Prior to moving to New York, I’d heard of shrinks, shamans, yogis and life coaches, but never energy workers. Having relocated from Atlanta four months ago, I was grappling with a broken heart, a lack of focus and a bad attitude. I spent two months strolling through traffic with my eyes closed. “I think I’m trying to get hit by a car,” I confessed to my trusted friend Brian over lunch. “Oh, I tried to get hit by a car the entire first summer I lived here,” he said as he bit into a sandwich. Was this a competition? Just because we shared this tendency, it didn’t make the desperation any less affecting. I had back pains, anxiety overload and no real solution to my pervading problems.
“Maybe you should try visiting the multi-dimensional energy worker,” he suggested. I didn't even know what an energy worker did, but I was broke and Brian said the fee was mutual respect. I jumped at the chance to release, or slightly distract, my inner demons.
The karma guy’s name wasn’t Locust, or Moonshine; it was David. And he didn’t wear sandals and carry a flute. His day gig was event coordinator for a nonprofit organization. Short, with curly hair and a permanent stutter, David was a good Jewish boy in his late-twenties who happened to practice energy work but only as a hobby on the side. He claimed he had accumulated “a proverbial tool belt” of skills that allowed him to exercise psychic abilities, tap into peoples’ past and see the toxic build-up in their bodies with his own mind’s eye. To me—a 23-year-old liberal, alternative medicine enthusiast who used to serve wheatgrass for a living—this sounded fascinating. But when I relayed my exciting discovery to my judicious lawyer father, it sounded like a joke. “I’m waiting for the punch line,” he said.
The first thing David did when we met for coffee (he had tea) was size up the degree to which my spinal fluid was imbalanced. According to him, everyone’s spine is either too acidic or too basic. “What am I? Too acidic?” I guessed, thinking of my feisty streak. “No, you’re too ba-ba-basic,” he stuttered as though it were obvious. This news disappointed me. Too basic? I felt like a generic brand of toilet paper. We had a lot of work to do.
The following Saturday I trekked from Brooklyn to 101st Street, where David performs his sessions from his apartment. I thought about my dad’s cynicism as he set up a massage table and told me to lie down with my face up. First, David gently cupped the back of my scalp to get an accurate reading of how screwed up I was. He said he did this by shooting a beam of pure white light down my spinal column and into my head. Then he told me about my problem areas: my throat, my feet and somewhere around my intestines. I asked about my back. He explained that, like all therapy, his expertise would allow me to resolve my anxiety after I targeted my past issues.
If I had to get to the root of my problems, what better way than with the aid of fairies, elves and sprites? Evidently, during that first session, they were all present. The elves acted like dust mites, cleaning out my toxic feet. The fairies told David, in what I imagined were squeaky voices, that the build-up in my lower pelvic region was tied to the persistent pain in my left shoulder. And the sprites helped to remove the rest of my oozing negativity by playing a game of sorts, like Mary Poppins when she cleaned up. Forty-five minutes passed as he lightly touched random parts of my body, wincing elaborately as he ejected all of my bad toxins by violently shooing them away. When he finished, I stood up feeling slightly woozy and floated home. I had to admit the result: I felt fantastic.
I reported to my dad that my limbs were still intact and no inappropriate favors were requested in exchange for David’s unconventional treatment. In fact, I couldn't wait to travel an hour to the Upper West Side to get another high dose of good energy from my new favorite and free therapist. This time, he put on music to set the mood. “The Whale Rider soundtrack, since you're related to the Mer family,” he said as he set the volume low, referencing my apparent connection to mermaids and other sea creatures. For David, this was all great fun, and he sported a healthy grin as he prepped. I figured that his spinal cord fluid was like Baby Bear's porridge: just right.
He leaned over me and waved his hands over my face. They began to flutter wildly as if I were dreaming. He never used words like mantra or chakra to describe the process. Instead, he flaunted a modern vocabulary that sounded less new age-y. I raised an eyebrow when he told me that he had gotten “online” and that he was now able to “download” what the sprites, fairies and elves were revealing to him about my body. After we were done, he informed me that he’d transformed my negativity into unconditional love. It sounded like a holistic greeting card since I was lonely and new in town, I ate up every word.
I continued seeing him on a weekly basis, feeling better with each session. During a recent visit, I had my first breakthrough and cried. So did David. Sure, it was awkward, but I just rolled with it along with the rest of our shared journey. I can't decipher if it’s his concentrated care that makes me feel better or because I rest assured throughout our sessions that he has an average day job that compares to my own. All I know is, it doesn't really matter. My spine and my head have never felt better—and I found a new friend.
