Rebekah Hick­man came across the Silva Method purely by chance… A friend intro­duced it to her, and she has never looked back since. Below is Rebekah’s story on how she used the Silva Method to over­come life’s daily chal­lenges and even her heart dis­ease to live a healthy and full life, despite her age.

“The Silva tech­niques cer­tainly have kept me on my feet and feel­ing good and feel­ing happy all these years.

A psy­chic friend of mine intro­duced me to Silva. She came to town to visit me one day and told me about the course. We didn’t have a Silva instruc­tor in Charleston, West Vir­ginia, at the time, but an instruc­tor who was trav­el­ing around teach­ing Silva courses came to Charleston. My friend said, “This is a real good course. I took it twenty years ago and it changed my life.”

I had been to a lot of work­shops, and I thought, “This is one that will be excit­ing for a cou­ple of weeks, then I’ll for­get all about it and will have spent my money for nothing.”

I asked my friend how much it costs and how long it took to do it. When she told me I said, “No, I don’t have the money or the time to do that.” Those are the stan­dard excuses for folks who don’t want to take the course. She said, “You’ve got the time, and I’ve got the money.” She lit­er­ally dragged me to that course, sat me down, and handed out the money to pay for it.

I thought, “This must be really some­thing, that she would do this,” because she didn’t have much money. I was sort of in awe that she did this. She had taken it twenty years before and it changed her life. In Novem­ber of 1987 it did the same for me, and I will always thank her for it.

Heart surgery

I had just gone through a heart oper­a­tion, just two or three months ear­lier. I’d had a dev­as­tat­ing expe­ri­ence with that. I started look­ing at my life and won­der­ing what I had done. I knew enough to know that I was behind it some­how, but I didn’t know how to do any­thing about it.

I was a sort of a Type A per­son­al­ity, and I knew I had to make some changes because I wasn’t going to live with the fear that I might have another heart attack.

Most of my life was any­thing but bor­ing. I have always been very, very active and into every­thing. I had a very happy child­hood, very good and lov­ing par­ents. My mother was a school teacher from the age of six­teen. I was born sort of “late in life” so I kind of had it easy and had a lot of fun.

My father was a butcher and he had a kind of Silva atti­tude too. It was dur­ing the depres­sion, times were get­ting pretty bad, but my father always said that he wasn’t poor. He wasn’t wor­ried about it. I never grew up with any great wor­ries or fears.

So when that heart attack hit me, it hit with a bang because I’d never been afraid of any­thing at any time in my life.

I went to col­lege, even though we were in the depres­sion, and was an aver­age stu­dent. At that time, in the 1930s, they really needed stu­dents in the col­leges, so they encour­aged me and helped me along. Now you have to fight to get into college.

I didn’t care too much for teach­ing, which is what I majored in, so I ended up get­ting mar­ried, I set­tled down to being a house­wife, and raised three chil­dren. I waited about fif­teen years before I went back to work.

I found out that I was more of a social worker than a teacher. I wanted to help the under­dog, to work on some­thing that had mean­ing, where I could solve prob­lems. I went to work at child wel­fare and worked with chil­dren who were in trou­ble. I thor­oughly enjoyed it. Next I moved to juve­nile court and worked with delin­quents and fos­ter care and adop­tion and all those things. I also loved that job.

After work­ing at a job for a while, I would take time off to be with my chil­dren and help them. Then I’d go back to work. I was offered a job with men­tal health. That was a fun job; they were all fun, because I was help­ing people.

The next job was at a pri­vate psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal. That was really fun because I got to work with all the patients, doing craft work, explain­ing things to them, tak­ing them on field trips. I ended up work­ing there twenty years.

The hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tor said, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I think you are doing good because it is mak­ing the patients happy and that is all that matters.”

Does life end at 65?

I almost hated to leave there, but I ended up being 65 years old and most peo­ple retire at 65. I was just fol­low­ing the pat­tern the way so many peo­ple think: When you get to be 65 you have to retire.

But I didn’t retire. I took a job where I was exec­u­tive direc­tor for Par­ents Anony­mous. They work with peo­ple who are abus­ing their chil­dren, and try to break the cycle of abuse that is handed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. Peo­ple don’t real­ize that they were abused and that’s why they abuse their children.

