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  Praise for Waking

  Matthew Sanford’s remarkable story puts a human face on an alternative healing path. His experience as a patient and his exploration of yoga and paralysis inform and inspire patients, doctors, and rehabilitation professionals alike. He beautifully underscores the limitations of our current medical practices and the necessity for a mind-body-spirit approach to healing and recovery. Matthew is a rising star in the integrative health movement.

  —Donna Karan,

  chief designer and creative director, Donna Karan International and founder, Urban Zen Foundation

  “This is a beautiful, life-giving book. It reads like poetry and takes the reader inside Matthew Sanford’s struggles and insights as a paraplegic and a man, a son, a brother, a husband, and a father. But the “transcendence” of the book’s subtitle is not otherworldliness. This is a story of moving gracefully within the limits, tragedies, surprises, and ordinariness of being human and alive.”

  —Krista Tippet,

  Speaking of Faith, American Public Media

  “Sanford offers a powerful, honest account of his battle: awakening a spirit within a damaged body.”

  —Psychology Today, August 2006

  “On the surface, Matthew Sanford’s story makes for terribly gripping reading. But the real reason to pick it up is for the beautiful simplicity with which he describes the mind-body relationship. Through his personal story of healing, he shares inspiring insights for anyone exploring awareness and the essence of life itself.”

  —Kaitlin Quistgaard,

  editor-in-chief, Yoga Journal

  “Sanford’s writing inspires not because of any drama or melodrama connected to loss, but because it awakens us to nonmedical possibilities of healing—discovering ways our minds can connect with our bodies to open windows to wholeness—something disabled and nondisabled alike can embrace.”

  —New Mobility magazine, June 2006

  “… A beautifully written account of his story. It is sobering, with its revelations of just how unbearable human existence can become after such a physical trauma, yet reassuring, through its narrative of how one man can adapt and learn from his own experience what an entire medical establishment had told him not to believe.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 2006

  “Sanford’s groundbreaking account is meant to offer a powerful message about the endurance of the human spirit and of the body that houses it.”

  —PN/Paraplegia News, May 2006

  “Like the best narratives, this journey takes you into new and unexplored realms of meaning. I cried and laughed and ultimately experienced transformational insights about my own life, elucidating not only the physical trials but also travails and triumphs of the soul. From a hard-won understanding of how the body has intelligence and is an aspect of the soul, the author presents us with a new revitalizing vision of what it is to be human.”

  —Susan Griffin,

  author, Pulitzer Prize-nominated A Chorus of Stones

  “[Sanford’s]paralysis has taught him powerful lessons about consciousness, and he shares them with lucidity in this funny but wrenching memoir. Still, it’s his story of how he came to embody his grown-up life as a paraplegic—complete with wife, kids, and a job as a yoga instructor—that will truly dare readers to appreciate their own bodies and lives.”

  —Yoga Journal, October 2006

  “Waking will wake you up, give you a substantial jolt of hope, and change your relationship to the most ordinary actions you take.”

  —Patricia Weaver Francisco,

  author of Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery

  “This is a riveting, heartbreaking, heart-opening saga … His insights are seeds that acquire power and shape over time—months after first reading it, I find myself appreciating his writing and the depth of his thinking more and more.”

  —Nina Utne,

  chair, Utne magazine

  “It is a ‘hero’s journey’ of separation, initiation, and return. However, the hero of Waking is profoundly human. He is not larger-than-life, of mythological dimensions, or otherwise a hero to idolize and worship, but is an ordinary human being confronted with extraordinary circumstances.”

  —Kristi Swenson-Mendez,

  assistant professor of Religious Studies,

  Virginia Commonwealth University

  For William and Paul

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: The Mind-Body Relationship

  Part One: Trauma and Separation

  1. Early Morning

  2. My Body Broken

  3. Out of Body

  4. Which Family Were We?

  5. Pain and Silence

  6. Mind, Not Body

  7. Gin and Tonics

  Part Two: Initiation

  8. Into Your Arms

  9. Wheels, Not Legs

  10. Broken Again

  11. Above the Chest

  Part Three: Yoga, Bodies, and Baby Boys

  12. Taking My Legs Wide

  13. Body Memories

  14. Maha Mudra

  15. Broken Yet Again

  16. Falling Gracefully

  17. The Births of William and Paul

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  I have learned that a book is not written solely by one person. I have a horde of people to thank, and not everyone can be mentioned here. But I am grateful to all of you.

  I feel profound gratitude for the revolutionary work of yoga master Sri B.K.S. Iyengar. His inclusive method of yoga has made all of this possible for me. I must also thank my yoga teacher Jo Zukovich and her husband, Mike. Without her steady but gentle and compassionate guidance, I would never have persisted. I am honored to call both of them my friends. I also want to thank any and all yoga teachers, past and present, who have helped me, including Manouso Manos who has taught me in ways I am still figuring out.

  I am grateful for all the music that I have listened to while writing this book and, in particular, for the music of the Dave Matthews Band, U2, and Keith Jarrett.

