Sunday, October 29th – Saturday, November 4th
This week I managed to hit three states. I wrapped up a visit with my dad in White City, Oregon, as well as an overnight with my friend Dorothy in Sisters, Oregon, then bebopped my way back to Washington for just a handful of days. Thursday found me on a plane and off to Colorado for Splankna Training.
Splankna? What’s that?
Read on to find out…
Sunday, October 29th
Sundays are lazy days and today was no exception. While dad puttered in his workshop, I did some writing while enjoyeing the ambience and warmth of the workshop wood stove, and the smell of cut lumber as dad puttered around.
For lunch/dinner, dad made Shrimp Gumbo, which I inhaled greedily.
It was a quiet and leisurely day – one of those days were there isn’t a lot of conversation, but plenty of the comfort and camaraderie that comes with mutual love and regard. This daughter adores her dad, and I think he thinks I’m pretty ok. 😉
Monday, October 30th
I hit the pool in Medford for my swim early this morning, making sure that I stopped to thank Michelle (the lifeguard) for her kindness during my time there. Back at my dad’s I had a mournful goodbye / ‘until I show up unannounced on your doorstep‘ moment with my dad 🤣, then found myself back on the road this afternoon, heading towards Washington. My original plan was to overnight somewhere just across the Washington border. Fortunately, a better option arose– a visit and overnight with my friend and former co-worker, Dorothy Michael.
Dorothy and I worked together at Alaska USA FCU (now known as Global CU) for a number of years until she retired and relocated out of state. We’ve stayed in sporadic tough with the intermittent texts here and there, but there was no way to pass up a chance to see her in person.
We met up for a late lunch/early dinner at Madaline’s Grill & Steakhouse in Redmond, which is about 30 minutes/miles from Sisters, OR.
So here’s the thing about Dorothy— she’s sly. 😏 She’s not in the least bit manipulative, but she knows how to get ya’! When I mentioned that I was going to continue driving after our meal and try to get a few hundred more miles behind me, she encouraged me to stick around the area, at least over night, quietly adding that she had done a little research and there were TWO labyrinths in Sisters that I *might* want to check out.
And just like that she had me- Hook, line & sinker… 😂
We checked out two labyrinths within mere minutes of each other. The first was the Sisters Community Labyrinth, located in a small park area bordered on two sides by highways. It was a decently large size (65 feet in diameter) and made with natural elements with a border that varied between between rocks and native foliage.
The second labyrinth was a 51′ diameter brick & paver style at the Episcopal Church of Transfiguration.
Dorthy was not a fan of the first (though the sunset view of the Three Sisters mountain range was spectacular), and she enjoyed the second much more.
After our labyrinth walks, we returned to their home, continuing to catch up on each other’s lives. When it got close to bedtime, I retired for the evening at John’s house for the evening. John is Shane’s dad, and he had a guest room ready and waiting for me next door. In addition to extending his hospitality to hosting me overnight- he made sure to leave a slice of fresh apple pie for me on the counter for dessert. 🥧❤️
Although he had already retired for the evening, he left a warm and roaring fire in the wood stove for me, and I relaxed with pie in bliss before retiring to my comfortable and cozy room upstairs for the evening.
Tuesday, October 31st
Before I headed out again this morning, Dorothy treated me to breakfast at Fika Sisters Coffeehouse, which is where the locals congregate for coffee and conversation. It is a lovely, bright and airy establishment, and it is easy to see why people linger there long after their coffee cups are empty.
It’s bittersweet to say goodbye since I don’t’ know when I’ll have a chance to see her again– but it will be within a year’s time, since I visit my dad every year for his birthday. I assured Dorothy that she will see me again. Until then, we captured some photos of our time together and reveled in our friendship.
It was late afternoon when I arrived back in Spokane, and I slid right into packing and preparing for my next adventure. Marcia and I recapped our Oregon trip for Randy & Lauren and we both agreed that more adventures together are needed. She’s an awesome travel companion and we encourage each other in the best of ways. Lucky me to have a friend like her! ❤️🎉
Wednesday, November 1st
Errands, chores and packing were the order of the day. I made sure to get my morning swim knocked out, then filled my Malarone Prescription (anti-malarial for Africa) on the way back from the pool. I feel like I barely left my room as I packed and repacked, leaving only to run a load of laundry and eat. All of my attention was focused on gearing up for my trip. The day passed quickly.
Thursday, November 2nd
Though it pained me to do so, I skipped my swim this morning, hoping against hope that I would be able to make up my swim time in the hotel pool this evening. Instead of a morning swim, I spent the morning frantically repacking, again. I’m going straight from a Colorado fall to a South African springtime. My time in Colorado is focused on training (for three of the days) and my time in South Africa and Namibia is all about adventure and exploration.
