Saturday morning

Before we could hear from Adolph or Imelda, we needed our blood pumping again (as if watching people sob onstage didn't get our hearts going enough) so we jumped up and danced to some disco beats for about 10 minutes. It seemed like we should move around for a song's worth of music, but we danced and jumped around for about 4 songs. And we had to do some of our wild hand waving and turning in circles while crammed tightly in with the people around us. My songs sounded like, "Y-M-C-oh, I'm sorry... It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-oh, excuse me..."

We ended our dance session with the group chant: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9--HUH! five or six times. Again, I started to feel somewhat mesmerized by the chant. Finally, we were allowed to sit back down.

Once we were all settled into our seats, Adolph came bounding on stage and congratulated all of us on a job well done. He was the same confident, intense guy from the night before, but this time he seemed angrier. Sometimes very angry.

"Here's the thing," he told us. "You're full of shit. Every one of you out there is full of shit. You're going through your life doing things and you have no idea why you do what you do. You make up all kinds of reasons, but you have no clue. We are rationalizing machines. We are all completely full of shit." He was clearly pissed off at all of us, but he was also earnestly trying to help us.

Adolph explained to us that we are all socialized to quash our needs and wants in order to make other people (ie, our parents) happy. Every time we were told we couldn't have a piece of candy or that we needed to share, our inner soul was stuffed. Because all of us WANT all the candy and we DON'T want to share. Now we are so stuffed from all the no's we heard as kids that we can't even articulate to ourselves who we are and what we want. We need this group and these people to help us unstuff ourselves. And it wouldn't happen overnight. It would probably take years.

The man to the right of me was a tall, black guy with a moustache who looked liked he was in his 50s. He seemed to take it all in like I did--he was interested and intrigued and willing to give it a shot to see if he would eventually "get it" but he seemed able to stay emotionally distant.

The woman to the left of me was a small, rocker-looking chick with long dark hair and tight jeans. Even though she was dressed youthfully and wore a lot of makeup, she looked like she was at least in her mid-40s. She was not buying any of the stuff she was hearing. She slumped in her seat, sighed loudly, mumbled sarcastically to herself, and generally hated every minute of being there. When Adolph told us that we were full of shit, she mumbled, "That's the first true thing you've said all day." Frankly, she was annoying, and I felt like her negative vibe was impacting my ability to get what I needed from the seminar.

So when we turned to each other to do our exercises, I made sure I paired up with the black guy to my right. And the exercises came fast and furious. Lots of repeating. Turn to your partner and say, "I am full of shit." Now your partner says that to you. Turn to your partner and say, "I want more intimacy in my life." Now your partner says that to you. Turn to your partner and tell them about the kind of intimacy you want and the things you are missing in your life. Each partner had either one or two minutes to speak---all predetermined by Adolph--and when a partner spoke, the other was to just listen. Just stare at the speaker and not say a word. When the time was up, Adolph raised his hand and we all raised our hands in unison, stopped speaking, and turned our attention back to our leader.

My partner was an interesting guy--a doctor who ran a clinic that was about to get some funding. He was concerned that some of his own personal blocks and procrastinating might cost him the funding and he was worried about his own leadership abilities. I would have been interested to hear more about his situation, but I was only allowed to talk to him for 1-2 minutes at a time.

For the final exercise in this part of the day, Adolph played us some music. We were supposed to close our eyes and listen to the music with our whole being. The song was the singer-songwriter variety--a guitar-playing folk singer straight out of the 60s. He sang about a little boy who wanted to color a flower with all the colors of the rainbow but whose teachers told him over and over that flowers were only red and green. He stood up to his teachers at first, with confidence and gusto, telling them that his flowers could be any color. Each chorus was the same---the boy standing up for his multicolored flowers. Until the last chorus, at the end of his school days. The words of the last chorus changed, as the boy finally announced to his teachers that flowers can only be red and green.

Right after the song played, without saying a word, we were supposed to turn to our partner and start talking. Before I could turn to my doctor friend, my team leader Maryann cut in and tapped me on the shoulder. She wanted to be my partner. So I turned to her and started talking. I was so overcome by the song, though, I could barely talk. I choked out something about my dad and his issues with women, but I don't know if I even said anything coherent. Still, Maryann listened and nodded. After a minute, my time was up and Maryann spoke. She was past choking up and had tears rolling down her cheeks as she talked about her parents and how little they noticed her. I tried to follow what she was saying, but it was so loud in the room that I missed a lot of what she said. Even though I didn't know quite what she was talking about, it felt like we made a connection and we hugged at the end of 2 minutes before we raised our hands and turned silently back to our leader.

After that exercise, we shook off all of that intensity with some more dancing, more chanting, and a few more words from the leader before we broke up into our small groups for lunch.