If you know anything about me at all by now, it’s how strongly I believe in the connection of Body, Mind & Spirit and that everything physical issue has a metaphysical root.
A few weeks ago I suffered great pain in my left shoulder. My clavicle kept popping out of place according to my chiropractor and I was out of options. My acupuncturist suggested I try Rolfing. While I had heard the name I had not researched the modality at all. The best way I can describe it now is a cross between a massage and physical therapy.
The entire therapy requires ten sessions each one focusing on a specific part of the body. It was last week’s session, number five, that really clicked for me. During each of the previous sessions she found connective tissues doing tasks they were not designed to do. Things that are meant to go sideways were attempting to go forward. As well as facia pretending to be bone.
During each session she runs into a challenge or two. These challenges are resistance living in my body and reads much like a herstory book. During session four while working on my sternum she informs me its supposed to move, but mine didn’t. After a minute or two she says, “Good Lord, I don’t even know how you breathe!”
While these different comments make me laugh, even more they give me insight. As soon as she says something like that I nod my internal head and say “yes, I remember when that was born.” How often did I find myself holding my breath waiting for the other shoe to drop or for the storm to pass?
As I meditate on it, I hear the Voice say “The ties that bind”. Hmmmm….yes, that is right. The ties that bind me emotionally translated in my body. Yes. That resonates. For so long I had held onto beliefs that worked against my highest good. As have been my muscles and connective tissues, it seems.
Today she said “Its like your muscles have to work against your restrictions just to survive.” That’s when the Voice said “You did whatever you had to do to keep it together and survive.” So often in life I felt like my hands were tied…and then my feet. Truthfully, my hips (the key to moving forward) have felt like they had a resistance band tied around them.
And there it is.
In order to survive I had to stay as small as possible. My body listened to this and did it’s best to bind itself. Now that I no longer believe this, my spirit is breaking those ties that bind. Has been for quite some time, I just didn’t realize that’s what was going on! In a way, its growing pains!!! My Spirit has outgrown the restricted physical vessel and is requiring it to make changes. The pain is my body’s resistance to let go of the story.
If I hadn’t worked on this stuff already I would probably be sobbing now. I might be a puddle, but I’m not. I’m good. And I am so very grateful for my body!! What a task she undertook, helping me to keep it altogether for so many years! Contorting herself just to help me bare my burdens. Little did I know the extent of the damage the pressure I was under for so many years caused, but my body tells the story. I literally tied myself in knots trying to keep things together, make everyone happy, never disappoint anyone and do what I was told was right.
My body has held onto that story.
Despite my every effort to allow my body to release that story, she couldn’t – not on her own. I needed to release the old so that the new story I’ve written can take it’s rightful place. No wonder my body was wracked with pain, the old story was not serving it and needed help releasing. Holding on to that which no longer serves is painful. Unnecessarily so. As my Rolfer said at the very end of my recent session, “It feels like you’ve been bashing your head against the concrete!” Then, “This is me making you less hard headed.”
She doesn’t know me like that, my friends. She doesn’t. But my body does and she told her.
For much of my life I felt responsible for ‘holding things together’. My mother wrote a letter to my sister and I, that was found after her death. In it, she speaks to me of how knowing I felt like her slave. She went on to explain that upon returning home from her extended hospital stay after a fatal car crash, she found her household in chaos. It struck her how she needed to train a replacement and being the oldest she felt she needed to prepare me to take over should anything ever happen to her again. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s how I got the idea that it was my job to keep things together.
But how the message was programmed is not nearly as important as understanding the impact the message has had.
During the most troublesome times of my life I distinctly remember saying to myself, “keep it together”. I said this at times when I wanted to fall apart emotionally as well as when circumstances seemed as if everything around me was falling apart. It’s been my gift to “keep it together,” for better or worse.
I was always the one cool, collected and taking charge in a time of crisis. Made for excellence as a social worker, but not as a human being. I held it together and then often would fall apart the second the crisis was over. Except then those around me would say “Its ok now, its over. There’s nothing to cry about.” What the ever-loving hell? Don’t want to experience emotion during a crisis, but after a crisis it’s too late? What an f***ed up thing to tell someone!! When was I allowed to experience my emotions? When? When was the right time for me to be authentic?
Now I know better.
Sometimes falling completely apart is what is needed. When I was in the middle of my divorce someone said something to me that really resonated, “sometimes something good has to fall apart, for something great to come together.” That stayed with me. At the time I thought my marriage had been something good, turns out that was an illusion, but the quote remains important to me anyway. Its the first time I really let things fall apart and discovered that things then are free to fall into the places they were actually designed to be in.
When we put such great effort into ‘making things happen’ the way we think they are supposed to be, rather than allowing them to become what they are meant to be, we create suffering.
Letting go, allowing and trusting that the Universe has your back offers so much more freedom and comfort than keeping it together ever did. It’s no longer my job to keep things together. Not a marriage. Not a friendship. Not a job. Not any relationship. Nothing.
It’s my job to show up and be authentically me. I don’t lie. I don’t hide. I don’t cover up. I don’t pretend. I listen to my higher self. I do what resonates with me. This is the only way I have found to experience pure Joy. In all the years of twisting myself into a pretzel by people pleasing, trying to avoid disappointing people and going against my intuition I never experienced Joy.
I also never experienced pleasing all the people or not disappointing someone. It was lose-lose.
It is by living in resonance that I summoned Rolfing to me to finally release the story my body had experienced and begin a new volume on clean paper. Not only that, it seems my Joy is contagious. While twisting myself into knots I achieved neither Joy nor pleasing anyone, since living in resonance I experience Joy on a daily basis and I no longer disappoint others. I may not please them, but because I am clear in my communication they know what to expect from me, they cannot be disappointed.
This brings me to my mission. I am not a Rolfer, not of the body anyway. My Healing Rite of Passage Me-treat is sort of like Rolfing (aka physical therapy and massage) for the Spirit. It is designed to purge the old story from your mind and energetic fields. It includes techniques you will be able to use for the rest of your life to help you live resonantly.
I am open to a few seekers spending a day with me in my little paradise in progress (remember I am renovating my home). The Healing Rite of Passage will be open to 16 people for $250, healthy lunch included. The day will include QiGong, chanting, energy healing, healing rituals, relationship building, friendship, love and so much more. If you might be interested please email me, jadewillowsong@gmail.com I am looking to do this in September so that we can do our healing outside in nature. The exact date yet to be determined.
I am looking forward to my next Rolfing session to see what other tidbits my body is holding onto and is ready to release. With that I leave you as always, in love.
I love you.
~Jade
