Making love to you is like riding a horse… in Greece

About Paul, Musings, Spirituality, Travel

October 16, 2006

A head injury in Athens leads to guided meditation on Skyros, then the dream of Santorini finally realised — and a deeper healing than expected. (10 min read)

I got the Greece later than I expected. I was 41. The trip began dramatically. Within 45 minutes of arriving, I was on my way to hospital.

The incident

After a very long flight from Australia, and a boomerang of stopovers, I was excited to finally be in Athens. The weather was balmy. The hotel was perfect, in a good location with a pool on the roof and a nice view of the Acropolis from the terrace.

Whether it was the weather, jet-lag, or something in the ether, I felt like I was moving in slow motion from the moment I arrived. Assuming it was fatigue, I decided to do some laps in the hotel pool. It wasn’t really a lap pool, but I thought I could make it work.

I jumped in close to the edge and it was so deep I could not touch the bottom. And because my goggles were out of reach, I decided to swim a couple of laps with my eyes closed. My body surrendered to the water and my stroke was fluid. In my imagining, my butterfly technique was perfect and I felt strong and aligned. And then it happened.

My head was hit so hard that I saw stars. Disorientated, I thought that I had raised my body too high out of the water and hit my head a little stone bridge – a folly of sorts – across the middle of the pool. Only later did I realise that there was a solid wall, below the waterline, dividing the pool in half.

The shock hit me quickly. But the shame was even quicker. There were people sitting around the terrace – Brits mostly. Some were curious but no one offered to help me. I somehow found the energy to pull myself out of the pool not realising the shivering was from shock rather than the cold water. And then I noticed blood on my towel and then I saw it all over the ground. And my shame amplified. I ran to my room and straight under the shower.

It wasn’t my intention to get a nose job. And when I realised what I had done I started laughing about the absurdity of manifesting a Roman nose in Greece. The mirth did not dim the pain or stop the bleeding, so I asked for a doctor. I was not expecting to be taken to the hospital. And when I got there I was much more concerned about the damage to my savings than my body.

I didn’t think it was serious. But I soon learned that having a head injury is akin to having a platinum frequent flyer card at check-in. Although the hospital was very crowded, with soviet aesthetics and the strong odour of farm animals, I was whisked straight to the first class lounge.

The paperwork was minimal, the tests were quick, everyone was really kind. I was patched up and given a neck brace and pain relief within the hour. They told me Australians don’t have to pay, so the angels that were taking a break while I was swimming, were back on my side.

The next day, with my head bandaged and neck braced, I found out that several of the Brits who had watched me in the pool were now taking the big ferry to Skyros.

Skyros

Skyros is 2.5 hours from Athens. It is a mid-size Greek Island, similar to Paros, and it ranks in the middle of the pack for beaches and greenery. It has charming white buildings with blue doors, bespoke timber signs, handicrafts aplenty and a very relaxed vibe. The food there is superb. It wasn’t the Greece of my dreams but a fine place for a 2 week vacation.

I was supposed to be in Skyros for a wellness retreat involving yoga, reiki and a psychotherapy course in the Gestalt tradition (ie “speak to the empty chair”).

Reiki is a Japanese healing technique that involves channelling universal energy. I had received reiki for the first time about 8 years earlier but this was a practitioner course. We were to be “tuned in” to do this work initially and then learn various hand gestures, called mudras, to balance our energies and improve the flow and focus of the energy to others. I approached the course with scepticism – not of reiki itself, but of my ability to channel energy. I found the practice, or perhaps the better word is “phenomenon”, really interesting. The palms of my hands became hot easily and they pulsed as I placed them over the volunteers. It seemed to “work” whether I liked the person or was indifferent to them. I found the flow was stronger and regular if I focused on my breath and elevated my thoughts. The proof of the pudding… my volunteers reported feeling heat and tingling sensations and relaxation. While that’s not the same as spontaneous remission of cancer, it was enough to motivate me to keep trying, or rather “allowing”, the energy to flow through me.

Guiding meditation

The head injury in Athens spoiled some of my plans for Skyros. Because I couldn’t practise yoga or exercise for the first week, I somehow found myself guiding others in meditation and breath work. In retrospect, this was providential.

To this point in my life, I had had about a decade of intermittent instruction in meditation and breath work and ten days of Viapassana. The latter is a guided, silent meditation retreat where the student sits on the floor and, in my case, sweats, in extreme pain – day and night – for almost 200 hours. The first couple of days one focuses on the sensation of the natural breath on the upper lip, creating a state of hyper-vigilance. After doing this practice, it feels like going on a magic carpet ride when you lay down at night. On the third day, Viapassna is given by way of a guided visualisation process. For me, this involved awareness of energy moving up and down the front and back of my spine and an extraordinary vortex of coloured light around my head. The experience was unexpected. And thank goodness for this light show, because the remaining days were brutal. The instruction was to repeatedly “sweep en masse”, visualising the cleansing of the body from top to toe, while remaining stationary. The pain of sitting was intense and the instructors attributed this to sankhara – which I understood to be “karma” or the energetic residue of past lives. I completed the ten days but knew, at the end of it, this was not the meditation practice for me.

