Healing Journey Monday: Connections and your muscles

I’ve mentioned this topic here and there but it keeps coming up so often that I feel like it needs a post of its own. Our bodies are systems and have lots of parts that interconnect. Muscles are a big interlocking system and once one of them is seriously out of alignment, it’s just about guaranteed that others will be pulled out of alignment. The longer the situation continues without any intervention, the more you will have muscles all over your body that are knotted or twisted or pulling in the wrong direction or squeezing glands or organs.

For a while now I’ve mostly been teaching my movement classes for body workers and I’m finding myself having more and more conversations about clients who can’t understand why you might need to work on the right hip when the pain is in the shoulder or to release the left ankle when the pain is in the left hip. They don’t understand when you try to explain that the muscles connect and that the place of pain is often not where the main problem lies or a connecting muscle that’s out of alignment may have to be addressed in order to heal the pain.

If you severely twist your ankle, all the muscles that are connected to the torqued area are probably going to tighten in response. If any knots or twists from the incident remain (most medical therapies don’t do anything to sort out the muscles after an issue like this) they’re going to lock in more deeply and over time the muscles that connect to the locked ones will be pulled and twisted as well. Eventually the torque in the ankle will impact muscles all the way up that side of the body. Once that side of the body is out of alignment, it will start pulling the other side of the body out of alignment. If you have a variety of accidents – even a small fall or minor twist can contribute– and leave the muscles untouched you’ll have patterns like that going all over the place, interconnecting and yanking on one another.  Check out John Upledger, creator of CranioSacral Therapy, for a nice discussion of how patterns begin and linger.

Asking a massage therapist to massage only a shoulder or asking a movement teacher like me to give you movements that only address your hips is kind of like asking to have only the first part of a surgery and insisting that you don’t need the rest. Since I’m so very aware of the connections that link each part of the muscular system to the next it’s hard for me to understand how anyone imagines that their body is somehow made up of isolated parts that just have empty space in between.

I know I’m pretty much preaching to the choir since my readers are folks who already know this; I’m partly just ranting and partly interested to hear what others think about how we (or whether we should) educate people to understand more about the amazing system that the human body is.

To me it’s kind of like our own personal version of the great interconnected web of all life. Just as we want to keep the rivers and oceans and species and plants, etc. alive and playing their roles in the flow of life, we should have the same view of keeping the flow in our own bodies.

Related articles

• Nostalgia for Numbness (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)
• Healing from Your Feet! (healingnest.wordpress.com)
• Trigger Points and CRPS (silentsongstudios.wordpress.com)

Question Everything

First of all, off topic, I want to say a big thanks to kdkh from the Peace With My Life blog, who nominated me for a Sunshine Award. As I’ve previously noted, I’ve given up on going through the steps for these awards (see post), but I always feel grateful.  In this case I’ve received one before so I’m going to refer you to that post for other bloggers, etc.  Please be sure to check out Peace With My Life for lovely posts.

I’ve been thinking a lot for a while about a post on “questioning everything”. Every time I try to work on it I wind up realizing that it needs to be divided into more than one post. I’m loathe to commit to some regular time to keep putting up additional thoughts on this topic so I finally decided I’d just throw out an opener and tell you I’ll be coming back to this but not on a schedule.

I first started thinking about this topic in line with the “create your own reality” idea that seems to have been replaced with the “law of attraction”. I found over time that unconscious beliefs often have more impact on reality, or what you attract, than what you’re consciously thinking. Once I started exploring belief systems I realized that the ideas that bind us are far more widespread than just what we learned from our families and have many roots so deep in societal, religious, and cultural beliefs that most of us are held in place by beliefs so ingrained we don’t even question them.

In spending a lot of time exploring Buddhism after those initial thoughts, I came to feel that those beliefs are also a big part of what practices “detach” you from and that belief structures are obstacles to success on pretty much any path if you don’t become conscious of them and find a way to step outside the structure.

