The Tale #28 - Yoga with Baby Ken

So there was some sort of bizarre entity living in my body, specifically my left hip.  Everytime I write about this I am dumbstruck by what I am writing.  I honestly had a displaced part of me, living in my body, which talked to me. OY!  It all seems like a dream now, six years later, but when I look at some of the video I took, I am mesmerized.

After Katherine Foolmacher, I decided to get myself checked out physically.  Maybe this was a neurological condition that caused this child self to talk with me - this was the crazy way I was thinking.. 

So I made an appointment with a Neurologist in Mt. Kisco.  When I arrived my hip/child self was dormant, almost not there, almost as if that part of me did not want to be discovered or uncovered.  The doctor, I forget his name, was a charming guy, early forties, personable, with a great bed side manner.  He introduced himself, and asked me why I was there.

"Well, I am having some problems with my hip from Yoga and I shake sometimes."

"Huh?  What do you mean by shake?" he asked.

"I uh, well sometimes, my uh, well my head goes side to side and my hip cramps up." I was feeling almost embarrassed.

"O....K...., well, let me test you out and we'll see what we find."

He did a series of neurological tests, and I responded appropriately. No bouncing.  No crying. No nothing.

Baby Ken, where were you when I needed you?

When he finished the tests, he sat on the edge of the "patient table" and said, "Well, you seem fine to me."

And I was.  Baby Ken was asleep or hiding.  He was so willing to come out on camera, but with strangers, no way.  Curious, huh?

As I was driving home, I could feel he was back.  My left hip tingled, just a bit, like he was giggling....or crying.

I came home, built a fire in the fireplace, and did my nightly Yoga, bouncing a bit and feeling vaguely sad.

What was the solution?  What the hell was my path?  There was this "energy" in me which did not want to dissipate.  And each day, it would show up in some odd way - hip cramping, weird random feelings, and now weird bizarre behaviors.  All of a sudden, I couldn't sit on a train, or in a restaurant with a male sitting behind me. It made me ....uncomfortable.  I knew the feeling was OLD, but still I honored my OLD feeling and always arranged my seating accordingly.


It was early November 2003.  I was meeting with Douglass at a rental room studio on 72nd St.  My hip was tight, and I was feeling "melancholy" and I knew it was not "PRESENT-BASED."

We began our Yoga and immediately I started to bounce and sob. Douglass by this time was used to it, so he just led me through the paces directing me into various Yoga asanas.  We were doing a Cat/Downward Dog sequence when it hit me.

"Douglass, I am going to do Yoga with Baby Ken."  

He looked at me softly and replied " Let's go for it."

"I am always feeling like that part of me is not connected but what if we were to do YOGA together?"

"OK, Ken, let's find out."

Douglass then led me through a series of floor Yoga asanas.  When the shaking began, I would consciously take an image of myself as a child and merge it in my mind with my visual representation of my body.  At first nothing happened but after about 10 minutes, the shaking slowed.

"Something's happening, Douglass."

"I can see that."

We continued.  As we moved into a new stretch, I would take that image of my child, merge with my visual representation of my body, and my body would open up, open up rather drastically, with no shaking at all and all of a sudden my flexibility increased by upwards of 30%.  It was uncanny!  It was almost as if my visual representation of my body, was limiting my flexibility, and as I "messed with" that visual representational image by merging BABY KEN into the image, I stretched deeper than I had ever stretched before.  

I started to laugh.

"Do you see what is going on here?"

"It's amazing, Ken. Just amazing."

All of a sudden, I was laughing as I did Yoga, almost laughing as a child laughs, and as I laughed and pulled Baby Ken literally in my mind into my Yoga, my body opened up.

When we finished I felt like a million tax free bucks.  I had never felt so open, so alive.

Centered and IN my body.

Yoga means to YOKE, to bring together.  Somehow in this process, I brought Baby Ken more into alignment.

For two weeks, I felt utterly amazing, like I was totally cured.

And then, Thanksgiving arrived, and with it a belly full of family "stuff"ing.  I cramped up two days before, and ended up spending the day by fear... fear of...

There was something to learn here, but what?

Why had I become disjointed, and GOD DAMNIT, how was I to cure myself?

Ken WolfComment