THE FELDENFELDEN METHOD (C)1992 Alan M. Schwartz I recently attended a gathering of the severely gifted. These wielders of indomitable mental power and its sequel - the status of social pariah - overran a local hotel for three days of Dionysian excesses aimed at people who were irreparably Apollonian. Preceding each day's seminars exploring nuclear substructure and the astrological significance of chocolate there lurked morning exercises. My plan was to sit hard by the breakfast buffet and consume everything within reach. I was well toward achieving critical gastric hypercontainment when I was inveigled into the intricacies of the Feldenfelden method. Fashionable aerobic absurdities are inevitably led by taut-bodied seductresses encased within monomolecular spandex films flaunting five axis anatomical mobilities that would make a 20-year veteran employee of a Turkish brothel blush. I would have been content to finish that last pound of lox had I not spied La Bombe Semtex flowing through the Hospitality Suite, enticing every living and two recently deceased males to join her downstairs to explore the Feldenfelden Method. My protuberate belly and I tagged along. How lucky I was to have unwittingly shielded myself against ruin. Bam Bam Feldenfelden held multiple black belts in home-study Tchai Quwan Reep and was an internationally renowned professional dwarf tosser. He sustained a near fatal spinal subluxion during warmups in the 1952 Poughkeepsie Dwarf Tossing Invitational. Totally paralyzed, in unceasing agonizing pain, and hovering at the edge of death he was to spend the remaining eight decades of his life collecting Worker's Compensation and Social Security Disability benefits, fathering more than six dozen children, and selling seven billion dollars' worth of Feldenfelden Method franchises. Rising above his own physical challenges he now invited the world to share in his discoveries. La Bombe Semtex had received intensive personal instruction from Bam Bam Feldenfelden himself, and only years of dedicated whole-body tattooing had hidden the hickey scars that proved it. We entered a large room ringed by chairs but otherwise empty. She bade us remove our shoes, empty our pockets, loosen our clothing, and lie on the floor. As we closed our eyes and immersed ourselves in her voice and her scent, she engaged in a preemptory examination of wallets and billfolds as she spoke: "The Feldenfelden Method is nothing less than establishing your body's kinesthetic resonance within universal somatic space. Through simple but precise, minute anatomical manipulations we will energize an aura of wellness. I work with a chiropractor, so we may explore full-time reintegration of your sensorium and be completely reimbursed by your health insurer. I also hold weekend seminars at my villa, where dozens of certified Feldenfelden method therapists will insinuate balance through the medium of the Jade Tunnel, forever establishing the quantum mechanical unity of monocoque skeletal realignment." I lay upon a threadbare carpet, a breakfast rich with salt, sugar, starch and grease sloshing within my stomach, protecting me from the insidious mental tendrils enmeshing more susceptible souls. As the instruction progressed we soon had our left ankles touching our right knees as our pelvises rotated to touch our breastbones, themselves realigned via the agency of our hands clasped behind our heads, cradling them and pushing them up and forward. La Bombe Semtex flowed over to one participant and, using her trained hands, traced the energy pathways flowing from his knees through his inner thighs. Judging from his muffled squeal, I'd hate to be the accountant reporting next quarter's profit/loss statement to the health insurer bankrolling his continuing self-actualization. Our somatic reorientation proceeded for 45 minutes, culminating in a display of her three lavishly photo-illustrated books detailing the intricacies of beginning, advanced, and sustaining Feldenfelden technique. That all the pictured therapists were female, representative of a broad range of ethnic, racial and geographic origins, and wholly unencumbered by the constraining nuisance of clothing no doubt empowered the remaining 15 minutes wherein she ran dozens of credit cards through her electrically powered stamper/verifier. I was preoccupied with keeping a traumatized breakfast beneath my belt. I was spared. As I drove home that evening I spied a fellow motorist pulled to a freeway shoulder by a California Highway Patrol therapist. The subject would receive about $226 worth of enlightenment and never have the opportunity to enter into kinesthetic resonance within universal somatic space. The Feldenfelden Method was mine to share. I checked my rearview mirror and floored the gas pedal as I passed.