“I purposefully go outside my comfort zone. In these situations I feel out of place, and I’m aware of my cultural corners. I say very little. I just listen.”
Jacquetta has demonstrated this elementary toe loom while waiting at the doctor’s office or at the airport. “I usually gather a few curious bystanders who wonder what the hell I’m doing! It’s another way of teaching.”
“I sat next to a Tibetan rinpoche not long ago. He knew about ten words in English and I knew not a single Tibetan word. According to tradition, sitting near an illumined being allows your mind to calm down and absorb some of that person’s extraordinary quality. If your heart and mind are open, this exchange takes place, language or no language.”
30 Milton Magazine
Jacquetta has shared her knowledge of these enduring practices through a long and varied tenure as a “gypsy teacher,” offering lectures and workshops at guilds, museums and university anthropology departments. “Teaching demands high-energy and intense focus,” she says. “Concentrating completely on someone else’s process, finding the blockages of their mind and helping to ease those, is enormously rewarding. Seeing people flower under your hands is miraculous.
“Milton grasped a long time ago that exposure to the arts is essential in developing healthy, balanced, creative human beings. During my lectures and classes, people are dazzled by the sophistication of these ancient techniques. They gain an interest and a respect. I’ve found honorable work in helping to preserve these beautiful and important traditions.” Erin E. Berg