As far as I was concerned, American Buddhism had stripped my home religion of all the mystical parts that I had enjoyed plus all the animism of the host country of Thailand. These "cultural beliefs" that couldn't be justified by Western psychology had been dropped by the American Buddhist teachers. Practitioners were not required to believe in reincarnation or spirits. This made the very valuable meditation practice much more accessible to Americans, especially in the highly competitive, stressed out culture of Silicon Valley. (My gratitude to all of you for removing so much road rage from our freeways.)

When I read the first principle of shamanic practice stating that spirits were real, I could hardly believe my good luck. This path would actually start where I had been left dangling in isolation with my too exotic background of ghosts, nature spirits, a coffee table that shot across the room in a seance and prophetic readings from psychic spirits summoned by channelers.

People, who come to Shamanism often did so because of some paranormal experience not easily explained by the science-dominant Western culture. My workshop partners told of prophetic dreams or incidents of psychic knowing that startled them. It was briefly stated on Lenore's page that a compassionate spirit had intervened into her life and spontaneously cured her long term clinical depression.

Trauma Spotting

As for traumatic experiences Lenore and I were looking for in our introductory session, I could name one immediately. Leaving Thailand at the age of ten had been the defining trauma of my life. This history had led me to write my book Diamonds in My Pocket in an attempt to reintegrate my childhood experience in that spiritually rich land, with my American and British identity.

Lenore continued to probe the rest of my life for further incidents. No I had not, thankfully, suffered any of the usual trauma of rape, incest or physical abuse. She then asked if I had experienced an incident where I had had to defend myself either physically or verbally. Well there was one I remembered from when I was nineteen and had written about already. I had gone to visit a high school sweetheart on my way back to college at the end of Thanksgiving weekend. 

In our reunion we had gone to the pool house of the apartment building complex to get some privacy from her mother who had meanwhile taken the opportunity to read my journal (left in my back pack in Helen's room) and had then come down to confront me about my lesbianism only minutes after Helen had confessed to me that I was the one true love of her life. (I had already moved on to a new love, but I would happily have scooped her back up too.) Her mother proceeded to accuse me of being a lesbian, then berated me for making this choice against God's law and told me she would shoot me if she ever found me with her daughter in such a compromising situation. I was so proud, at the time, that I held my ground until I realized that she wasn't going to let me return to the apartment to get my things, including my shoes. So I had turned back and done what I knew she wanted of me. I swore to her that I would give up my lesbianism, kneeling on the floor as she bid me repeat after her the statements of my conversion. 

She had also asked me in a rather creepy voyeuristic way what it was that lesbians did. Would we go into a corner and make out? 

"No", I protested, "it's about love". 

"It's not about love," she spat out, denying me the only truth I knew to be so at the time. The retelling of this confrontation still had heat.

This brought us to the end of the interview. Lenore asked if I'd like her to do a short journey to see if her guides could tell her if I did indeed have soul loss. For this five minute trip she drummed herself there and back while I visited with my own power animals to wait. Mongoose drew lines in the sand and we played a game of tic tac toe. 

"You are a two spirit person," Lenore said upon her return, using the Native American word for homosexual. The Native Americans treasured their LGBT people and gave them special tribal roles often as Shamans themselves. I had first learned about them in the book "The Spirit And The Flesh" which I had bought at least 20 years ago. It was my first introduction to an example of shamanism. One I had wanted to step into, but never thought possible.

The two spirit part was also literal. I did have a soul entity split off who was very near me, had been there a long time, but was refusing to reintegrate. It first appeared to her as a fairy by my head. It was this entity that had done the ceremony. Which was why I had no memory of it. I wasn't there.

I was dumbstruck. 

Well that explains it I thought. I still had no idea what had triggered such a black out, but I did feel that this spirit entity had chosen to step in, had perhaps taken advantage of the whole situation in the most dramatic way possible, setting me up to be rescued.

Lenore told me that since this entity was so close, I could do this retrieval myself as part of my Shamanic work. 