My preference for meditation is to intend, visualise and align to my highest aspect, to connect above and below and allow divine light to flow through me. At this time, I was interested in service through earth energies and I made this the focus of my private meditations on Skyros. My group meditations were initially more general but once we got comfortable with each other and relaxed into the work, some of the sensitives in the group picked up my intentions and their experiences emboldened me.

One person in the group, the loud Brit I liked the least, asked me what I was doing during the meditation. I deflected the question. She then shared that she had a dream in which I was connecting the heavens and the centre of the earth to heal Skyros. As her dream mirrored my private visualisations, I took it as a sign that I was on the right track and that I should be open about it with others. And, when I was open, somewhat miraculously, the meditation group grew larger.

The work reached a crescendo on the day the group took a long hike across Skyros. It was a beautiful, clear day and not too hot. The environment has been untouched in recent years, apart from a dirt road that did not get much use. The road meandered through the smorgasbord of micro-climates – from harsh, rocky, barren land to a leafy little forest. Apart from a lone donkey, there were no animals to be seen.

After a few hours walking we reached the energetic epicentre of the island. We were all drawn to the huge tree crowning a little hill of barren earth. The canopy provided an umbrella of shade that many in the group were desperately seeking. But I found it compelling for other reasons. Not only were there plenty of perfectly formed boulders to sit on, there was also an extraordinary view. I suggested we all sit quietly, close our eyes and appreciate the environment.

I used deep breathing to let my companions know I was meditating and many of them tuned in too.

It is so much easier to connect to the earth when you feet are on it, so I took off my shoes and wiggled my feet into the powdery dirt (which was a bit much for some of the Brits).Without giving any instructions, I knew that the group was applying the visualisations I had shared during our meditation sessions. We sat in silence for over an hour. My intentions to clean and balance the energies of Skyros were extended to Greece and then to the whole of the Earth. In perfect time one of the group said “pray for mother earth” and this was followed by a spontaneous and collective “Amen”.

The temperature dropped quickly and we opened our eyes to twilight. But most extraordinarily, the mountain in the distance had morphed into the outline of a pregnant woman laying on her back. There were twinkling lights which amplified this impression. We had been rewarded for our prayers for mother earth.

The group walked back in silence. I was preoccupied with what I had experienced and I didn’t notice what was happening for others. Later that evening, at dinner, I sensed “fulfilment” in my companions. Looking back at the photos, we all look so much brighter and younger than the days before.

What I did not recognise at the time was the process that had been orchestrated for me by the universe. The accident in the pool that stopped me doing yoga inspired me to lead a meditation group for the first time, bringing together quite disparate meditation disciplines with the channelling of universal energy. The voice of spirit, which I was could not hear myself, came through another. And when we worked together for the good of the Earth we were rewarded with signs and wonders. Amazing. This was not what I was expecting from my first holiday in Greece.

Summer lovers on Santorini

I had wanted to visit Greece since Peter Gallagher said “making love to you is like riding a horse”.

For better or worse, I’ve heard him say this many times. Gallagher is a young American on vacation with his girlfriend, Darryl Hannah, in the Randall Kleiser’s 1982 film “Summer Lovers”. It is a romantic comedy, set on Santorini, the most famous of the Greek Islands. While trashy in many respects, it is also beautifully filmed, with a good soundtrack, hilarious dialogue and a great deal of bad hair and bad fashion.

After Gallagher makes the “horse” faux pas, his lover looks at him and laughs in disbelief. He then says “its the way you respond”. Hilarious! But instead of kicking him out of bed, she tries to instil some emotional intelligence before the film cuts to another scene of the island.

Santorini is stunningly beautiful. You have probably seen photos of the iconic white buildings that hug the rim of the caldera – the remnants of the rim of volcano – which is surrounded by the sea. I knew I had to go there, not just because of its beauty, or the film or my nostalgia for the 80s, but because I had heard that it was implicated in the fall of Atlantis.

Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), often referred to as “the sleeping prophet”, said that Santorini was part of the larger Atlantean empire. He also said that its volcanic eruption and destruction were part of a series of cataclysmic events that led to the downfall of Atlantis.

The closest “Summer Lovers” gets to prophecy is when Darryl Hannah reveals that she dreamt she was a mermaid (two years later she would play a mermaid in the film “Splash”) and when Valerie Quennessen dramatically comes off her bike (she died in a motorcycle accident seven years later).

“Summer Lovers” filled my head with a lot of beautiful images of Santorini and I felt like I was in the movie as my little Olympic Air plane flew over the island. My heart open a little wider and I suppressed the tears that would have trickled down my face had I been alone. Just like the movie, I heard the Pointer Sisters singing “I’m so excited” – on repeat – in my head.

A friend had arranged a beautiful hotel for me, complete with an infinity pool, right on the edge of the caldera and close to the famous church bells. The view was amazing, just like the movie.

I was only on Santorini for a couple of days but I had enough time to walk the streets and see the sights. The sun and the water are the heroes of this place and then there is the food. It was a dream come true. Even now, it is hard to believe that only 2 weeks earlier I had smashed my face in the pool in Athens.

I sensed that the healing in Greece had been deeper than my head injury but it would take some years for the magnitude of this to be fully understood.