I also worked with a group in a hous­ing devel­op­ment in the Charleston area, where there were a lot of drugs and other prob­lems. I still get calls from some of the par­ents want­ing to know what is going to hap­pen when their kid is taken to court, and what they can do. I try to work with them. I would love to give them all Silva, but haven’t found a way to do it yet. As some­body once said, noth­ing is free…everything is paid for by some­body. I haven’t found the “some­body” to pay the expenses that would be involved in these peo­ple tak­ing the course.

I must have thought I was get­ting old at that time. I was sort of begin­ning to feel old. When you look at the cal­en­dar and you are 65 — and I was more than 65 then — it can begin to drag you down.

For the first few years after I “retired,” I was trav­el­ing around, hav­ing a good time work­ing and estab­lish­ing other Par­ents Anony­mous groups. In the mean­time, on the side, I would dab­ble in art — sculp­ture and paint­ing pic­tures. I always did yoga exer­cises three times a week, and still do. I kept myself active.

But even­tu­ally I gave it up. I thought, Well, I am get­ting old. I will turn it over to this young man who has a degree in social work. My degree was in teaching.

When I turned it over to him, I must have made a bad mis­take, because it fell apart. They don’t even have a group now.

It was then that I began to go down­hill. I was going in all direc­tions, and felt the need to do some life chang­ing things I guess.

“This is not going to be the end of me”

When I had my heart attack, I thought, This is not going to be the end of me. When they took me to the hos­pi­tal in the ambu­lance, I knew I wasn’t going to die. I knew I had to live for some­thing, that there was some­thing else in life for me to live for.

I remem­ber think­ing, “I won’t close my eyes; if I don’t close my eyes I won’t die.”

I didn’t die. I got well before any­body else in the hos­pi­tal, and I was on my way again.

That’s when I took the Silva course.

It was really life chang­ing for me. I felt like it was what I had been look­ing for all my life.

It all made sense imme­di­ately. As the instruc­tor said, the right brain doesn’t take a joke. And it doesn’t. I remem­ber that one of my favorite expres­sions was, “That really hurts my heart.” I don’t know what kind of mes­sages I was send­ing to my body, but I sure got busy and stopped send­ing them right quick.

I learned all the tech­niques and used them all. I went to every class the instruc­tor gave in Charleston, and drove the four hours to her town to attend more lectures.

One day when I was in her class, I told the instruc­tor, “You know, if I was twenty years younger I would love to go to Laredo and take the instruc­tor train­ing.” I really wanted to find out what was behind it, what made it work so good, what made all these good things happen.

She said, “That’s the sil­li­est excuse I’ve ever heard! You know you can go to Laredo and become an instruc­tor if you want to!”

Then I began to think that maybe I could. All my friends told me I was too old. By that time I was 69 years old. What peo­ple are going to put you through the train­ing and let you start at 69? Soci­ety doesn’t accept that kind of thing. You know, you are sup­posed to get old and decrepit and end up in a nurs­ing home by the time you are 70!

A sign from a higher power

Going to Laredo for instruc­tor train­ing began to sound like a won­der­ful idea. All kinds of fab­u­lous things had been hap­pen­ing: I’d changed my life, I had helped my hus­band, and had done so many good things. Peo­ple still laughed at me because of some of the things I was doing, but when they found out what the results were, they became believers.

For exam­ple, one time we were dri­ving to the beach and our speedome­ter broke. My hus­band, who had not taken the course, was really upset about it. He didn’t want to drive with­out the speedome­ter. I told him, “Just hold on…” I was using the Three Fin­gers Tech­nique; I con­tin­ued, “There’s going to be some­body at the beach who will fix the car. It will be an Exxon station.”

He said, “It will cost a fortune.”

“No,” I said, “it is going to be real cheap.” I don’t know where it came from, but some­thing must have come to tell me. After we got to the beach my hus­band and our older son went out to get the car fixed. When they came back, my hus­band had a sheep­ish look on his face.

“Well, we went out we got the car fixed” He said. “They fixed the speedometer.”

I asked how much it cost. He answered, “Thirty dollars.”

I asked where he went and he said “Exxon.” That is what I had pic­tured in my mind. I didn’t make it up, it just came to me.

Any­way, I still needed to make a deci­sion about going to instruc­tor train­ing, so I decided to go to level and ask for a sign to let me know whether I should go or not. I knew that I was get­ting old, and I wanted to do more with my life. I didn’t want to give up my life. I wanted to be involved, and I liked help­ing people.

I pro­grammed that if I received money from an unknown source, this would be a sign to go. I didn’t really need money to make the trip to Laredo, but it would be a sign.

