Remembering Virginia Veach: July 7, 1932 – October 21, 2012

Virginia Veach, long-time Sensory Awareness leader, long-time president of the Sensory Awareness Leader Guild, and an amazing force in this world, died on October 21, 2012. She will be dearly missed by the Sensory Awareness community. I had the priviledge of interviewing her in 2009.

Every Moment Filled with Sensing

Virginia Veach speaks about the relevance of Sensory Awareness for her work as a psychotherapist and physical therapist, how it helped her living through severe illness and how it informed her engagement in a Cambodian refugee camp.

This is an edited excerpt of an interview for the Charlotte Selver Oral History and Book Project. Supporters of this project can listen to more of this interview on the members pages. 

San Rafael CA, December 13, 2009

Stefan: How did you meet Charlotte Selver?

Virginia: I went to Esalen to work with Fritz Perls in 1967.  And while I was there, Charlotte was there.  In September of the following year, when I moved there to be a resident at Esalen, that’s when I really started working with her.  Because it was this beautiful fresh breeze blowing.  It was as though I’d come home. I didn’t go looking for Charlotte because I didn’t know about her.  But when I met her it was immediate that I knew she was someone that I wanted to work with and discover what was occurring in me and in life, in the life around me – it was exactly what I wanted.  

My reason for going to work with Fritz had to do with the fact that I had a very large tumor that I was needing help with, or felt that I needed help with it.  And what I really needed was the sensing that I was doing with Charlotte

In ’72, when I began Ting-Sha Institute, Charlotte and Charles were very much a part of that. They came up and gave wonderful sessions. As I was starting that residential treatment center, Charlotte wanted to be sure that I would be offering sensing . She wanted to be sure that I considered Sensory Awareness as part of the process.  Every day.

Stefan: How did that happen that you wanted to start this institute?

Virginia: That was because I wanted to integrate different therapies.  I wanted to integrate meditation and creativity with sensing, and digging in the garden with sensing, and cooking and how people interact with one another and relate to one another and the environment.  So we’d have sessions of group therapy, and then other sessions during the day of sensing and then we’d put the two together and have both the sensing and the therapy at the same time.  And the art and the therapy, and the meditation – all mixed together.

Stefan: What was the purpose of the institute?

Virginia: It was a residential program. There were three main groups of people that we worked with.  One group were teenagers who were really having a hard time at home, getting into trouble. Then people who were retired forcibly but didn’t want to stop being productive, and didn’t know where their life was going.  So the teenagers and the retirees really fit together; they had an awful lot to share with one another.  It was really fun to see that kind of teamwork of “what’s life going to be next?”  

Another group that interestingly enough fit reasonably well together were the people who came for a retreat, for their own quiet.  We also had some people there who were quite disturbed.  Usually they were schizophrenics, but other forms of mental illness also.  They fit very well together.  They could be quiet together and enjoy one another in a way that really helped the people who were very agitated – that they could just be with somebody – didn’t have to talk to them. They could work quietly together in the garden, or they could work in the pottery studio and really enjoy being together, which was a surprise.  We had people who no longer wanted to be in a half-way house, and couldn’t be on their own.  And people who wanted to go deeper into what their profession could be. Generally they were psychologists, psychiatrists or social workers, anybody in the helping professions.  They wanted to come and stay for a 3-month period. Then people wanting to get off various drugs – wanting to be somewhere where they’d be safe.

And then after that is when we did the cancer retreats.

Stefan:  So it changed into something else.

Virginia:  Yes. The cancer retreats didn’t happen until we came to West Marin.  It didn’t stay in Occidental. Charlotte would ask a lot about it.  But she also was very, very interested in the work that I did in the Cambodian Refugee Camp.

Stefan: Tell me about that.

Virginia: I remember seeing on television news the people struggling, crawling on the ground, trying to get to a refugee camp, get across the border, and they didn’t have enough water, they didn’t have enough food, it was just a horrific situation.

Stefan:  And the year was . . .

Virginia: 1979 and 80. The camps were really just opening up in 79, despite the fact that this had been a problem for several years.  It just seemed so wrong that I would be sitting here in heaven while my brothers and sisters were in hell, and I wanted to do something to try to help.  I contacted various voluntary agencies to see if they were sending teams over.  I got a call back saying, basically, how soon can you go.  I said, right away I can go.  But I wanted to take people with various capabilities.  I took a carpenter, and I took technicians; people who could cook. I didn’t know what we were going be dealing with.  It wasn’t just going to be medicine, obviously, but nobody could say where we would go.  Nobody could say what the diseases were we would be facing. And nobody could say what would be needed when we got there.  Our first team was wonderful.  We got there and we were shown a spot: It was just bamboo poles, a thatched roof and some rock.  Thank goodness we had a carpenter.  