Whoa doggies, this was not a DIY project I wanted to take on. There was good reason this soul entity wasn't coming back. There wasn't enough self love on my side of the fence. So many layers of rejection had been absorbed over the years. Nor did the gay community have enough love in it to help me. No, it would take a cross cultural agent to provide reason for such entities to come back.

The Dark Within

We scheduled the ceremony for the following Saturday. Meanwhile I was to hold myself open to receiving. And I could bring items for the altar which would help to attract the soul entity to me. Also an item of comfort for myself such as a stuffed animal plus photos of my younger self. All of this optional. The only thing required was something from the plant world that I would then take home and put on my own altar.

That there was a soul entity to retrieve gave me so much to think about. The story of Helen's mother brought back so many memories of that time, that I felt like I was bungee jumping back into time. The emotions plummeting into me. This was not the story I had wanted to tell, but it now appeared that it had to be told in order to save my own life as Alice Walker put it. "If it doesn't save your own life first, it won't save anyone else's", she had said. There was a whole decade of my life I had been loathed to write about.

I was first angry at feeling so abandoned by the homophobic society of the '70s. Even the feminist lesbian culture, (very white at the time), rejected me because I refused to tow the political agenda of the day, kept my hair long and hung out with guys. It wasn't that they were unwelcoming; it was just that they didn't feel comfortable with me.

Then there were the guys I hung out with at the art, theatre and dance college of UC Santa Cruz known as College V. The ring leader of this group had been so snide, cynical and caustic, he was basically creating psychic warfare on all unsuspecting persons who wandered down our hall. He was also conducting a low grade of sexual abuse and domination over any attractive woman who was lured in by his handsome face and romantic French name. I thought it was funny at first, because I was an actor and I was game for public acts of depravity that aimed to shock onlookers, so I didn't stop him from grabbing me, but he came to expect to continue. 

He had a side kick who was much more benign, even endearing, but he was also quite capable of criticism that was so to-the-point that there was no escaping the stinging truth of it. He took one look at my childhood teddy bear the week I arrived and declared that I was sentimental, a term that haunted me as a writer for many decades afterwards. These two attracted to them other writers who were witty and erudite and encouraged scathing put downs for every occasion. To protect myself from further abuse I chose to join them and participate in their commentary, but it only marginally protected me from being the direct target. I also initiated pranks of my own to manipulate people's feelings. I reviewed these acts. They didn't seem so bad in the light of day, but nevertheless the destructive intention of them disturbed my sensibilities.

My friend Dave, who also went to UC Santa Cruz, a little after me, told me that what was going on there had been described as an unacknowledged form of hazing; the unacknowledged part just making it that much more dangerous and destructive. He had given College V a wide berth.

With these memories coming at me, I was now bungee jumping with a cobra that was trying to bite me as I had everyone who crossed my path. It went on for so long that I just had to resolve to ride it out like a 24 hour bug of self-hatred. My equilibrium was eroding at such a pace that I snapped at Catherine when she was trying to do something nice for me. This stunned me. I came to long enough to remember that I now had the ability to talk about my feelings so I sat down and told her what was going on. She understood the importance of this psychic work and gave me the space to do it. This arrested my deterioration and I turned to creative solutions. I was sewing a new shirt with bright turquoise sleeves matched to a pink and yellow grid pattern. I would wear it for the ceremony. Sewing allowed my thoughts to flow without attacking me. It was my walking meditation practice.

I had spent so much energy protecting my bear from the characters at College V that I knew I had to bring him to the soul retrieval. I retrieved him from his hiding place in the cabinet by my bed. Just looking at him melted my heart. I showed him to Catherine who had never met this very important member of my psyche (in 17 years of living together). Her heart also melted. Then I decided to make him a new outfit to match mine. When I told this to Catherine she burst into delighted laughter and I could see that she was beginning to understand this creative metaphorical theatre of the shamanic path. And if she could understand it so could others and I knew then, that it was going to work. Was already working just in the getting there.

