I arrived at the clinic to meet Alex - firstborn of the Family Koyfman - super friendly, super smiley, thick Russian accent, but beautifully spoken English - his English was so good, it was almost like what's-her-name in Gotcha! - an American actress playing an American CIA agent named Cheryl Brewster (I can remember that but not the actress' name? - it's Linda Fiorentino - I figured that out, thanks) faking an identity as a Russian or East German spy (I was never sure, though most of the action was in the DDR, so...) - you either remember this, or you can easily imagine the perfect English (this was for American audiences, after all) spoken in the cartoony "Natasha" accent. Oh that movie... The nice German "punk" band who befriends Jonathan, the snotty French waiter, the Hispanic maid jokes at Jonathan's parents' house in suburban LA - "You sound so close!" (actually, I still go through that "You sound so close" thing with my own father, but in his defense, he's not still dredging up racist 80s humor - he actually gets surprised sometimes by how good cellular technology is - no offense, dad - if I stopped to think about it, I'd go insane trying to figure it out, myself). But so yeah - Alex is 34, and came over with the family pretty soon after the fall of the Soviet Union - 1994, I think he said - and that was 14 -15 years ago, at which time, he was 20. So he spent his first 20 years in Soviet Ukraine, speaking mostly Russian, and the last 14 years here in the States, speaking mostly English. He's married to a woman from Columbia and likes to dance to salsa, so he must spend a decent amount of time around Spanish speaking people as well. It's pretty amazing, and either the stereotypical "Russian" accent is local to Odessa (where they're from), or his time spent in Atlanta among English and Spanish speakers has smoothed his Russian accent into something that to my untrained American ear sounds almost TOO stereotypically "Russian" to be real! I imagine it'd be like meeting a Leprechaun that talked like a Leprechaun, if you take my meaning - you'd have a hard time believing it was real (and not just because you were looking at a Leprechaun), you know?
And I will jump ahead now and introduce you to the rest of the family, actually, because the accents tell a story. So there's Alex - grew up to young adulthood in the Soviet Union - formed his identity and speech patterns there, spent his highly formative twenties and early thirties in America, adapted, speaks perfect English with a thick Russian accent. His younger brother, Igor, who is around 24 came here at around ten years old - much less time to completely settle into oneself back in the old country before leaving with the family, has grown up mostly in America, speaks local Georgia urban southern English like any other young guy you might meet from down there who's not totally "country" or "Southern Golf Course" style, BUT also speaks perfect Russian to his family with what even I can tell is a slightly southern American English twang! Just as an interesting aside, he's actually engaged to a girl from Germany. They're having visa troubles - we had a good long conversation about that while he operated the colonic machine later in the week. Then there's Dr. Koyfman, who we've only spoken to on the phone (I'll get to that later), but who obviously studied and spoke some English before he came here, because he was able to get certified and set up his clinic right away upon arrival, but still obviously has a different first language. Like, with Alex, if it weren't for the accent, you'd never know he didn't grow up speaking English and only English - he has the complete vocabulary and all nuances down, but Dr. Koyfman himself does not. And lovely kind Olga - Mama Koyfman - she actually spoke very little English, and had to make herself understood, often, with pointing and simple words, but though this has nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make about how interesting it is the way the family's relationship to spoken language developed over the years since their immigration, I can't express to you how much her care and smile was worth and how easily she made herself understood with her expressions. I digress...
So Alex immediately makes me comfortable - he's affable, professional but conversational, just easy and nice to get along with. He invited me into the office for a consult, and we talked for about a half hour, during which time I explained to him that Jodi has some more serious concerns that she'd like to try and address, but that I was here for my general well being, and thought I'd like to try the "accelerated program for out of state visitors." He agreed that that would be good for me, we talked a little bit about what it would entail, shook on it, and he led me into the room for my first colonic irrigation!