Consequently, packing has been a real challenge. Tony sent me a full itinerary of adventures, including dinners and gathering with his family (I’m super excited to finally meet his wife Charmaine), road trips, tent camping and safaris… I’m trying to keep it simple, but I keep thinking, “Whatever will I wear?” 🤦🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️
About a 1/3 of my luggage is taken up by my sleeping bag (it just doesn’t make sense to buy one in Africa since I have a nice one in ‘like new’ condition). Tony is supplying just about everything else we’ll need for the camping and safari, so it shouldn’t have been that hard to pack, right? And yet, it was- ridiculously so. When I started groaning that my bag was over the weight limit, I could hear Marcia downstairs laughing at me. She just reminded me that whatever I forgot I could easily buy there.
Goodbye flat iron and blow dryer– its au natural hair for this trip. But I tossed in two of my swimsuits (since I want to swim as much as possible and my first airbnb has a pool- I made sure of that!)
Lots of clean underwear (because I had a mom and I AM a mom, DUH!), but just a three pairs of pants and three pairs of shorts. And about a dozen shirts- a couple LS (some button-down to layer and a couple just for bulk/warmth- for camping), a few SS, a few tank tops, WHY is my bag SO FULL? 🤷🏽♀️
Oh yeah… the toiletries… 🧴Things I know I *cannot* get in Africa. I consoled myself with the logic that the bag will go back without most of the toiletries because they are likely to be all used up.
Eventually, purely by the grace of God (I think), I had a suitcase at 45# and all the ‘necessities’, plus my backpack (with laptop, and a few items to get me through 18+ hours of flight time). Marcia had me out the door and dropped off at the airport just a bit after 11:30.
It was one of those moments when I was EXTRA happy I invested in Global Entry/TSA pre-check because I have never seen the Spokane TSA line so long… it was wrapped all the way to the end of the stanchions. 🤯 The TSA precheck line had NOBODY in it, and I sailed right through with plenty of time to spare. WORTH EVERY PENNY!
It was short flight (less than two hours), but the next few hours DRAGGED. With six ladies all arriving within an hour or so of each other, it was a long wait for everyone to finally converge. Between that and the time zone change, we didn’t get to the hotel and settled in until well after 8:00 pm. I was tired, anxious about the upcoming training and worn out, but determinedly headed to the pool for my one-hour swim. I tried to stick out the whole hour but I only made it about 35 minutes. The first 25 minutes were fine, but the three boys and their mom who arrived partway through my swim made it impossible to swim laps when they were cannonballing into the water and showed no regard for me.
As you may have experienced, hotel pools are not very large to begin with, and with a depth of only 3.5 – 4.5 feet throughout the entire pool, I didn’t want to be present if a tragedy occurred, so after 10 minutes of screaming boys and chaos, I gave up and got out. I had no ill will, though I was a *tad* irritated by their lack of regard for splashing me and kicking me as they thrashed around with their friends. Then I had to sigh and remember what it was like to be a kid who couldn’t wait to get into the hotel pool.
I went to my room, showered and hit the bed by 10:00 p.m., which was well past my bedtime.
Friday, November 3rd – Splanka, NOT Spelunking…
My brain is full… to the point of overload.
With all the traveling, experiences and adventures I’ve had over the last year, you may be wondering what could possibly prompt such a feeling at 6:00 p.m. on a Friday.
The answer is easy: Today was the first day of the Level 1 Splankna training.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Splankna.
Whenever I say the word ‘Splankna’, people look at me like I’m odd and say something to the effect of “Huh?”
“Splankna,” I repeat, slowly and carefully.
“That thing you do when you explore caves?”
“No, that’s Spelunking. I’m going for training in Splankna.”
<Insert long pause and confused expression> “Ummm, what is that?”
When I explain it, I I simply say that it is a faith-based healing modality. If you visit the Splankna website, they define it as a ‘biblically-based, mind-body protocol for emotional freedom‘.
Before today’s training, I really couldn’t explain it much better than that. And even now, it’s hard to articulate everything I learned, saw and experienced in today’s training.
There were waivers to be signed and disclaimers made, but there was also massive transparency, vulnerability and real emotional healing taking place.
There are approximately 116 people attending today’s training- Denver (where I am for the weekend) has just over 40 folks in attendance, with another 70 split between satellite training locations in Nashville and Kansas City. Another half dozen people are also participating via Zoom. About half of the group is here for a refresher, while the rest of us are all newbies.
While I expected the majority of the group to be counseling professionals (e.g. therapists, counselors, etc.), everyone I have talked with so far hasn’t been any of those things. (Admittedly, I haven’t talked to that many people.) Youth group leaders, massage therapists, missionaries and other everyday people of Christian faith are in this training, so I felt like I fit with this diverse group of folks- most of who are best described as people seeking Christian tools to help others (and themselves) on the path to healing.