The Sum of Us

I spent the rest of the week gathering pictures of my younger self and thinking of things I would add to the altar, telling myself the stories that went with them. (And as I was able to lay my hands on each of these sacred items I realized that this was the true test of being organized. This was what my organizing clients wanted to be able to do, but had lost the ability to do in the chaos of their lives. I felt my professional life validated by this realization.)

I also gathered my community. I happened to be going to see Life of Pi with Dave and he asked about the outcome of my meeting with Lenore. He was following my hints on Facebook and had read my last post. So I asked him if he would come to the soul retrieval. A support person was recommended to help receive and welcome the soul parts back home. Not to mention driving me home afterwards, given my last episode with Shamanic ceremony. I also asked a colleague as back up. (One of the advantages of sharing so much of my life with others in these essays was that I was quickly able to find the people who could respond to whatever was going on in my life. There were indeed people in my network who had experience with shamanism.)

I also went to lunch with a very old friend who followed my writing and I told her what I was about to attempt. She got the logic of soul retrieval and accepted where I was going with it. She was a children's librarian and had a grasp of metaphor and story telling that could embrace my journey with a whole literary culture. In my twenties, she had put Dante's The Divine Comedy in my hands at a time when I was in need of a metaphysical fix not long after dropping out of UC Santa Cruz. Reading it had taken nine months and by the end of it, made me high with the symbolic poetry of it.

Other people I told did not have quite the ability to grasp all of what a soul retrieval might be, but they wished me well. And on the appointed day I had my tiniest rollerboard suitcase packed with my memorabilia including Rupert Bear in his brand new outfit.

Lenore welcomed us into her office. She looked different again and was wearing a tunic with a scoop neck that had a ceremonial air to its design. Her face was welcoming and warm. She admired my shirt and told me she too sewed. I was surprised by this additional thing we had in common. Not too many people sew these days. 

She asked how Dave and I how we knew each other. We also spoke of Stacy whom I had invited, but hadn't been able to come. Stacy was the third member of our old Seale House family when we lived together. We also spent an hour debriefing my week of bungee jumping. I told her about the scene at College V.

Then she prepared us for the ceremony, describing how she would journey into my psychic terrain with the help of her guides in search of soul parts. She would return any she found and make additional trips to bring back any others that were needed and a power animal to help me with the integration. She would blow these entities into my chest and head with each trip as prescribed by shamanic protocol. This was the technique by which I had received my original power animals and brought back for others their power animals.

She asked me all the names and nicknames and terms of endearments by which I had been called in my life. I included my Thai nickname. This would assist her in talking to my soul parts. She asked me, too, what I wanted from this soul retrieval. I had mentioned leadership skills at my last interview. 

"I want to be nicer," I said thinking of the biting cobra that had come out of my College V years. Then I turned to Dave and said, "I can't believe I'm asking to be nicer." He agreed. In the retelling of this event, Stacy said she would have giggled had she been there. That would just not be me in all my impudence and natural sense of absurdist humor. It would suck the life out of me. Then I remembered what I had prepared.

"I want to feel legitimate so that every time I go to do my creative work, which often includes breaking rules (of convention), I don't feel like I'm committing a criminal act." Lenore understood what I meant and reframed my request as a desire to be less defensive, softer and more positive when presenting something new and different.

Then I unpacked my suitcase laying out all my pictures and memorabilia on either side of her altar. I had the book The Spirit And The Flesh at one end with the photographs and a 35 mm film splicer from my days as a projectionist. At the other end, my journal and fountain pen, my red childhood lock and key diary, my high school yearbook open to my senior picture, a portfolio album from College V opened to my self portrait posing as Patti Smith. My black belt to divide the two. My book Diamonds In My Pocket. And my passports from my three countries. Got to have traveling papers. I placed Rupert  Bear closest to her tiny circle of precious figurines and ceremonial instruments. 

"Matching outfits!" Lenore exclaimed when she saw him.

"Isn't he cute?," I agreed.

My object from the plant world was a petrified lemon that I had hung onto since College V because my friend Tim gave it to me already in a dried up state. He had lived on my hall, but because he was a year older and had a strong sense of what was right, he had managed to stay out of the fray created by my adopted gang. We had stayed friends, but he now lived in New York.

