Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Body suspension spurs an altered state of mind

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Friday, February 23, 2001
Body suspension spurs an altered state of mind
Local enthusiasts enter deep meditation by hanging from 8 gauge wire threaded through their backs
By Ricardo Baca
Caller-Times pop culture/media critic
What: Firewalking and body suspension demonstration
   When: 3:30 p.m. Sunday
   Where: Near Bob Hall Pier on Padre Island
   Cost: Free
   More Info: 985-2995

   It looks like an industrial testament to stigmata.
   The skin is prepped, and the hook is laced through the flesh alongside the muscle. More hooks are sewn through other areas of his back, and his pierced body is lifted into the air by wires into a position known as "the crucifixion." He hangs there for 15 minutes, skin stretched like a Salvador Dali painting. Save for his heaving chest, he's still, and he begins to resemble a slab of beef hanging on a meat hook.
   Although the roots behind this hanging ritual date back hundreds of years, hook hangings and suspensions aren't a medieval torture device. While it makes some cringe and sick to their stomach, for this group, who call themselves a "tribe," it's an exercise in meditation, devotion and friendship.
   Open to the public
   "Suspensions give me that let-out," said Jason Price, 27, frequent hanger and co-owner of 3-D Body Art on Airline Drive. "It takes me to an edge that my normal life doesn't offer."
   Added his friend and business partner Jason Stampfly: "I do it as an escape from reality. Once I got into the body piercing business, after thousands of piercings, you look for something more to bring the life back to it. Suspensions definitely did that."
   Price and Stampfly frequent the hooks. They also firewalk on red-hot ambers. Both activities lend a sanity to life that is otherwise unattainable, they say.
   "Before I'd go to jail for fighting and get really drunk and get in trouble," said Price, "but when I started doing suspensions, it got me out of that. I separated my conscious mind from my sensitivity. You go into a meditative state that you control."
   Body suspensions aren't a nightly affair for Price and Stampfly, but they are holding a gathering Sunday afternoon to share their art with the public. Price and company will be firewalking and suspending their bodies at 3:30 p.m. Sunday near Bob Hall Pier.
   Price has done hanging shows at Planet Luna and in the front yard of his tattoo parlor before, but he's psyched to be back on the beach's sandy shores.
   "At the beach," Price said, "there will be a lot of wind and the sound of waves crashing, and it's in nature. That's where you're supposed to do all of this stuff."
   Walking on hot ambers and lifting his body into the air with a system of hooks and pulleys isn't the most natural hobby, and, Price said, it's always been tough to get past conservative naysayers . It's even difficult to attract liberal-leaning viewers.
   "It looks really negative, but it's the most positive thing that's ever entered into my life," he said. "It helps me control myself. It has completely transformed my life."
   Price said he was thrown out of his house when he was 14. He hooked up with some street kids and ended up in Atlanta, where he picked up the art of body piercing, along with other habits. After a few addictions, he tattooed his face to get off drugs and moved away from Nashville to get away from the negative scene. .
   Spiritual side
   Before they came to Corpus Christi more than a year ago, Price and Stampfly were in Nashville where Price was one of the first body piercers in the late '80s. After Price's tumultuous childhood, he is psyched to have found happiness with his inner circle of friends. Together they find new ways to explore their spirituality.
   "We're very in touch with our spiritual side - not Christian, but not Satanic either - God himself," he said. "No organization binds us, and suspensions really bring us together. The main concept of (body suspension) is the in-depth mediation. Putting mind over matter, you make sure that you don't rip. And most of the time you don't, because you have so much confidence in everyone around you."
   The skin occasionally rips when the piercer makes a mistake or the pierced looses concentration. The person's body is pierced in multiple places through four or five inches of flesh. But sometimes mistakes are made, and even experienced professionals such as Price run into complications.
   Which only emphasizes that this is a do-not-try-this-at-home experiment. Price has been doing it for five years, and he remembers the first time he thought about it.
   "We started out with clothespins and rubber bands," he said. "Then we started sewing body weights into our skin."
   His fetish quickly moved onto bigger (and heavier) objects.
   "We once pulled a skid with 1,000 pounds of people on it," he said. "People always say, 'I've always wanted to do that,' but I tell them that it looks a lot easier than it really is. People we let spontaneously do it freak out. If you're not in the right mindset, your body can go into shock."
   Mind over matter
   Starting out, they use 8 gauge wire filed-down shark hooks. As an elder in his tribe, Price usually goes first. They prep his skin and the hooks with chemicals; then they pierce four to six hooks through the skin. It's more comfortable to hang from your back, Stampfly, 27, said.
   "I make sure that my mind is in the right corridor," Price said. "A lot of the meditation is heavy breathing and a rotation of your breathing."
   He stretches his body beforehand ("It's almost like getting ready for a big 5k run," he said.), and gets hooked up to a car or an electric winch on a pulley system. Once he's lifted off the ground, there's no feeling like it, he said.
   "When you're raised up, it feels like you have hot irons on each side of your back," he said. "The tension doesn't bother you, because once you're in your meditation, you can stop the pain. You're focused on the one sensation, the pressure of the hooks, and that's all you're concentrating on."
   Some are raised only a foot off the ground while others go 20 and 30 feet up. Once he comes down, Price said he's always worn out and hungry.
   "You've been off the ground for 15 to 30 minutes, and you're senses were blocked while you were doing that," he said. "You block the pain and the fear. You have to block the threshold of all that energy that's trying to shoot through your brain. It's tiring."
   Although Stampfly is also tired afterward, his body goes into an entirely different state of shock - it's a feeling more familiar and pleasing to him.
   "It's orgasmic," he said. "When everything is said and done, and you've got hooks in your back and you've been up for an hour, it feels just like you had an orgasm."
   Although the firewalking isn't as grotesquely picturesque as body suspension, it requires a deeper meditative state, Price said.
   "You're walking over 15 or 20 feet of red-hot wood ambers," he said. "It's a really big mind control thing. (Firewalking) deals with burning - granted the ashes give you a boundary of protection to cushion the walking- but at the same time, these are red-hot coals. If you walk the wrong way, you're going to burn bad.
   Positive vibes
   "We don't burn. It's really crazy, but the bottom of our feet don't burn. You may get a few blisters on the top of your feet, but nothing on the bottom. ... People say we rig it, but I invite them to try it out."
   Stampfly was burned badly once because the onlookers were looking down on him for walking on the scalding ambers.
   "There were bad vibes that time," Stampfly said. "All the other times when everyone was positive and there were good vibes, nobody got burned."
   The 3-D Body Art crew is setting up classes for people interested in learning - and taking part in - the rituals. For around $250 per year, visitors will get their own hooks and equipment, and they'll be trained and prepped for each ritual, Stampfly said.
   "You'll get like four rituals a year, firewalkings and suspensions," Stampfly said. "I think there will be some people interested in it."
   Occasionally his tribe hangs and walks privately, but most of the time they enjoy sharing it with others. Price has seen that initially people are turned off by it, but once they get a taste of the action, they're hooked.
   "It's a really sadistic world," Price said, "and people love to be scared."

Pop culture and media critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 886-3688 or by e-mail at bacar@caller.com

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