Spring Updates :: Winter Garden Healing Arts

In this newsletter:

• One year in Silverlake

• Update to On-Site pricing

• Recent studies in manual therapy

• Playlist to the people

• Poetry by Diane Di Prima

Happy Spring to you all! This seasonal update includes a roundup of various developments in the past few months, as well as a poetic offering at the bottom. The photograph above was taken outside Wendover, Nevada. The vertebrae belonged to a horse (the rest of the skeleton was nearby). I had a nice drive back from a workshop in Salt Lake last month, and enjoyed stopping along the way to shoot with my new old Pentax 6x7. Read below for details!

Feel free to get in touch, whether for scheduling, questions about my practice, or just to say hello. It's always nice to know that someone is reading these.



One year in Silverlake

Next month marks one year since I took the plunge and opened my own office in Silverlake, just across the river from my old shared space in Atwater Village. The new office is such a dreamy home for my practice. If you haven't had a chance to come in yet, or if you haven't seen it since redecorating, I hope you'll come check it out! In-home treatment is also available, as always.

Given the ongoing struggle with new Covid variants, I continue to prioritize safety and am still requiring masks inside. I am also maintaining fresh air circulation and filtration in the office to lessen the risk of transmission. Of all the things we've learned over the past two years, it's nice to know that giving and receiving bodywork with a mask on is really no big deal, and can be a tremendous relief in such stressful times.

New office location: 2900 Riverside Ave, Los Angeles, 90039

Hours: Thursday through Sunday, 9:00am - 6:00pm

Schedule your appointment here: wilsonshook.com/schedule



Update to on-site pricing

With escalating fuel costs lately, and in consideration of the general madness of being in demand both in and out of the office on any given day, I have decided to raise my travel fee. Existing scheduled and/or prepaid sessions are not affected, and my office pricing remains the same for now. On-site and in-home session rates will now start at $200 for 90 minute sessions. Those of you outside of my normal area who pay a custom rate will generally see a $20 increase. This is my first increase since moving to Los Angeles five years ago, and I thank you for bearing with me as I adjust to the realities of living and working in such a vast and expensive city.



Recent studies in manual therapy

I traveled last month to Salt Lake City to learn some new techniques from one of the leading US-based instructors of Visceral Manipulation and associated disciplines, Lisa Brady Grant. The class was called New Manual Articular Approach: Upper Extremity. The work was an application of some of the subtleties of VM to articular (joint) work. We spent three days on the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and hand. It's a bit of a different workflow from my normal session style, so I'm still working on integrating what I learned, but I expect that these techniques will be helpful for many of you with chronic joint and nerve issues.

A less recent, but no less exciting development: last fall I traveled to San Diego to assist with my first Visceral Manipulation class. I was recognized by the Barral Institute as a teaching assistant back in 2019, but had to wait out the turmoil of the past two years before an opportunity to assist opened up. I had a great time introducing new practitioners to the work, while honing my own skills and anatomical knowledge. I look forward to continuing this work!



Playlist to the people

By popular request, I have added a page to my website with links to most of the music that I play during sessions. I will update this page with new additions periodically. If you are one of the folks who particularly enjoys the musical aspect of our sessions, this one is for you!

wilsonshook.com/playlist



Poems by Diane Di Prima

This month's offering came to me by way of Cedar Sigo's brilliant lecture, Guard the Mysteries, of which I was fortunate to witness an iteration at REDCAT in 2019. Guard the Mysteries is now published in book form via Wave Books.

Sigo opens the book with a contemplation of Diane Di Prima's Revolutionary Letters. He describes Di Prima's poetics and activism as informing "a new kind of correspondence, another dance... whose ultimate and desired effect is to build coalitions among people and to keep that spark active and available within poetry. Poetry is never simply a set of words living alone upon the page. It exists as a perennial light in the mind, a tool of recognition that we must press into the hands of others."

City Lights recently marked the 50th anniversary of the original Revolutionary Letters with a new edition which  encompasses letters written up until the poet's death in 2020. I think it's in Di Prima's extension and perpetual reinvention of the project that it really blossoms and shows its richness. While she turned out a few duds over the years, her voice remained strident, utopian, pragmatic, and refreshingly nondogmatic from the initial broadsides and underground newspaper communiques up through her final works as a celebrated elder poet. Throughout the Letters, Di Prima is above all concerned with how we care for each other in trying times. As she puts it in Letter #70, "We spin out light in a dark time, grow it at cost out of the incandescence of flesh we still call living, and all the fingers of the night point home to us."


REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #20
for Huey Newton

I will not rest
til we walk free & fearless on the earth
each doing in the manner of his blood
& tribe, peaceful in the free air

till all can seek, unhindered
the shape of their thought
no black cloud fear or guilt
between them & the sun, no babies burning
young men locked away, no paper world
to come between flesh & flesh in human
encounter

till the young women
come into their own, honored & fearless
birthing strong babes
loving & dancing

till we can at last lose some of our sternness, return
to our own thoughts, till laughter
bounces off our hills & fills
our plains



REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #100
REALITY IS NO OBSTACLE

refuse to obey
refuse to die
refuse to sleep
refuse to turn away
refuse to close your eyes
refuse to shut your ears
refuse silence when you can still sing
refuse discourse in lieu of embracement
come to no end that is not
a Beginning



With care,
Wilson