"Why on earth did you hang onto a dried up old lemon?" Stacy asked me later.

"I don't know. How an earth do you throw away a dried up old lemon like that?" I said. It had so much history in of itself. I told her how Tim had found it on a nail on his door. He figured it was a message from someone telling him what a sour puss he was and he was giving it to me for the same reason. I had once thought to e-bay it with some sort of story, but I never got around to it.

Lenore smiled at it when I offered it, took it gently and placed it in the middle of her altar.

The Soul Retrieval

For the ceremony I lay down on my back in the middle of the floor. And for a good forty minutes or so Lenore danced around me, rattling, sometimes singing her songs. She was listening on her iPod so we did not hear the drumming that was assisting in the journeying. Dave sat in a chair assisting with his own interior landscape. I stayed present as instructed, trying to turn off my interior narrative and become a sponge of reception. I visualized a tide pool of creatures feeding on incoming plankton, then a mossy piece of earth sucking up rain. 

Lenore blew into my chest a total of four times with much journeying in between. I was struck by the endurance required of this work. (I still kept my journeying to a mere ten minutes.) I absorbed each delivery as best I could and finally when she rattled around me I felt the many layers burnish into my body and fuse together like a lacquer finish. Only then did the interior narrative stop. I opened my eyes to her waiting face and said "thank-you" so softly she had to be reading my lips to hear it. "Welcome home," she said and she held my gaze.

"Would you like contact?" she asked me. I nodded and she gave me her hand which I took in both of mine. And in the half light of the dim room, I took in her gentle face, her bobbed hair slipping over one eye and all I could think of was "Do you KNOW how beautiful you are?" And I saw this thought reflected back at me in that gentle reverberation of mirroring and oneness that can appear when you truly get to look at someone.

She asked if I wanted Dave to come closer. I said yes and sat up. He left his chair to join us on the floor and I took his big hand in my other one. Then she told me about the soul parts she had brought back.

The one nearest to me was a ten year old of such erratic movement that Lenore had to shape shift into a panther in order to get her to stop and persuade her to come back to me. The ten year old hadn't wanted to come back and was very resistant, but Lenore caught her up with my life as it was now and then she was persuaded to reintegrate with me. She was also given a spear and a shield with which to defend herself. I had been very angry at ten years old at being in this new country without the rest of my family. And likely depressed too. Private school had helped nurture me back.

Lenore went out again to check for more soul parts and this time found my nineteen year old self who was buckled over as if she had been punched in the gut. She had left because the lifestyle at College V had offended her integrity so she had shot off to live in the spirit world. She too, was resistant to returning. Lenore talked to her about how hard I had worked to build my integrity back up. She described the kind of life I now led and how much I needed her talents to continue with my life. She too was persuaded to return. 

Hearing about her was a profound confirmation of my original goodness. I had felt her loss the greatest in the following years, exhibiting many symptoms of soul loss in my twenties, including alienation, despondency and the sense that there was no point in planning for the future because there wouldn't be one. Only the obligation to finish a degree pulled me forward.

Finally there was a very young soul part of two or three years of age who was hiding behind one of Lenore's guides. She was playful and was making herself visible as if to say what about me? Lenore easily scooped her up and blew her into my body where she saw a joyful reunion between the three soul parts as the nineteen year old one picked up the little one and held her as they danced around in a circle. It was at age three that I had left England and my beloved grandma.

There was also the gift of the power animal of which I will only say that she was female and so perfectly suited to me that I couldn't wait to make her acquaintance. Lenore's work was done. It was now my turn to nurture these newly returned soul parts so that they would stay.

For a definitive guide to the general practice of soul retrieval you may want to check out the book Soul Retrieval: Mending The Fragmented Self by Lenore's teacher Sandra Ingerman.

For a general description of Shamanic practice as it was introduced to modern Americans see Michael Harner's The Way of the Shaman.

Hang On To Your Fats: Further Travels of the Thin One

In which I stop the progression of my pre-diabetes and discover a whole new world of food as medicine at the Weston Price Foundation conference.

