Long-held tension

This essay gets sort of wandery, so please forgive me.  It does all come together in the end.  I had a profound experience in a class I just took, but there is a back story.  Be patient.

pow!

Over thirty years ago, I behaved stupidly around a horse, and was rewarded with a kick to the face.  That incident broke my nose into a jigsaw puzzle of six separate fragments and gave me a scar right down the middle of my forehead that took 36 stitches to close.  Being only 14 at the time, I was able to recover quite quickly, and within a few days went back to school with a cast on my face.  I had never broken anything before, so I asked all my friends to sign my nose.  Eventually it healed up and I went on with my life, and I didn't think too much about it most of the time.

Working with horses also inflicted other injuries to my body, including getting stepped on, kicked, bucked off, etc.  People who love and work with horses accept this as part of the deal -- they are very large and powerful animals who are, at best, only half-tame.  They are unpredictable when they are startled, and even if they do not mean to hurt you and can be very contrite when they recognize that you have been hurt, if you are in the way when they get scared, you are going to be the one who gets hurt.  (Sometimes there is a battle of wills going on, and they DO mean to hurt you.  That's when the more serious stuff usually occurs.  But again, this is part of the challenge we accept as horse-people -- learning to work in harmony with any sentient being, especially a huge animal like that, requires not only certain skills and the abilities, but also a meeting of minds… and, just like working with people, we get along with certain horses better than others.)

Anyway, in particular for me, the kick to the face and another incident where I got bucked off into a tree and landed straight on top of my head were pretty serious.  (In a separate incident, I also partially dislocated my shoulder around the same time as getting bucked off, so my upper right quadrant has been weak for a long time.)   

Like this, except I got thrown into a tree

When you are younger, you can shrug the pain off more easily… it's later on that everything comes back to haunt you.  In the last twenty years, I had not had very many days without feeling the aches and strains of old injuries, which were also compounded in the last few years by the emotional wear of my unraveling marriage.  My right shoulder became my emotional "basket"  where I carried all the heaviest burdens.  

OW

As I began my process of healing change back in 2008, I became interested in finding alternative solutions for my health.  I began counseling again, I started receiving regular massage work, and became interested in herbal medicine as well.  Becoming a regular receiver of massage helped me connect with my body-mind so much that I wanted to be that important and helpful person who gave massages too.  I was full of doubt if I could do it, but decided to make the leap and enroll in school.

When I began massage school, I never knew that there were so many other forms of healing touch that existed.  I had never once heard of Lomi-Lomi, or Polarity, or Craniosacral Therapy… or even trigger points, neuromuscular therapy, or anything other than "swedish massage" and the mysteriously named "deep-tissue" massage, which seemed to be code words for "work on me so that I feel like I got hit by a truck the next day".  What I learned in school, to my utter astonishment, was that I, who had always considered myself to be clumsy and uncoordinated, was actually quite good at the most subtle of the modalities -- the craniosacral and the polarity work.  In these modalities, I listen with my hands, and feel with my intuition, and dialog with the client's body-mind silently to effect release, change, and healing.  

from borderstherapies.co.uk

I just took an intense tutorial in craniosacral therapy…. very small class, very personal attention…  at this level, we are working inside the mouth, as well as evaluating dysfunctions of the sphenoid bone.  As you might imagine, this is quite an intimate experience, and you really have to have a high level of trust with your partner to allow yourself to accept their fingers all the way to the back of your jaw.  Even more trusting than that, we also incorporated an element from another type of therapy in which we work inside the nasal cavity.  We have to move very slowly, and with great subtlety, and feel when the client's body will allow us to move forward and not before.  We are using our felt sense and intuition and nonverbal communication all at the same time.  It's terribly fascinating work, to experience how such subtle movements can affect the entire somato-emotional body.  

On the second day of the workshop, we worked in the mouth, releasing the zygoma (cheekbones) and the musculature, and ended by working inside the nose.  When one of the instructors adjusted my nose and then my cheekbones, I had a huge energetic release that made my entire body unwind, and I couldn't even stand up afterwards.  I felt spaced out for hours, slept like the dead, and woke up with my neck and shoulder feeling good, a sensation that is very unusual for me.  The tension that had lodged itself in my facial bones got to be released, and the effects were profound.

Then, just the other day, there were large earthquakes in both Colorado and Washington DC.  It made me think about not only long-held tension in myself, but long-held tension in the Earth.  When my tension was released by a subtle movement of facial bones, my entire body was affected:  and as the glaciers retreat, and huge amounts of weight are released from the crust of the earth, the Earth too is affected, all over.  It's as if the planet was stretching, and in stretching, all the pops and creaks of re-adjusting bones and ligaments must occur as well.

image from the USGS

Just like when people work with horses and we must accept that they are so much more physically powerful than us that we cannot boss them around, that we must work in harmony with them, so too must we accept that we cannot boss around the Earth.  We must work in harmony and balance and flow with this planet that sustains us (despite all the abuse we give to it!), and recognize that, when it comes right down to it,  we are really at its mercy.  We are puny, and the Earth is big.  No matter how much we may attempt to modify and bend the planet to our will, Nature always wins.