In several past posts I discussed why I think some sort of mindfulness practice is crucial, made suggestions on a variety of ways to achieve mindfulness and added ideas on how to give your thoughts new directions. So I’ll just reiterate here that I think you not only have to dig around in your consciousness to understand all that you believe but you also really have to learn to be mindful, which is Buddhist speak for being in the moment. Without mindfulness it’s unlikely that you can track your thoughts well enough to note when you’ve stumbled upon a belief to address, nor will you be able to focus your thoughts well enough to stay in the moment being present and unattached to all those beliefs that direct your thoughts.

I’ll open with this thought that arose for me in Bali. I was stunned to discover that the Balinese don’t really have a concept of individual pursuit of happiness (at least they didn’t – I have my suspicions that the explosion of visitors from the west is probably changing that…). Life there is centered around the temple and first allegiance is to serving the temple and next allegiance is to serving others. That simple difference between putting community first and putting self first blew away my assumptions about life and the pursuit of happiness and the rightness of putting the individual first. And I realized how many differences in world view flow from that one simple difference in belief. I don’t know if all visitors realize how much of the beauty and the absolute charm and kindliness of the people there is the direct result of that belief in putting others first. But it’s magical.

I can’t say that I’ve completely changed my attitudes about individual rights but that single experience opened a window for me and a breeze has been blowing through ever since, leading me to see how many assumptions I make because Americans make them or Southerners make them or middle class people make them, etc. How many thoughts and actions are conceived because I accept a whole array of beliefs about how life works or what one must do. Once I understood that none of those beliefs are set in stone, nor are they universal truths, I saw how limited my thinking is.

I also saw how easy it is to embrace a new spirituality that is far from the mainstream and to imagine that you’ve thrown off all those fetters. In actuality I still find quite often that on the one hand I hold beliefs that are far outside the norm and at the same time I operate from so many learned assumptions that arose from class and country, etc that it’s unnerving. As I let go of all those “musts” I become more peaceful. What beliefs do you hold about action, inaction, love, war, peace, ownership, service, etc. that you learned from your school or town or family or country?

Related articles

• Early Memories of Mom and Dad (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)
• What You Believe To Be True Will Be True For You (reflectionsofalightworker.wordpress.com)
• Oh how hard it is to hear and be heard (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)

I need to be reminded of this often…

What if God is all of us?

I’m re-posting this one from a while back because I’ve been reflecting about these questions again.  A bit more is added here.

Reading a novel that yet again brought me the endless debate on whether God exists I was feeling kind of, “Blah, blah, blah.” The usual questions were raised, “if God exists why does He allow so much awful stuff to happen?” And the counters about miracles and faith. Blah, blah, blah. But my mind being what it is by a few “blahs” later the debate drew me in and I wondered what might answer the question about a God who would sit back and allow hurricanes, murders, famine, etc. The old “there are reasons in the universe that are beyond our understanding” never really worked for me.

Right away I realized the debate always seems to rest on an assumption that God is an entity (just one) who exists somewhere out there—well, not just out in the heavens, but outside of us—and decides our fates. But I believe that we’re all part of one giant interconnected consciousness and that God is the totality of that consciousness; looked at another way we’re each a part of God. Or maybe we are Him and He is Us.

From that perspective I look at the state of humanity and it seems to me if God is all of us then pestilence and famine aren’t such a big surprise. If we want a kind and loving God maybe we have to be kind and loving. What if God is all of us?  What if we are God and perfect magnets for good or bad depending on our thoughts and actions?  What if all the good people and all the bad people add up to God and the good or bad of the Earth rests entirely upon our shoulders?  What if the only way to have peace and joy is to achieve a majority of people who live in heart space, in love, in peace?  What would you do?

Healing Journey Monday: Working on Your Ancestors

I’ve been periodically aware of the influence of my ancestors on the current state of my life and over the years I’ve experimented with a variety of ways to work on issues that stem from family patterns. I’ve never tried to do an exhaustive study so I’m sure there are dozens more possibilities than what I am presenting, but these are some things that have worked for me. If you believe the past is the past and the dead are unreachable, then this is about to be too woo woo for you. And I’m dipping into territory that’s more woo woo than traditional practice. So beware, woo woo is afoot below…

First of all, I think lots of spiritual practices have an impact so I believe that my years of practicing the Eight Key Breaths and the Five Tibetan Rites and Flying Crane Chi Gung have been subtly working on the energy level of these problems for a long time and possibly I’d have gotten through these issues with only the practices. But I like to try different practices and modalities and I’m usually lobbing several “fixes” at any issue, so I also went for the woo woo.