Doctor's Orders

In order to reverse my pre-diabetes diagnosis I had to openly defy my doctor's orders of the previous year to lower my cholesterol. 

"They just can't have it both ways," I said to myself. Between cautionary advice regarding heart disease and my new understanding of the role of carbohydrates in raising blood sugar levels there would be nothing left to eat. This is the realization a diabetic is forced to come to given the parameters of the medical establishment and that is how the pharmaceutical companies get you. They already got us with the fear of cardiac arrest putting so many people on statin drugs. And blood pressure medicine. And Lipitor to lower cholesterol. And Prevacid for heartburn. But I was onto them. I had uncovered the Big Fat Lie. Saturated fats, providing they were derived in nature and not by industrial processes, did not make you fat or cause clogged arteries. And cholesterol was necessary for repair to the body especially for women as they aged. But high insulin; now there was a marker for deteriorating health. Not just diabetes, but high blood pressure and Alzheimer's (which was now known as type 3 diabetes because of the role of insulin). 

My continuing pre-diabetes status would be revealed at my next blood test by the HA1C test. It came back at 5.9 down from 6.0. I had stopped the progression and reversed it, though not by much. I was disappointed given how hard I had worked, but later saw it as a triumph. Considering that I had not yet mastered cortisol levels triggered by flight or flight response, I still had room for improvement. Especially with my public speaking appearances. The three minutes on stage at the conference in Chicago had shot my blood sugar reading 100 points over normal and kept it high most of the weekend. I would learn to master that.

The speed at which I had been reading in the last three months had taken a toll on my sleep patterns too, which hadn't helped. And I had spent so much psychic energy building up my case that I had become argumentative at a drop of the hat. But I had diligently monitored my blood sugars and ferreted out the offending foods—toast, oatmeal, potatoes, and the crust on chicken pot pie that rushed into my veins so quickly I felt slightly drunk. I replaced those foods with daily rations of bacon, eggs and avocado.

My doctor was noticeably impressed by my work with the blood glucose readings and the food diaries. But my cholesterol was indeed high at 243, up from 189.

"Is that what you wanted?" she asked once I had told her why I had taken a high fat approach.

"Yes, yes," I said clapping my hands like a child awaiting a treat. High cholesterol was my act of defiance though it still made me nervous, so intense was the propaganda.

"But your bad cholesterol is high too," she cautioned. The LDL reading was at 133, up from 102. 

"Well, according to my reading," I said prepared for this moment of truth, "there are two parts to the bad cholesterol." I waited for her to get it. She agreed that there was and admitted that there was a test to determine whether it was the big, fluffy LDL that protected the arteries or the small, dense LDL that caused damage to the artery.

"But there's no point to it," she said about the test, "because there is no treatment for high LDL except diet."

"Okay then," I agreed. Diet was, after all, what I was after, not some drug. And so she conceded to prescribe, so that my insurance would pay for it, what I knew to be an expensive test. And would require another fasting blood draw.

The test came back in favor of the fluffy protective LDL and Dr. V wrote me a note that I had made my point, but she was still concerned with other factors of my lipid profile. I did not take the bait. I was done with this battle with conventional medicine. 

Foundation to Preserve the Sacredness of Food

After reading Gary Taubes book Good Calories, Bad Calories, I began to hear references to the Weston A. Price Foundation, first from a breast cancer survivor friend of Catherine's, then in the DVD I bought featuring Gary Taubes and finally on the KQED Health Quest show. Weston Price was the dentist, who went around the world documenting the diets and health of indigenous people. The foundation was set up to preserve his findings. 

As it happened, the annual conference was to be held in Santa Clara, a half hour from home not two months after I discovered them. They had never been to the Bay Area before. This was so fortuitous that I felt giddy with the divine providence of it all. 

The theme of the conference was "Nutrition and Behavior" a rather fitting choice for California's therapy rich culture and would cover ADHD, depression, insomnia and a host of other mental disorders normally relegated to psychology (and often affecting my chronically disorganized clients). 

