In which I am undone by love

It’s no secret that I love ila products.  In a world of fudges and half-truths and compromises, this stuff shines out pure and clear with integrity and authenticity. Okay, it’s not cheap but then, more and more I think I’d rather have one truly wonderful thing than a whole bunch of cheap bits of nonsense.  In the field of beauty we’re sold so much crap, truly we are. So many lies.  Anyhow, this isn’t a sales pitch – like I’ve said before, they don’t pay me. There are just some businesses that so chime with me that I love to shout about them. 

But, funny thing, I’d never had an ila treatment.  

‘Let’s fix that,’ said Philly Vass, their adorable PR.  Okay, I can hear your thoughts - you think all PRs are grasping bitches who only love you when you’re a columnist on a daily?  Well, mainly you have a good point but Philly really is different.  She turns down lucrative accounts if they don’t chime with her core values. And she’s stuck with me over my year of being entirely bonkers.  Plus she has a pug puppy.  Enough said.

‘You have to see Holly.’ 

‘I do?’

‘Yes.’ 

‘Okay.’

So we had a coffee at Paul in Marylebone and then she walked me to Gielly Green (one of those slightly intimidating hairdressing places) and introduced me to Holly who was about half my size and not remotely intimidating.

‘My job is done,’ said Philly with a knowing smile, and left us together.  
I felt nurtured before I’d even taken off my boots. If you’re a spa or massage virgin, I beg you, please, go see Holly.  One thing I think so many therapists and spas get wrong is that they don’t tell you exactly what to do.  And I figure that’s what puts a lot of people off.  But with Holly, there is no guesswork involved. There is no need to do anything in fact except let go and just be.

Her room was a small temple, a womb-like cocoon of sensory soothing. Softly lit, warm, embracing. Scents enveloped me – some familiar, some not so. And music, one of the gently captivating ila CDs that I love so much.

As I sat swathed in a thick towel, she knelt and bathed my feet in such a rapt honouring that it almost brought tears to my eyes. It put me in mind of Mary washing the feet of Christ.  Her attention was totally there – I felt noticed and blessed – elevated yet humbled. Then I lied me down on the couch, naked under the softest, warmest fluffy towels (honestly, you don’t feel exposed or weird, trust me on this) and she started the ‘kundalini’ massage.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what I expected but it wasn’t this.  She didn’t say a word, just started touching my back, so so gently.

No! 

I wanted to beg her to go harder, dig deeper. As I've said before, I like my massage hard and tough: it’s why I tend to prefer male bodyworkers. But then the fight just kind of went out of me and I was simply slayed by gentleness, beguiled by softness.

It felt like some kind of initiation into an ancient feminine mystery. A benediction. A soft yet insistent teasing apart of all the toughness, a dismantling of all the harsh walls. She got under my defences, not by smashing them down but by soft insistent love. 

Strange images flashed up.  At one point I ‘saw’ her extract some horrible insect. It was so clear and visceral I nearly started off the couch. And oh,when she touched my heart area, there were deep stabs of pain - not from her hands, but oh so deep inside. I was undone. Tears rose and then quietly dispersed.

When she was finally finished (oh too soon, too soon) and I sat sipping a glass of water, she looked at me with huge compassion.

‘Tell me,’ I whispered. ‘Tell me.’

‘You’re so guarded,’ she said softly. ‘Your poor, poor heart.’

I nodded. ‘I know.’

And as I sat on the top of the 73 bus on the way back to Jane’s flat, I felt a wave of sadness wash over me - like the rain outside. And no, don’t start thinking, ‘Oh, poor Jane, how awful’ because really it was lovely. An opening up.  A softening. Because I’d been building up my carapace again, thinking I needed to be oh so tough; to not feel, not trust, not dare to open. And something a friend had said had been worrying at me. She said she was trying to think more like a man, to compartmentalize, to attach less importance to the whole experience of relating. And while I understand that, I felt, very strongly it wasn’t the path for me.