About 10 years ago a practitioner with shamanic training told me that I had an issue that went back seven generations in the maternal line. I gave more detail in a previous post, but the short version is that I used meditation to go deep within and then asked to be taken back to the ancestor who started the issue. That got me information–whether you believe that such information is true makes a difference in deciding to use the technique—that the women in my family were seers and one was burned at the stake leading her daughter to close down the “sight” for all generations to come.

Having pinned down an ancestral story to work on I wasn’t sure what to do. A friend of mine mentioned that with second degree Reiki you learn how to send healing long distance or through time. Shortly after I took a class for second degree (I’d had first for a long time) and started sending healing back to the daughter. Sometimes I said the lovingkindness chant for her. I felt like the issue became somewhat better but I still felt that she was holding all of us who came after in her belief. Periodically I’ve continued to send Reiki and to try to reach her in meditation and offer her lovingkindness.

Later I started noting patterns of poverty consciousness going way back in my family tree. I work a little bit with Akashic record reading (see ARCI) so I did a reading and got advice to work with EFT (Emotional Freedom

EFT-tapping points (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Technique), including a couple of phrases to use for the process. I started tapping with the phrases and there was some opening in my body work sessions and a few things seemed to open up in the way of financial opportunities but it didn’t seem to eradicate the issue.

Skip ahead to my recent realization that the ancestral poverty consciousness is also linked to ancestral patterns of holding tension in our bodies, especially jaw and face. I went back to the Records to ask for more suggestions and I came out with two more EFT statements to tap, an affirmation to repeat and a statement to use with one of the ARCI grace points. After a couple of rounds the muscles at the core of the holding patterns in my head finally started to open. They’re still unwinding but I know it’s basically done now.

At a recent Full Moon ceremony we each wrote down something to release and threw our pieces of paper into the fire. I released another aspect of ancestral holding. To be honest, I’ve never personally had a dramatic result from any of these ceremonial burning practices but I’ve occasionally encountered someone who has and I like the symbolism of releasing old stuff to flames so I love to take part in those.

Shamanic journey is another path to work on this kind of thing but I’ve never used the personal journey techniques I’ve learned to chase down an ancestral tale so I can only tell you it’s another possibility that’s available.

From meditations to affirmations to long distance Reiki to EFT and beyond, there are a lot of ways you can work on ancestral issues (cellular memory) if you believe you can impact your predecessors and my experience is that you really can get things to move on out.

Related articles

• Healing Journey Monday: The Time It Takes (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)
• Stern and Stingy Ancestors (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)

Passion For Truths

“I have always had this view about the modern education system: –
We pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.”

– Dalai Lama

… and this message has be re-emphasized by people who channel messages from the Other Side i.e. it is imperative for us to think and act from the heart. Our heart center is considered the seat of our soul. It is also the 4th (in the middle) of our seven chakras (energy vortices), separating the 3 lower and 3 higher ones. Through this sacred heart, all beings are connected and any perceived separation is merely an illusion of the ego self.

And so, our logical ego builds walls … but our heart builds bridges.

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Nostalgia for Numbness

The good news lately has been that a lot more unwinding in my head has set off a lot of muscles opening down my body.* The bad news is that lots of muscles deep in my back and legs that used to be numb are opening and that means pain. The last few days it has hurt to breathe sometimes and even small movements are painful. I’ve had this experience of muscles hurting when they first open before so I know what it feels like, I just haven’t had quite so much opening at once – makes me kind of nostalgic for the numbness. However, I know that when the muscles (and especially the nerves that have been smashed in the knots) adjust to being out in the world, I’m going to have more freedom and relaxation and comfort than I’ve felt in memory.