I enlisted the support of Joan, the breast cancer survivor friend of Catherine's, who was equally interested in attending. We made our way into the crowded Convention Center, squeezing past displays by vendors of natural health products. There were hundreds of people, possibly 800 attendees, mostly women, a bit younger than us looking fit and healthy in a  radiant way. They were also friendly in a family sort of way—the Weston Price family. I was soon to find out that most were practicing nutritionists in a holistic tradition such as Chinese medicine or homeopathy. Also attending were quite a number of psychotherapists, Paleo eaters, an astrologist and a host of farmers and food producers. 

The atmosphere of progressiveness was not unlike Bioneers, the environmental solutions organization in Marin County that Catherine and I attended every year. Except for one thing; it was not dominated by the vegetarian paradigm. The Green Festival, too, had nothing but vegan options in their workshops on food this year. Not a single reference to grass-fed beef being an environmentally tenable solution. This difference at the Weston Price conference created a climate of subversiveness that came up repeatedly in speaker's references to what was held by the public to be healthy, but was understood by the group to fall far short of nourishing and would inevitably lead to failed health. Just the word "low-fat" sent ripples of laughter throughout the room. I laughed too, with relief. It was from one of these speakers that I would learn how coming off a vegetarian diet and onto the Weston Price way of eating would likely send your cholesterol levels high, but it would stabilize over time.

Witches of Health

These were modern witches, I realized. As subject to patriarchal suppression as the midwives and wise women of the 18th century who were burned at the stake, to be replaced by predominantly male, Church sanctioned doctors. There was no need to burn their modern counterparts, though, for it could be taken for granted that there was little chance people would emerge from the low-fat mantra of conventional wisdom long enough to listen to the heretical message of eating a high-fat diet that included red meat. When I first looked at the Weston Price website I thought it was bizarre and queer in a fetishistic sense with all the articles about organ meats and animal fats. But as I became more educated, I was attracted to the very otherness of entering into this world. I was following the path of ancient knowledge. A path that would completely subvert the dominant paradigm of processed foods and factory farmed products.

I, of course, wanted to hear Sally Fallon, the reining goddess of the foundation, though she more reminded me of a head mistress, very calmly presenting what were known facts, had been known for longer than gravity had been discovered so no need to invent new diets when there were tried and true methods of eating throughout the world. Certainly there were differences from culture to culture and individual to individual, but certain facts were universal. Humans were meant to eat what appeared in nature, mostly fats found in animal products, some plants, properly prepared grains and legumes, if available, and little or no sugar in the form of honey and plant syrups. (And no, a vegetarian or vegan indigenous culture had never existed. In fact the more plant based the diet the more cavities and lesser overall health of the population.)

What our industrial food system had done, Sally pointed out, was replace real foods with ersatz foods; foods that had been manipulated by extremes of heat and mechanized processes that so distorted the very molecules of the food that it was no longer recognizable by the body. This included homogenized and pasteurized milk which distorted fat molecules and destroyed beneficial bacteria. Low fat and non fat milk was even worse being ultra-pasteurized. And breakfast cereal was extruded through a machine at such high pressure it rearranged the protein bonds. And factory farmed, nutrient depleted grains stuffed with gluten, causing celiac disease, as referenced in the book Wheat Belly, now a New York Times bestseller. What we once thought of as nutrtitious building blocks of the body, could not be used properly and ended up as unwanted deposits that would cause joint pain, autoimmune diseases, allergies or gastrointestinal disorders. The body no longer recognized what was friend or foe and was attacking these foods and itself. No wonder GMO's were so dangerous. It would just further this process of making foods unrecognizable to the body. 

It was this unmasking of the food industry that probably gave the Weston Price Foundation the reputation of being extremists, so threatening was it to industrial food suppliers. Weston Price scientists were accused of having far fetched ideas, though they had revealed the dangers of trans fat, long before anyone else realized and were now emphasizing the dangers of polyunsaturated fats. Not to mention the even more contentious subject of unsafe soy—soy that was not prepared in the traditional manner through fermentation to neutralize the harmful phytates and trypsin inhibitors.

