“I believe I am pregnant,” she said, then broke out in tears and sat down on the big bed. “How could it happen?”
Walter choked and said, “I am sure nothing went inside you. I always pulled it out on time.”
It might have been the rare event that sperm had been present in the preseminal fluid. Once the gynecologist confirmed her condition, it did not really matter. This time the couple took time to discuss, ponder, and decide. Margaretha gave Walter the opportunity to voice his opinion about what to do and did not decide on her own. Deep down his view and wish reflected what he knew. He did not want to ruin her future by pinning her down. Her fragile constitution and life expectations at that time did not include a child. Margaretha seemed tentative about what to do and waited until Walter was absolutely sure to have an abortion. She agreed to get a referral from her physician for a supervised procedure in a hospital. Margaretha disappeared for three days—she preferred to be alone this time—and when Walter saw her again, she looked pale but seemed relieved.
The emotional pain of the abortion manifested itself for both in different ways. Walter fell into a depression and spent more time lying on his bed during the daytime, while Margaretha looked for options to heal.
She asked him one day, “Would you like to do a massage training course with me? Antje told me about a couple who will begin a class soon; they are experienced therapists. It will take place on four separate weekends.”
He said yes because he could not think of anything better to do to get out of the house. Especially since Margaretha’s proposal involved therapy, Walter had a sudden strong interest. Often, when he remained for hours at a time in the dark cloud above his head, he asked himself how long a human being could endure something like that. Without actual need, emergency, or crisis of any kind, the extreme misery within refused to go away by itself. He knew he had to do something to get out of it.
When the first massage training weekend arrived, the couple drove in Walter’s car to nearby Taunus Mountains. When they entered the trainings room, they were greeted by a friendly man and a woman with blond hair, blue eyes, and unusual names, Sunito and Bijou. They dressed in red and orange clothes, wore long necklaces of wooden beads with a small, round picture, framed in wood, attached. Margaretha had told Walter that the trainers had been in India with the guru everybody knew about, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. She also told him that Antje planned to leave for India to see the same guru. Antje had met the trainers at a center in Frankfurt and told Margaretha about the upcoming training.
When Walter went to India, he never heard about this particular guru. All he knew he read in the news magazines and through some television reports. There were stories of a few celebrities who went to see him and had a good time. One of the news items, however, had caught Walter’s attention. It was the report by a German journalist who had been sent to investigate the activities in the guru’s Ashram and turned into one of his followers. Walter also remembered the scary picture on the cover of a prominent news magazine of a man with very long hair and beard, wide-eyed, hands stretched out over a group of people sitting on the floor naked. It left Walter with unease—partly attraction, partly fear.
The massage trainer couple introduced their technique as neo-Reichian, part of bioenergetics analysis developed by Alexander Lowen. It was a body psychotherapy that originated from the work of Sigmund Freud and was later refined by Wilhelm Reich, author of Character Analysis and many other books.
The group sat in a circle on the floor of a large, empty room and introduced each other by stating their names and whatever information they wanted to share. Interestingly, the majority were women. As the instructors directed, the group members closed their eyes, breathed into the abdominal area, and tried to feel their bellies move up and down. They stood up, walked in a circle, and, when the trainer said stop, closed their eyes and felt what was going on in their bodies. They danced to loud music, and when the music stopped, looked into the neighbor’s eyes, and felt what was going on inside as they kept eye contact with the other person.
Numerous short exercises followed until at one point Sunito said, “Now, let’s do the Kundalini. Who has done it before?”
Only two people knew what Kundalini meant. The instructors explained that they wanted the group to experience a meditation technique from the Ashram in Poona. It had four different stages, all sustained by music from a cassette tape and with closed eyes: shaking the body, dancing, sitting still, and then lying down on the floor without music. Each part lasted fifteen minutes.
During most of the exercises and the meditation, Walter realized that he did the best he could, but his interest was more with anybody else than with what went on inside him. Every so often, he peeked involuntarily, to see where he stood on the floor, whether he had sufficient space to dance without bumping into a fellow participant. Keeping an eye on Margaretha was more important than observing his insides.