I have been oh so masculine in so many ways in my life, oh so tough. So in control. I’ve dismissed and diminished the soft feminine, the woman in me. Maybe it’s time for her to smile shyly and emerge from the shadows. 

“In the midst of loneliness, in the midst of fear, in the middle of feeling misunderstood and rejected, is the heartbeat of all things, the genuine heart of sadness… We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering, we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is, we only become more fearful, more hardened, and more alienated.”  The love that will not die, Pema Chodron. 

Wild and free...

I have worked sixteen hour days for the past fortnight.  Minimum.  I have eaten at my desk (when I’ve remembered to) and fallen asleep over the keyboard (yes, when I woke up my nose was indented with the letter B and the screen was flashing ominously). One night I even dreamed I got through a whole shedload of stuff and woke feeling a profound sense of satisfaction – until I realised, with sinking heart, that it had all been emailed and filed in the land of sleep. 

And what do I have to show for all this effort?  Not a whole lot, truth be told. A few ‘maybes’; a couple of ‘possiblys’; quite a lot more ‘no thank yous’ but mainly... silence. 

Never mind. You carry on, right?  You don’t give up. And all the time you’re putting on a brave face, smiling and laughing and pretending everything is hunky-dory.  But by heck sometimes it’s hard to keep one’s spirits up. And, I’ll be honest, I think I may be running out of steam.  Which is why I can’t wait for Friday. 

Come Friday I am waving my credit card at the train station and taking myself up to London.  My bestest friend Jane (she of chicken-eating spider fame) is off to Southwold for her own version of escape. ‘Do you want to come?’ she said, a while back. ‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘But, could I borrow your flat instead?’  ‘Of course you can,’ she said.  The way she does.

Cos, see, I had people I needed to meet in London in May.  But, the way these things go, the best-laid plans go astray and the right people will be in the wrong places.  You have to laugh, right? 

Ben Barnett

Still. I shall go nonetheless.  I am hoping to meet up with my old editor from HarperCollins and I'm going to be reviewing some luscious treatments.  So I get to experience the Kundalini massage at Gielly Green which uses products from the divine ila-spa range.  And I also get to meet Ben Barnett who comes highly recommended by Nicola Hughes. Ben does what he calls ‘three dimensional bodywork’ using a hydrotherm massage bed.  As he works on you he also takes you on a guided visualisation.  ‘Think of two words that capture how you want to feel,’ he said in his email.  Eh what?  ‘You know, energised, peaceful, positive, that kind of thing...’

Um. How do I want to feel?  In two words.  Just two words?  That stopped me in my tracks.

And the negatives flooded in.  It’s easy to know what I don’t want. I’m fed up of feeling tired, overstretched, underappreciated, washed up, old, broke, misunderstood, sad, angry, frustrated, bored. Okay so that's a bit melodramatic but I really would like to stop feeling like I’m banging my head against the proverbial brick wall again and again and again. I'd love not to feel the need to pander to delicate egos all the time. I’m sick of walking on eggshells.  I’m fed up to the back teeth of people making promises they have no intention of keeping. And I am really really really tired of being cold.

But that’s no good for Ben, is it?  Yet the positives just sounded too floaty, too wishy washy.  Energized – yeah great, but for what?  Serene? I’m not a freaking lake. 

What did you use? I asked Nicola. ‘Proud and peaceful,’ she snapped back instantly. Nicola is always so certain, so sure. Peaceful? Nah, I’m bored of peaceful. Proud? Nah, I don’t really have any self-esteem issues that would warrant that.

So… what then? Rich? Sounds greedy.  I don’t need rich anyhow, just solvent would be nice. But that makes me sound like glue.  Abundant?  Vegetation springs to mind.

And then a whole pile of music crashed through my head.  Images from the third book in my series of novels accompanied them. Wide open roads. Deserts. An open-top car with music blaring out.   

There you go, said my subconscious.  There you go.  Two words for you, my lovely.  Wild and Free.  Wild and Free.