Becoming the First Rebirther on Hopiland
Part I From Re-Birther to School Counselor
It is late August and at thirty-five, I am four months pregnant with an alive being growing inside of me. I am returning to Indian Country ninety miles northeast of Flagstaff Arizona after completing my Rebirthing training and camping under the stars near the Bristlecone Pine Forest.
In this moment, deep within arises a desire to live spontaneously. I feel renewal, freer of the past. An eagerness to begin again emerges here in this wilder environment, full of open wide spaces, at an altitude of seven thousand feet, without the confinement of city life and expected norms that go with it. I sense a reverence for nature’s essence surrounding me, through bright intense sun, thunderstorms of rain, and harvest time of ripened corn, melons, peppers and squash.
It’s late summer when I pack up my belongings on Navajo to move from Ganado to Hopiland. A neighbor teacher approaches me to buy my river blue metallic VW convertible superbeetle. I sell it to him for cash and return to Santa Monica where Lenny, my former beau lived. He agreed to meet for lunch.
I am primarily in the LA area to buy a used vanagon camper with a popup top for my house on wheels.
Waiting on the paperwork for the van, I stop at my favorite coffee shop in Santa Monica. While standing in a fairly long line, a man behind me, whispers in my ear, “You smell wonderful and I love pregnant women.“
Startled yet intrigued, I turn to see a tall gorgeous man with sandy brown hair, fit tan body and bright loving playful eyes. He smiles and we sit in the sun drinking our coffees. He mentions he lives around the corner. I follow him back to his place and we make love on his twin bed.
The moment I melt into his strong muscular arms, our bodies soften, hips rock like water and swim into union with steady even breaths. We linger in each other’s arms, his eyes caress my heart and as we sigh in sync.
Trusting our lovemaking was what was meant to be, I choose to let go of judgments about it.
On the wings of lovemaking and clarity concerning my next step, I drive back from Santa Monica to Hopiland to return to camp in my used vanagon at the Hopi Cultural Center near the third village of Second Mesa, named Shungopavi.
Several people have confirmed the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) will be hiring school counselors on Hopi. I apply late August to the the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) for a school counseling position and wait to hear if I’m hired at Second Mesa Day School.
After applying, I receive a call reminding me Leonard Orr would be at the Hopi Cultural Center offering an advanced training — he is requesting I attend. I choose to give Leonard Orr one more chance with this advanced training. The first was when I traveled down to Scottsdale to meet him, and found Smoking Rebirthers as part of my initial training experience. The second, earlier in June when I participated in the month long rebirthing certification with him at Sierraville Hot Springs.
During temperature-training, Leonard guided us personally along the north rim of Lake Tahoe, building my body’s stamina for contrasting temperatures as well as my immune system. How he spoke about fire purification confirmed for me he was speaking from personal experience. But I felt disappointment with him, as he — the primary facilitator — was not available for individual interaction nor feedback during the entire month of June. Instead, Leonard spent most of his time in Sierra Hotsprings, rebirthing himself. While I understood that he believed he was holding a purification space for everyone immersed in the water this way, I needed more time with him.
The fire ceremony, guided by him, proved a powerful purification for me. I sat tending the fire all night long transmuting deep ancestral rage, agitation, and resentment . Finding and collecting the wood from nature while feeding the fire to purify my essence body empowered all dimensions of my being.
Recalling the June elemental empowerment of fire and water, and still integrating in September, I decide that since I am already here, I will participate in Leonard’s training.
While camping, I observe several rows of peach trees planted in an orchard next to Route 264 across from the Hopi Cultural Center campgrounds. It is here I meet Leonard Orr again for his advanced rebirthing training.
Gunning the engine to seventy driving along highway 264, with the sky above radiating turquoise blue, billowy thunder clouds like sheep wool puffs above. Late to the rebirthing training with Leonard Orr, I pull my blue vw pop up into the parking lot between the Hoop of the World Hopi Cultural Center and the cedar lined campground. Dry tinder for fire lies in piles by the open fire pits. Indian summer blazing hot, beads of sweat cover my face and chest. I lock the doors and speed walk to room 111.
The door is ajar, five people are seated on two queen beds. Leonard is running more water in his bathtub. Kate, the woman from Washington, DC tells me, “The water here is weet well water and Leonard has been rebirthing in his tub since nine. I glance at my watch to see it’s nearly eleven in the morning. The room looks dim with drawn curtains. Several candles are lit and sitting on the bedside tables.
Leonard is known as the father of rebirthing, continues breathing in a circle. I attune to his cadence while placing my things by the door and join the others sitting on their beds. We divide into dyads and one person sits while the other breathes in a conscious connected way. Music of birds singing, rainfall and thunder is playing from a portable cassette player.