  A developing manuscript needs thoughtful readers, and I have had many of them: Kerri Neville, Teri Carter, Susanne Otos, Anna Paulson, Mia Lynch, and especially Larry Lavercome. I also want to thank Nina Utne for her tireless help and ongoing support.

  Special thanks goes to Patricia Francisco, who convinced me to write my story as a memoir, who helped me every step of the way, and who showed me how to fall in love with the process of writing. I must also thank my agent, Marly Rusoff, who believed in my work and had the patience to help me mature as a writer. I also want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my editor, Leigh Haber, who had the courage to take a chance on my story and ensured that the best version of Waking made its way into the world.

  I must also thank my mother, Paula Sanford, who has faithfully listened to her youngest son struggle to articulate his thoughts for the last twenty-seven years. Finally, a special thank you to my wife, Jennifer. She has had to live with this book every day for eight years and is still willing to hug me.

  Introduction

  The Mind-Body Relationship

  Hope is the dream of a waking man.

  —Aristotle

  There is a difference between seeking and looking for answers. I am not looking for answers. Rather, I seek to appreciate and believe in my experience.

  I know what it feels like to leave my body. I learned to do this as a means to survive devastating trauma. At the age of thirteen, I was in a car accident that killed my father and sister. It also pounded my body and left me paralyzed from the chest down. During my first three months in the hospital, leaving my body became a survival skill. I needed to separate from it—otherwise, there was too much pain.

  These experiences
alone put me in unknown territory when it comes to mind and body. But now add the paralysis that I have lived with for the past twenty-five years. My mental awareness—through a spinal cord injury—was literally knocked out of the lower two-thirds of my body. If someone tickles the bottoms of my feet, my mind does not register a tickling sensation. When my mental awareness reaches downward, below my chest, I cannot make my body move, nor do I feel any sense of control. Instead, I experience a form of silence.

  Add to this what I encountered during my initial recovery. While doctors were able to keep me alive, I was not given any tools to reconnect my mind to my paralyzed body. In fact, I was taught that such a connection was no longer possible, that my paralysis (and the silence that came with it) was simply a loss. For the first twelve years after the accident, I believed it.

  As I write this book, I am a yoga teacher, and I still get around in a wheelchair. I teach bodies that can stand when I cannot, that can feel things where I do not. This is possible because I have explored a different kind of connection between mind and body. Although I still cannot move my legs—and have no goal to do so—I do feel a heightened level of presence throughout my entire consciousness, including my paralyzed body.

  It is a connection that we all share. Most of us, however, have not needed to bring it fully to consciousness. I believe this shared connection has profound implications not just for the shape and quality of our consciousness, but for the aging process, for the experience of trauma, for our approach to disability and rehabilitation, and even for our survival on this planet. By consciousness, I mean the sum total of whatever we are—mind, body, spirit, and any other term that aims to describe the totality of our presence. This book is my first attempt to articulate something about our consciousness that has struck me because of my unusual experiences with mind and body.

  In principle, my experience is not different from yours. It is only more extreme. If I asked you to stretch the muscles between your ribs or to directly lift your arches, chances are you would have no idea how to proceed. We all live with versions of mind-body disconnection.

  My mind-body relationship changed in an instant—the time it took for my back to break. But the changing relationship between mind and body is a defining feature of everyone’s life. We are all leaving our bodies—this is the inevitable arc of living. Death cannot be avoided; neither can the inward silence that comes with the aging process.

  I now experience a different, more subtle connection between mind and body. It does not require that I flex muscles. It does not dissipate in the presence of increasing inward silence. In fact, this connection depends on it. It does require, however, that I seek more profoundly within my own experience and do so with an open mind. It means that I must reach intuitively into what may feel like darkness.

  Two important descriptive terms appear throughout my story: silence and healing stories. Silence is the word I use to describe the empty presence we experience within our experience—between our thoughts, between each other, between ourselves and the world. We feel the silence when we daydream, when we appreciate the beauty of a sunset, or when the love of our life truly walks away. It is an inward sense, often experienced as a longing or an ache. It is a feeling of emptiness and fullness at the same time. The silence is the aspect of our consciousness that makes us feel slightly heavy. It is the source of the feeling of loss, but also of a sense of awe.

  A healing story is my term for the stories we have come to believe that shape how we think about the world, ourselves, and our place in it. They can be as simple as “Everything happens for a reason” or as sharp as “How come nothing ever works out for me?” Healing stories guide us through good and bad times; they can be both constructive and destructive, and are often in need of change. They come together to create our own personal mythology, the system of beliefs that guide how we interpret our experience. Quite often, they bridge the silence that we carry within us and are essential to how we live.

  My story is full of healing stories. They have come from healthcare professionals, from my family, from myself, and eventually from the practice of yoga. These stories have profoundly shaped my perceptions of my own body and of how my body and mind interact. They determine whether I see possibilities within the silence of my paralysis or stop at feeling only its limitations. I believe that we all share an inevitable confrontation with an increasing silence. I also believe that our healing stories truly matter.

