Day 31. May 12. Thursday.

Sylvie was kind of overwhelmed with all the stuff she still had to do moving into her new/old house, so I took the train by myself to Falmouth, a lovely old seaside harbor town in Cornwall. I walked my ass off—must have walked 10 miles. Good thing I did because I’m embarrassed to say I had to get another Cornish pasty, and then I had to try a Cornish ice cream, both of which were delicious and totally gluttonous.

I took a wrong turn and walked a lot longer than I thought along a costal cliff walk to get up to Penndennis Castle, which was worth the extra walk. Then a caught a ride with a couple whom I had stopped to ask directions down to Gyllyngvase Beach, where I walked around more, and then caught the train back to Truro. It’s funny, these are the same town names as on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. It was a really nice day exploring a new place, taking photos.

Day 32. May 13. Friday the 13th.

In the morning I attended one of Sylvie’s somatic Yoga sessions. That woman knows what she is doing! So skilled; so precise—really amazing.

Counseling session and insight

In the afternoon I agreed to do a (surprise) individual counseling session with a young man and his mother. He was prone to anxiety attacks and had been put on medication a few different times in his life, including now. I had one of those wonderful moments that happens sometimes in a session. As he was rambling on talking about his problems, out of deep listening I suddenly got hit by something, big-time.

I interrupted his rambling stream of thought and asked if he wanted to hear what I’d just been hit by. I said something like,

“You’ve only got one problem. You’re always thinking about yourself and how well you’re doing and comparing to others. If you didn’t think about yourself or take thoughts like that seriously, you’d be perfectly fine because then your pure mental health, your spiritual essence within you would be there for you to experience unencumbered, because it has just been obscured by that kind of thinking.”

It hit him like a ton of bricks and he started to cry, realizing that’s what he did constantly. For the first time he saw hope for himself because in an instant he experienced a sense of freedom he had never felt before.

Syd Banks said we’re only one thought away from mental health, and this is an example of what he was talking about.

I took Sylvie to dinner before she had to run back to teach another class. As a reward (but not because of it) in payment she gave me about the most powerful bodywork session I’ve ever experienced. She’s powerful! This was nothing like a typical massage; man, did it hurt in parts! But once I got up (and recovered) my back, which had been hurting pretty badly for the last week or more, didn’t hurt any more. Sylvie is an incredible healer (even though she hates the word).