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How to read this...
If you are new to the site, after reading the "home" page, click on "my story in sequence", and read it from beginning to end, and then log on at your leisure to follow "my story - daily" which is posted on a daily basis. (more or less.) I am hoping to do at least 5 entries a week if not more - (knowing me it will be more.)
If you wish to follow one thread, (i.e. INSIGHT) - try searching the site using the thread title and then magically each entry in the thread will appear.
Also, feel free to comment after any entry or tell your story on the "tell your story" link up right. Thanks again for logging in. Namaste!
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Review of
The People in my Hips by Ken Wolf
“THE PEOPLE IN MY HIPS is one of the most extraordinary pieces of theatre I have seen on or Off-Broadway in years.
Mr. Wolf’s script is nearly flawless in its eloquence and is one of those rare pieces of work that reminds us of our common humanity.
Mr. Wolf’s one-man performance is exquisite, inspiring, courageous and beautifully constructed. I laughed even as I was moved to tears.
See THE PEOPLE IN MY HIPS soon.
Because you will want to see it again.”
Lise Avery, Anything Goes!! Internationally Syndicated Radio
At this point in time, there are going to be four threads or themes that will power my story. They will be numbered in sequence as I post them.
THE TALE: will tell my People in my Hips story from the beginning through all my "crazy" struggles until the therapeutic "BURP" which healed me 3 years ago.
INSIGHT: will explore in depth and talk about Yoga, depression, PTSD, mental illness, multiple personalities, therapy, childhood sexual and physical abuse and more - often connecting my People in my Hips stories to stories posted on the discussion page, in the news and more.
PLAY: will be about my experience of sharing this story on stage and speaking with individuals after, finding the courage to finally present it, posting pages from the play, posting video of live performance and anything else coming out of that experience.
SOUL: will be about our possibilities, our positive and/or limiting beliefs and our innate power to heal ourselves or to lead ourselves to healing.
And then, we'll see where else this will go.
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Review of
The People in my Hips by Ken Wolf
Martin Denton · January 17, 2009
NYTHEATRE.com
The People in My Hips, written and performed by Ken Wolf, is unlike any theatre piece I've ever seen before.
I feel like I've been saying that a lot lately; the indie theater scene in New York seems more inventive and vibrant than it even usually is these days—a very good thing. But The People in My Hips stands out among the fare I've encountered recently. It's the kind of show that makes me want to put an adverb in front of the word unique—but I won't attempt to modify the unmodifiable.
Playwright-actor-director Wolf attempts something just as impossibly zenlike in this one-man play of his: to revisit the unrevisitable. The People in My Hips is an autobiographical work about events that happened to Wolf within the past seven years. One day, at a yoga class, Wolf suddenly started to experience excruciating pain in his hips. Eventually he came to understand that this pain was a manifestation of energy related to abusive events from his past. Wolf ultimately identified the "people" in his hips as "Little Ken"—himself as a young boy—and the "Dark Man"—some unknown evil presence who had apparently hurt Little Ken decades before. Through a lot of painful exercise and therapy, Wolf was able to exorcise these personal demons, and the pain, he tells us, is now gone.
Except that he warns us, before the show proper starts, that he fears that this very performance may trigger their reappearance. And as we witness the wrenching re-enactment of illness and recovery that Wolf has structured for us in this play, we believe that such a re-emergence could very well occur...may, in fact, be occurring before our eyes.
The play itself is a narrative of the history of Wolf's "people in hips" illness. It's shaped chronologically, with Wolf telling us the story and also commenting on it; he also shows us some videos that he made during the course of these past seven years, which he sometimes interacts with and more often seems eager to be out of the way of. Wolf also, on prerecorded audio, portrays various individuals who attempted to help him find a cure (which, for traditional psychotherapy, would mean unlocking the repressed memories of what "Dark Man" actually did to "Little Ken").
The main theme of the play is to reject that traditional treatment and to embrace the healing powers that each of us innately possesses. The climax of the piece comes with a yoga-fed acceptance of the past rather than a dramatic whodunit-style revelation. Catharsis is nevertheless achieved.
It's hard to tell where Wolf the actor-playwright ends and Wolf the still-evolving-and-healing-human begins, which may itself be a testament to Wolf's performance prowess. The show is consistently compelling and a lot funnier than I'm sure I've made it sound. It's involving and maybe even harrowing in places, but at the end of the journey we feel lifted up. Wolf cautions in the program that The People in My Hips is a play and not a seminar, but there is certainly advice offered here that audience members can choose to accept or reject. "The seminars will begin after I get on Oprah," Wolf adds in his note.
The determination it took to make this play may well land him on TV.
