Madhuri asked Yuri about his life, and how he came to Osho
Yuri Zelez was born in 1952 in New York state, he tells me. I’ve just looked up the name Yuri – I always like to know what names mean, and I think Osho did too – and I found this: “Aboriginal, meaning ‘to hear’; Japanese, meaning ‘one to listen’; Russian, a form of George, meaning ‘farmer.’” This is what he told me about his life:
My parents had just recently immigrated from Ukraine and hardly spoke any English. When I was seven years old, one day I was out in the garden behind our house, near an old cherry tree that I loved for its delicious fruit. By chance I wrapped my arms around the rough-barked tree… and I could feel the sap moving through the tree. I was shocked, and didn’t know what to make of it – but the experience awakened in me the understanding that the sense of touch was an important part of me.
At 21, I moved to California, settling in a teepee near the Klamath River. There I planted my first garden – and first realised that I could be part of Nature. There was a creek nearby, and as I listened to it I felt that it was flushing through my brain, flushing me clear of all the useless things I had learned in school and society. I spent three years there, living in Nature… Crows and various other creatures came around the teepee, bringing up fears of the wild world, but I faced them, and found they were imaginary.
Following an inner call, I finally left that place and moved to Santa Cruz – I didn’t know why. There I joined a yoga community. A practitioner of Polarity Therapy mentored me, teaching me the method and then referring clients to me. So I was doing hands-on healing, and making a living too. I felt, This is natural to me!
I felt that I needed to go to India; the yoga community seemed not to be enough. In 1976 – I was 24 – I bought a one-way ticket. I studied sitar in Varanasi. I used to go to the burning ghats and ponder the lessons of life and death. I became very ill with a fever, and in that fever I saw a face hanging in the air in the corner of the room. It was a man, bearded, balding, with long hair…. a glowing man. I had no idea who this was – perhaps just a fever dream?
I met a Brit who told me about a Belgian monk who lived in Gujarat. Off I went! I found the retired Benedictine monk living on a hillside. He was beautiful! The monk asked me if I would be willing to take the sacrament on Sunday? Since my last confession had been many years before, I thought I was not able to take the sacrament. The monk said, “You don’t have to confess sins. Confession is really a prayer for what you want to create for yourself.” This changed the meaning of sin and contrition I had learned in my Catholic upbringing. It also removed the shame that came with it.
That December, I had a feeling, I need to leave now, but I don’t know where to. I took a passing bullock cart into town, to the train station. I got a train, wondering, Why did I come here? The train took me to Bombay. What the fuck am I doing here? So I went to a window and said to the clerk, “Put me on the first train that is leaving.” That train went to Poona.
I got off the train there, and found space in a dorm, trying to sleep near a fat snoring Indian guy. Next day an Australian wearing orange asked me, “Are you here to see the old man?”
“What old man?” I asked. The Aussie explained, and off we went to the ashram. I was wearing black and white, and what I saw on all sides was beautiful women running around in warm orange! This is not meditation! This is not spiritual! I thought scornfully to myself.
Next morning I went to the ashram, got into discourse, and sat in the back. Osho came out… That is the guy I saw in my vision, when I was sick! I was blown away.
I asked someone, “How do I get to sit up front?” I was told I needed to take sannyas first. Off I went to see Garimo (then Arup), who asked me how my visa situation was. Turned out my visa was expired… so she told me to go get a new one and then come back. Which I did.
I became a sannyasin, stayed in Poona till Osho left, then went to Oregon, where I worked as a heavy equipment operator, among other jobs. At one point I sent Osho a letter with a question… the answer to which was, “You can be with me wherever you are.” I took this to heart.
After the Ranch ended I hung around in some sannyasin communal houses in California for a bit, feeling lost but determined to find my footing; then married, became a psychotherapist specialising in trauma, and had a separate massage practice. Later I divorced and traveled regularly to Asia.
Four years after the Ranch closed, when I was in graduate school, the AIDS epidemic was in full swing. I remembered feeling the pain of those isolated at the Ranch who had tested positive for the virus, so I volunteered, in my town in California, to help those infected. Since I was a budding therapist, they asked if I could co-lead an HIV support group and I said “Yes!” I facilitated the group for seven years, and watched more than 50 people lose their lives to this disease.
My next bump with a trauma event happened in 2011 when the tsunami destroyed much of the coastline of northern Japan. I was part of a team training doctors and therapists how to work with trauma. We trained these students how to treat children using play therapy, how to deal with their clients’ grief at the loss of loved ones, and how to regulate themselves during the hard work ahead.
Lastly, I was teaching in Poland when the Covid epidemic began. I navigated those hard times when travel was curtailed: I was able to teach on Zoom at first, then traveled there when we were able to fly under severe restrictions.
Each of these experiences taught me a great deal about resiliency and regulation in my own body, which I then used in working with others.
Yuri lives in Eugene, Oregon, where he sees clients on Zoom and in person. He says the elephants he worked with and loved are with him there in Oregon. touchingintotrauma.com
Related article
- Yuri’s elephant story – In this video, a licensed psychotherapist brings Somatic Touch into the world of elephants at the Royal Elephant Crawl in Thailand. Madhuri spoke to him to learn more about his discovery
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