Friday Night Dialogues: Twin healers at library
“I walked into a bar, sat down and asked the bartender for a double. He brought out someone who looked like me!” — Rodney Dangerfield
It is said that somewhere in the world everyone has a double, sometimes called a doppelgänger. Maybe you have wondered what it would be like to meet your double, or thought about being an identical twin. It’s a curiosity that many people share.
At the Shelter Island Library’s “Friday Night Dialogues” on June 16, Gail Staal and Tal Schwartz will present “Twins — The Experience” about the many facets of the phenomena of being twins.
Gail and Tal are twin healers who have spent a lifetime of personal and professional exploration on the shared love of twinship. They have lived and continue to experience numerous paralleled coincidences throughout life. They are so grateful to be twins and have over the years, accumulated a great many tools for coping with and understanding this unique world.
Tal is a licensed acupuncturist and energy healer. Gail is a clinical social worker trained in trauma healing and interactive group work.
Together, they share a love for the mystery and the magic and the challenges of what it means to be born with a person who shares the same DNA. Some of these challenges are how to consciously raise twins, how to be married to twins, how to work out the dynamics affecting siblings and also how to be friends with twins.
Gail and Tal have been offering people a view of this complicated and wondrous world while helping them understand how best to approach having twins in one’s life. These skills and the expanded awareness Gail and Tal offer ultimately help people be more attuned to our shared human community. When we understand twins, we also can see “that’s me” in everyone, in spite of history, race or what we think of as separate and alone.
Nowadays, because of advancements in fertility treatment, more twins are born in the United States than ever before, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting 33 sets of twins born for every 1,000 births in 2014. Gail and Tal have been told by many people that they have always dreamed about being a twin and they want to understand that longing. By giving workshops and public talks, by doing individual sessions with twins and their families and by interviewing many twins, they have recently completed their own “Survival Manual For Twins.”
Gail says, “The wonder and mystery of twins can often open up a greater awareness of how interconnected we all are no matter what our unique stories and lives may have lead us to believe. In today’s divisive sociopolitical climate it’s important to focus with kindness on our shared humanness.”
Gail Staal and Tal Schwartz look forward to sharing their lives as twins with you! Their presentation is on Friday, June 16 at 7 p.m. at the Shelter Island Library.
Up next: “Recovering Looted Nazi Art” with Raymond Dowd on Friday, June 30.