A cou­ple of weeks later I got a let­ter from a friend I grew up with, that I hadn’t heard from in thirty-seven years. When I opened the enve­lope, there was a check in it from the Wells Fargo Bank in Cal­i­for­nia. I thought, “I’ve never been to Cal­i­for­nia.” I didn’t know what Wells Fargo was. It looked to me like it was one of those fake checks that was just made to look like some­body was giv­ing me $400, but was really some kind of promotion.

Then I picked up the let­ter and read it. It was from my friend Nel­lie. She said she knew I would be sur­prised hear­ing from her, and she used terms like, “I’ve been think­ing a lot about you,” and, “I don’t know how much money I really do owe you but this num­ber keeps pop­ping in my mind.”

The way she wrote, it sounded like some­thing or some­one was send­ing her mes­sages to do this, in order to send me a sign.

I wrote her a thank you note. I would have sent the check back because I didn’t feel like she owed me any­thing, even though she thought she did. But then I thought, Well, I did ask the uni­verse for it, so I decided to accept it. I knew where it really came from.

That gave me my real sign, in the phys­i­cal world. And it also paid my way to Laredo and back. I was very excited about that.

I went to Laredo and took the train­ing, and felt like I was in heaven. I didn’t know enough about it to ask a lot of ques­tions, but knew that I would learn more as I went along. As I’ve gone along with it dur­ing the twelve years since I attended instruc­tor train­ing, I have learned more than I have ever given away. I know that.

When I got up at the begin­ning of instruc­tor train­ing to intro­duce myself, they asked why I was here. I con­fessed what I thought, that maybe I was a lit­tle too old to start doing this. A lot of the instruc­tors who were in that class have kid­ded me about that ever since. Twelve years later I’m still going strong, teach­ing at least one class a month, and involved in a lot more activ­i­ties, like writ­ing a chap­ter for Jose Silva’s new book.

It was like a dream come true. I had men­tally pic­tured going down and get­ting my cer­tifi­cate and being accepted as an instruc­tor. I looked at Jose Silva…and he was older than I was! And he was still so active. He was demon­strat­ing a mem­ory tech­nique and could do it so well, I thought, If he can do that at that age, I’m sure I am not old either. He was a great inspiration.

I lit­er­ally began to get younger every year… in my feel­ing, in my life, and in the way I could do things.

I found that I didn’t have to get old.

In fact, one of our instruc­tors, Marcelino Alcala, used the Span­ish term: (stop count­ing), which means, you just “stop count­ing.” I think that’s a great idea.

I once heard one of our grad­u­ates jok­ingly say, “I really don’t think I’ll ever die…and so far, so good!”

Prac­tice what you teach

I used the Silva tools to set up my Silva busi­ness. Sev­eral of my grad­u­ates have become instruc­tors. I teach every month in Charleston, and also travel to Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, to present classes. We’ve trav­eled through snow and rain to go teach classes.

We prob­a­bly have more older peo­ple in our classes than most instruc­tors. I think they see us and want to see if they can get what we have.

We orga­nized one of the first Silva cruises with Vic­tor Kovens, and have been on nine cruises since. We get to travel to won­der­ful loca­tions all over the world, and we also get to present Silva work­shops to peo­ple. We went to Alaska, the Caribbean sev­eral times, Canada, the Mediterranean.

We climbed the pyra­mids, rode on camels, did all sorts of things. If you have an ache or a pain, you just use a Silva tech­nique to get rid of it and keep going.

One time I almost got — as they say — “camel-napped.” A cou­ple of boys came and put me up on top of a camel and said, “For $20 we’ll take you for a ride.” I said, “I’ve already been for a ride, and the oth­ers are wait­ing for me.” I was kind of scared then, but I put my three fin­gers together and they finally thought, “This old lady is not going to give in to us, let’s take her back,” and they finally took me back.

Peo­ple have given me many things to point out that I am older…but am still hav­ing fun.

I got one cute lit­tle gift that says, “Grow­ing old is not for sissies.” It is hang­ing in my kitchen.

I’ve got one of my gifts on the front door. It is a Raggedy Ann doll hold­ing a sign that says, “I am an old Raggedy Ann doll liv­ing in a Bar­bie Doll world.”

I’ve also got­ten a lot of books about age, many from peo­ple who are fight­ing it off and seem to want to iden­tify with me.

In one book, the author talks about work­ing with var­i­ous spe­cial­ists who are sup­posed to be there to help older peo­ple. She was on a team to help older peo­ple keep active. The spe­cial­ists were very hos­tile, she said. They didn’t want the old peo­ple to be active. They wanted them to go to nurs­ing homes where they could make money off of them. Most of them die soon after they get there. If they keep them active, they live too long. They need to get them out of the way so the younger peo­ple can come along and take all the money.