I’ve been thinking about this and how well it mirrors the way change often feels. There’s that happy piece that’s often there because you’ve actually been trying to change something (or the grief that accompanies the kind of change you don’t want). But change also means you’re saying good bye to the way things were and that’s not always easy. It also means you’re facing the world with a new set of circumstances and, while that may prove to be great in the long term, most of us are a little uneasy when life is really different from the way we’ve known it. So change often means there’s a period of pain even though the outcome may be that life is better or at least that you can adjust to a new equilibrium.

Even though I’m occasionally thinking numbness wasn’t so bad I keep reminding myself how pleased I will be when these muscles have finished healing. How the pain will lead to better days. That the numbness represented the emotions I stuffed and the issues I didn’t feel. This pain tells me that all I’ve done to let go of the past is working and when the pain passes my body will finally be free. What will I do with all the hours I’ve devoted to getting my body back? For sure I see some happy dancing…

*Several practitioners have explained that a tilted sphenoid can lead to lines of twisted muscles extending all the way down to your feet.

Related articles

• The Cycle of Pain (cppcdocs.wordpress.com)

Healing Journey Monday: The Time It Takes

The time line in alternative medicine is so different than the time expectations fostered by allopathic medicine that I’ve run into lots of people over the years who have not been able to understand why it often takes so much longer to see results in alternative medicine.  I guess I didn’t question it in part because western doctors just dismissed my health issues and alternative practitioners actually took my complaints seriously, found explanations for my incessant exhaustion and felt they could treat me.  As long as somebody was doing something I didn’t question how long it might take.  

The big difference is that in alternative medicine they’re actually trying to heal the problem and those shots and pills that make you feel miraculously better are designed just to mask or remove symptoms with little or no concern as to whether you’ve healed the problem that created the symptom.  [I realize there are more doctors now who have a holistic view, but they were exceedingly rare when I started the journey — if you note a little bitterness, it’s based on my experience and I’ve never gone back to a medical doctor]  Not surprisingly it takes longer to heal issues than it does to hide a symptom.  

Acupuncture, for instance, works sort of by layers.  If you have the flu the day you show up to complain about a sore shoulder the acupuncturist is going to work on the flu first because the treatment on the shoulder won’t work if  your body is turning all its resources to healing the flu.  I’ve seen people walk away disgusted when the practitioner was actually giving the best treatment because it didn’t address the issue in the expected way.  Takes time to heal all the interrelated layers.  

In chiropractic and body work a good practitioner is also looking at patterns and layers and if something in your hip is contributing to the pain in your shoulder then the therapist will treat your hip.  I’ve also seen people give up in disgust because they couldn’t grasp that their body has interconnected parts.  Sometimes a pattern somewhere else in the body is pulling on the area where you feel the pain and that pattern has to go before the specific area can release.  Takes time.  

Now in my case all of the treatments dragged on long enough that I now realize I should have been looking for a new modality a while back, but I am not dissatisfied with the treatments I received, all of which helped me move to the place of wellness I’ve reached and all of which helped me sometimes to get relief from pain or to have a little more energy.  

For me the slowness of this process seems to have been part of learning about patience.  The detail of this process seems to have been related to learning about my own body and how to treat it not only for healing but for wellness.  I’d rather go slowly but feel certain that my health will have been restored when I come to the end than to go quickly and just hide symptoms without achieving actual good health.  Relax and enjoy the journey seems like the best advice.

Source of Inspiration

The wisdom of truth
is all inclusive. It
is knowledge of the
inanimate, animate, and
vegetative worlds. It also
includes all non-material
dimensions, indeed all of
the Creator’s thoughts.
All the teaching of the
world are encompassed from
the least to the greatest.
All are wondrously included.

Put aside your arrogant
assumptions that only you
and your group have the
truth. Every truth comes
from Source regardless of
its perspective. Can a
facet of a diamond be
beautiful cut from the
others? Does one branch
of a tree bear different
fruit from the others?

Knowledge, wisdom, and truth
are intricately woven strands
of multiple teachings. When
you are bestowed with the wisdom
of truth, you will find all
are one manifested by Source.

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