“On Finding Myself In A Sauna”

Squibs & Blurbs

by Jerry Zimmerman

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—3/29/10—I’m sweating. I’m in a sauna and I’m sweating; pleasantly and happily sweating. And I’m trying to figure out exactly how I came to be here.

This sauna is in a health club, once known as a gym, but this is a gym without the smog of body odor and disinfectant, without the athlete’s foot, the dirty towels on the floor, the yelling and screaming, and the grimy equipment, all the things I remember so well from my weight-lifting youth.

So, things have changed. And I’m in the sauna, breathing this hot, dry air of change and trying to trace back through the vectors of thought and action that have led me to this spot, sitting on a fragrant wood bench in a little room at the age of (I actually can’t believe it) 62.

I have been able to follow along the different events and decisions that brought me from kitchen table to ab machine, but the real mystery for me is: how is it that my desire to do these things has been re-awakened? What has materially changed to make me want to work out, to look forward to working out, instead of finding it to be the drudgery it seemed to be in the recent past? And, really, what makes me want to do anything?

This question reminds me of a science film I saw in high school, a part of which I have never forgotten. A segment of the film tried to explain “movement,” the process by which a thing actually moves in space from one place to another place; for instance, moving one’s foot a step forward.  The theory propounded was that your foot, to go from a to b, must first get halfway there along the way. But to get halfway there, it must first get halfway to the halfway point, and so on and so on. You can see where this gets us: nowhere, literally!

Forgetting my feet for the moment (which somehow seem to confound the science by actually getting me around), how does my desire change, how does no go to yes, couch surfing go to weight lifting? How does something new arrive in our lives? There don’t seem to be any half-steps along the way; just a full-blown leap to a new freedom.

One’s life flows along, directed or misdirected not by deciding to move left, right or sideways, but by desiring to go there, wanting to go there, being unable to not go there. It is the big push that makes the waves in our lives, and that originates in a solar-nova bright spot somewhere deep within us, the fleck of power that drives us all.

I am a teacher of Aikido, a Japanese martial art of great beauty, finesse and power. In this art, it is imperative immediately to sense the beginning of an attack by an opponent in front of you. One of the ways to refine your senses for this moment is to, counter-intuitively, broaden your field of vision and not focus on any particular part of the person in front of you but, rather, softly to see everything in your scope of vision at once and as one complete scene.

The smallest movement, or thought of movement, from your attacker will slightly ripple the scene, like the tiniest pebble dropped in a pool of still water. This technique is amazingly much more effective in sensing the moment of attack than trying, specifically, to stare at an arm or a fist or a body.

Back in my sauna, I un-focus my mind and softly gaze with my heart at all that lies within me. If I’m quiet enough, if I’m open enough, I discover the thrumming agents of change and desire deep inside. I feel the old and familiar channels of thought and action softening, shifting and enlarging, allowing new pinpoints of energy to pulse and push.  I live in the same world as before, but the shift is palpable; anxious and joyous at the same time.

I still can’t figure out how something moves from one place to another place. Yet, as I breathe deeply and push hard, I can get that heavy steel barbell off my chest and up into the air without the slightest philosophical concern with the how and why, but with, instead, a great and happy satisfaction . . . that just makes me smile.