The People in my Hips at MRT last Spring was awesome. With the new ending recounted in these pages. My sister and my brother attended. It was pretty wild. I could hear them weeping in the audience. Awesomely wonderful. Show was again a big success.
Manhattan Rep has moved to a new space (a long and crazy story - maybe one day I will blog about it.) Manhattan Rep now is a flex space so I am hoping to start teaching ENERGY YOGA there. It is a Yoga practice I have developed to help balance and release the wacky energy we hold in our bodies. Hoping to put up another production of The People in my Hips in April with the announcement of ENERGY YOGA at MRT. I will keep you posted.
I still am amazed at how I have changed because of the People in my Hips. There is this wonderful sense of peace and security that I now have in just being me. I am not as dramatic about life - I live it and I simply deal for the most part with the goofy stuff. And my Yoga practice is still so special, balancing me, making me smile more and making me just feeling better overall.
I attended a AERIAL YOGA workshow where everyone hangs from silk slings like in Cirque du Soleil and I have to tell you, for a chronicalogically aging man, I did GREAT. Most of the class was 20 to 25 years younger and I totally kept up. It was a great affirmation of Yoga and what it has done for me across the board.
Hopefully, one day I will teach Aerial Yoga, but we are definitely getting a sling at MRT so I can hang upside down before I go on stage in The People in my Hips! (Love it!)
Anyway, I will keep you posted more often about all. It has been a long time, but a really good time.
So I have the dates and it is happening. The People in my Hips play will be returning to Manhattan Rep this April.
We are opening Wednesday April 6 and then playing Friday April 8 and Saturday April 9, all at 7 pm. Hopefully, there will be demand so we can extend it on-going.
I am totally rewriting the play and adding the NEW ending. It is going to be awesome. I am very excited.
Just yesterday I photoshopped the new People in my Hips logo. I love it.
Check out THE DARK MAN and BABY KEN on the Logo. And I look pretty cool as Shiva, huh?
When I look at this, I have to say, it affects me. The Dark Man's photo is adapted a bit and changed, but this is the God honest truth, I really used his image. That's him from over 40 years ago. Wow, the wonder of the Internet. Scary too.
So why did I make this choice, to use his image? Because this is a true story. I can't announce his name for I really don't have proof, but a part of me feels everyone who comes to my show should see this man's evil face.
I guess I am not that enlightened to forgive him. I probably never will. But I don't hate him. He is dead. I am sure he has paid for his RAGE and EVIL 1000 times over in his lifetime. That is just how it works.
But the good news is I FORGIVE MYSELF for making whatever choices that led me down that road so many years ago. I am so damned happy being healed, and also, so damned happy that I finally know the truth about one of the major events which contributed to my crazy PTSD and the People in my Hips.
The Good news is The People in my Hips (the Play) is returning this Spring now that I have a new ending, and Oprah is finishing her show so I have got to move my butt.
I just put together a new trailer with some new footage. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Every time I look at this footage, I am frightened and amazed.
All roads converge at Starbucks, and to healing, even if it is 40 years later.
I was originally going to go to the bigger Starbucks in Marmaroneck for I had a hole in my schedule and I could do some work on my laptop but I decided on a whim to go to the little and nearer Starbucks in Rye Brook to save some time.
As I was parking, I saw her. My sister Margie getting out of her Honda Civic. Bizarre. Whenever I met her it was always at the Starbucks in Rye. She was here unexpectedly, and so was I. This was not an accident. It was time to learn more.
“Ken, I have more for you. I remembered more in therapy. Do you want to hear?”
“Yes, I do. I really do.”
My younger sister Margie was my WATCHER. During our conversation here at Starbucks in Rye Ridge, NY, 15 minutes ago, she gave me permission to reveal her identity.
“So I have remembered more. I knew there was a piece missing. There was one place where I would get nauseous whenever I would relive it in therapy. How could I know he had squinty eyes if I was so far away when I saw him beating you? That was the question that was driving me crazy.”
Since our meeting in the park when she first revealed to me that she was witness to my beating with an aluminum baseball bat by THEDARK MAN, she has been obsessed about remembering and actually traveled up to our old home in Yorktown where all this took place so many years ago. In the process of retracing her steps, she actually ran into the grandson of THE DARK MAN and had a conversation with him! What happened to her 40 years ago for the most part was very very real now, with just few holes in her consciousness.
“After I saw him beating you and he saw me, I ran. I didn’t know what to do. And then I was grabbed by someone. I turned. It was his wife! “Your brother has been a bad boy, a very bad boy. You can’t tell anyone, you will get hurt if you do.” She screamed. I pulled away and ran. I was at the curb now, and my shoe got stuck in the sewer drain there, and fell off and I ran away without it. I ran up the block. I didn’t know what to do. Now here is the part, that has been dark, where I would always get nauseous, every time we would do the therapy, I would get nauseous. But I remember now, not totally, but I remember now.”