Joan Baez’s mother gave us sewing machines so people could put together scraps of clothes and make something to wear out of them. They could come in and use the sewing machines, so that was fun.  All that was going on while the building was going on, before we could have patients in there.

Stefan: What was your professional background?

Virginia: Psychology and physical therapy. It turned out that strangely enough that was probably really good because I was the only person in camp who had ever worked with polio and TB, and we had lots of polio cases and TB.  And lots of amputees.  And nobody who had ever tried to build crutches or worked with what happens with an amputee.  I was the only one in the camp who had ever done any of that.  So it was a good thing that I had that background.  

Virginia: We started as a family practice ward.  That meant that we were a catch-all. Anybody in the triage station they didn’t know what do to with was sent to us. Like the mothers that were so dehydrated: They didn’t have enough milk to feed the babies, and the water was so contaminated that if you gave milk to the babies and the water bottles weren’t boiled, the babies would die. We decided to take eye-droppers and drip boiled milk on the mother’s breast as the baby was suckling.  And hydrate the mother, not the baby.  So we’re madly hydrating the mother and dripping the eye-dropped milk for the baby and stimulating the mother’s lactating. We absolutely banned baby bottles.  They were killing the babies so fast. 

We also didn’t have much at all in the way of anesthesia.  That’s again where sensing came in.  We were able to do surgeries with people with no anesthesia and manage the pain just through Sensory Awareness, and my supporting people through that.  Every moment was filled with sensing.  

Sensing was so essential also because we had only two microscopes for 180,000 people.  There were some stethoscopes, and later the German surgical team brought x-ray capacity – and swiped our technician to run the x-ray machine.  That was it for diagnostic equipment.  Often the challenge was to figure out whether we’re talking about referred pain or not, when someone was in pain.  Was it pain in the front that referred from the back, or vice versa?  Was it referred from somewhere else and the area that the person was complaining about wasn’t the problem – very difficult to really pin things down unless you can work with sensing.  That way it can be traced back to its source to know more what’s going on.  It was so essential!

Stefan: Did you have an interpreter, or how did you work with people?

Virginia: We did.   And of course we had to also try to teach the interpreters the right words.  

Stefan: I was thinking in terms of Sensory Awareness, to work with an interpreter and they would have to understand what you were wanting, and then they would have to find words to pass that on.

Virginia: That’s right.

Stefan: That seems almost impossible to do.

Virginia: That’s right.

Stefan: But you did it.

Virginia: Well, often – there was one patient that was a monk and he came to us because he was incorrigible, we were told.  He was not cooperative.  He certainly didn’t look uncooperative to me.  He was a very, very sweet man.  He was starving to death, but he wouldn’t eat.  So I had to ask him what he needed.  My interpreter at that point was a young woman, and she said: “I’m sorry, this is really not something that’s acceptable for me to tell you.  I would not say no about anything else, but I can’t speak to the monk, so you’re going to have to find a man who will talk to him.”  So the man we found came over and then the cots that people were on were about this high, and the monk was lying down, so the interpreter had to get below the monk to speak to him.  Of course I didn’t know enough so they forgave me all my mistakes. I asked him why was it that he was finding eating so much of a problem and he said, “They serve lunch after noon.”  Immediately we all knew.  All we had to do was bring him something to eat before noon, and he’d eat it. So it’s that kind of give and take.  Why?  Ask!  Don’t just assume this is somebody who’s incorrigible. It’s all part of what sensing is about.

There was a little boy who had a spina bifida and a child was brought in who was in shock. We put the two boys together on the same bed.  They just lay and held each other.  And then little by little they got to exploring, and they’d feel their way around the bed with their fingers and then began to walk a little bit feeling their way, and then they’d begin to feel if there’s – how far the next bed was.  And the little one who was in shock was blind, and the spina bifida boy couldn’t walk on his own, but he could walk with help.  So the two of them, one of them guiding the other one – it was very dear.  

Stefan: Beautiful. I’d like to go back to the beginnings of your encounter with Charlotte. That tumor was part of your decision to go to Esalen. Were you helped by the work?

Virginia: Oh, very much so.  Yes.

Stefan: Can you say how?

Virginia: I was helped in – balancing probably is a reasonable way of putting it.  But also in working with the fact of the tumor.  What’s going on.  What’s actually happening in that process.  And then after I did finally have it surgically removed, sensing was very integral to the recovery process.  By that time it was just integral to my life.  

Everything that I did had sensing as its foundation, really.  Later, when I developed other issues – cancer and heart disease – and had various surgeries and recoveries – I’m sure that sensing really made it possible to stay alive. Two years ago, I had an ejection fraction of 20. The amount of blood that’s pumped out compared to the amount of the blood that’s retained in the heart is a ratio.  In my case, the amount of blood that was pumped out on every beat was 20%, and 80% was left in the heart. A strong heart pumps out most of what’s there to circulate, and mine was not.  Today, mine is 55%.  And every time they do these tests they say: “We don’t see this sort of thing happening.”  And almost always I’ll say: “Do you want to know what I’ve been doing?” And the answer is always: “No”.

