Into the Magic Shop Read online

  “You will. Keep coming back. Keep practicing everything you learn this summer, and someday you will.”

  I nodded yes, but I didn’t know if I would come back or not. This wasn’t like the magic tricks I wanted to learn.

  “Do you know who Isaac Newton is?” she asked.

  “Some kind of scientist?”

  “Yes, very good. He was a physicist and a mathematician. Maybe one of the greatest scientists of all time. There’s a story about him you might like. He didn’t have a great life. His father died three months before he was born. He was premature and without a father, so you could say he didn’t really get a fair start in life. His mother remarried when he was three years old, and he didn’t care much for his stepfather. At one point he threatened to burn down the house with both of them inside. Isaac was a pretty angry young man when he was about your age. Anyway, his mom took him out of school because she wanted him to be a farmer. That’s what his father had been, and that’s what everyone expected him to be as well. But Isaac hated farming. He hated everything about it. A teacher convinced his mother to let him go back to school. He became the top student, but only because he was horribly picked on and bullied by other students, and getting the very best grades was his form of revenge. Later he went to college, but in order to pay for it he had to be the valet at the school in exchange for his tuition and food. He may not have had the same advantages as other kids, or the same luck, or the same money. But he changed the world.”

  I never knew famous scientists hated their parents or fought with their classmates.

  I said good-bye to Ruth and to Neil and was just about out the door of the magic shop when I heard Ruth say, “Don’t forget, Jim, practice what we talked about.” She looked me directly in the eyes and smiled. I pedaled out to Avenue I with a feeling of warmth throughout my body. I had no idea why she was teaching me to relax my body, but I would go home and practice and see if it really was magic.

  Today I know that a large part of what Ruth began to teach me that first day had to do with the brain and the body’s acute response to stress, or what most people call the fight-or-flight response. If the brain perceives a threat, or is in fear for its survival, that part of the autonomic nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system kicks in and releases epinephrine. The adrenal gland also gets triggered by hormones released by the hypothalamus, and cortisol is produced. I’m sure even at the age of twelve I had elevated cortisol levels. Basically everything in the body not necessary for fighting for your life shuts down. Digestion slows, blood vessels constrict (except for those in your large muscles, which dilate), your hearing lessens, your vision narrows, your heart rate goes up, and your mouth gets dry because the lacrimal gland that regulates salivation immediately gets inhibited.

  All of this is important if you are in fact fighting for your life, but this acute stress response is meant to be temporary. Living in a state of prolonged stress has all sorts of psychological and physiological repercussions—anger, depression, anxiety, chest pain, headaches, insomnia, and a suppressed immune system.

  Long before people were talking about stress hormones, Ruth was teaching me to regulate my physiological response to chronic stress and threat. Today when I go into an operating room, I can slow down my breathing, regulate my blood pressure, and keep my heart rate low. When I am looking through a microscope and operating within the most delicate parts of the brain, my hands are steady and my body is relaxed because of what Ruth taught me in the magic shop. In fact, if it weren’t for Ruth, I may not have become a neurosurgeon. Learning to relax the body is and was powerful, but it was only the start. It took ten days for Ruth to get me to a place where I could relax my entire body. On the eleventh day I rode my bike to the shop, sat in the chair, closed my eyes, and waited for Ruth to talk me through the relaxation process. But Ruth had other plans.

  “Open your eyes, Jim. It’s time to do something about all those voices in your head.”

  Ruth’s Trick #1

  Relaxing the Body

  Find a time and a place to do this exercise so that you will not be interrupted.

  Do not start if you are already stressed, have other matters distracting you, have drunk alcohol, used recreational drugs, or are tired.

  Before beginning sit for a few minutes and just relax. Think of what you wish to accomplish with this exercise. Define your intention.

  Now close your eyes.

  Begin by taking three deep breaths in through your nose and slowly out through your mouth. Repeat until you get used to this type of breathing so that the breathing itself is not distracting you.

  Once you feel comfortable breathing in this manner, specifically think about how you are sitting and imagine that you are looking at yourself.

  Now begin focusing on your toes and relax them. Now focus on your feet, relaxing your muscles. Imagine them almost melting away as you continue to breathe in and out. Only focus on your toes and feet. When you begin, it will be easy to be distracted or to have your thoughts wander. When this happens, simply begin again, relaxing the muscles of your toes and feet.

  Once you have been able to relax your toes and feet, extend the exercise upward, relaxing your calves and thighs.

  Then relax the muscles of your abdomen and chest.

  Next think of your spine and relax the muscles all along your spine and up to your shoulders and your neck.

  Finally relax the muscles of your face and your scalp.

  As you are able to extend the relaxation of the muscles of your body, notice that there is a calmness overcoming you. That you feel good. At this point, it is not unusual to feel sleepy or even fall asleep. That’s OK. It may take several attempts to get to this point and be able to hold this feeling of being relaxed without falling asleep. Be patient. Be kind to yourself.