And then she told me how THE DARK MAN, when he saw her must have run up behind our house and cut her off, and then confronted her.
“He was like an animal, he was so mad, like an animal, and that is when I saw his squinty eyes. That is when I saw them, those eyes, those squinty eyes, that is when I saw them.”
He then must have shoved her down on to the ground, telling her not to tell anyone. (I must have been unconscious while this was going on.) Then somehow, she doesn’t remember yet, she was able to get away and run, and then with only one shoe, she ran up the block, across backyards and then down a cul de sac where she hid in the bushes in fear. About a half hour later, she slowly walked back frightened out of her mind to see if I was ok. From down the block, she saw me slowly walking up the lawn from the DARK MAN’s house to our house. I was alive. She then followed me up, and went in the back door to our house and curled up in a ball on the couch, never talking to me about it, or at least that is the case in her memory now.
Walking up to the house is one memory that kept reoccurring in me during my People in my Hips journey. Walking up to the house thinking “ I can’t tell anyone about this. HE WILL KILL ME IF I DO. I HAVE TO KEEP IT A SECRET or I will die.”
That is when my unconscious mind made the choice to make me forget.
I am sitting here in Starbucks weeping…
40 years later. How many times has my unconscious mind caused me to forget in 40 years?
How much of my reality and self image are real, or has my mind been picking and choosing to erase events so that I can function and feel good about myself?
That is a crazy ass question. I am not going there. Not today.
Margie had to run to work, but before that I had her plot out the path she ran on a make shift map I drew with a Red Sharpie on a Starbucks napkin.
“This was the most incredible thing I have ever experienced.” She said softly.
“Me too.”
We are connected now. Profoundly connected. Her story brings validity and truth to mine, and mine to hers.
Even her therapist, who viewed this site and all the videos, said that it seemed like both of us were telling the SAME story, that was somehow lost in our unconscious minds.
When Margie was in Yorktown, retracing her steps, when she talked with the GRANDSON of THE DARK MAN, she discovered that THE DARK MAN divorced his first wife, and remarried. The woman who grabbed her to protect her CRAZY HUSBAND, was not the woman who was widowed when the DARK MAN died in the car accident in 2006. His first wife, THE DARK WOMAN, was still alive. She was 76 and she still lived in Yorktown.
“ I think we should go and talk with her.” I said tentatively.
“I don’t know.”
“ I think we should.”
“Let’s talk. I gotta run.”
We hugged, a long silent hug.
I am sitting here wondering what I should do. Part of me loves the idea of talking with this woman for it could be an amazing closure and completion of this story, but part of me is frightened, the child part of me, the part of me that split off and became Baby Ken living in my hips.
I can’t go back there. I won’t. I never want to ever be in that place again. That place where I battled the DEMONS inside.
Sorry it has taken over a week to get this entry to you.
It has been a lot to process. Just amazing. Here it is.
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We met at Starbucks and then went for a walk down by the library and sat together on a wooden green bench. It was so bizarre. How could this person know? It was 40 years ago when the DARK MAN perpetrated his madness on me and 40 years ago when I locked that traumatic memory deep in my subconscious mind and in the muscles of my body. How could this person know? I didn’t even know and I was there. I have sifted through the sand of my unconscious for years. All I have are brief frightening images, (trees, a porch, a balding man, being so scared to tell anyone for fear I would be murdered) and the crazy somatic responses in my body while I was involved in my People in Hips journey (hands on my neck, being hit repeatedly on my back and all over my body, and an automatic bouncing of my body that seemed as if I was being raped.)
Now this person from my past was going to tell me what happened. It was 40 years ago.
And I thought this story was finished...
I am crying as I write this for it is the beginning a long conclusion. I thought putting it away in a box in my past was enough, and it is enough to prevent the PTSD, to prevent the shaking, to prevent the spontaneous cramping of my hip flexors. It’s enough. Putting it in a box in the past works. It relieves the pain, the present day pain. There is no baby Ken here, no Dark Man. They are and were manifestations of my past, my trauma, my lost childhood.
But now, knowing the truth seems somehow… sublime.
It is said that the truth will set you free, and in my case, it will. It will set me free from the fear of not knowing, free from the fear of being crazy and free from the fear of Baby Ken and The Dark Man returning someday for even more fun. The truth will firmly seat me in my body, validating my People in my Hips experience as being real.
After all this, I like real.
Now this person from my past was going to tell me what happened. It was 40 years ago.
Amazing.
So this is what was remembered in hypnosis… not mine… this person’s hypnosis. (I am going to tell the tale in the female gender although that is not necessarily the proper gender, for I was asked to keep this anonymous.)
She was walking up a road in Yorktown, and heard noise - yelling, arguing coming from down the hill behind a house across from where I lived as a child. (The same house that my hip lead me to on December 24, 2006 - the day I was cured of my PEEPS condition.) She walked further down the road where she could see what was happening down behind the house.
I was there. Yelling. Wearing a red plaid shirt, my hair parted at the side.
And a MAN was yelling back at me. Balding. Dark squinty eyes. Partially graying. He was standing on his back porch. Yes, that porch that porch, the one I remembered so often in Yoga, that porch connected with so so so so much fear.
“I can walk through your yard anytime I want.” I said defiantly.
“Oh no you can’t.” He yelled back.
“I am just taking the path down through the woods.” (Yes, those woods the woods that I remembered so often in fear.)
“Get out of there! Get off my property!
“I will do what I want.” Egging him on like I egged on my father. “What are you going to do about it?
There was an aluminum bat, with a red handle and a silver top. It was in his hand. He came at me.
“Leave me alone. Get away. God damnit! Get away!”
And then she saw this man, this DARK MAN, this god damned fucking monster of humanity come at me. As I turn to run, he hits me in the back of my left knee with the bat. I fall against a big oak tree, and the Dark Man starts to beat me repeatedly as I scream in terror.
THE DARK MAN stops a moment and turns, and sees, maybe he sees or maybe he doesn’t see but this person watching thinks he sees her so she runs and runs and runs, terror racing through her veins. She runs and runs and runs and has to get help but she is so scared - she doesn’t know what to do, she is so so so so crazy scared she needs to help me but she can’t - “Should I go to a neighbors house please god oh please someone help me help that boy I know down the hill he is going to die but I don’t know what to do Oh please please help!”
She runs frantically around the block, down a nearby cul-de-sac and around the block again. She just runs, she becomes the running she becomes the fear “oh god I have to help and I CAN’T.”
A while later, know one knows yet how long, she makes her way back. She sees me as I come hobbling up the hill from the DARK MAN’s PORCH and his TREE OF DEATH, to my house. (That memory I had during Yoga and in therapy - walking up to my house being so scared so hurt - someone, yes, THE DARK MAN told me NOT TO TELL ANYONE or else he would KILL ME. HE WOULD KILL ME IF I TOLD ANYONE. I had to keep it a secret, a secret, or he would kill me. So what better way to keep a secret - MAKE YOURSELF FORGET.) She saw this my memory of my fear, and she still didn’t know what to do. She watched as I hobbled up to my home, beaten and …. Oh God, I think something else but I just don’t know yet… I just don’t know.
Please, can I keep that in the box.
Because of this event, my “Watcher” spent the rest of her life up until now unconsciously trying to help/save people for she was unable to help me on that oh so dark day, 40 years ago.
And I, by the DARK MAN, was given the curse (now gift) of the people in my hips.
One event changed the course of our lives. I thought this was my story but the miracle here is, it wasn’t. This tale, my tale is shared. Someone was there. Someone was there.
Oh God, it was real.
“Can you ever forgive me?” my “Watcher” wept as we sat together on that park bench. “Can you ever forgive me, I didn’t know what to do, I had to run, I couldn’t help myself I had to run I had to - can you forgive me please oh please oh please?”
She was there again. A child begging my forgiveness.
“Of course I forgive you. You didn’t do anything. He did. He’s the evil one. Of course I forgive you. I am fine. It is forty years later, and I am doing really well. That was the past. It’s over.”
“I didn’t want to tell you. Are you alright? I didn’t want to bring stuff up for you.”
“I am fine. Totally fine. You didn’t do anything. You were a child. Just a child.”
She wept as we embraced. I felt somehow devoid of emotion, yet filled with so much compassion for my dear and wonderful Watcher.
I vaguely remember the incident behind the Dark Man’s house. The somatic feelings of getting hit on my back when the People in my Hips first manifested big time now made sense. I was beat on my back by an aluminum bat. The somatic hands on my throat must have been his, and the memory of being held down when I had the Moobee points done on me by Alexander Hand, must have also been from this experience also.
And then there was the somatic memory of being raped which showed up in Yoga. Did that happen that day when my Watcher ran away? I don’t know. … And I think so.
The next day, I received a phone call from my Watcher. She found out the identity of THE DARK MAN by searching the internet and she found a picture. In the picture, he was balding with dark squinty eyes. It was him.
He was dead. He died three years ago, in 2007, in a car accident.
He can’t hurt me ever again.
When my hip lead me to his house on that fateful Christmas Eve in 2006 when I was cured of my condition, the Dark Man was probably sitting in his house less than 30 yards away.
The world works in mysterious ways.
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Here is that video from that fateful Christmas Eve re-presented here in this context.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 6:44AM 
