The Hugging Of Strangers

I am dancing with a dozen women to Gerri Halliwell’s It’s Raining Men.  A disco ball throws green specks of light over us.  A bunch of middle aged women at a disco, only these are not any women.  Most of these women are in pain;  some are in the late stages of cancer.  As they dance about the room, throwing their arms in the air and girating trance-like to the music, my genetically engineered brand of irony and disdain is quiet.  All I see is the beauty and the dignity.

Françoise has been up there for at least an hour.  She is glowing with perspiration and joy.  Hard to believe this is the same Françoise who arrived angry and withdrawn, a shadow of this dancing diva. 

This is a seminar on the body mirroring system run by Martin Brofman.  Brofman believes that our physical symptoms are purely a reflexion of what is going on in our conscious mind.  He created this process of healing from his own experience thirty years ago when he developed a spinal tumour.  Given two months to live, he set out to experience as much of life as he could.  Along the way he discovered meditation and a zen master who told him that his cancer started in the mind and that is where he should go looking for a cure.  

We meditate. We heal each other.  We discover and understand the power of our own energy.  We laugh.  At night after dinner the music goes on and the unravelling begins.

Hugging is a big part of the healing process.  Hugging strangers took a while for this Brit to get used to.  I am a pioneer at the forefront of hugging strangers repression.  I’m just not genetically wired to melt into a stranger’s body and go for gold and so I soon realize that this is my sickness.  I may be one of the lucky healthy ones drawn to this experience out of curiosity and a willingness to learn more, but I’m lousy at opening up to strangers and I am here to breakdown the barriers that I create.

Along with the hugging fest, what I learn from this experience is that we are all born good. (Which is why the death penalty is not a solution and we are all somehow responsible for the crime).  That the power of the human spirit and the capacity to love is infinite; that we all create our own realities and that the answers to all our problems are to be found in our conscious mind.