He shows me the machine, shows me the bed with the pad on it, invites me to get undressed and put on the robe as he leaves the room for a minute. I sit there pantsless, calm, interested, but wary. I mean - let's be honest here - it al looks pretty no-frills, you know? If I wanted to make a racist 80s joke, I might say something about it resembling similar facilities in the old Soviet Ukraine or something like that, but I won't, because I also have had many a good night's sleep on the bunks and dog shit smeared floors of East German squats (and American college kids' group houses), and I believe in these people - maybe more than I even believed in the value of sleeping on the floors of East German squats (and I did, and really, if I'm going to be completely honest with you, still do, really believe that there is some value in that, though I never believed there was much value in the trials of sleeping in those sloppy lazy college kids' places - clean out the litter box, Jack!), and I know I'm not here for some pampered spa resort vacation - this is going to be work, it's meant to be work, I'm psyched to do the work - this is why I'm here. So it's chilly (but still warmer than home) and raining, and I'm in my shirt, socks, and smock, in an industrial tiled florescent lit room, about to have a tube stuck up my rear end, and warm water shot up then sucked back out, hopefully taking the detritus of a life lived relatively well out with it, leaving me ready to go on living a life lived better (slightly). Well, jumping ahead for a second, when he first turned the water on, it wasn't warm. I will say, though, that that actually didn't feel that bad! Aaaand it heated up pretty quickly to body temp, so I really didn't feel it at all after that.
So here's the process - you approach the left side of the bed and sit on the pad in the center. You swing your legs up so your feet face the machine, and you lay your head down on the pillow at the top. You then roll onto your left side, exposing your arse to the clinician. He or she, and in this case, Alex, lubes up everything in sight, sides the nozzle (an again, in this case, I'm gonna go ahead and give Alex some props and say "artfully") up in ya, you roll back onto your back, bend your legs up at the knees, and the fill and flush cycle begins. Again, Alex was great. I wasn't too uncomfortable with anything about the process - as I said - I came to play, so I was psyched to have it all underway (so to speak... no?), but you can tell that he tries to put everyone at ease, anyway. We had a good frank conversation about me, him, our families, etc., but also, and more importantly, the process - and this was one of things I most appreciated about the entire experience - they were all able to be as serious as you needed to be about it, or to laugh at the human condition right along with you - I think that's part of what made them all so endearing to me - they weren't Kool Aid drinking "Colon Health for World Peace, and by the way, let me tell you about Xenu" people - they were totally down to earth but expert at what they were doing. Anyway, this being my first colonic, as you might assume, it wasn't the most productive. It's a progressive kind of therapy, and takes a few sessions, helped along with fasting and cleansing of other organs of the body, to really get to the deep stuff. I'm sure you've all read "the literature," so I won't get too into it here, but just imagine it - with our modern lifestyles, we pretty much never completely evacuate all material on our own, and some of what's left builds up, which builds mucus and creates gas and traps toxins, and it all leeches out into our other systems at it sits there and festers, etc. You get the picture. So this first time, was mainly to start breaking the matter up. What was flushed first was most recent, though I also had a lot of mucus released - I could see it going through the viewing part of the machine, and again in my immediate post-colonic bathroom visit (of course I looked! they TELL you to!! that's how you LEARN about it!).
Alex would fill me up, and release me on some sort of rhythm that I should have asked him about, but that I think had something to do with watching the pressure gauges on the machine, massaging my abdomen in a targeted fashion as he changed the direction of flow to allow me to release. Inevitably, his massage would produce more stuff than if I had just been letting it flow. Speaking of which, the one problem that remained for me throughout was how to "release." I (and I'm assuming "we") must have some control of some inner sphincter that I/we don't know about when we clench what we think is just our "outside one," for lack of a better term, because I was clenching to control the release, and it worked, even though my "outside one" was forced open to a consistent amount by the nozzle. I don't know if this was the right thing to do, but at the start of every release, it seemed to come with such force that if I didn't control it, it would make that opening a little less consistent and burst out all over the sides and everywhere! There was one point at which I felt like I was... leaking... so I told Alex, who, of course, pulled the curtain of my smock aside and checked without a flinch, but he assured me that I wasn't, and that even if I was, a little bit would be o.k. - that's why they had the pad on the bed. If it was bad, he'd know, and he'd stop the process. Phew? I dunno... Anyway the session went on for about forty minutes. Halfway through, he put that semi-circular device you see here over my abdomen.
