A Disabled Woman's Giant Steps

----------------------------------------------------------------- "My Soul Purpose: Living, Learning, and Healing" by Heidi von Beltz, with Peter Copeland Random House, $24 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Heidi von Beltz makes a lousy quadriplegic. The former actress and stuntwoman refuses to sit still - or stay in a wheelchair.

Almost immediately after von Beltz broke her neck during a stunt on the set of Burt Reynolds' 1981 movie, "Cannonball Run," she was plotting to walk again. This was in spite of doctors, therapists and psychiatrists declaring she must learn to love her wheelchair.

With customary bite, von Beltz writes, "The really sick thing about that suggestion was that they meant it."

"My Soul Purpose: Living, Learning and Healing," written with journalist Peter Copeland, is von Beltz's testament to the power of the human spirit to heal the body. Sometimes preaching "heal thyself" creatively, sometimes praising alternative medicine, and sometimes gabbing about life in Hollywood, von Beltz's memoir is a quirky combo of cosmic-health guru and California golden girl.

Now, more than 15 years after the accident, von Beltz can move every part of her body and she can stand. She credits her family, a stubborn disregard of medical experts and a knack for funky therapies. She tried anything that worked: deep-tissue massage to pummel short-circuited nerves into submission, prayers, even an

Olympian exercise routine that included being peddled countless miles by a motorized stationary bike.

The common thread is power from motion. Motion, she writes "gets at the core of my personality. I move, therefore I am." A former aerobics instructor and acrobatic skier as well as stuntwoman and actress, she simply was not going to slow down because she had broken her neck.

Though von Beltz details her ideas about healing, she is savvy enough to keep readers flipping pages when too much spirituality begins bogging things down. In this way, "My Soul Purpose" also becomes a pretty good celebrity schmoozefest: Such stars as Melanie Griffith and Bruce Willis orbit within her personal galaxy, as do former lovers Jack Nicholson and Ray Liotta.

Although actor Christopher Reeve isn't among von Beltz's inner circle, his own recently broken neck got her attention. In a recent telephone interview, von Beltz said a mutual acquaintance had passed along her book. Regardless of the therapies Reeve chooses - alternative, mainstream or both - he has far more choices than did von Beltz a decade and a half ago.

That makes her story even more remarkable. When she was injured in 1980, she writes, mainstream medicine had little to offer quadriplegics. What she and others accomplished, they accomplished using alternatives.

Because of her partial recovery, as well as other, less dramatic cases, alternative medicine is gaining popularity - and skirmishing with traditional medical care. Should we put our faith in experts with white lab coats and microscopes, or in practitioners espousing universal energy and chiropractic care?

To von Beltz, that's a no-brainer. Others aren't convinced, however, arguing that such ideas heap guilt on people who remain disabled and who seemingly don't have enough faith to pull the proper cosmic switch.

Currently in a special rehabilitation program, von Beltz continues advancing on her goal.

"They expect, because of my progress, that it will be within the next six months that I'll actually be taking steps," she said in the phone interview. Not bad for a woman once described by a physician as "in essence, a neck and head." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hope C. McPherson is a Seattle writer and technical editor.