I've been to see the redoubtable, inimitable Dr S Siddhu - as, apparently, have half the residents of Melbourne, to sort out one problem or another. His reputation extends far into diverse sectors of the city's demography, and his success is renowned. About eight years ago, my sister-in-law and eight of her friends went, one at a time, to see him, to address their inability to stop smoking; only one (my sister-in-law) went for more than one 50-minute appointment, and only one (not my sister-in-law) has ever smoked again.
A small, trim, neatly bearded and coiffed man, with rather intense eyes whose pupils are strangely difficult to differentiate from his irises, and even the whites of his eyes, Dr Siddhu dresses in a semi-formal jacket and tie, and is at once easily nimble and calmly unhurried. He is a former surgeon in Malaysia where he grew up, who came to Australia, worked in leading medical research labs, at various hospitals, and as a general practitioner, all increasingly in the area of “psychosomatic wellness,” which has been his specialty in private practice for 25 years. His office is a snug room, with waiting room fashioned from the front lobby, in his sizable home in a very fashionable suburb of Melbourne. The house looks to be of about 1870 vintage, a two-story brick building with attractive grille work, and all the appearance of financial solidity and independence. Inside his office, after greeting his clients with a rather tentative handshake, or perhaps just an overall sense of withholding or only partial self-disclosure, he beckoned me to a seat in front of his large desk, behind which he retreats. From this point, he is seen in half-light, and partially obscured by a desk lamp, so that one has to pay close attention, with a slightly crooked neck, to catch everything he says.
His message is one of self-doctoring, and of compassion, affection, and responsibility to oneself, in connection with whatever the issues presented - insomnia, anxiety, smoking cessation, weight control. Of these I nominate the first and third, and he proceeds to ask me a variety of trenchant questions that appear aimed to pinpoint just the most general facts and dynamics of my past and present. Why do I not sleep? Why do I not become trimmer, fitter, and (this last emerges only later) taller? The last commands my attention, to some degree, because I've been most easily resigned to limited height, of all my shortcomings. His only partly metaphoric meaning emerges later.
My attention is sharply on his clearly practiced, though impressively tailored messages. He has seen many people in a wide array of psychological and physical states, and is dedicated to helping people relieve themselves of dependancy on medicine, substances, destructive habits, hope for salvation by anyone but oneself. Impressively, he sketches out these remedies to depression, overweightness, anxiety, sleeplessness... with no hint of cantish, Tony Robbins-like proselytizing. The foundation of his approach, it later emerges, is an amalgam of spirituality and dependence on the body's own ability to be well. The various elements of this are announced by what one sees in his office (through the said half-light). On walls, above a large disused fireplace, are photographs of various generations of his extended family, amidst images of various spiritual guides of the usual Indian-diaspora variety, along with others of the likes of Padre Pio. Prominent on his desk is a small sign, facing me, that reads: “It is time to make up your mind.” I get the idea, and am fascinated by the juxtaposition of ancestral spiritual guides and Padre Pio, so am quite willing to attentively consider his take on spiritual health or receptiveness.
He describes, then, at one point, his understanding of the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. There, in the grotto, he suggests, an apparition really did occur, but when hoardes of people go there, most are motivated by a desperation to bask in a potentially saving grace that they do not find because their attention is to physical, objective manifestations of the apparition, which of course cannot be detected. They then miss another manifestation of some kind of palpable holiness, he suggests; but it is one that can be felt only on a spiritual plane, with the appropriate and necessary preparation within oneself.
Surprisingly, all this seems quite reasonable, even to an excessively analytical, religion-embittered soul such as myself. So I determine to be more open to, and more successful than I normally am, the hypnotherapy session that then follows. Having learned of my remoteness from its effects, he employs more ramped-up techniques than he has in my case in the past, and than he normally does, according to various former clients. As I sit in his oversized, reclining armchair, he sits in a plastic moulded chair beside me and proceeds, for example, with a technique involving counting down from 10 while holding my right wrist, or placing his left thumb on my forehead, talking about a differential of warmth and coolness from one hand to the other. Most notably, however, he counts down from 10, quite quickly, interspersing odd phonemes, of indeterminate significance, between the digits -- something like: 10....9... i'm-a 8... 7...”
And so forth. There follows a variety of reinforcements of the program he requests that I put in place, which includes ritualizing eating and also standardizing the contents of my diet. He will not control, or force me to follow this, he emphasizes, but he will assist me.
It strikes me that being able to record all this (and I could say much more) underscores one pillar of my inability to relax more into life, to leave past anxieties behind, and all their manifestations, but I nonetheless leave believing my life can only improve from here, that I can and will wait for no one to save me but myself, and that some of the major pitfalls I regularly encounter, such as mixed success in contracting and maintaining close relationships, despite my awareness that I have some quite well-honed skills for the task, will continue to be resolved, with beneficial, real-world outcomes. I am encouraged to find that when I wander into a Rivers shoe store a block away from Dr Siddhu's office, to begin to buy my new supply of the comfortable, eminently walkable shoes that I love so much, I fall easily into delightful conversation with the lean, lithe Jessica on the shop floor. We talk about the benefits of cargo pants, with which she, too, has recently replaced habitual jeans. Jeans really aren't that comfortable, we agree. I don't venture that, yes, and they really can be an armor for blokes like me who are loath to present their physicality to the world through less heavily fortified fabric. But I do say, when she adds that it took her a while to get used to the light fabric of the cargo pants, that I, too, had that experience, and in fact for a week or so, I was shocked every time I looked down, to see that someone else appeared to be inhabiting my lower half, and for a month or so, I often stopped short, suddenly imaging, until I quickly doublechecked, that I was wearing nothing on my nether reaches, at all. Jessica blushed a little, but we parted with the expectation that I'd return next week, when back in Melbourne, to report on my new shoes, and to purchase some more.