Practically speaking the Foundation's approach was extreme simply because, in order to eat in this traditional manner, you would very likely have to cook everything from scratch. Such home making skills had begun to disappear from American society just about the time that Home Economics was no longer offered as a degree in college, taking with it the nutrition science behind the cooking skills. 

It was the mission of the foundation, Sally told us, to make sure that young women who would become mothers had enough knowledge to support good nutrition in themselves and their children. Otherwise, she feared, it would be too late. Entire generations would be born unable to fend off the slightest pathogen and burdened with a long list of allergies. Not to mention being cranky, depressed and mentally unteachable.

One of the first observations of Weston Price, the dentist, was that good nutrition resulted in happy, easy going people. His photos often showed people laughing. He made the point that healthy eating was the key to full expression of one's genetic heritage. Thus the women were beautiful with high cheekbones, the men strong with noble faces and the children content, alert and well behaved. They also had perfect teeth without the benefit of either dental care or doctors. He also had pictures of the same tribal people after they had been exposed to modern diets of refined flour and sugar. Their faces had narrowed, their jaws crowding the teeth which were grown in crooked, their demeanor troubled. This was the proof of the pudding as it were. Too much pudding. But the medical establishment put the findings of a dentist and likewise anthropology somewhere so out in left field it was probably viewed more as a quaint hobby, much like history and literature. 

I already knew that Shamans had brought forth the knowledge of healing plant medicine from communication with the plant spirits themselves; they likely had done the same for the health supporting effects of food. Which would account for how each tribe had their sacred food as Sally was describing. For the little Swiss village isolated in the mountains it was the first butter of Spring, when the cows were returned to pasture after wintering on hay.

Good Bugs, Bad Bugs

Internal medicine, by its own admission, was all about bugs and drugs. The body as an entity to be defended from terrorist pathogens with increasingly high tech weapons and the sterilizing of food. Western medicine was to the body what the military was to diplomacy, competent in meeting its objectives, but in an extremely destructive way full of unintended consequences. 

In the world of Western Price, the body was an organism that was host to billions of micro organisms and the key to health was to boost immunity by keeping good relations with these beneficial bacteria and exposing them to a broad range of more good bacteria. It was also important to insure lots of fat intake to keep the body in good repair. Sally told us she ate 70% of her calories in fats. Her picture of half a stick of butter on a short stack of pancakes made us laugh. 

Indigenous people ate animals in reverse order to modern people we learned. The muscle meat we moderns were so fond of was left until last and often fed to the dogs. The most important part of the animal was the head, the internal organs and the bones. This was the world of bone broths and liver for strong bones and cell structure, while fermented vegetables and raw milk provided good bacteria. Probiotics was the word of the day.

Hang On To Your Fats

A colleague introduced me to raw milk a few weeks before I got to the conference. She told me how, even though I was lactose intolerant I might very well be able to consume raw milk just fine, because the enzyme lactase is destroyed by pasteurization and this is the very enzyme needed to help digest the lactose sugars in milk. Thus raw milk helped you digest it. How brilliant is that? That unpasteurized milk was known for food born pathogens like e-coli made me slightly nervous, so she went with me to Rainbow Grocery to help me buy my first pint of whole fat, raw milk. It was deliciously sweet and full bodied. She also recommended the book The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights, in which an investigative journalist ferrets out the real story behind the harassment of raw milk suppliers. Now I drank my raw milk with impunity as an activist supporting food rights, but I was also curious to see what health benefits it might offer. And yes, it did not give me gas like regular milk did. 

Raw milk enthusiasts claimed that it cured asthma, Asperger's symptoms, ADHD, sent cancer into remission and fixed digestion problems. Like good chicken broth it had the power to boost the immune system and fight off colds. The connection between raw milk and less asthma in children had been documented, but science on the whole, was bent to serve the bias against raw milk and other unpasteurized foods. I recalled from earlier readings on globalization how Raj Patel, in his book Stuffed and Starved, had pointed out that the most profit to be had in the food supply was at the point where it went through the most expensive processing because of the industrial machinery involved. Farmers couldn't afford such machinery, but investors could profit intensely from owning such machines. Unpasteurized foods meant more direct access to farmers and like the Church and God, it simply wouldn't do to make it so easy for ordinary people to have such access to fresh foods or the Divine. It cut out the profits of the middle man and diminished the self-importance of the medical establishment and its dogma against pathogens. Destroying bacteria was also necessary for longer shelf life so served the food processing industry as well.

