Closed off. Pain. Health: What do these have in common?
Your tissues speak to you, your body speaks to you. It’s usually not in English, or other verbal languages. We feel pain, tension, aches, itches, tickles, cramps, uneasiness, dizziness, etc. All are signs from the nervous system communicating imbalance. Do we listen to what the body wants? Learn the language of the body and follow it to greater freedom and openness. Today I worked with a massage client who complained of upper back pain. I began at the feet, as I usually do, to connect with the divine health blueprint within the body. I immediately felt a stuckness above the left hip, a blocking of flow. I felt it shift out as I focused attention on it. Next, I move to the shoulders, specifically the traps and release attachments along the spine. Legs – open the IT band, the bound up tension in the quads and, grasping the ankles, do a double leg pull, gently feeling for fascial restrictions, allowing the hips and lower back to release and noticing the leg sockets realign and relax. Now I am drawn to visit the neck and begin to unwind the right side. She asks what I am noticing about her tissues. I tell her that I was guided to open up her lower body first, so that I could return to the neck to complete the lengthening there. She describes feeling like her whole spine is compressed. I ask what she is holding. Grief is the reply. I encourage her to open and surrender, let go. I open the arms and wrists. Time to flip. More work on the traps, the erectors, the levator scap as I notice the armor soften. I listen to the sacrum and it is stuck and twisted. I watch and wait, as it shifts, realigns and begins its see-saw swinging motion. The upper spinal column begins to realign to it and then becomes harmonious. It is a joy. A final balancing hold at the knees supports the body’s move to this new alignment. In this instance, we see held and trapped grief closing off the body, creating compression and pain. A downward spiral of dis-ease until we become aware and release. Listen.