Leonard Barrett on meditation and multiple sclerosis

Leonard Barrett (photo: Don Morreale)

The ' light bursts' began when actor and jazz vocalist Leonard Barrett was just a kid.  ' They're a spiritual signal,' he explains,  'inviting you to breathe and allow the energy to go forth and bring joy to your experience.'

He holds his hand  in front of his chest.  ' It's a sensation near the heart," he says.  ' It always coincides with some outward event.  Like one night I got home from a gig and realized I’d forgotten to pack the microphones.  Mics are expensive and they’re the first thing to disappear.  I was beginning to get really uptight. Then I had a light burst. 
It said,  ‘Breathe…Hold…Observe.’ 
I said, ‘Ok-a-a-a-y.’ 
' Next night we’re setting up and literally ten seconds before showtime, this guy comes to the stage and hands me the mics.  This was all the proof I needed that the Spirit was watching out for me.'

The son of a Methodist minister, Barrett grew up singing in his father's church.  In his early twenties, he and his wife Jean put together a band called ' Barrett and Barrett '  They played the casinos in Atlantic City, ' doing show tunes mainly.'  The act lasted  thirteen years and It was during this time that Barrett's interest in spirituality, dormant since his teens, was rekindled.

He began experimenting with meditation and eventually found his way to the Self-Realization Fellowship where he studied an arduous form of breath practice.  ' The basic idea,' he says, ' was to observe the ego fighting you while you sat there calmly watching the breath.'  A sitting could last upwards of three hours.

In 1993 Barrett’s marriage broke up, and along with it,  his band.  He moved to Boston and got a job as an office temp.  One morning on his way to work, something happened that would alter his life forever.

'I was in the passenger seat,' he remembers. ' My girlfriend was driving.  With no warning my eyesight started to fade, my body went numb and I couldn't get my jaw to work. I thought I was having a stroke.'  An MRI revealed degeneration of the myelin sheath, a clear indication that Barrett had multiple sclerosis.

The symptoms slowly subsided.  After a week he regained his sight.  In a month he could walk again.  Then the exacerbations started.

Barrett as Don Quixote (Photo: Michael Ensminger)

' I'm standing in front of the stove reading a magazine, waiting for some water to boil.  Suddenly my girlfriend starts screaming and I look down and my hand is in the water.  I just broke out laughing.  It was like I was Superman.  I never felt a thing.'

The doctors assured him that with proper medication they could cure, or at least mitigate, the symptoms.  But 'crazy Leonard' wanted nothing to do with pharmaceutical dependence. 'They gave me two bottles of meds which I tossed into the trash on my way out the door.'

He moved to Colorado and went to work teaching computer software at CU. Meanwhile, the exacerbations kept coming, on average about once every three months.  One day it occurred to him that meditation might help.

'I’d pretty much given up on it after my divorce,' Barrett says.  'But now i was desperate for a cure.'  He resumed the practice with a vengeance.  When he was able to sit for three hours he started feeling a little better.  Encouraged, he added another three hours to his daily regimen.  At six hours, the exacerbations just stopped and he hasn’t had a flare-up since 2005.  'Meditation has been a powerful tool for navigating through this monstrosity,'  he says. 'My focus on being centered is what healed me.'

Leonard Barrett is back!  And he's again doing what he loves best. He's joined PHAMALy, the Physically Handicapped Actors and Musical Artist's League.  Last summer he sang the lead in the company's production of  Man of La Mancha at the Denver Center.  In January he will open a two month engagement at Lannie Garrett’s Clocktower Cabaret.  He's calling it  'Loved in Return; a Tribute to Nat King Cole.' 

 Leonard Barrett will speak on Sunday, November 29th at the Colorado Insight Meditation Community.  First Unitarian Church of Denver, 1400 Lafayette St., 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.

Click on 'Subscribe' at  the top of this page for a free email notification whenever a new article is published.