So important was raw milk to the Weston Price ethic, that it had started the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund to protect the raw milk farmers from this constant harassment from food authorities. They also founded the Raw Milk Institute to help farmers establish uniformity of standards. 

Mind The Gut

The support of good gut flora was one of the pillars of the Western Price approach. A Russian educated doctor, Natasha Campell-MacBride had devised a nutrition cure after giving birth to an autistic son. She had made the connection between the digestive system and brain and had used her findings to bring her son off the autism spectrum. Now she spoke every year about the connection between a failed digestive system and a myriad of psychological problems from ADD to Schizophrenia. She called this GAPS, or Gut And Psychology Syndrome. Her cure included removing toxins, adding missing nutrients and adopting a gut friendly diet. Pathogens created the gut environment it preferred, Dr. Natasha told us which was what made us feel bad. It was from this theory that I understood why the body could become alkaline. So often had I been hearing that cancer grows in alkaline bodies. (11/23/12: Correction: I mixed that up with the alkaline diet. Cancer actually creates an acid environment. Weston Price has an article on the holistic treatment of cancer that recommends eating more fat to change the bodies metabolism to prevent the build-up of lactic acids.)

A vigorous two week restorative diet was prescribed that restricted all starches and complex carbohydrates. Bone broth ensued to heal the gut lining. Other animal products were enlisted for nourishment. After which you could begin to introduce diary and other more challenging foods. I would never look at a mental disorder again without thinking of gut flora.

In another room Julia Ross, a psychotherapist and author of The Diet Cure and The Mood Cure, also mentioned GAPS syndrome in her talk on the connection between body and sugar. She linked the onset of not only obesity and diabetes with an increase in sugar in the American diet, but also depression, anxiety, ADHD and insomnia. In combination with the low-fat obsession of our culture we were being severely undernourished. Sugar (and chocolate) was a form of self-medication for low levels of serotonin and hypoglycemia to prevent the brain from crashing. But it also rewarded the dopamine pathways which made sugar four times more addictive than cocaine. In combination with casein in milk products it created an opiate response. Thus the comfort foods like mac and cheese. Such a high sugar diet led to nutrient depletion. But amazingly a cupful of amino acids could correct the neurotransmitter deficits and stop the cravings in about ten minutes. Supplements of tryptophan and another amino acid—5-htp would help the body make serotonin. An appropriate diet would restore the natural body chemistry. These stories offered hopeful alternatives to the pharmaceutical bandaid.

In my travels food was seldom connected with mental health. People wanted quick fixes, but now more were fed up with pharmaceuticals and side effects so slowly these homeopathic methods were gaining in popularity. The nutritionists and homeopaths were reporting that they needed to do less outreach since more people were coming to them.

I also attended a talk on diabetes. This disease was so much a part of the health and diet spectrum that they had a session on it every year.  The speaker was a medical doctor who had adopted the homeopathic approach. I was intrigued to find that there were homeopathic remedies and missing ingredients like glutathione and glutamine to look into. She advised liver twice a week and a high fat, starch free diet. In fact 60 to 80% of the diabetic diet was to be from fats. I was vindicated. And forget about those wheat grass green drinks and raw food diet which had been recommended to me more than a few times. It might lower blood sugar impressively, but the diet just didn't offer the necessary nourishment.

Before I received this pre-diabetes diagnosis, I had often said I wanted to know more about nutrition to obtain optimal health. I just didn't know where to begin. Having been pulled into this research through an insulin related disease, I couldn't have asked for a better portal. Probably had asked for it given how these things worked. I left the conference with my brain turned inside out. The whole world was going to look very different through this lens.