I thought, That’s pretty much true. Most doc­tors, and every­body else, just kind of regale peo­ple past a cer­tain age to the old age home. If the time ever comes where they try to do that to me, I may go teach yoga or some­thing, or go teach Silva.

Young peo­ple worry about you. They don’t want you to take a trip any­where. I can’t just sit there, I have to go visit. Two of my chil­dren live pretty far away, so I’m going to go see them from time to time. My daugh­ter wor­ries, but I told her, “Look, I stop a lot, I walk around, I use my Silva tech­niques to stay awake on the road so I don’t fall asleep, what have you got to worry about?” I think she is kind of under­stand­ing now.

My fam­ily used to tell me about the prob­lems that older peo­ple have. I said, “Look, I’m going to live till I die. I am going to live life. But I am not going to live in fear, and I don’t want any­body to tell me about these things, because I don’t want to hear that stuff!”

Older peo­ple don’t have to just sit in nurs­ing homes. They can get out and be active. Silva gave me my life back after I had the heart attack. I decided, I’ve got to keep going; I can’t just give up. And I haven’t.

Occa­sion­ally I get a lit­tle flut­ter in my chest. I go to my level and talk to my heart. I tell it “I don’t want that, just keep going along smoothly.” Of course I still go to my doc­tor reg­u­larly, and I do my hatha yoga exer­cises. It is impor­tant to use both dimen­sions. I don’t turn away from the things I need, whether they are in the phys­i­cal dimen­sion or at the alpha level.

I don’t live with my chil­dren. I still enjoy life. I enjoy hav­ing them all come to visit. I enjoy going to the beach with them. I enjoy going on cruises. I enjoy teach­ing Silva. There is always some­thing to do.

Right now I still take care of a ten room house, and have friends and rel­a­tives come to visit every day. I go to visit my chil­dren because they don’t have time to come visit me. Just recently I helped my daugh­ter move to Penn­syl­va­nia. I had to drive six hours, and then I helped her unload boxes. She said, “Well Mom, you did pretty good for an old lady.”

Most peo­ple worry about me dri­ving. My grand­son rode to the beach with me one time, and his mom had kind of scared him a lit­tle. He usu­ally sleeps all the way in the car, but this time she told him, “You be sure and keep your grandma awake, because she might go to sleep.”

After we got there he said, “You know Grandma, you did pretty good. I can’t believe I stayed awake all this time for nothing!”

I can remem­ber doing the same thing to my mother. When she was sixty I thought she was old. She was late com­ing in one time, and she said, “Don’t you ever worry about me; I don’t want any­body to worry about me.” Now I know how she felt.

You don’t have to give up your lifestyle. In Silva, we have a dif­fer­ent way of look­ing at it.

Things that keep you healthy

I give work­shops a lot of time on for­give­ness and things that can keep you healthy and happy, not hold­ing grudges against peo­ple, things like that.

Some­times I give a break­fast work­shop on the week­end. We all meet for break­fast and have a lit­tle work­shop, and every­body enjoys it.

The qual­ity of life is the key to this — not “old age” — to this mel­low, golden age.

It is impor­tant that we go to our level every day and take care of ourselves.

It is impor­tant that we stay active. As they say, Use it or lose it. That goes for both your body and your mind.

Our rela­tion­ships with other peo­ple are so impor­tant to our phys­i­cal and men­tal health. That’s why we need to for­give peo­ple, to let go of resent­ment, to have peace within ourselves.

It is impor­tant to help oth­ers when­ever we have the oppor­tu­nity, and to seek out oppor­tu­ni­ties to help oth­ers. It gives us a pur­pose beyond our­selves; it gives us a rea­son to live, to be healthy, to be happy, to feel good about our­selves. As Jose Silva has said many times, it is the rea­son we were sent here.

Try­ing new things will help to keep you young. My friends tease me. They say that when­ever any­body sug­gests that we try some­thing new, I reply: “Oh, that sounds like fun. What is it?” I guess I’ve always had that spirit of adventure.

As long as there is some­thing new to dis­cover, as long as there is some­body I can help, as long as I am able to be of ser­vice, I will con­tinue my journey.”

(This is based on the work­shop that Becky Hick­man pre­sented at the 1998 Silva Con­ven­tion in Laredo.)