Whenever I walk to Whole Foods with friends, we have an adventure, and not just the one where tall thin women ram you with their shopping carts.
This time, it was a guy with an enormous didgeridoo. We had been drinking coffee, watching the circus that is Whole Foods, Venice. My friend asked the guy if he had made his didgeridoo, and he said Yes. He added that he used it for Sound Therapy.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I saw a documentary called Kumare, about an American-born Indian guy who decides to pose as a guru, to see if people will fall for it. Sure enough, everywhere he goes, people lap up his idiotic impersonation of a Mystic, exclaiming how they can feel his powerful energy, etc, etc. I found it depressing. People are so stupid. Or as my husband put it, more charitably, “People want someone to follow.”
Anyway, there is a Sound Healer in Kumare who uses a didgeridoo, and he looks alot like the guy at Whole Foods. “Were you in that Kumare movie?” I asked him accusingly. He seemed baffled and said no. He wanted me to sit down and let him demonstrate his therapy. He instructed me to focus on “an intention.” I asked him if he was going to find out what’s wrong with me, secretly thinking “If he only knew!”
A handsome Black man intervened cheerfully, “Why does there gotta be something wrong with you?” He was wearing a fedora and eating a cup of Whole Foods ice cream. He looked as contented as a human being could be. I didn’t want to spoil his mood by answering him.
The Sound Therapist started blowing into his didgeridoo, moving it slowly up and down my back. It felt great! I could feel the sound waves vibrating through my body and I pretended they were evacuating evil spirits. It was extremely pleasurable.
When he was through, he asked me if I had pain in my lower back, noting that he could sense this with the didgeridoo. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I told him that while I had pain everywhere, my lower back was a place that sometimes hurt.
The truth is, my lower back is probably one of the few places where I don’t feel pain. I don’t believe in any kind of New Age healing. I don’t believe in gurus, gods, angels, the I Ching, the Secret, Tarot Cards, reiki, colonics, or anything else.
Time doesn’t heal either, as we know. But coffee is wonderful and so is Whole Foods, if you don’t buy your groceries there.
