A Thinking Body

"Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I am backlogged on my writing of post for Dreaming Miracles. It's not as if things haven't been happening, but that I just haven't written of their happenings. I'll try to catch you up...

I've written a lot over the course my Dreaming Miracles journey about the illness I've endured during these past three years: chronic, severe nausea. I've mentioned all of the different medical modalities, both Eastern and Western, that I have tried to cure me of it, the most recent being sessions with, Z., a hypnotherapist that my neuropsychiatrist, Dr. T. had referred me to. 

As I had mentioned in my post, The Dark Night of the Soul, it was thought that the hypnotherapist could do what's called a "regression" which I basically understood as taking you back to the point of some trouble, and then attempts to "re-program" your thinking - your mind - so as to see what occurred not in a negative light, and to not hold onto that feeling, whatever it may be, any longer (I'll try to write a post on that therapy soon...).

However, during all of this time I'm not sure I mentioned that within the past month-and-a-half I had been driving five hours round-trip, about once a week to see a D.O (Doctor of Oestopatheic medicine) that specializes in cranial-sacral therapy and manipulation therapy.

Originally, my neuropsychiatrist, Dr. T., had referred me to a local woman in my town who was licensed in cranial-sacral therapy in the hopes of relieving my nausea that might be due to a new diagnosis (which I'll explain further down in this post), but I don't think at the time I actually explained anything about that. But in order to make a long story shorter, I saw this woman for therapy about five or six times with no change in my nausea, at which point she referred me to the D.O. doctor that happened to be the two-and-a-half hour drive away. She had told me that she felt like I could be helped with the therapy, but that she had reached her professional limits as to how to help me, and believed that this doctor, Dr. J., would, with his medical expertise, be worth traveling to see.

I took her advice and called his office right away, only to be told that I needed a doctor's referral, and that Dr. J. only saw one new patient per week, so it would be at least a month before I could get an appointment. I then called my neuropsychiatrist, Dr. T., and asked her to call him and see what she thought, i.e., did she think he would be helpful to my condition - this "new" condition being that I had had an MRI done in the past year of my head (my general practice doctor had tested everything over the years but my head!). And, to my surprise (because I had thought nothing would show up on the MRI unless it might be an inner-ear problem), it was found that I have what's called a, