What is Your Earliest Distressing Memory?

What is Your Earliest Distressing Memory?

By Carolyn

I experienced the power of breathwork six months before hearing the term “holotropic.” Like Billy Pilgrim, I’m spastic in time.

“What is your earliest, most distressing memory?”

That prompt led to this painting. This painting led me to Holotropic Breathwork.

“What is your earliest, most distressing memory?”

Everyone in the group had been given the same prompt, and we spent a quarter hour journaling and sharing.

The scene is black and white except for the red engines of a small toy airplane. The chunky toy plane is on the floor, and the floor is made up of large black and white tiles. I’m at my maternal grandparents’ apartment in New York. Suddenly, the red lights are twirling, a sound like an ambulance makes. I’m filled with panic in a “danger Will Robinson” way, without the irony.

And then, the memory changes. It’s a real plane. Or a model of a real plane. The planes keep cycling back and forth.

Someone in group had a copy of The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. On the cover of the book was Matisse’s “Icarus,” plate VIII from the illustrated book, Jazz.

The duality of that image made me want to paint again. Icarus appears to be falling back to Earth, we see the sun as he falls, snapshots from a spinning and descending viewpoint. Icarus also appears to be dancing in a nightclub full of flashing lights. Can both images be true?

My first sketch was a disaster. I replaced the black figure of Matisse’s Icarus with a candle lit birthday cake. My earliest, most distressing memory is of a plane, not of birthday cake. Why would I do that?

I began again, replacing the dancer/Icarus with a plane, the sun/stars/lights of the jazz club with the logo of National Airlines. I flew National on my first solo flight, February 9, 1968. A trip to visit my maternal grandparents wintering in Miami Beach. I flew alone, two days after my third birthday.

An early sketch:

A few months after that initial prompt, I brought “Icarus/Ishmael” to the support group I was participating in. The facilitator asked to see the painting rotated ninety degrees. His memory is image based. “Again” he said. When I flipped the painting another ninety degrees, I had a moment of deja vu. Had I seen a plane from high above? An out of body experience while flying?

There were two planes.

When I was 2 ½ , everyone I lived with at my grandparents apartment in New York flew to Montreal. They left me with my Aunt and cousins for a week. A toy plane as a parting gift. A week is an eternity to a 2 ½ -year-old.

The second plane was the coverup of a plot hatched the moment he laid eyes on me, in August of 1967. The summer of love. My mother’s new boyfriend. He had six months to try orchestrate the re-enactment of the trauma of his third birthday upon me, on my third birthday in February. If he could arrange to send me away to Florida the day after the abuse, the mental and physical signs of trauma would be masked by a plane flight.

I searched “Out of Bodies Experiences” [OBEs] in pubmed and found a study on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy [HBOT] which induced OBEs in a small number of study participants. This led me to a different study about spontaneous delayed memory recall during HBOT.

Recovery of Repressed Memories in Fibromyalgia Patients Treated With Hyperbaric Oxygen – Case Series Presentation and Suggested Bio-Psycho-Social Mechanism

After reading the paper on repressed memories, I decided to try an n=1 experiment. I had a dab of hash, hopped on my indoor rower and got my heart and breath rate high. I got off the rower, stood in front of the wood stove, bent at the hip like a runner out of breath, and I started breathing as hard as I could, directing the oxygen to my brain as I breathed. I stopped breathing heavily, stood straight and took a deep breath. I fell into a chair and had a vision/journey:

To my right, I saw a piece of fabric that looked like the invisibility cloak from the Harry Potter movies. It shimmered, but I could see through it. The fabric tied itself together in a knot, high above my head. The fabric came down and secured my wrist to the arm of the chair I was sitting in. My head turned left. I felt something in my throat and then three points on the outside of my neck. No pain, just a sensation. An impression.

The next day, I had a flashback.

I had recently purchased my first bidet seat. I loved everything about it except for the underpowered blower. When I pushed the blower button, the whole thing seemed to make a huge racket and then delivered an unimpressive amount of air.

When I had the flashback, the sound of the dryer revving up sounded like an old propeller airplane and somehow, I felt as though I were being strapped into a seat. An airplane seat.

The flight to Florida would have been only 24 hours after being tied to that chair the day after my third birthday.

I thought the stewardess was going to do to me what my mother’s fiancé had done the day before. After tying my arms and legs to the chair.

The second time, I did the only thing I could do to protect myself. I left my body. The painting I made 55 years later is what I saw below me.

I knew what the vision meant. It scared me so I took a detour and spent 9 weeks learning how to grow psychedelic mushrooms. My favorite variety is named Jedi Mind Fuck.

I assure you, after a dab of hash, the resemblance was clear.