Walking the Coals With Baby No Sweat...

Walking the Coals With Baby No Sweat to Moms

Is the way to the delivery room paved with burning coals?

Mary Russell, a North County hypnotherapist, thinks maybe so. For years she has taught a course on “Childbirth Fulfillment With Hypnosis” in Escondido to reduce the fear and pain of childbirth. Now she’s added a new (and optional) touch: fire walking.

Russell figured that if expectant mothers saw how hypnosis allowed them to walk pain-free across 7 feet of hot embers, their terror of the delivery room would diminish. So four of her students gathered recently in the back yard of Russell’s home in the San Pasqual Valley.

First came a three-hour lecture by Russell’s husband, who is also a hypnotherapist and regularly conducts fire walking exhibitions. Next, The Walk.

“There was no heat and no pressure,” said Kari Hillstrom, 24, of Oceanside, who is expecting her first child in August. “It was so amazing; it was staggering.”

“I wanted to reassure myself that this hypnosis stuff really works,” said Carolyn Peterson, 42, a reading specialist for Fallbrook schools, who is expecting her second child. “Now I’m a believer.”

Mary Russell says the four-for-four success rate is not surprising, and she’s thinking of adding fire walking as a regular feature of her class.

“It’s all a matter of increasing the frequency of your personal vibrations to direct your mind away from pain,” she said.

It may be a while before the American Medical Assn. adds fire walking to its prenatal suggestions. None of the four mothers-to-be dared tell their obstetricians in advance.

Those Are Fighting Words

The editor calls it “an unfortunate simile.”

The activist calls it “the most lowdown, degrading, awful thing I’ve seen in my 50 years of politicking.” She’s talking to her lawyer.

At issue is a punchy paragraph in the recent pre-election edition of the Residential Reporter, an intermittent publication of the Coronado Residential Assn. since 1954. Of Coronado City Council candidate Susan Keith, the Reporter reported:

“In the minds of many people, Keith is

associated with a small band of articulate, ultra-conservative citizens, whose inflammatory rhetoric and untempered accusations in and out of our council chambers mimic the antics we have come to expect from the children of the Ayatollah .”

Lula Coleman, a Keith supporter and longtime civic gadfly, says those are fighting words, and she’s not pacified by the fact that Keith, a slow-growther, won a narrow victory last week over the candidate endorsed by the residential association.

“You can’t compare people to the Ayatollah and get away with it,” she said. “What if my grandchildren read that?”

Jane Winn, the editor, says the paragraph was trying to show how the activists who besiege Coronado City Hall and the demonstrators in Tehran both rev up their rhetoric when the press is present.

“It wasn’t meant in a political way,” she said. “It was only meant to show they act alike when the cameras appear.”

News From the Front

The guerrilla war against the SDG&E; sellout to Southern California Edison continues:

- San Diego City Atty. John Witt was in Washington on Friday to brief the county’s

congressional delegation on the city’s opposition to the merger. So far, the four local reps have stayed neutral, which they insist is unrelated to the fact that they’ve all received campaign contributions from either SDG&E; or Edison.

- Encinitas Mayor Anne Omsted, a member of the San Diego County Water Authority, is wearing a “Being Sued by SDG&E; Is a Power Trip” T-shirt. On the front, an orange lightning bolt; on the back, a copy of the cover sheet of SDG&E; vs. County Water Authority.

- Consumer advocate Michael Shames, who last week revealed an internal SDG&E; memo suggesting that rates may increase under Edison, has established a hot line for utility employees seeking to leak inside information: 270-7880.