This is one of the far-infrared machines you may have been wondering about if you browsed their website. The basic idea is that far infrared waves penetrate to the deepest cellular levels and heat the body more efficiently than other forms of light and heat. This increases capillary circulation to a degree that maximizes the removal of metabolic cellular waste, thus also helping to bump up your metabolism, get more oxygen to your cells, etc. It winds up being an important part of their process at the center, but for now, I was just glad to have something warm on my belly - it helped with the cramping.
But so, in a little bit, I wasn't really passing too much more, so Alex took the tube out, and suggested I run, sort of literally, to the bathroom - it was good advice. Once I felt it was safe to get up, I went back in, put on my clothes, and Alex asked me to wait in the lobby for Jodi, who he was about to work on, then we'd both go upstairs to the FIR sauna together. So I chilled out and read, and got a nice complement on "my style" from a strikingly tall, beautiful, and glowingly healthy woman - she looked like Iman - who strolled in like she owned the place (in a kind of charming way), and who I later found out was named Asia (pronounced ah'-see-ya), and is a long time client who loooooooooooooves the liver cleanse. Something to look forward to - the liver cleanse was scheduled for later in the week! When Jodi was finished, the look on her face was like that emoticon from iChat or your mobile device that's supposed to signify surprise but gives off a more, like, "WTF??!?" kind of vibe, you know?
8-0
That kind of thing? Well, if you can imagine it, but with eyes that also contain a smiling, "Oh HELL yeah" kind of message, then you've got her face. We went up to the FIR sauna, which at first seemed just like a small sauna They gave us each a hot herbal tea and a cool freshly juiced juice (today's was straight apple, and lots of it), and we disrobed and got in. It was awesome. It is, in fact, a lot like a normal sauna, but there's no question that the body heats more quickly and more thoroughly with the FIR waves.
I was pouring sweat in a ridiculously short amount of time. One other aspect, was that the air itself heated differently - breathing was easier - your body got hotter and hotter, but it felt as if the air itself didn't - like you weren't breathing in that hot sweaty sauna air. Really interesting, and both relaxing and invigorating (not unlike green tea...).
After the sauna, a quick shower and we were done for the day. They recommend juicing, even on the fast, and luckily, they have a juicer that they loan out to out of state people, so we were able to borrow that, and with it in the back seat, we went off to the local Whole Foods to get supplies, where, as I mentioned above, we ran into Olga checking out before us. We hadn't really established a rapport with her at that point, so it was actually a little awkward while we waited, with our stuff on the belt, for her to be finished. On of those, "Oh - hi!..." then an awkward pause where neither party has anything else to say, but you still have to stand there in each other's proximity while one finishes whatever business he or she's involved in, so you kind of look around, whistle a little, rock back and forth on your heels, etc., then finally the other party is finished and as he or she grabs his or her stuff a little too quickly and waves and starts to leave, you jump in a little too quickly with your "OK, g'bye!!" kind of moments. And then it was back to the hotel, where we both crashed pretty hard. By this time, it was only around three PM, but the combo of the colonic and the sauna, at this stage of the game for us, had a hidden knock-out punch - the toxins were starting to flush, the muscles actually felt worked - it was intense! So I hooked up my computer to the ginormous flat-screen tv after two trips to the Target down the street to get the right components, and we caught up on some more of our re-watching of Battlestar Galactica in preparation for January 16th's final season kick-off. I couldn't even tell you how many we watched if I wanted to - we basically didn't leave the couch until we moved to the bed to tuck in for the night; but I think that was ok - we needed it, and all of Dr. Koyfman's literature says that you should, in fact, do just this at this point in the procedure - rest. Get up the next day and take a morning walk in the fresh air, but for now, just rest.
