Ep. 17 | Tub Talks with Vicki Topp: Esalen Legend + Bodywork Practitioner
This week on Tub Talks, we soak in with one of my Esalen and Big Sur elders, Vicki Topp. Vicki has practiced bodywork for many decades alongside our first Tub Talks guest, Deborah Anne Medow. Vicki shares her journey of landing in Big Sur, as well as her immersion into the world of bodywork (massage therapy and other practices). She even demonstrates her skill set on my body during the bath!
In the immediate aftermath of an eye injury the evening before our soak, Vicki opens the conversation with her original concept of something she calls ‘alternative futures’: a theory that guides her through encountering the possibilities of how to navigate life experiences, including the difficult ones.
Falling pregnant in college, Vicki dropped out of law school and found herself in Big Sur. From working with elementary school children at Pacific Valley School in the south coast of Big Sur to starting the massage program at Ventana in Big Sur, Vicki details how Big Sur has always “kept her.” She compares her life in Big Sur to a long term relationship, seeing how her dynamic has shifted and adapted over the years. She tells us about her relationship to learning, to housing, to dating, to boats. She talks about losing friends to death as a result of brainwashing in experimental groups in the 70’s. She talks about losing friends now, as she enters a different phase of life.
Vicki uses bodywork as her way of impacting society, teaching her technique across the world. Vicki’s experience of practicing bodywork is defined by working with a client, as opposed to working on someone. She describes bodywork metaphorically. She sees parallels to life through something she calls ‘reach patterns.’ Reach patterns are both physical and emotional. They can delineate the way we reach for our dreams, or expand the length of our arms from our body. Vicki claims to have grown reach patterns in her body, while being limited in her life goals. Vicki gives us permission to be unapologetically ourselves through her demonstration of how. Vicki paves the way by showing us how to be a strong, independent, intelligent woman. Her vulnerability and honesty about being lost in a nowness is permissive too. So soak in her wisdom, and learn a little bit more about Big Sur culture and the stewarding of the land through living as Vicki Topp!
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