After doing mind's eye hoop rehersal yesterday on the train, I started surfing the web on my Blackberry. I felt as if I had somehow forgotten something very, very important during recent years. Something that I used to know, but now ... was missing.

I went to the website for Pacifica Graduate Institute. I obtained a second master's degree from Pacifica in Mythology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology after I left the the PhD program in Anthropology at UC.

This is a minor detail I have left out of all conversations with the media over the last several years. I wanted to whittle down all the confusing details to a story that was manageable. Easy to tell. The honest truth is, a story of radical change is never easy to tell because it reveals your most vulnerable sides.

I left UCSB because my doctoral advisor didn't take me seriously. I was an avid percussionist at the time, drumming daily and teaching classes, training with African teachers at every opportunity. Drumming was my life! Something about it was so primal and ful of raw, crackling energy! It really moved me. It connected me. It gave me a feeling of at-one-ment, at one with all things.

I went to Senegal, West Africa, to study djembe drumming and it's relationship to healing and crafted a dissertation proposal. I discovered some discrepencies in my plan -- djembes did not originate in Senegal, nor were they used for healing. However, something about going there seemed important because I had a dream. I had a dream about people being healed with drums.

When I was presenting my proposal to my advisor and collegues, they found it impossible to take my research methodology seriously. "What does a dream have to do with research?" they asked. I couldn't answer that, but I knew it was important. I didn't have the language to prove it but I felt it.

Professors started talking about me. Word was, I actually stayed up all night at drumming gatherings held in warehouses downtown. Word was, I actually sang Orisha songs at spiritual gatherings in the mountains. Word was I was performing drumming and dance at shows...Word was ... I was having dreams and thinking that they mattered! Of course, word didn't include that I also spent 10 hours a day at the library and up late at night, reading the thousands of pages of assigned reading and writing papers based on what the professors thought was important.

What astounded me, was that they didn't get these things I was doing! These professors of culture didn't understand or comprehend the importance of supplementing all their cerbral academic jargon with actual embodied experience!

One day my advisor sat me down in her office and told be the "honest truth". She said that if I persisted in this idea of a dissertation on drumming, no one, not one person, would attend my dissertation defense. "Drumming," she explained to me, "is simply not important enough. What we want you to write about is theory. We have a lot of theories we talk about which relate to very specific situations. You need to focus on these."

I realized then I had to go. I got my Masters Degree in Anthropology and left. I realized that this academic environment was based on the presumption that microcosms are more important than macrocosms. I realized I was interested in picking up the pieces of the world and finding a way to put them back together again -- to create holism. I was there to learn and understand how to create healing and understand larger, universal truths.

The anthropology program at UCSB was designed to slice and dice the world into microtopics which faculty members could create theories about (with or without any input from "natives") to gain a reputation of prestige and credibility. Any students studying with these professors had to do research which continued to promote their advisors ideas and theories.

I was shattered. Up until that time I had idealized that I could learn from the native traditions of peoples worldwide by studying anthropology. I realized then it was impossible. I realized anthropologists were doing, perhaps, some of the greatest dis-service to those very traditions they were supposed to be so interested in. Anthropologists themselves had become the cultural colonizers.

I went through a period of drifting. I worked as a dj and managed a flower essence store. Then one day I heard about a conference on something called, DreamTending. It was happening at a school called Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara.

It was an amazing day. The president of the school explained the vision of the school -- ANIMAE MUNDI COLENDAE GRATIA. Latin for, "For the sake of tending the Soul of the world." The school seal had crowned serpent reading a massive book on a map of the world. Hmm... as someone who had recurring dreams of snakes, this was already fascinating.

Dr. Aizenstat said things such as, "Pacifica is dedicated to cultivating and harvesting the gifts of the human imagination...Pacifica traces many of its central ideas to the heritage of ancient story tellers, dramatists, and philosophers from all lands who recorded the workings of the imagination...the importance of symbol and metaphor in personal and cultural imagery...Each student enters graduate work carrying within his or her own dreams the seed impulse that, when cultivated, opens to personal fulfillment..." Dreams, he went on to explain in the workshop, have us access go the soul of the world.

He shared his ideas (inspired by the work of depth and archetypal psychology) with us: the world is alive, conscious, self-aware and ensouled. Humans are all connected because we have access to something Jung called, the collective unconscious -- an infinite repository of knowledge, ideas and archetypes (energized nodes of universal human experience). The imagination is a powerful tool to access information through non-thinking, creative activities such as dreams, art and play. The whole day was spent exploring dream characters as intelligent visitors who have come to communicate with dreamers to share specific information on behalf of the world's dreaming soul-- looking at them as reflections of the self as well as reflections of the world. It was a day which encouraged poetic languaging, drawing and work in small groups sharing insights.

So many years ago... it is hard to convey the excitement I felt or the exact words spoken. What I can remember is that I suddenly felt at home. I was among intellectuals who shared a view that the world was aware and sacred and it allowed such a deeper investigation of reality.

I stayed. I got a master's degree in Mythological Studies with an emphais in Depth Psychology. I voraciously devoured readings and wrote like a possessed madwoman. It was an incredible time of creativity for me. Meanwhile, I moved into my minivan and lived by a stream in the mountains. I was on a kick of puritanical living and yoga, and gave away most of my belongings except books. I graduated, moved back into my apartment and decided that I needed to start working again. I was inspired by the PhD but realized I had work to do. While at Pacifica, I also took a massage therapy training program so I could keep my awareness in my body.

I left and worked as a massage therapist at a chiropractors office and also at some retreat centers. I also began working as a personal assistant to an incredible woman who had a production and post-production company in Montecito. Every day for months, I drove up the long driveway to her multimillion dollar mansion. I ran her empire. I was shocked she hired me, as I was wildly intimidated by her wealth and presence. At the same time I learned how many issues I had to about money which needed to be healed. She taught me how to work professionally in a lifestyle that still had a strong sense of the divine connectedness of all things. This woman lived in super high integrity and opened my mind to so many things. She helped me become so much more worldly (having to place phone calls to Ravi Shankar and Jackson Brown requires you to get yourself together!) and also exposed me to a wealth of spiritual knowledge. Working for her also taught me a lot about running an office and keeping one's life running smoothly. She also allowed me to house-sit for her on occassion when she travelled. I would do yoga, meditate and sit in the hot tub overlooking all of Santa Barbara. I would wander the halls and look at images of famous friends. I would read amazing books, listen to beautiful music and soak up the vibe of spiritual goodness in all the exotic statues of dieties and beautiful tapestries. I began to imagine that one day, I could also live in a home like this. That I could be as gracious and beautiful and present as she was.

It was then, while I was working for this goddess, that I picked up my first hula hoop. The transition from UCSB to hula hooping actually had a 3 year window of events between... but how you explain this in a a cohesive way to an interviewer? I have tried and the results can be disappointing. What I learned is that reporters want a story. They don't always want all the details. You need to keep things somewhat tidy and neat and linear for a story to work.

After I had begun teaching classes, running my hoop booth at the craft faire and holding hoop jams, my boss sat me down one day and explained to me that I was an artist and had to follow this impulse. So I left her, and began working as a full time hooper... And the rest is history....

But I wanted to share with you, dear blog reader, how complex and circular the truth can really be.... I'm on vacation with nothing but time on my hands for a change, and felt like telling this story.

Thank you for listening.