  Now focus on your heart and think of relaxing your heart muscle as you slowly breathe in and out. You will find that your heartbeat will slow as your body relaxes and your breath slows.

  Imagine your body, now completely relaxed, and experience the sense of simply being as you slowly breathe in and out. Feel the sense of warmth. Many will feel that they are floating and will be overcome with a sense of calmness. Continue to slowly breathe in and slowly exhale out.

  With intention remember this sense of relaxation, calmness, and warmth.

  Now slowly open your eyes. Sit for a few minutes with your eyes open and just be with no other intention or thought.

  Breath and relaxation are the first steps toward taming the mind.

  *You can visit intothemagicshop.com to listen to an audio version of this exercise.

  THREE

  Thinking About Thinking

  Agood magician signals to the audience that he’s about to do his next trick. A great magician already has the audience under his spell before they even realize he’s moved on to the next trick.

  Ruth was a great magician.

  I never knew there were voices in my head until Ruth pointed them out. I never knew how loud they were until Ruth asked me to try to keep them silent. It was hard to train my body to relax—especially at home in a small apartment where the television always seemed to be blaring and every deep breath was infused with the stale cigarette smoke that hung heavy in the air. But if relaxing my body was difficult, silencing my thoughts seemed impossible.

  I had been coming to the magic shop for ten days and in many ways it was more comfortable than my own house. I loved the quiet and the calm. After the first few days of lessons, Ruth started to bring lunch every day. We would finish our magic practice and go to the front of the store and out would come a big green Tupperware container with a white plastic lid inside of which was usually sliced pieces of fruit, cheese and crackers, or nuts. The only nuts I usually liked to eat were Corn Nuts, but I tried Ruth’s varieties even though some of them were weird. This was always followed by my
favorite, Chips Ahoy! cookies. If Neil wasn’t busy, he would join us and tell stories or show me a new magic trick or the latest card deck he was making. Neil liked to talk with his mouth full. Even though we were an odd and temporary trio, I quickly felt close to them. Sort of like they were family. I didn’t have to be the caretaker in my magic shop family, and for two hours a day I had their undivided attention. We talked and joked and there was an ease about it, unlike at home where certain topics were avoided and underlying anger or resentment could surface at any time. Neil began every story by putting his reading glasses on and then looking over them and smiling at you as he began.

  Neil told a story about being stationed in the Korean Demilitarized Zone. He said he and his buddies were performing a magic act inside their canteen when their commanding officer came in and demanded they immediately report to the 38th parallel—the dividing line between North and South Korea. He and his two army buddies arrived at the checkpoint, but the military police wouldn’t clear them to enter because, while they had their weapons, they were still wearing the top hats and long tails from their magic show performance. I don’t know if this story or any of the stories Neil told me were true or exaggerated, but they made us laugh. The kind of laughing where once you start you just can’t stop. In those moments I could completely relax and let go of the voice in my head that Ruth was telling me about. Ruth told me tales of her living in a small town in Ohio where everyone cared for each other and where long summer days were spent with family and friends. Sometimes I imagined Neil taking me on as an apprentice and teaching me all his most top secret magic tricks. I could even imagine the marquee advertising the two of us in big lights. It’s funny how when you’ve been starved of such experiences you want to hold them and not let them go. The connection I had with Ruth and Neil was special and real. I’ve felt that connection with others throughout my life—sometimes it’s a random person in an elevator, where you look into each other’s eyes, and for reasons you can’t explain, there is a connection, not just simply eyes meeting, but some deeper knowing, an acknowledgment of each other’s humanity and the reality of being on the same path. And when that happens, it’s pretty magical if you really think about it. Other times I’ve looked into the eyes of someone who is homeless or just down-and-out, and when our eyes connect it is as if I could see my very own face staring back at me and for that brief moment, and often even longer, I experience the pain of my own journey and feel deep empathy followed by gratitude that my journey has taken me to where I am today. Everyone has a story, and I have learned that, at the core of it, most of our stories are more similar than not. Connection can be powerful. Sometimes just a brief meeting can change someone’s life forever.

  Clearly that was the case with Ruth. That first encounter changed everything, putting my life on a far different trajectory than it would have been on. Ruth wasn’t a supernatural being, even though at twelve I liked to imagine she was. She was simply a human being who had the profound gift of empathy and intuition, of being able to care about another human being without expecting anything in return. She gave me her time. She gave me her attention. And she exposed me to a type of magic that I still use to this day. There were some hours in the magic shop where I was convinced that being there was a waste of time and that I couldn’t possibly learn what she was trying to teach me. There were other times when I truly thought she was pretty close to crazy. Today I know that the techniques Ruth was teaching me were in many ways age-old and had been part of Eastern traditions dating back thousands of years. Now science acknowledges that neuroplasticity is not only a reality but an inherent part of how the brain functions. Now I know that the brain can be trained to improve one’s focus and attention and also to not respond to the ongoing dialogue in our head that distracts us from making clear and useful decisions. Today this is well understood, but at that time what Ruth was teaching me was unheard of. When Ruth told me she was going to teach me to turn off the voices in my head, I had no idea what she was talking about, but I decided to go along with it anyway.