I wonder if Leonard will leave the solace of his bathroom this group training. When I spent a month at Consciousness Village in Sierraville, California, he stayed submerged in his bath inside his trailer occasionally venturing to one of the hot spring pools at night when most people were sleeping.
I was drawn to rebirthing as a way to heal from childhood traumas and emotional pain and met Leonard in Scottsdale at a rebirthing introductory a year ago.
I sigh and rest my palm on my belly, connect my breath, letting go and arriving at the same time. One of the men in the group put on a drumming tape at Leonard’s request. The drum beats pulse through the room providing the grounding to follow my inhale and exhale.
My finger tips tingle and then a band of energy releases around my head and my body feels heavy and light at the same time. My arms, too heavy to lift, and legs feel like leaden weights. My heart soars to where the clouds drift in the gusts of wind across the second mesa village of Shungopavi, the nearest village to the cultural center hotel, campground and restaurant where this group is staying for a week.
Leonard finally leaves his bath to speak to our rebirthing group. He nods to everyone as his eyes embrace our entire circle. Carol, in charge of finances speaks about choosing a person to be a resident rebirther on Hopi. I am selected and I am expected to publish a monthly newsletter to share my progress in exchange for financial support from volunteers of our rebirth association.
My body tenses, my throat gulping for a full breath, and I nearly faint. I have no idea how to approach a Hopi to offer them a rebirthing session. Too shy to admit this, I manage to clear my throat and say, “Thank you for this opportunity.” Out of the corner of my eye, a centipede scurries across the wall and my skin crawls with it.
At the closing gathering, Leonard asks me about Michael — another rebirther and the father of my child — and if I’d heard from him after June, and I respond with a no.
What I find most annoying about this is that he was again unavailable for me to speak with him individually. I didn’t feel I had an opportunity to bring up my concerns regarding the lack of ethics during the California training — mainly, rebirthers having sex with rebirthees as well as rebirthers who were polluting their lungs with cigarettes.
Leonard’s expressed desire to have rebirthing become part of the public school curriculum overrides my intent to clear the air with him concerning rebirthing ethics, sex and smoking.
The entire workshop group then chooses me to become the first rebirther on the Hopiland Reservation, before I have secured a position as the school counselor. I find this unsettling and question inwardly the ethics and validity of rebirthing local children while being the school counselor or not.
When I mention I do not have the position with the school, the group decides they will support me financially, make monthly pledges, and I agree to publish a monthly newsletter of my progress as the initial rebirther of Hopiland.
A few months later, after I am offered the counseling position, I mail out the first newsletter to the eight people who contributed to me financially. I haven’t rebirthed anyone else on Hopi but myself and my unborn child in the sacred waters of my bathtub.
The following spring, after I had my baby and returned to Hopi, a couple of rebirthers came to visit me from the Arizonan valley of Scottsdale and Phoenix, Mary Caroline Meadows and Ron Long. They stayed for a weekend to meet me to see how I was doing as the resident rebirther.
They didn’t seem that interested in speaking with or meeting any Hopi people when I offered to take them up top to meet my friends in Shungopavi. Mary was a sunny person with light blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes and an aliveness that shone from her face.
“Have you talked with any Hopi about physical immortality?” Mary asked.
“No, I’ve done some breathwork with a few children I see for counseling at school.”
Ron says, “Well, it’s important to open the door of possibility to as many as you can.”
I thought to myself he sounded more like a born again Christian than a rebirther.
“I can only handle one thing at a time for now,” I responded.
“You must come down to a meeting and meet Charles Brown,” Mary said.
“I don’t understand what you’re talk about.” I blurt out.
“The Eternal Flame Foundation is a group of immortals who meet weekly in Scottsdale.”
I clear my throat, and know for certain I don’t feel attached to my physical body being able to last forever and offered, “I think the spirit of a person lives on past the body.”
This knowing came from my experience of my mother communicating with me in dreams and in spirit three years after she died.
Relieved when they left, I realized this was the part of the rebirthing training that had seemed too extreme to me when I was at Consciousness Village; Leonard’s emphasis on Babaji and physical immortality. Neither of these teachings seemed real nor relevant to me at the time nor now.
Crone Wisdom: Even though you felt pressure from Leonard and the group to spread the word about rebirthing on Hopiland, you chose to stay in integrity with your heart and to introduce helpful tools from rebirthing, like circular breathing, with the children individually and in smaller groups in your office. You found a way to bring more healing to help students by providing paints and colored pencils for art therapy, clay, and sand tray as ways they could creatively express what they could not speak of. You facilitated a sacred and safe space to feel their feelings and to integrate challenging experiences in their families and in their lives.
In your six months of communicating with the rebirthing group via monthly newsletters, you were honest about what you could manage to introduce ethically to the school curriculum. I am proud of you for standing your ground in integrity and parting ways with this cultish rebirthing community when it felt time to do so.