                                                                 **************************

The most curious thing about practicing craniosacral therapy and polarity therapy is how much the therapist's intuition comes into play.  The closest thing I can relate it to is how, when a horse and rider are communicating well, everything just flows -- there is a nonverbal connection that allows perfect synchronicity and harmony of action.  The more I learn about connecting with people, the greater my connections become with the energies of the world and the Universe:  or maybe it is the other way around....  and the stronger the connections, the more interesting this ride becomes.

Illustration by Goro Sasaki

Shift Happens

In the polarity world, just like any other community, we have our catch phrases, like "Get the most out of neutral" and "Shift Happens".  We just need a t-shirt to make it go viral  :-)

Wouldn't this make a nifty t-shirt?  These are called recursive waves.

In a personal sense, neutral is the space where change occurs. As we grow and adjust ourselves, often there is a huge amount of change that goes on for a while, and then it sort of plateaus, and with luck you get the time to settle in and notice what happens.  As practitioners, by opening space in the body, we also open space in the mental, emotional, and spiritual realms as well.  By holding space for our clients, we allow them the room to expand, change, move.  In the bodywork, we often induce movement, and then allow for stillness.  The stillness is where things happen.  

"Getting the most out of neutral" also refers to the neutral, compassionate, nonjudgmental stance we take as therapists.  This was the motto of my Polarity Training class, and we thought it was so funny, because typically, if you think of a car, you don't get anywhere in neutral.  But in polarity work, it refers to that state of being where we are neither too expanded or contracted, where we are in balance with our mind, body and spirit.  We are "standing steady in the shifting sands",  ready to respond to the next wave that comes along.  We get out of our own way, in order to allow the space for our clients to have their own experience.  There is also the neutral pole of every triad that we work with, which tends to be located in the core of the body, the deepest parts of us, where we experience peace.  

I recently saw a wonderful quote in another polarity practitioner's office:  it is not change that takes time, it is the decision to change that takes time... once the decision to change has been made, the change is rapid.  When you are ready, SHIFT HAPPENS.  When you go through a shift, you feel what you need to feel, let go what you don't need anymore, and let the earth and sky take back what you let go of. As you lift each layer, more of your beauty shines through.  A friend of mine who has been studying Lomi (sacred Hawai'ian massage and philosophy) told me that this concept of space and letting go is akin to something she was reading about in the Hawai'ian philosophy -- that our lives begin as empty bowls filled with light… For each burden we acquire, we place a stone into that bowl.  The more burdens we carry, the more that light is blocked by the heavy stones.  Only when we begin to let go of those stones, those burdens, will our light shine through again and allow us to be light again in our bodies and spirits.  Again, there is that concept of giving ourselves a neutral, quiet, healing space.

(tulip photo by tom debrayanna)

Stillness and quiet are important to me.  I like to notice things in the stillness… what is happening between the inhale and the exhale, in the moment before a kiss, in the hesitation before speaking, in the time between sleep and awakening.  It is in the stillness that my intuition speaks to me.  I love to live in NM because of the quality of light that exists here and nowhere else.  That light speaks to me as well.

The ocean offers us deep motion and immense stillness at the same time
          photo by tom debrayanna

I was talking with a close friend last week about energy work, and about this whole idea of providing loving, compassionate, neutral space for others.  He is a retired social worker, so he understands the neutral stance, but isn't sure about the loving and compassionate part (despite the fact that he is extremely good at doing just that, I think he does not recognize it in himself).  I told him that this is what I am here on earth do … I can love anyone for an hour while they are on my table, and then let them go.  I can notice things without judging them.  I truly believe that it is this aspect of my work that allows their healing to occur, and for sure this is why I am so attracted to Polarity work.  

Anyway, he asked me this question:  by being open to love without attachment, what am I giving up?  My answer is that I have to give up any expectation that what I am doing will have any effect at all for my client, because in truth, it is the other person who must do their own changing.  I am a facilitator, I hold that safe and sacred space for them, but I am not a "fixer".  Mechanics fix things.  I cannot do that.  And yet, I have seen profound things happen for my clients, things that amaze both them and me.  It is hugely humbling for me to get to be a part of their experience, and I am grateful to be able to be a witness for them, to honor what they go through, and to be with them through it.

In recognizing my role, I have changed much of how I behave in friendships and family relationships, and especially in how I behave in intimate relationships.  Where previously I undoubtedly held on tight to expectations of others and how they "should" act, now I can allow people the space they need to be human on their own terms.  I can be compassionate with myself as well as with others, and give myself the space to be human too.  It gives me the space to react with love instead of fear.  And when people in my life respond in loving ways, I get to be in a state of nearly continual noticing, appreciation, and gratitude.  It's a good place to be in.  

Believe me, though, it is still work.  I still do get in into my times of expecting people, especially family, to behave in certain ways, and I can get disappointed or have my feelings hurt too.  But the difference is that now I allow those feelings to pass through.  I can notice them, honor them, and let them go.  And almost always, things turn out better than I could have hoped for in the first place.

Happy Mothers' Day, everyone.  Go out and love your children, love your mothers, and don't forget to honor the fathers without whom there would be no mothers or children.

I love my kids.  All teenagers, and these are the first macaroni cards they ever made for me.