The Zen of Sarah - Transcript
[Narrator]
It’s Thursday night in the heart of Benson in north central Omaha and the neighborhood has an energy. It is a confluence of tradition and hipness; a mix of young and old. It is at this intersection of past and future where you’ll find Haney Shoes, Leo’s Diner and the Benson Bakery sharing sidewalk space with the Archangel Michael Soul Therapy Center.
[Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain with the rain of Shambala. Wash away my sorrow, wash away my shame with the rain of Shambala...]
[Narrator]
Inside a group meditates using healing tools while praying and listening to Tibetan Buddhism chants and music. The meditations are designed to heal both the soul and the body.
[chimes and bells]
[Sarah Olson]
In everything that I do I’m trying to be in meditation, which means sometimes I literally am saying om mani padme hmm, om mani padme hmm, om mani padme hmm in my head (which means may all sentient beings attain enlightenment). May we all find freedom, which is a really good prayer and it really lifts my spirits.
[Narrator]
The Soul Therapy Center has been lifting spirits since it opened here in Benson eighteen months ago. It’s been integral to the dramatic emotional and spiritual change that has taken place in Sarah Olson’s life.
Two years ago Sarah was suicidal and it was only five years ago at the age of thirty-one that Sarah suffered a life changing accident while rock climbing.
She fell nearly one hundred feet to the ground. She had only one broken bone but it was an injury that left her paralyzed from the chest down.
[Sarah Olson]
When I realized that I was basically stuck, terror just... you know burned in my heart. Just took over. And almost in that same instant a presence just appeared behind me with a voice that said, “It’s okay. Just let go.” And there was… this presence had an incredible feeling of safety and it sucked the fear out of my heart.
[Narrator]
Sarah believes she had five near death experiences and several encounters with God during her rescue. But it would be another three years before Sarah would fully connect the pieces of what happened in the accident and begin to turn around her life.
[Sarah Olson]
I never actually tried to commit suicide but I spent my life being just really a
Dare devil. Almost daring God to take my life. I didn’t care, you know, whether he did or not. I did a lot of drugs. I did a lot of crazy things. You know the pain or the anxiety or the resentments... I’ve had to deal with them because I can’t run from them anymore. So that’s a gain you know to be able to access my heart is a huge gain. And it’s worth giving up anything for that.
[Narrator]
But Sarah is not giving up on her desire and determination to walk again.
[Sarah Olson]
Having experienced a miracle you know, literally from the arms of God you know carrying me down and allowing me to survive. It put a whole new slant on everything you know. The fact that God is very much real... more real than the scientific facts of gravity. That’s a cool thing to know.
[Narrator]
She’s in her first week of what has been called the Christopher Reeves Therapy. A relatively new approach to treating paralysis.
[Therapist]
Each of us is taking one leg to try to simulate a normal pattern of walking. And by doing that we’re hoping to activate some pathways in the nervous system that are hopefully intact that are responsible for automatically generating that normal pattern of walking and trying to kind of restart those if we can.
[Narrator]
It’s a complicated therapy program, one that exhausts the therapists but leaves Sarah energized and wanting more.
[Sarah Olson]
It feels really good to have my hips moving in this way again. It like the first time in five years that I’ve felt this kind of fluid motion in my hips. It’s sort of waking something up.
[Narrator]
Regardless of the outcome of Sarah’s Therapy she’s guaranteed a dramatic life transformation during the next year. That’s because she recently became a nun and in a year Sarah will move to a monastery at Mount Shasta north of San Francisco to serve as a nun. She will leave her old life behind including her personality, old photos and all belongings.
[Sarah Olson]
It was hard to throw away the pictures of here’s when I as a model and here’s when I had you know purple hair and dreadlocks. That’s not the point that I want to come from anymore and I’m just going to have to see what emerges from that. Because it’s kinda like falling in the abyss again and just trusting that there’s going to be arms there.
[Narrator]
In the meantime this neophyte nun garbed in the traditional burgundy and gold of Tibetan Buddhism is learning how to make the tools of her new trade. Quartz crystals called etheric weavers that are believed to help in healing body and soul. Sarah isn’t ready to say that she is fully healed or that she has all the answers; only that she knows she wants to help people.
[Sarah Olson]
My whole life is a payback for the fact that I was saved. I mean I really shouldn’t be here as far as physical laws are concerned. So every breath I take should be a song of gratitude for the fact that I am. And how can I use this time that’s stolen time? That’s why I made such a sort of drastic step as to become a nun. Because my life has ended and I see how quickly it can end. And it will end again and so between now and then I might as well really do as much as I can in the right direction.
[Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain with the rain of Shambala. Wash away my sorrow, wash away my shame with the rain of Shambala...]
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