(This article appeared in my column, "Sacred Space", in the Marin Independent Journal on 1/13: www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_5017780)
“You have
to do this!” she exclaimed on the phone with me after getting a facial. “It was a religious experience!”
That was
saying a lot for my wife, who is skeptical about all things religious, despite
or perhaps because she is married to a Christian minister. I had never considered getting a facial
before. But the urgency in Roberta’s
voice convinced me to make an appointment at Experience Salon in Sausalito.
A warm,
gentle soul with a European accent in her lilting voice, Marianne is a global
citizen, having grown up in South
Africa with her Dutch father and Austrian
mother. When she came of age, she knew
she could not bear to live under the apartheid system, so she came to America. Along the way she became part of a community
centered on Adnan Sarhan, an Iraqi teacher of the Sufi tradition. For twenty years, Marianne was a devoted
practitioner of spiritual dance and movement. This led her to practice various forms of healing-oriented bodywork, including
cranio-facial massage, and now to her job as an aesthetician.
I lay back
on the padded table under warm covers. Soon Marianne was delicately spreading smooth creams on my face, all
organic and natural, she told me. Then
she covered my eyes and aimed an intense light beam to identify skin pores that
she proceeded to pinch clean. It felt
like she was popping pimples I didn’t think I had! “This is what people expect when they come
for facials!” she laughed. “Don’t worry,
this part will be over soon.”
Any anxiety
I felt was quickly erased when she started to massage my face. Her fingers lingered at certain spots. Pressure points, she told me later. She delicately spun her fingers around my
eyes and nose and mouth as if painting lacy patterns. It was entrancing. She then put one finger on the bottom of the
midpoints of both sides of my lower jaw, giving pressure at first and then
pulling back so slowly that I could not perceive when her fingers finally came
away from my skin. I had the sensation
of infinite expansion. I could sense no
boundary between me and the universe. Time stopped. She waited for a
while – was it eternity? - before taking a brush to apply a hydrating mask on
my face.
While the
mask, covered with a warm, wet towel, soaked into my skin, Marianne proceeded
to massage my hands, fingers, and arms. After kneading them with her hands, she then moved my arms, extremely
slowly, down onto my chest, one at a time. The intentional slowness of the movement, and the very long time she
took to lift her fingers away from my skin, once again induced in me the sense
that my body had no boundary, that I was one with the universe. One with God?
Back on Caledonia Street, my face aglow, I got on my cell phone and called my wife to say “Wow!” She laughed, enjoying her success in
converting a minister to a new sort of religion.