Saimi Sattar attends a session which claims to clear her mind clutter in the least and elevate her life at best

Lying there, I was sceptical, truth be told. I was attending a session called Access Bars. Essentially it is a technique which was started by Gary Douglas of over 30 years ago. The technique consists of 32 points on the head, called Access Bars, which when lightly touched stimulate positive changes in the brain and defragment the electromagnetic components of stress, thought and emotion. The bar session usually lasts for 60-90 minutes.

Coming back to the session, I had just heard how phenomenally it had changed lives of people — a gentleman had managed to better his eyesight, another shrugged off cervical pain as if it had never existed and yet another did not have to worry about money. But then, it was the cynical old me attending the session, so scepticism in anything that remotely sounds like mumbo-jumbo or even faintly resembling it, is bound to be scoffed at.

Nevertheless, I decided to take it lying down (figuratively speaking) and give in to the expert hands of the facilitator. Five minutes into the session and Sangeeta Kochhar placed her feather light hands on my forehead and back of the neck while the thought that kept running through my head was, “Huh! What is so great about this session? I don’t feel a thing. It is indeed some new fangled marketing gimmick being sold to people who have more money and time on their hands than they can utilise.”

But Sangeeta sure had other ideas. She asked me to move my hands up with palms turned upward, applied the slightest pressure on them for another five minutes and then turned her attention back to my forehead. For those who think it was a massage, no, that wouldn’t quite fit in the description. She just placed her hands really, really gently on my forehead and nape during the session. And it was about 10 minutes or a little under that time that I realised something different was underway. For the first time after God knows many years, I was blank. There was not a single thought that was running through my head unlike the usual where at any given moment there are atl east 30 tabs, if I take the analogy of a computer, open. From the deadlines that I have to meet to the book that I am reading and the oh-so-interesting twist in the web series to state of affairs in the country, stuff that I have to wind up at home and more... I am sure you get the drift. And I panicked. For the very idea of not having a thought sounds something almost akin to blasphemy to me. So I reached out to the only other person in the room questioned Sangeeta, if that was even normal. And she reassured me that it not only was so, but rather something that they try to achieve.

In between the reassurances and the worry, I fell asleep — a deep, dreamless and relaxing slumber —  for a couple of minutes even as Sangeeta was gently touching my forehead and nape. The session lasted for about 45 minutes. Once it was over, I settled down for a short chat with the facilitator and she told me a lot more. “I could feel the energy coursing through you. This happens sometimes, but not necessarily always. This was because you were ready for change,” Sangeeta said. However when I questioned the fact that initially I was sceptical and unbelieving that this can bring about a change, so I was not essentially believing that the session could bring about a change, she told me, “You might not have been, but then, once in the session you thought, let’s see what happens and that is what made it possible.”

Poonam also told me that she has been a facilitator for the past six years. “I was a housewife and I was going through a lot emotionally when I decided to enroll for this,” she says. Now, her young daughter, too is a facilitator who she says is better than her.

For anyone to become a facilitator, all it takes is a one-day session. However, becoming a certified facilitator takes longer.

Coming back to me, I can say I did sleep a lot better that night. But did it make much of a difference in my life in the long run? The jury is still out on that one.