The group event ended for the night officially, those who wanted to go home left the location. Most of them stayed at the school building and had a light self-made dinner in the break room. Since Margaretha did not want to leave, Walter prepared his place for the night on one of the available mats.
Next morning’s schedule began at 6:00 a.m. When Walter became aware of stirring all around him, he thought that he had not slept at all. It seemed that he had listened to the sounds in the group room for hours, the shifting, coughing, breathing of people. Margaretha’s mat lay next to his, but she seemed so far away, he could have been in Thailand. When all items were cleared and stowed away, off the floor, Sunito explained what would happen next. He called it “The Dynamic Meditation,” which sounded promising. But if Walter had known what was coming toward him, he might have left the room to have breakfast elsewhere.
The trainer described five stages of a meditation technique accompanied by taped music. The first stage was chaotically breathing through the nose, the second becoming very mad—screaming, shouting, crying, jumping, shaking, dancing, singing, laughing, no holding back of anything. Then the third stage: with raised arms, jumping up and down shouting the mantra, “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” as deeply as possible. It was followed by the sudden stage four: Stop! Freeze wherever you are. Do not move. The fifth stage was to celebrate through dance. All stages were clearly separated by different percussion rhythms or music.
When the group reached stage three and Walter went through the first minute of the exercise, jumping with raised arms, he thought he would die right there. An excruciating pain went through both his thighs, bringing tears to his closed eyes. He had to stop jumping for a moment and then continue in a more tentative way. He managed to go through the stage by alternating resting and jumping. Drenched in sweat, with shaking legs, he went through the freeze stage and then the dance phase, which turned into a walking-on-eggshells segment. During breakfast at the shared table, no one talked and some of their faces were pale.
Once again, all participants sat in a circle and reported about their adventures so far. An occasional roar of laughter went through the building. Relieved, proud future massage therapists discovered that they were not the only ones who had suffered during the Dynamic Meditation.
During this first weekend and the following sessions, they learned the technique and its psychologically therapeutic effects in self-awareness and on their own bodies. Starting with the feet, they slowly worked their way up to the head, the most sensitive part. For Walter, a fundamental and extremely interesting fact of the massage application was that less of it could mean more, referring to a stroke, a movement, or a simple touch on or with the body. In situations where people worked on a practice partner, specifically on their hands, the slightest movement of a joint could trigger a catharsis—release of stored emotions, pain of the past freed by the gentle touch of another person. It frequently occurred that the whole group interrupted what they were doing and gathered around an individual who was going through a traumatic experience of the past. They listened, shared the pain, and by doing so, stimulated healing.
On the third weekend, it was Walter’s turn.
When a tender stroke by a partner triggered an enormous surge of revolting, painful emotions, Walter began to scream and cry so much that Bijou approached the mat he lay on and said, “Let it go, let it all out.”
Walter unconsciously intensified his shouts and outcries.
Bijou suddenly declared, “Walter, you need to stop. You hear me? You need to stop; I am not willing to go there.”
Somewhat thankful but also perplexed, he tried to calm down and wondered what was wrong with him. Where and why did she not want to go there? He never found out, but assumed Bijou was not prepared to handle his issue.
Margaretha fell in love with the trainers. Obviously, Walter noticed every step of it. She made it absolutely apparent by being overjoyed whenever she mentioned them. It did not have the quality of romantic love, more like a little girl adoring her parents, but he mentally noted it and observed. After the last segment of the training, a troupe of new massage therapists went out into the world to trade sessions or even work on someone from the outside.
In Walter’s world, things began to happen again. First, Antje had become Kavita in Poona, and when she returned, Kavita wore only red clothing and the necklace. During the massage training, many of the members had talked about India, the guru, and visiting the Ashram, and some even began to wear textile colors that ranged remarkably across the orange spectrum. Margaretha became a frequent visitor at Walter’s apartment, arriving with large bags full of white T-shirts, pants, and other stuff. She used his washing machine to dye them red or purple or some color in between. He did not mind her visiting and using the machine, but as a result, most of his white clothes turned slightly pink when he used the machine after her.