THE DESERT THERAPIST
To feel the sand under your feet

Inge Levin is a charismatic woman with passion for dolphins and nature. She has experienced several remarkable turning points in her life. From her earlier career as a well known photo model in Denmark to injuries from a serious car accident to present where she conducts “love tours” for Danish travellers to the Red Sea.

Accidents happen when they are least expected.
An early afternoon in December, 1989.
A Danish woman by the name of Inge Levin is in a car with her family on their way to the airport in Copenhagen to meet wih her daughter, who is on her way home from the United States. In the back seat of the car are Inge’s two other children. They are both excited to see their sister again.
In a shocking instant, a car crashes into their right door, and suddenly the idyllic family journey is turned into a nightmare of blood, tears and ambulance sirens.
Inge Levin’s injuries include a broken pelvis, four broken ribs, a broken collar bone and a crushed hip bone. The entire right of her body is paralysed.
After two years of painful rehabilitation, Inge Levin hears from a friend that dolphins might possibly be able to help her in the healing process. She decides to travel to the Dolphin Reef in Eilat, Israel, where she would have the opportunity to swim together with these exciting creatures.
“This was a devine experience for me. The water, dolphins and the sun! Wow! I was both afraid as well as fascinated by them. The dolphins touched something very deep in me. I cried so much. When I arrived home again, I began to read about them – about how their sounds releases hormones in our bodies (endorphines) and about how they can assist in restoring one’s health. You can count on a dolphin. When they are angry, you are not in doubt. And when they are caring and loving, you are also not in doubt. It is said that dolphins are much better in utilizing their brain capacity than we humans are. And they are able to control the individual use of each of the two halves of the brain. By putting only one half to sleep at a time, they are still able to stay awake – while resting.”
In 1994, Inge Levin began a new career as a “dolphin oriented” travel guide to Israel, and also to the Sinai in Egypt, south of Eilat, where there is a special dolphin who keeps herself to the coastal area just outside the village of Tarabin.


Selfesteem and sensuality

An early afternoon in December – 11 years after the car accident – Inge sits on a beach in Sinai. Today, there are no traces left of what she has been through.
A warm, brown-tanned woman, who is at one with herself and her surroundings.
She has just brought a group of 14 Danes to the coral reef at a village called Ras el Shitan, where a small, peaceful camp of bamboo huts is sculptured into the desert hills in the background. These Danish tourists have come not only to dive among the corals, swim with dolphins, ride on camels, meet the Bedouin people, and experience the desert, but also to meditate, work with concepts of spirituality, and to learn more about themselves as individuals. They have come to find out about the important things in life.
This desert oasis is perfectly created for this purpose.
In the late afternoon sun at Ras el Shitan, one can see silhouettes of human figures on almost each mountain top and cliff formation in the area, meditating or just enjoying the spectacular view of the bay and the desert mountains.
Beduins sit among the travellers sipping peppermint tea, while cats dose on cushions in the shade. The atmosphere is peaceful and very relaxing. One has the feeling of timelessness.
“Ras el Shitan is one of the magic nature places in the world, where doing absolutely nothing has a value in itself. The silence of the desert makes room for listening to your own heart and soul,” says Inge Levin, who calls her arranged tours to the Red Sea “love journeys.” Primarily because as it happens, love tends to be the most popular subject of discussion among her tour groups: How do we fulfill our individual need for love?
“Here in the Sinai desert we have time. Time to come forward with the big questions in life. What makes the wheels turn around? What is the meaning of life? This spot in itself helps to give the answers. For instance, that it is often the most simple things which are of the greatest value. That one’s confidence and self esteem have a lot to do with developing one’s potentials. In astrology, for example, they say that the meaning of life is the development of consciousness and love,” explains the 59 year old love therapist.


A slave to desire

Shortly before the car accident, Inge Levin and her husband Tom had separated. She was 47 years old and had come to a point where she felt that she had become much too dependent on having a man.
“At that time, I was running a clinic where I worked with psycho-therapy and healing. Now I suddenly felt the need to work with my own self – on my own dependence and independence. It had been too many years where I had done what my husband wanted. I was forever thinking whether I was good enough, nice enough, beautiful enough... Passion and “the great desire” meant everything to me – even more than friendship.
I experienced so much pain and anger over my last relationship that I had to work hard for many years to get it out of my system. Having a relationship is a huge working process, where you constantly live with the risk of losing a part of yourself. Desire controlled me so much that I had become a slave to it. Time was up for me to make a change in my priorities.”
The car accident, the dolphins and the waves of the Red Sea crashed into her life, and eventually, Inge now has lived for the last 12 years in celibacy.
Although Inge lives on her own today, she has still not given up the thought of a future relationship: “But when I do find the man, it will be friendship which is of highest priority.”


To feel the sand under your feet

“Nothing is coincidental,” says Inge Levin. And my first meeting with Inge isn’t coincidental either. I am drawn by this mature, self-assured woman, and I find myself curious to learn more about her lifestyle.
Shortly after sunrise, I drop by her hut. Inge has just returned from “the Satan’s cliff” where she usually does her Tibetan morning meditation. The bamboo hut is furnished with her asthetic clothes set on hangers and hooks around the weaved walls. On the carpeted floor are her sandals, small curious boxes, stones, an alarm clock, a little green plastic Christmas tree, and Jesus crusifix. She lives on her terrace, where there are mattresses covered with woolen blankets.
The way she dresses shows something of her self confidence. Her colourful beduin inspired garments light up the little desert camp, where everything, except for the sky and sea, are in subtle, dust coloured beige nuances.
Her father is of Polish Jewish descent and her mother is what Inge describes as “typical Danish”. She was raised in the Jewish faith, but when the the Muslim fasting holiday, Ramadan is held in the Sinai, she takes part in that as well.
“I am also a great fan of Jesus,” she says with a smile and quotes: “He conquered the storm and the sea while he wandered the earth, but children played at his chest...”
Inge talks about Jesus as a warm and affectionate person with the ability to criticize someone without humiliating or degrading him or her. “That is a very great and difficult art to master,” she emphasizes.
Inge Levin believes in many sides to both Judaism and Christianity. She has also studied the theories of Rudolf Steiner. She says, “My main belief is however that no matter which form for religion or belief one chooses, the ultimate can be summed up in one sentence: “Do not unto others, what you would not wish upon yourself”.”

Sharpening the senses

“After the car accident, I came to the conclusion that from now on I will only work with what I really believe in and enjoy. And in a tempo, which I, myself can manage,” Inge tells me. She has consciously chosen this envious lifestyle of living in three countries with summer and sun all year round:
“I enjoy variation and interaction – moving back and forth between the primitive and civilized. It sharpens one’s senses.” Inge loves to live outdoors. When in the Sinai, she sleeps in a long woolen Beduin coat under blankets on the terrace of her hut, only a few meters from the waves and just under the incredible, star studded desert sky.
Her family has become almost just as enthusiastic over this place as she is. For the last five years, she has celebrated the Christmas and New Years holidays with her children and their families at this spot in the Sinai desert.
Inge has chosen a career which is much influenced by the political situation.
For the moment, so much of the tourist industry below Israel’s border is at a standstill. The majority of villages on the coast of the Red Sea are usually filled with Israeli travellers at this time of year. Now they stand almost empty, and many of the villages owners and employees have gone away until the situation hopefully improves once again.
But Inge is not worried over the future. She expresses it with with a Zen Buddhistic quote, “Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.” Or, as I usually say to my tourists, as we cross over the border to Egypt: Relax, nothing is under control!!...”
Uncontrolable laughter....
Inge is always good for a joke, quote or motto, whether it be the Danish philosopher Grundvig, Moses or Jesus.
“ “A seaman doesn’t ask for good weather. He learns to sail...” One has to try experimenting with life with putting things on an edge,” says Inge.
“Ever since the car accident I have practiced myself in feeling out pain. I have learned, that I have to go through pain in order to come through it. To give you a very simple example of what I mean. Just this morning, I ate a piece of cake and suddenly had a stomach ache. I sat there and tried to come into the pain I felt in my stomach, to feel it out. That helped. Then I try to remember the pain for next time, so I won’t be tempted to eat such a piece of cake again.”
Loud laughter.
An Israeli girl named Sigal who lives in the village walks by as we are talking.
She interrupts our interview: “Can I give you a kiss, Inge?”
Sigal has been suffering with a swollen leg, which Inge had healed with one of her innumerable natural medicines which she has up her sleeve.
Says Inge Levin:
“If I am about to go into panic over a difficult situation or about to lose belief, then I think back to that time in 1989, when I was so happy to just be able to sit myself up or take a step. In meditation, they say that one has to walk towards the light. I myself like to formulate these words as: one has to come through the darkness in order to come out into the light.”

FACT BOX:

The dolphins
A group of Bottlenose dolphins, including babies born at the site, have made Dolphin Reef near Eilat, at the southern tip of Israel, into their home.
They maintain their normal routine of hunting, playing, courting, and socializing. They live together as a group, or pod, and are never separated from one another. The dolphins have the freedom of choice to stay in the site or go out to the open sea. The fact that the dolphins choose to return to the site reinforces the bond created between the humans and the dolphins at Dolphin Reef.

The staff at the site has witnessed many encounters between people and dolphins. A pattern has emerged out the two hundred case studies which show the power of transformation and healing that such encounters can create. They have collected a large number of 'Dolphin Within' experiences over a three year period.

Contact with humans, including during interaction sessions, which the dolphins can choose to participate in or not, is based on free will and choice of the dolphins. Their choice to approach guided groups of snorkelers or divers is not based on any reinforcement by feeding during these encounters. It is worth mentioning that the dolphins continually develop an even stronger connection with humans based only on curiosity, play, and spontaneous interaction.

Dolphins share information with each other holographically, transferring images from brain to brain using sound.

For instance, female dolphins can detect that a swimming human female is pregnant (and will often in reaction tend to protect her). As the produced wave of sounds bounce off distant or close objects, the Dolphin receives in echo an acoustic "image" that is sent to the brain in the form of nerve impulses for interpretation and action.
People who work with dophins talk about an experience they call the 'Dolphin Within'. A Dolphin Within experience is indescribable, by definition. Each and every person coming out of a powerful experience with dolphins says the same thing: 'There are no words'. You don't even want to talk for some time after a Dolphin Within experience.
Using an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine connected to a laptop computer, researching into human brain states before and after dolphin encounters, they found scientific evidence of and possible explanations for the changes in mind, body and spirit that has been observed in people who encounter dolphins.
The brainwave pattern changes after a Dolphin Within experience are quite remarkable, and are linked to the self-transformation processes that many participants at Dolphin Reef have reported. The staff claims that the scientific research demystifies the healing power of dolphins.

However, the more they observe, the more they have realised how much is still unkown, andthe more they realise how much we People of the Earth have yet to learn from the People of the Sea.

POSSIBLE PICTURE TEXT TO INGE'S PORTRAIT:

During the last 20 years, Inge Levin has resided by the sea – in Taarbaek in Denmark, Eilat in Israel, and in Egypt’s Sinai desert.

PS: I also have a photo of Inge Levin together with the dolphins.