Body and Mind

By Matthew Sanford, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Some people are born with a smile on their face, and I am one of them. By that I mean that my mouth does not possess the ability to form a frown, like a tongue that cannot curl. Instead, the outer corners of my mouth turn slightly upward, making my default expression a smile.

For most of my childhood that smile reflected how I felt. My nickname was Jolly because my expression and pudgy cheeks hinted a giggle was just around the corner. And why not? Life was full of fun—running around with my older brother and sister, playing hockey, basketball and baseball, canoeing Minnesota's many lakes.

Then, in 1978, when I was 13, my life and my family were shattered by a terrible car accident. I had no memory of it. After three and a half days in the hospital, I opened my eyes. Relief lit my brother's face. He slipped out of the room and returned with our mother.

I heard noises: a heart monitor, a respirator, various beeps. My 13-year-old reaction was, Wow, a realistic dream, cool. My endurance spent, I drifted off again.

"Matt, you gotta pull through...I don't know if I can go on without you." My brother's imploring tone told me something was very wrong.

I motioned for a pen and paper. Dad and Laura? My mother closed her eyes. My brother couldn't look at me either. "They didn't make it," he said.

My next scrawl: What happened?

My brother's voice cracked. "We were in a car accident...skidded off a bridge."

You two?

"I jammed my shoulder and Mom hit her head pretty hard, but we're fine."

Where are we?

"Mercy Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa."

Me? There was a long pause. Finally my mom said, "Matt, you've been in a coma. It's serious."

I can't feel my legs.

"You've broken your back. They think you're paralyzed from the chest down. They say you'll never walk again."

The death of my father and sister hardly registered. What I locked into was that I needed a way to keep focused and going forward. I couldn't dwell on my physical damage: the crushed vertebrae, broken wrists, fluid-filled lung and injured pancreas. So I told myself: My mother and brother desperately need me to live.

And I did. But to survive excruciating procedures, I learned how to dislocate my mind from my body. My mind found a silent place into which I could retreat.

One day in the hospital, I felt tingles, surges, mild burning. Neurologists poked and prodded my lower half. "Whatever you are feeling is not connected to anything. The sensations exist only in your head," they told me.

That convinced me. I stopped listening to what was left of the relationship between my mind and my body.

We eventually returned to Duluth and worked to construct a life. For me that meant rehabilitation. I learned to use the bathroom again, to get around, to drive, to live with a wheelchair.

I finished high school and went to the University of Minnesota. Something didn't feel right, though. I had this nagging sense that I was not to simply live a normal life. There had to be a purpose to what I had experienced. Yet I couldn't figure out what it was.

I grew more disillusioned. I wore gray clothes; I bought a gray car with a gray interior. I lived in a gray apartment. Unconsciously I created a world that mirrored how I felt. My smile deadened.

I started graduate school in California but had to take a leave of absence. I told my graduate advisor why: "I'm coming apart."

That's when I met yoga teacher Jo Zukovich. It was April 1991. A woman I knew set up a meeting with Jo, who taught in San Diego but came to Santa Barbara once every six weeks to teach a workshop.