Before and After
Very little is askedof you.
Before
Five small things, and none of them are cleaning.
I
One room, any room
A bedroom, a living room, a quiet corner with space for a table. Roughly two metres by two metres is plenty. Carpet, hardwood, and small condos are all familiar ground.
II
Leave the tidying
Nobody is inspecting your home. A practitioner has set rooms in every state a Toronto week produces, and none of it registers.
III
Eat lightly, drink water
Something small an hour or two before, and water through the day. Heavy meals sit badly under slow body work.
IV
Tell us the truth on the form
Pregnancy, recent surgery, injuries, medication, anything tender. It changes the work, never the welcome.
V
Decide about the phone
Most people put it in another room. The evening changes noticeably when nothing can reach you for two hours.
Toward
An Evening of Your Own
The evening keeps going for a few days.
Step through
After
What the house would ask of you, if it asked anything.
I
The first hour
Do not go anywhere
No plans after, if you can arrange it. Stay in the dim, keep the candles going, drink the water that was poured for you. The work continues settling long after the hands stop.
II
That night
Sleep earlier than usual
The most common message we get the next morning is about sleep. Let the evening end in bed rather than back on a screen.
III
The next day
Warmth, not effort
A warm shower rather than a hot one. Gentle movement. Skin after facial work prefers to be left mostly alone, with nothing new introduced for a day.
IV
The following days
Keep one small piece of it
A candle lit at the same hour. Ten minutes in the chair before bed. People rarely miss the whole evening. They miss the permission it gave them.