MY STORY

At age eleven. I began fighting competitively in traditional martial arts tournaments. By age seventeen, I was at the top of my game. Around that time, at a shiai (a tournament held exclusively for our school), I experienced something that could only be described as transcendent. I became Cobra.

My fellow competitors and I were fighting outside in the shadows of a hot August afternoon. This was at a time when my sensei (teacher) permitted me to fight the young men in our dojo (school). This added for me, as a young woman, an extra sense of honor and excitement. I was one of the few women at the school permitted to fight men in tournaments. Already successful through several of the day’s matches, I moved up the rankings as a finalist. Now, in the last match, I fought for first place.

Exhausted from the heat, I pushed myself beyond any limits I had ever experienced while fighting. Everything moved in slow motion and I could feel my body coming into perfect balance. I experienced my body in the form of a cobra balancing in a smooth rocking motion and ready to strike at any moment.

Reacting automatically to my opponent’s movements, I delivered the quick kick to the head for which I had become infamous, a strike as quick as the cobra’s poisonous bite. I won the match, but more than that, I had had a mystical insight. It was not until years later that this experience of Cobra would open up new wisdom for me. Balance was essential for my success as a fighter, but more, CobraBalance would eventually save my life.

Martial arts practice and teaching was an important aspect of my identity into my mid-twenties. Then, peaceful pursuits like yoga and dance drew more of my attention. Frankly, I was tired of being hit. The many injuries I had ignored over fifteen years as a fighter were beginning to manifest as chronic joint pain.

As I reinvented myself as a peaceful warrior, the mystical experience I had in my youth stayed with me. Yoga brought me an inner stillness comparable to the slow-motion calm I felt as a fighter. Dancing with shamanic healers and in tribal rites taught me that through conscious movement, there was a way to heal my body, my mind and my spirit simultaneously.

In 2006, I began dancing frequently at Gypsie Nation gatherings, a sacred space for ritual ecstatic dance. I had also been studying Alexander Technique with Nada Diachenko at the University of Colorado Dance Program. Then, during one of Gypsie Nation’s ecstatic dance rituals, I had an incredible breakthrough. The training I had undergone in the Alexander Technique meshed with all my previous studies and culminated in a magic moment.

During the dance, once again, I became Cobra, but this time I understood what the experience meant. While undulating in a rhythmic sway, I became aware of my spine; I began to experience fine muscle control ordinarily relegated to the autonomic nervous system. In this moment, the experience of Cobra was not just a strange, mystical hallucination brought on by heat exhaustion and adrenaline at a shiai, but a state of awareness that I could develop in myself and help others experience.

Shortly after this second breakthrough experience of Cobra, I would have the opportunity to use all I had learned to heal myself. It was as if the universe was forcing me to a test. I am living proof that the CobraBalance system works. On January 1, 2008, I had a ski accident that rearranged my life. At first, I did not know the accident was serious. I skied the rest of the day, only feeling a crunch in my neck when I reached to grab the ski poles dropped in the “yard sale” wreckage.

The next day, limping around downtown Missoula, Montana, I suddenly felt I was having a stroke. The worst headache of my life went through me like a hot poker and the right side of my face drooped and twitched slightly. From that day onward, I experienced excruciating headaches twice daily that lasted about three hours each. A doctor diagnosed me with cluster headaches and prescribed heavy, painkilling drugs that made me zombie-like. I could not even leave my apartment to do my own grocery shopping.

After over a month of the debilitating headaches, the pain was so severe that I thought about taking my own life. It is still shocking to imagine how quickly one can go from being a healthy athlete to a home-bound patient. I knew I had to try something other than the traditional prescriptions if I was going to survive, so once again, I decided to fight.

Frustrated by formal American medical practices, I sought out acupuncture, chiropractics, and returned to my Alexander Technique instructor, Nada Diachenko. A second x-ray showed that I had moved two of the vertebrae in my neck slightly askew. The stress on my neck was affecting neural pathways. Over the next two months I resisted taking painkillers as often as possible and used the principals of Alexander Technique fused with my earlier practices of martial arts, yoga and dance to heal myself.*

The results saved my life. Now, CobraBalance incorporates what I have learned into a system that may help you.

*The hands-on help of several healers was invaluable to my healing practice. If you are struggling with a serious injury, do not underestimate the help of experts. I was blessed with a team of healers: chiropractors, massage therapists, an acupuncturist, a physical therapist, and of course, private sessions with my Alexander Technique instructor, Nada Diachenko.
---------------------------------------
PART 1, PRINCIPALS: