Sunday life: a chat with Oprah’s life coach Martha Beck
So, this week I get “wordless” with Martha Beck
You know that conversation starter where someone asks, “So who would you most like to sit next to on a plane”? For some deeply intuitive and not wholly understood reason my hypothetical answer (because, in fact, no one has ever actually launched a conversation with me in this way) is Martha Beck. Martha is one of Oprah’s advisers and cited as “the best-known life coach in America”. The only magazine I’ve ever subscribed to is Oprah’s O Magazine, and mostly for Martha’s tack-sharp, “and-now-sweetheart-it’s-time-to-get-over-yourself” advice column. Let’s just say, she speaks to me.
So in New York , while I didn’t sit next to Martha on a plane, I do share a green tea with her at the swish Hudson Hotel…and watch on as she defiles the restaurant’s cutlery.
Now for the bit that needs to be accented in fluorescent marker with big red circles around it. Shortly after we sit down and make high-energy small talk, Martha bends a spoon using the stillness of her mind (and her hands, lightly). A few things you should know: she first gets me to try bending the spoon (there was no way I can budge it, and, let me tell you, I have “man hands”); Martha weighs little more than a whippet with the corporeal strength to match; the act is un-premeditated, using a spoon from the restaurant (not her own); and, finally, if you’ve seen The Matrix, yes, it’s rather like that.
Martha (that’s her below) shuts her eyes for 10 seconds and then, using two hands but no visible brute strength, calmly bends the spoon 45 degrees. I grab it from her; surely I can bend it now the metal has “loosened”. But, nope, it still doesn’t yield. When we’re done, she shuts her eyes again and bends the spoon back into shape. It’s not something to believe or not believe. It just happens. As Martha says, we can’t see thoughts, or “prove” thoughts, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
So how did she do it? She used wordlessness, she says. For her tenth book, Martha, a Harvard graduate, New York Times bestselling author and former Mormon who’s survived untold hardships (including having her husband come out as gay; she then realised she was gay shortly after), is travelling the world studying shaman and wise leaders, to find the secret to living our best life (to adopt an Oprah-ism). The most powerful technique these leaders have in common, she says, is… wordlessness. Which is a state of being involving stilling the mind and going beyond concepts and language. In some cultures this takes the form of meditation, others trance. Beyond words, nothing is delineated. Everything is connected and we’re not limited by mental constructs, such as “us” and “them”, and “hard, metal spoons can’t be bent”.
Granted, the spoon-bending stuff is tough to absorb on a Sunday morning. And I don’t have the space – or expertise – to spell out how Quantum physics can now explain this kind of energetic phenomena. I suggest you watch the cult film What the Bleep Do We Know, or The Matrix for this. Also, Jill Bolte-Taylor on TED.com talks about her experience of having a stroke, and the insights it provided her into our experience of “matter”. It gives slightly different take on the same kind of thing and is my FAVOURITE TED.com presentation.
That all said, the benefits of wordlessness is indisputable. By now many of us have heard of those experiments done on Tibetan monks which show meditation enlarges the “happiness” bits of the brain. Martha has done weight-loss experiments where subjects using calming, or wordless, techniques alone lose 11pounds more (in one day) than those using traditional diets.
Achieving wordlessness is another matter. Martha suggests I try this technique: go through each of the five senses and recall your favourite moment for each. For me: the smell of cheese on toast, the visual of a particular camping spot in Kakadu at dusk, the sound of kookaburras, the taste of dark chocolate, the feeling of being stroked on the inside of my arm. Then conjure them up, at all at once, flood yourself in a bubble ‘n’squeak of outrageously pleasant stimuli.
I do this and hold the riotous sensation as long as I can. My mind is so flooded with feeling there’s no room for thoughts or words. Feelings “crowd out” word-thoughts, and I feel a lightness and focus seep over me like honey.
These sensations aren’t new to me. I’ve been meditating daily for several years. Yet I struggle to still my mind. In my meditation group I often vocalise that I’m crap at mediation. But holding a wordless space renders such outbursts redundant. It might not bend spoons, but it is smoothly powerful.
I’d love to know how meditation “feels” for you. I often feel a “suction” feeling when I slip into the space. When the words go, I feel sucked into nothingness and it feels wonderful… you?
Sarah, let me tell you that I am going to nominate you for “The Bent Spoon” award which is announced annually by Australian Skeptics to the “perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal piffle”.
In the case of your article today you could most aptly substitute the words “life coach” for “con-artist”.
Spoon bending is a magician’s trick. I know lots of people who can do it. Uri Geller is the most famous totally discredited moderately competent magician who claims this is some sort of “magic”.
The film you refer to,”What The Bleep Do We Know”, won the “Pegasus” award from the estimable James Randi (go to his amazing website) for being a very misleading piece of rubbish. Anyone with any real understanding of Quantum Physics (which is, to be fair, probably almost not understandable) will tell you that the film is nonsense.
I suggest you learn to put your brain into gear and also get in touch with your emotion of “curiosity” in order to look a bit deeper into these things. Your appraisal is heartbreakingly superficial.
Mediation is ok and has been found to have some benefits but it does not bend spoons.
You will be nominated for “The Bent Spoon” but you’re no certainty to win. There are lots of gullible people and con artists out there. The competition will be stiff. Good luck!
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July 4th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Hi Terry, I appreciate your time in writing to me. I’m sure we will have to agree to disagree on the worth in this life of being skeptical, at least as a starting point. I emphatically prefer to be open and steer things from there, not professing to have all answers, or indeed, any at all. We used to think the world was flat, until our perception was able to steer us into the possible. If we’d all been skeptics, we would’ve shut the door on exploring further.
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Wow, I’m lost for words…
Love how you’re prepared to encompass the possibilities that our rational sciences may not yet be able to measure, Sarah.
(and in the meantime, I fancy it’s quite an honour to be nominated for ‘The Bent Spoon’… you know what they say about being sane in an insane world)
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July 4th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Yes Gab, I feel rather honoured about the nomination!
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Spoon bending? Are you serious Sarah? It’s a simple magic trick and shown to be so back in the 70’s.
I can do it and anyone can be trained in the magic of fooling other people into thinking you’re bending a spoon with your mind, along with thousands of other cheap card tricks based on “the power of the mind”.
And Sarah, I don’t thank you for telling skeptics what to think. If the evidence says the world is round, not flat, skeptics accept the evidence.
If the evidence says people can’t bend spoons with their mind – and that has been shown to be the case, particularly where the testing is done with another magician checking that no trickery is done, then skeptics accept the negative evidence. Skeptics would love to be proven wrong, James Randi (a retired magician) has 1 million dollars worth of wanting to be proven wrong.
You’re the one who appears to be closed minded in thinking that it can’t possibly have been a simple magic trick.
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Sarah, if you want to be “open” then be “open” to the possibility that there may be other explanations for a spoon being bent that just some supposed mystical power.
You say that you do not profess to have all the answers but you say the “benefits of wordlessness are indisputable”. Hmmm…”indisputable” doesn’t sound like a very “open” word. Well, I’m disputing it.
You say “How did she do it?” …”she used wordlessness, she says”. So you believe her just because she said it? That’s not being very “open”. That’s like a little kid believing some lie told to them by a bigger kid. If someone says it then it must be true. I’m “open” to the possibility that you’ve been conned.
And it was the “skeptics” who came up with the idea that the world wasn’t flat. It was the “believers” who continued to believe what they were told. Galileo went to prison for being skeptical about the church’s teaching that the Earth was the centre of the universe.
The use of the term “Quantum Physics” in your article is a typical example of someone ignorantly misappropriating the good name of Science while betraying its principles.
What the “bleep” would you know about Quantum Physics, for goodness’ sake?
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Ok, I normally love your posts, but let’s get down to brass tacks here:
I am a physicist, a card-carrying degree-holding actual physicist. I have put in years of hard graft learning physics, and that includes a hell of a lot of quantum mechanics. I am unafraid of the Schroedinger Equation, Dirac notation, or perturbation theory.
What the Bleep Do We Know is a bunch of uneducated ignorant half-baked waffle. End of. You can talk about science being open minded and try and draw a spurious flat earth analogy, but the cold hard facts are that science deals in cold hard facts, ie, actual repeatable evidence, of which that movie is entirely lacking. There was, after all, irrefutable evidence against the eart being flat, it wasn’t mere open-mindedness or wishful thinking.
I prefer my reality real. That doesn’t make it any less beautiful, quite the contrary.
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July 5th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Hey Cosmic, get your points. I love science, too. I don’t have the full expertise, as you do, but I enjoy the logic and process of it. I don’t subscribe to reality only being that which can be proved by science, however. I don’t like to narrow the definition down like that because I really do have more fun playing with the science side, as well as the more esoteric postulating. The earth-flat point, however, is to show that possibility can trip up those who stick to conventional perception alone and are not open to something until it’s “proven” by science. Science might get around to “proving” lots of things eventually, but that doesn’t mean that all the stuff it hasn’t proven yet isn’t possible, or doesn’t exist.
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Terrific work! This is the type of information that should be shared around the web. Shame on the search engines for not positioning this post higher!
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Sarah, I love this five senses excercise!! Thank you so much. I have trouble meditating because of racing thoughts as well and just tried this and voilà, I think I can work with this. Yay!
Also, LOL spoon rage ITT, get over yourselves, people.
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Wow, such anger about spoon bending! I’d like to thank you for sharing this, and I’m choosing to look at the spoon in a metaphorical way; when we realise how much our language, rules and structure define our lives it’s much easier to see the other possibilities that are out there. Just like accepting that there may be a way to bend seemingly otherwise completely unbendable spoons, it also helps me realise that ‘being adult’ is just a social construct, just words and ideas we have created and then steadfastly believed, as are our notions of intelligence, some people being better than others and beauty. I’m thinking that Martha didn’t show you the spoon bending in order to completely convert you to her wondrousness, after all it was part of a larger conversation, but more to allude to a different way of thinking, a way that might break through some of these constructs which may be holding us back from making our lives better. It has, at least, certainly helped me think a bit more clearly at the start of this week. Thanks!
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July 5th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Lauren, you said it better than I. The spoon-bending thing is as possible and “normal” as all the other bizarre things that happen around us. Yep, she was merely illustrating a point. And at the time it didn’t blow my mind or make me wonder how she did it too much. My point remains: I CHOOSE to be open to all possibilities. I can’t tell you where my phone number exists in my head, but I know it’s in there somewhere….weird example, but off the back of a chat I just had with someone.
Thanks for your thoughtsx
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I love meditating, I did it very regularly for about 2 months last year which pretty much saved my mental health on a whole lot of things. Now, I’m lucky to do it once a month. I love the feeling of being in that state and the supreme relaxation that comes afterwards, the clarity of mind and thought and spirit. I just find it so hard to actually commit to doing it. I’m going to start again though, you’ve inspired me.
Off to try and bend a spoon now
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July 5th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
just don’t tell a skeptic about it!
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Sarah, are you open to the possibility that the spoon bending you saw might have been a magic trick?
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Mal, I am. I merely say: I couldn’t bend the spoon. She could. It wasn’t a set-up. If I was a skeptic, I’d say, “prove to me that it was a magic trick”. But I’m not, so won’t!
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Sarah, you said ” I love science, too.” And then you said “…I enjoy the logic and process of it”.
No you don’t!
If you actually applied the logic and process of science you probably wouldn’t be saying what you’ve said about spoon-bending, Martha Beck and the pseudoscience of “What The Bleep Do We Know?”.
It’s ironic that your supposed “openness” keeps you stuck in a very “narrow” and vulnerable place (i.e. where you are prone to believe what charlatans tell you).
The old saying “don’t be so open minded that you let your brains fall out” could apply.
If you really want to open your mind why not broaden it with some real scientific rigour which might lead to a better, and deeper, understanding.
Our education system has clearly failed us when someone as (presumably) well educated, eloquent and literate as you comes out practically (apparently) scientifically illiterate.
Actually, Scientists can be fooled, too. It’s “Magicians” who can teach you about spoon bending. Just google “spoon bending”, James Randi in particular, and see how it’s done.
Note: even in your own text you contradict yourself when you say Martha Beck used “wordlessness” but then you say she was “…using two hands..”.
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July 6th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Terry, I have read and absorbed your various comments. I appreciate and have enjoyed your points in so far as they relate to my opinions. I ask, however, that you do not use my blog to veer into personal attacks and conjecture. I have unapproved one of your comments, as I do any such personal comments on my site that are nonconstructive. My site is not the forum for this, I’m afraid.
Thank you.
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great post.
i am kinda surprised, why is it bothering some ppl.. so much? “spoon bending//”
everybody has right to choose what to believe// there can be many explanation.. but it wont look / feel the same to everybody…
if everybody subscribed to same viewpoint.. how boring the world would be..
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Thank you Sarah for sharing the 5 senses recall as a strategy for focussing the chattering & wandering brain. It’s helped me this week during a stressful time. Negative comments on this blog –
blah!! Keep on keeping on Sarah 
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I am slightly amused to note that several people got so totally caught up on the ‘spoon bending’ that they missed the rest of the article. Which was lovely, by the way.
I do enjoy reading your writing, Sarah.
Now I am off to read some of Martha’s!
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[...] Oprah’s life coach Martha Beck. We chatted about wordlessness. She gets it. As in, how to live your message. Be your message. When [...]
Hi Sarah – it seems a lot of comment has been caught up in the ‘what’ of the spoon bending. I’m pretty sure that all of us, no matter what perspective we take, agree that there is some technique involved, has to be. I think the ‘why’ of the spoon bending is more interesting. My guess is that it’s a little bit of showmanship, something to shift your mind out of the everyday and into that border country of wonder and possibility (walking on water, loaves and fishes anyone?). Why she feels the need to do it is another thing…maybe she doesn’t yet fully trust her own abilities, maybe a step or two to go for full authenticity. I agree with you though, she is a remarkable women with a lot of good things to say. Love your blog and have a great time in Bali
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Hi Sarah….and others on the spoon bending front.
I have to say I have just cottoned onto this blog in the last month and have really enjoyed it….up til now.
and that brings us to spoon bending!
The thing is……it has been shown to be an optical illusion. Which is ok.
But what i kinda find hard to let go of is why ….
a) Martha took the time to learn the trick, and
b) Why she would use it on you and not fess up to the fact that it was a trick
I see that as more than a little unfair (no matter how good an existential point she was making)……
But ultimately it sits pretty poorly with my inside peeps (fact is, it scares the hell out of the lot of them and they all start shifting nervously and looking for the door).
Now….where is that door?
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Hey Riccardo,
Spoon bending…to answer:
a) why not? given she does it to demonstrate what the mind is able to do, I think this a very interesting way to while time
b) I’m not convinced it’s a trick…I’m very open to all kinds of things…there are so many things that can’t be explained, and I love that…it keeps us yearning for more information, more engagement, more connection.
But I TOTALLY get that everyone’s inside peeps tell them different things!
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I think Martha Beck is a great Life Coach!
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Sarah, I kept this article in my visions book and found it again today. I only hope one day to have the power of spoon bending, although I am getting better and better at making things happen. Thank you for your inspiring words and letting us see the vulnerability in you. It makes me feel like there is someone else out there like me. Looking forward to so much more!
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Prayer and meditation, wordlessness, the value of sitting still. Forget the spoon, the point is prayer works.
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There is an unseen energy among the many unseen energies (Isn’t all energy unseen after all, as we just see the phenomenal effects e.g. electricity) some call ‘Ectoplasm’ which can be directed by some to cause phenomena such as spoon bending.Uri Geller was obviously an expert. Some psychics can marshal it to rock tables etc Apparently the Russian military have been trying experiments so as to use it for their military purposes. The user of this energy doesn’t have to be spiritually of a high level. The point is that there are unseen energies which Science has not yet been able to measure with it’s current instrumentation as yet,
Regards,
Toreba
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