There were lots of friends in my dreams last night, but I don’t remember anything else. I have things to think about: my cup of water with lemon, a candle, and the typewriter that I’ve covered my eyes from being able to see — my chiropractor gave me a hard time about my ergonomic setup, and now here I am typing away at a kitchen table. So I lower the monitor, type with just my hands illuminated, and look straight ahead, hoping that I’m striking the right keys. Trust that old learning, the typing lessons you got when you were 12 years old, or something close — and trust that you won’t lift the screen in twenty minutes and find only gibberish.
Today my body is better. What a thing to be able to say. There are places that are sore still, inflamed, along my spine, in my knee, in my ribs, after years of being out of alignment and now adjusted, corrected. But my body is better. Yesterday I went to see a structural bodyworker, who talked with me a little bit about what is going on for me — the spasm I had two years ago, old injuries that might be manifesting now, the sort of trauma I might hold in my body — before starting to work on my body.
I explained that most of my pain was on the right side of my body. He’s been a long time in this work — almost 30 years — and had some ideas about what might be going on even before we got on his adjusting table. He worked with his hands, feeling along my spine for places that are out of alignment and then making the adjustments by hand, too, using a table that drops out from underneath me when he pushes down for the adjustments. Mostly, it didn’t feel like anything was happening. I heard the loud ring of the table, felt him pressing on my back, but most of the adjustments were slight and small, I think — gentle corrections that will help energy and blood flow more smoothly through the contours inside me.
He talked to me all the way through the process, explaining when and where he felt something stuck, and when he felt things start to move and loosen again. He found major obstructions in my neck and in the ribs closest to my shoulder, in my lumbar spine, and then had some adjustment to do on my knee (which he said I’d hyperexended). My lumbar spine is the place that’s most inflamed now, after a long time of being out of whack. This morning I am not sure what I feel. I kept waiting for some major release of emotional energy, and though I did tear up once or twice, I also laughed a lot, in surprise and curiosity — what’s going on here (especially when he cracked my neck manually, the way you see chiropractors doing on tv). The changes are mostly subtle — I still have some residual pain in the places that have been hurting, but I also think things are better there.
And what’s most astonishing is that the place in my butt under the glute muscle where I thought for sure that something was spasmed and held tight (this is the trouble with self-diagnosing when you don’t know anything about the problem), that tension is gone — it wast the torquing of my lumbar spine causing all of that trouble, that tight muscle. None of the stretches that I was doing would have ever helped “pop” or ease or relax that muscle out of spasm, because that wasn’t the problem.
Today I mostly feel peaceful, quiet inside, and grateful.
He was able to help me know what bones are connected where, and to start to explain what happens when they’re out of alignment. He was not rushed with me, and was willing to answer questions throughout. He asked me about old injuries and I described: the weekend before the spasm back in November 2012 (leaving day job, hard dancing in high heels, helping my sweetheart on her moving day); the time I fell hard right onto my back when I was up in the Tiburon hills with Sophie and she was running around with another dog, playing chase and keep away, and she ran straight for me, hit me at full speed, knocking my legs out from under me and dropping me to the ground; and my stepfather’s assaults. He found evidence of all of these (and more, likely) while he worked on my body. Later, at the end of the session, I mentioned something about my dad. He clarified — Your biological dad? I said, Yeah — my stepfather is in jail. This was the second time in a week I’d made that particular clarification in that way for somebody. He was delighted to hear this news, after feeling in my body and bones some of the aftermath of my stepfather’s violence. That’s a great end to that story! He cheered. And I thought so, too.
He was kind and direct, confident in a way that could have come off as cocky but didn’t — or at least didn’t bother me. I think I know what I’m going to find when I get there, he’d say after listening to me explain what I was feeling. Ok, I thought. I hope that’s true. And I hope you know how to fix it. And then he did. I feel like I have found another someone who may be able to help me understand my body. What a gift.
At one point I stood, transitioning from the adjustment table to the massage table. How does that feel, he wanted to know. But I didn’t really have words for it yet. Better–maybe. Can you relax your shoulders, he asked? But I thought I was relaxing my shoulders. No, he said, not yet. And then after he did some work on my ribs, he said, There — now you’ll be able to relax them. Not, now you’re relaxed, but: now you’ll be able to relax there — now the muscles have he opportunity to remember what relax looks like, after they shift out of this reactive posture, tightening up and around in response to a torqued spine and bone structure.
Now I’m trying to sit upright in my chair, look straight ahead (instead of down at the keyboard), keep my body in alignment as much as possible. I feel fortunate today, and grateful that I stumbled on a therapist I like, who then has been able to give me some ideas about steps to take with other practitioners to help me with my body. And I feel quiet and kind of heavy, like something deep is going on in me — and it probably is. My body is recovering from a chronic issue — it makes sense that I wouldn’t have an acute emotional response. The response will come slowly, I think. Everything in me feels a little tender, a little looser. I walk around gently, looking with my inside eyes: does this still hurt? What do I need to do differently here? My bodyworker wants me to wait for a few days before I start really exercising again, to let the swelling in my lower back heal, let that part of my spine get better before I go compressing it again like what happens when you jog.
I had made a lot of assumptions about what was going on in my body, based on how I felt — it must be spasms, muscle knots, tightnesses — but these were all reactions to something more structural, deeper.
Are there metaphors in that for writing? Sometimes the trouble isn’t in the symptoms — it’s in the structure; change your framework, the bones of your book and your story, and suddenly everything flows a little better, things get a little looser, more agile, more interesting, more limber.
Also: sometimes we can’t fix the problem ourselves — in our books or in our bodies — sometimes we have to get some damn help from someone who knows more than we do. And that doesn’t mean we’ve failed. It means we’re smart; we know what we know and what we don’t know, and know we can use guidance and suggestions around what we don’t yet know.
Anyway, today I am grateful for this skin and bones, these fingers on the keyboard, and your eyes out there — I am grateful for the generous response I got to my posts about what was going on with my body and how scared I was of dealing with it. Kindness goes a long way. Thank you for that. Big love right back at you today.
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