Feeling, experiencing what’s going on, what’s needed: Is there any tension? Is there anything that I can do to allow support for each heart beat? Is there any holding going on in my chest that makes things harder for the heart? And feeling into whatever movement I’m doing. 

I can in times of quiet with sensing feel – I remember Charlotte used to talk about feeling to the bottom of your heart. The bottom of my heart got to the point that it wasn’t moving at all.  So when I would feel into it – sense what was going on – and really bring my attention to that area and see if there’s some way that I could improve the circulation, I could improve the electrical process, by just improving the awareness. The last time I had an echo they said that the apex of the heart was moving as part of the contraction of the heart.  It is sensing that made that possible I’m sure.

I remember when Charlotte came to visit me after I had surgery for cancer. She said: “Be sure not to hold your arm too close in.  Allow enough air so that your armpit can breathe.”  She would come to see me, and we could sit and have tea and we could talk about both of us having had cancer; what her experience was and what mine was and what sensing had done to contribute to her recovery.

Stefan: She amazingly survived breast cancer and many other illnesses and accidents.

Virginia: I talked with her when I broke my hip the first time . . .

Stefan: You’re a good student of Charlotte’s, you’re following her path thoroughly!  Cancer and hip surgery.

Virginia: Yes, it’s true. I broke my hip falling playing tennis.  The neck of the femur got compressed in the fall, and when I rolled back it twisted the head back.  They wanted to replace it, and I said no, just pin it. So they put a screw in it, and when it healed I wanted to have the screws taken out, so that I could work on trying to straighten that bone.  Because it was rotated so far back that it affected my motion in my hip.  And given that bones are plastic – in the real sense of that word, not in the material sense – I didn’t see any reason why it couldn’t with enough sensing begin to lengthen and straighten.  I told Charlotte what I was doing.  She was delighted. 

And then when I began losing the strength and the feeling in my legs and feet because of the problems I was having in my back, she was very interested in my plan to walk as normally as possible just by feeling what I could from wherever I could, whether it was in my thighs and trying then to be aware of how that must mean my foot would be.  So even though I couldn’t feel my feet, I could still sense where they must be by how my weight was coming down.

The first time I had an angioplasty (unblocking of a blood vessel), the doctor said: “It’s maybe going through cell by cell, but it’s way too blocked for us to get a tube through there.  And we certainly don’t have time to get you to the surgeon.” Which I didn’t want anyway, so that was fine.  

So he said: “What shall we do? It’s your choice, because this is a bad situation.”  

I said: “Well it seems to me that you need to work with me, and if we work together we can get it done.” 

He: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

I: “I will try opening as much as I can the vessels and I’ll let you know and you can try to move the tube forward, and then I’ll try to open a little farther and then you move the tube forward.”  

He said: “That’s impossible.  You can’t feel in there.”  

I: “Trust me, I think I can.”  

He: “Prove it.”  

I: “Okay, so start running the tube in me, and I will point from the outside and tell you where it is.  I’ll point to it as you’re progressing.”  

He said: “Okay”, and then: “How do you do that?”  

I said: “I’m just feeling.”  

So that’s what we did when we got to the blockage.  And I would sense into my heart and into those vessels to try to open as much as I could and then he could inch the tiny little tube through.  It was very successful.

I attribute all that to Sensory Awareness. It has been part of everything that’s helped support life for me.  And on and on and on – many other surgeries, and situations. I keep discovering more and more.  

Stefan: It’s interesting to me because for the past year I have had tendinitis in my shoulder. For a long time I thought: “I can help myself.” It got worse and worse. “I’m a Sensory Awareness leader, I can help myself.” Until I finally had to admit: “Okay, I cannot help myself”, and went to the “competition” – to a Feldenkrais practitioner.  So after months of treatments I’m getting much better. But it’s interesting and curious to me because my learning experience was to see my own limits. To acknowledge that I needed help.  And you were so daring. When everybody told you, you cannot help yourself, you knew you could and you did it.

Virginia: Well I think they’re both necessary.  You can’t function autonomously, really.  We do need help, and it’s a kind of give and take process. If you take Charlotte herself.  Look at all the surgeries she had.  That’s called help. We do our part as much as possible.  But I think that if we absolve ourselves from any responsibility, that’s when things can be not as good as they would be otherwise.

So I am still alive, despite everybody’s predictions that I shouldn’t be. I’ve beaten the odds on almost everything that I’ve tried, and I don’t know how long I can keep that up.