  So I offer my story of mind and body. During my thirteenth year, the silence within my consciousness cracked wide open. My life ever since has attempted to bring this experience to waking.

  Part One

  Trauma and Separation

  1

  Early Morning

  For the first seven years of my life, my nickname was Jolly—Jolly because my smile, pudgy cheeks, and a potbelly intimated that a giggle was just around the corner.

  Some people are born with a smile on their face, and I am one of them. I do not mean this metaphorically. I literally mean that my mouth does not seem to possess the ability to form a frown, like a tongue that cannot curl. Instead, the outer corners of my mouth turn slightly upward, making my default expression a smile. After all that has happened, I am grateful for this fact.

  This does not mean that I am particularly upbeat or light-hearted. In fact, my wife, Jennifer, complains that I am unrelentingly serious, especially in the descending moments before sleep. It is then that Jennifer knows to stop reading and extinguish her light. Her eyes close as she utters the words “It’s time to lay down, lover.”

  It is early morning, and I am lying in bed. I am entering the summer that approaches my thirty-ninth birthday. I still have those boyish jolly cheeks, curly light brown hair, and a short beard that is beginning to show hints of gray. In a few hours, I will be teaching my Monday, 9:30 yoga class. As usual, I am not sure what I will teach, but I am hoping for inspiration, a sudden burst of how a particular yoga pose feels. I am looking for a feeling that can bridge the gap between my own paralyzed body and the walking bodies of my students.

  Sitting up without disturbing Jennifer’s sleep is difficult. I grab the edge of the bed and pull myself over to my right side. As I do, my gaze encounters my wheelchair, like it has for more than a quarter of a century. Even after all this time, I am often surprised to see it sitting quietly at my bedside, waiting not for someone else but for me. In one continuous movement, I swing my legs off the bed and rise to a sitting position. After twenty-five years of paralysis and thirteen years of yoga, my muscles below my chest remain unresponsive to my direct command. I put one hand on the seat of my wheelchair, one hand firmly on the bed, and lift myself onto the main source of my mobility.

  I am up early this morning to practice pranayama, the yogic art of breathing. I want to finish before my house wakes, before Jennifer’s coffeemaker begins to groan, before my son’s feet begin to travel across our wooden floors. As I wheel silently down the hallway, I do not feel my feet against my foot pedals, but I do feel a buzz, a hum that travels throughout my entire body, both my paralyzed and unparalyzed body. I gently lower myself down onto our living room rug. It is a transfer that has taken years to perfect—to move as a unified whole, to combine flexing arms and flaccid legs into a single flowing movement.

  The morning sunlight beams through our east-facing windows and creeps across my body. I am lying on two accordion-folded blankets that run along the length of my spine. A third blanket is folded to form a makeshift pillow under my head. This posture begins my practice. Its effect is a delicate balance that opens and lifts my chest, while also lengthening the back of my neck. It is designed to allow my breath to enter my chest and torso more freely.

  The bustle of life has begun around me. I hear the bathroom door latch and water pour from the faucet. In these last few yogic breaths, I can feel that my diaphragm is slightly gripped—it is the anticipation of contact with others. I sink inward and feel presence in the backs of my heels. The effect is a
softening of my diaphragm.

  I marvel with a thought. After all that I have been through, the ability to connect awareness through my heels represents one of my greatest accomplishments—something so subtle, something that seems so ordinary. I am not walking, nor do I feel courageous, but I have worked hard for such a moment. It has taken patience, persistence, and a willingness to feel vulnerable. It has taken a different kind of strength.

  I hear the sound of feet tramping down the hallway. I feel Paul peering down at me. “Why are you sleeping on the floor, Papa?” As I slowly open my eyes, I am already smiling.

  2

  My Body Broken

  The year was 1978. After three and a half days, I simply opened my eyes. As I met my brother’s frantic gaze, relief lit across his face. He squeezed my hand, quietly slipped out of the room, and returned a few seconds later with our mother.

  My waking had occurred slowly. First, I moved from the silence and into a dream. I remember hearing noises: a heart monitor, a respirator, various beeps—the sounds of lifesaving technology. My thirteen-year-old reaction, “Wow, a realistic dream … like on TV … cool.” My endurance spent, I drifted back into silence. Other times, I was roused by hushed voices, edged with seriousness, but they too were fleeting, certainly nothing adequate to lift my slumber.

  But then the dream became frightening. While again admiring its realism, I began to notice a connection between one of the sounds and my own breathing. Sleepily, I attempted to separate them. Okay, next time I hear the sound, I’ll hold my breath. Ready … My chest jerked and inflated without me. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Try again … Same result. Something was out of my control. As a child who had suffered from horrible nightmares, I had learned how to exit unwanted dreams, and I wanted out of this one. I moved outward toward waking but to no avail. My chest continued to heave without my consent.