  “Relax your shoulders. Relax your neck. Relax your jaw. Feel the muscles in your face relax,” she said, all things that I now knew how to do.

  Ruth talked me through relaxing my body yet again, her soft voice making my body feel so light I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was hovering over the chair, levitating like a playing card out of one of Neil’s magic rising decks.

  “Now I want you to empty your mind.”

  That was a new one. I suddenly felt the weight of my body against the chair. What was Ruth talking about exactly? How was I supposed to empty my mind? My thoughts were off and running and I opened my eyes to see Ruth smiling at me.

  “This is another trick,” she said.

  “OK. How do I do it?”

  “Well, this gets a little complicated because your mind is going to think about thinking, and the minute it does that you’re going to have to stop thinking about thinking without thinking about it.”

  Huh?

  “Do you know what a narrator is?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s like you guiding me through the relaxation trick.”

  Ruth clapped her hands together twice and laughed a little. “When you do the relaxation trick at home, how do you do it?”

  I thought about this for a second. “I do it the same way I do it here.”

  “Well, I’m not there narrating, so who narrates it?”

  “You do, but in my head.”

  “But it’s not really me in your head, so who is narrating it?”

  As far as I was concerned, it was her voice in my head telling me to focus on and relax every muscle in my body. “It’s your voice.”

  “But it’s not actually me, so who is it?”

  I guessed at what she wanted me to say. “It’s me?”

  “Yes, it’s you, talking to yourself in your head, and it sounds like me because that’s what you want it to sound like. This narrator is very good at doing impersonations. It can sound like anyone.”

  “OK.”

  “We all have this voice that talks to us nonstop in our heads. From the minute we wake up to the minute we go to bed at night. It’s always there. Think about it. It’s like one of those radio deejays telling you what’s coming next. Giving you the playlist every second of the day.”

  I thought about this. I listened to Boss radio, Top Forty hits, 930 on the KHJ-AM dial in Los Angeles. I imagined “the Real Don Steele” narrating my life.

  “Imagine this deejay in your head telling you everything about everything all day long. You’re so used to it you probably don’t even notice that the radio in your mind is playing at full volume, and it never gets turned off.”

  Was this true? I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t noticed it before. I was always thinking about stuff, but I had never really thought about thinking before.

  “This voice in your head is judging every second of your life as either good or bad. And your mind responds to what the voice is telling you. As if it actually knew you.” Ruth said this with emphasis, as if I should be shocked or affronted by me thinking about me. I was totally confused. “The problem is that often your response isn’t one that is necessarily good for you.”

  “Well, it’s me in my head, so don’t I know me?”

  “No. You are not the voice in your head. You, the real you, is the person who is listening to the deejay.”

  I wondered just how many people Ruth thought lived inside me. Maybe she heard voices in her head, but I was pretty sure it was just me in my head, not some deejay telling me the weather and cuing up the next song.

  “Here’s what I want you to understand. You can’t trust the voice in your head—the one that’s talking to you all the time. It’s more often wrong than right. You can think of this trick as learning to turn the volume way down and eventually turning it off altogether. Then you’ll understand what I’m talking about.”r />
  “I guess I could give it a try,” I said to Ruth.

  “What’s the deejay saying right now? Right at this very second, in your head?”

  I thought about what I was just thinking. “He’s saying that I have no idea what you’re talking about, and this isn’t going to work.” The deejay was also saying that this whole thing sounded really stupid, but I wasn’t going to tell Ruth that.

  She smiled at me. “That’s good. You see, you just thought about what you were thinking about. That’s the first part of this trick.”

  I nodded as if I understood.

  “We’re going to practice thinking about thinking. Now close your eyes and take a few minutes to relax your body again.”

  I closed my eyes and went through the relaxation sequence I had practiced a hundred times by now. I started with my toes and worked my way up to the top of my head . . . every muscle relaxing as I thought of it in my mind. By now it felt good, like being in a tub that was slowly filling up with warm water.

  “Just focus on your breath,” Ruth said. “In and out. Just think about your breath. Nothing else but your breath.”

  I took a breath in through my nose and slowly exhaled. And then another. After a few more breaths I felt an itch on my face and moved my hand up to scratch it, and as I did so I felt a bump. I hoped it wasn’t a pimple coming up. There was a girl I liked who had just moved in above us in the apartment complex. Her name was Chris. Her hair was long and dark, almost down to her waist. I had spoken to her that first day I saw her and afterward wondered if she thought I was a dork. She was nice enough and smiled as we talked. Would she consider hanging out with me? I suddenly also remembered my crooked tooth and ran my upper lip over it. No, she wouldn’t. What was I thinking? Pimples and a crooked tooth, geez. I remember her looking at me and then turning and walking away. I wasn’t good enough for her.

  “Keep focusing on your breath. If the deejay starts talking, just stop listening and go back to focusing on your breath.”