Stefan: How old are you now?

Virginia: Seventy-seven.  And I’ve been at this most of my life. It’s really been Charlotte who has made it possible for me to put it all together. I use it every day in my work.

Stefan: Now you work as a psychotherapist mainly?

Virginia: Yes.  But  just two days ago, I had a man telling me that he was having a terrible time with anxiety attacks, and so we stopped right then and there and we just did some sensing: How it felt to be sitting in the chair, his feet on the ground and his weight in the chair. He began to relax a bit and then I asked him about how he felt in his chest area, and he said that it felt like he was in a cage, and his heart was being squashed. So we worked with that for a while, and pretty soon he didn’t feel encaged anymore and then he could begin to talk and we could talk about what happened – but he had to do the sensing first. And that’s always true.  

Sometimes it will become obvious that what they need to do is draw and not talk at that moment.  Then I ask them just to feel the experience of a pencil on paper – not a writing pencil, but a color pencil, softer pencil – if they can feel the tooth of the paper through the pencil, and if they can respond to that as though they’re feeling a log or feeling the sand, just wander and feel it, what’s it like just to feel that, sensing what wants to happen, and just let your hand go where it wants to.  People come up with wonderful things that they didn’t have any idea they were going to talk about.  

I’ve had quite a few people who have discovered their own illness that way.  There was one woman who was quite sure from looking at her drawing that she had a mass in her lung, and went to the doctor and got an x-ray, and sure enough she had lung cancer.  The same kind of thing happens with dreams.  It will come out – the same message will come out on a piece of paper if they’re really willing to feel the paper.  Sensing is a way into our inner knowing of what’s going on in us.  Through a visual thing as well as our own sensing in the purest sense of the word. Some people are more willing to participate that way, and then they could go to directly feeling it within themselves.  It’s a way to introduce awareness.  But the hope is that I can get people really to sense without anything else to have to lead them in there. 

A lot of times people will have an asthma attack, and by sensing we can stop the asthma attack.  And certainly pain is a big one.  Pain is something that really we can work with. If I have someone who wants help with pain, I can work with questions like: ”Is it so intense that if it got a little more so, you couldn’t tolerate it?”  That’s important to find out.  “Are you willing to explore?  Are you willing to be curious about what you’re experiencing?” And if the person says yes, then that opens up the possibility of: ”What would happen if you got out of the way of the pain?  If you didn’t try to contain it;  If you didn’t try to manage it; What would happen?”  And often people will say, “Well it would get bigger.”  And I’d say, “How much bigger?”  So they’re feeling into does it go down the arm, does it go down the chest, does it go down the back, does it go across to the other shoulder, where does it go?

Then it will change nature. ”As it’s bigger, does it become warmer or cooler?  Does it become pulsing or steady? What happens?  And where does it stop?  How far does it go?  And if it does stop, what’s stopping it?” Because pain behaves like warmth.  It will radiate – well, sometimes it will get smaller.  So does warmth. It’s the same kind of thing.  It’s a sensation.  But you need to be curious about it in order for it to be interesting.  

And when the pain and the breath sensation come together, that’s where the action really is.  That’s no different from psychotherapy.  Contact is always where the action is.  So, “as your sensation of breathing begins to fill you, does the sensation of pain – do they touch each other?  And then what happens when they do?”  It’s all sensing.  “And if they don’t touch each other, what’s in the middle?  Why don’t they?  What is it that is going on? Not that you want to make them touch each other, but just find out.  Be curious about how they are with each other.”  It’s really quite surprising that most of the time the pain will turn to warmth.  And sometimes it’ll change to burning.  And then you say: “And if you let it get bigger?” Well, then it cools.  The farther out the warmth goes, the more it cools.  And then it kind of comes back into a non-painful state.  

Stefan: So you would sit with somebody and just guide them through that.

Virginia: Yes.

Stefan: And they would give you constant feedback?

Virginia: Right.  It’s just that we have an idea that we want to get rid of the pain.  And then it’s hard to be curious about it.

Stefan: Yes.

Virginia: I usually have an opportunity at some point to tell people about a patient that I had who did not have the capacity to feel pain. It was a terrible existence, because he never knew if he had a problem.  He never knew if he had strep throat.  He never knew if he’d burned himself accidentally.  He never knew if he had an abscessed tooth.  He was just constantly going to check to see if there was something, somewhere that he didn’t know about that needed attention.  He was miserable.

He didn’t have pain sensors.  And they’re so helpful!  They let us know right away that there’s a problem that needs attention.  Or there’s an area that’s uncomfortable that needs attention. And we can’t have it be a pleasant sensation.  We wouldn’t do anything about it.

It’s such a gift, pain.  So it would be nice to be curious and see what it wants – what it’s telling, how is it – how are we in that.