By the time we broke for lunch at noon, my head and heart were spinning- with wonder at the possibilities for helping/healing and with overwhelm from everything I’ve learned today. After all, it’s not everyday that someone begins the next segment of learning with, “Let’s talk about quantum physics” 😂🤯 … unless, of course, you are in a quantum physics course.
It’s incredible how science and faith work together, making this an intensely powerful tool.
All six of us ladies (the original six from Thursday’s airport carpool) loaded ourselves into the Ford Expedition we rented (shoutout to say thank you to Jeanette for spearheading the rental and playing chauffeur all weekend!) and headed a short distance away to Naan Curry Grill for lunch, where we learned a little more about each other and shared our thoughts on class so far. (Lunch was pretty good, though it was the spiciest Chicken Tikka Masala I have ever had)
A nice man sitting one table away placed an order for one of his favorite dishes (Chicken Karahi, I think) and had it sent over to us, so we invited him to join us and made a new friend. 🎉 Cliff introduced himself as a truck driver who lives/works in Colorado. The seven of us traded stories of travel experiences, things to do and places we’ve been until he had to leave. A couple of the ladies tried to explain Splankna to him. I’m not sure they succeeded. 😂
After lunch, Heather (another instructor) gave a demonstration of the protocol with a volunteer/student from the class.
Ya’ll, heart work is HARD work. And it was incredibly emotional and moving to watch– many kleenexes were passed and it was amazing to see it in practice. I’m not exaggerating when I say that breakthroughs and emotional healings were happening right in front of us, and we’re learning how to help other people have those same breakthroughs. It is truly humbling work.
I know what you might be thinking: This sounds like some WOO-WOO New Age craziness. But it’s not any of that. I don’t have the words, but I want to share the wonder we experienced and I don’t quite know how to do that without sounding like a whackadoodle, so I’ll just stop. 🤪
We finished up the afternoon training with some practice in dyads, and when training ended for the day, our homework was this: NO HOMEWORK. We were told, under no circumstances should we review material or spend any more time on Splankna. We were told to rest our brains and spirits for tomorrow.
So I promptly took myself back to my room and off to bed at 6:30 p.m. And was asleep in 30 minutes or less. 🛌😴
Saturday, November 4th
My 6:30 p.m. bedtime made for an early wake-up at 2:30 a.m. I did a little writing, a little contemplating, some prayer time, and then headed the pool at 5:00 a.m. for my swim. It would seem that they aren’t used to having people use it that early since I had to find someone to unlock the deadbolt for me (pool/fitness hours are posted as 5:00 a.m. – 11:00 p.m., but apparently the doors are manually locked and bolted in the off hours). It was gloriously empty and I had the whole things to myself for the whole hour.
When I was done, I showered and changed, grabbed an omelet for breakfast downstairs, and then headed to class at 8:00 a.m.
We jumped right into class today practicing the introductory and primary elements of Splankna and were told to partner up with someone we had NOT worked with yesterday.
I was fortunate to partner with a gentleman named Kristopher. He shared that his wife was a Master Splankna practitioner, but that he was just getting started and hoped to offer it to men in need of healing. Our dyad worked well together and we had a mutual appreciation and grace for our respective learning curves. There were definitely some revelatory moments that neither of us saw coming, so we knew we were on the right path.
Lunch found me retreating to my room to process the experience thus far, and when we returned after the lunch break, there was another demonstration (with a different student volunteer). This time, Heather demonstrated the full protocol from start to finish, including algorithms.
Once again, there were revelations, breakthroughs, healing and tears (from lots of folks).
We spent part of today’s session covering important topics like boundaries, No-No’s and spiritual health. There has been a quiz each day, and I appreciate that we discuss each questions and go over the answers to clarify any points in training that might have been confusing. As we wrapped up today’s racing, the homework was the same as yesterday: Put Splankna away for the evening and rest our mind, body & spirit.
That’s a wrap on this week. There is one more (half) day of training tomorrow, but I don’t fly out until Monday afternoon. I have a reunion with a friend I haven’t seen in 25+ years tomorrow, then I head to Africa on Monday.
I hope you’ve enjoyed following my adventures thus far.
Curious about Splankna?
If you are curious and would like to learn more, I’ve include this link to an article Sara wrote in 2021 that discusses Splankna in a little more depth.
If you are interest in a Splankna experience, I encourage you to find a Splankna practitioner. I’ll need to log at least 30 hours in order to complete my level one training, so if I am in your area in the near future and you are interested in a session (and are fully cognizant of the fact that I am still in the introductory training and learning phase), let me know and we’ll see what we can do to make it happen.
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love reading about your journey!