A small, trim, neatly bearded and coiffed man, with rather intense eyes whose pupils are strangely difficult to differentiate from his irises, and even the whites of his eyes, Dr Siddhu dresses in a semi-formal jacket and tie, and is at once easily nimble and calmly unhurried. He is a former surgeon in Malaysia where he grew up, who came to Australia, worked in leading medical research labs, at various hospitals, and as a general practitioner, all increasingly in the area of “psychosomatic wellness,” which has been his specialty in private practice for 25 years. His office is a snug room, with waiting room fashioned from the front lobby, in his sizable home in a very fashionable suburb of Melbourne. The house looks to be of about 1870 vintage, a two-story brick building with attractive grille work, and all the appearance of financial solidity and independence. Inside his office, after greeting his clients with a rather tentative handshake, or perhaps just an overall sense of withholding or only partial self-disclosure, he beckoned me to a seat in front of his large desk, behind which he retreats. From this point, he is seen in half-light, and partially obscured by a desk lamp, so that one has to pay close attention, with a slightly crooked neck, to catch everything he says.
His message is one of self-doctoring, and of compassion, affection, and responsibility to oneself, in connection with whatever the issues presented - insomnia, anxiety, smoking cessation, weight control. Of these I nominate the first and third, and he proceeds to ask me a variety of trenchant questions that appear aimed to pinpoint just the most general facts and dynamics of my past and present. Why do I not sleep? Why do I not become trimmer, fitter, and (this last emerges only later) taller? The last commands my attention, to some degree, because I've been most easily resigned to limited height, of all my shortcomings. His only partly metaphoric meaning emerges later.
My attention is sharply on his clearly practiced, though impressively tailored messages. He has seen many people in a wide array of psychological and physical states, and is dedicated to helping people relieve themselves of dependancy on medicine, substances, destructive habits, hope for salvation by anyone but oneself. Impressively, he sketches out these remedies to depression, overweightness, anxiety, sleeplessness... with no hint of cantish, Tony Robbins-like proselytizing. The foundation of his approach, it later emerges, is an amalgam of spirituality and dependence on the body's own ability to be well. The various elements of this are announced by what one sees in his office (through the said half-light). On walls, above a large disused fireplace, are photographs of various generations of his extended family, amidst images of various spiritual guides of the usual Indian-diaspora variety, along with others of the likes of Padre Pio. Prominent on his desk is a small sign, facing me, that reads: “It is time to make up your mind.” I get the idea, and am fascinated by the juxtaposition of ancestral spiritual guides and Padre Pio, so am quite willing to attentively consider his take on spiritual health or receptiveness.
He describes, then, at one point, his understanding of the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. There, in the grotto, he suggests, an apparition really did occur, but when hoardes of people go there, most are motivated by a desperation to bask in a potentially saving grace that they do not find because their attention is to physical, objective manifestations of the apparition, which of course cannot be detected. They then miss another manifestation of some kind of palpable holiness, he suggests; but it is one that can be felt only on a spiritual plane, with the appropriate and necessary preparation within oneself.
Surprisingly, all this seems quite reasonable, even to an excessively analytical, religion-embittered soul such as myself. So I determine to be more open to, and more successful than I normally am, the hypnotherapy session that then follows. Having learned of my remoteness from its effects, he employs more ramped-up techniques than he has in my case in the past, and than he normally does, according to various former clients. As I sit in his oversized, reclining armchair, he sits in a plastic moulded chair beside me and proceeds, for example, with a technique involving counting down from 10 while holding my right wrist, or placing his left thumb on my forehead, talking about a differential of warmth and coolness from one hand to the other. Most notably, however, he counts down from 10, quite quickly, interspersing odd phonemes, of indeterminate significance, between the digits -- something like: 10....9... i'm-a 8... 7...”
And so forth. There follows a variety of reinforcements of the program he requests that I put in place, which includes ritualizing eating and also standardizing the contents of my diet. He will not control, or force me to follow this, he emphasizes, but he will assist me.
It strikes me that being able to record all this (and I could say much more) underscores one pillar of my inability to relax more into life, to leave past anxieties behind, and all their manifestations, but I nonetheless leave believing my life can only improve from here, that I can and will wait for no one to save me but myself, and that some of the major pitfalls I regularly encounter, such as mixed success in contracting and maintaining close relationships, despite my awareness that I have some quite well-honed skills for the task, will continue to be resolved, with beneficial, real-world outcomes. I am encouraged to find that when I wander into a Rivers shoe store a block away from Dr Siddhu's office, to begin to buy my new supply of the comfortable, eminently walkable shoes that I love so much, I fall easily into delightful conversation with the lean, lithe Jessica on the shop floor. We talk about the benefits of cargo pants, with which she, too, has recently replaced habitual jeans. Jeans really aren't that comfortable, we agree. I don't venture that, yes, and they really can be an armor for blokes like me who are loath to present their physicality to the world through less heavily fortified fabric. But I do say, when she adds that it took her a while to get used to the light fabric of the cargo pants, that I, too, had that experience, and in fact for a week or so, I was shocked every time I looked down, to see that someone else appeared to be inhabiting my lower half, and for a month or so, I often stopped short, suddenly imaging, until I quickly doublechecked, that I was wearing nothing on my nether reaches, at all. Jessica blushed a little, but we parted with the expectation that I'd return next week, when back in Melbourne, to report on my new shoes, and to purchase some more.
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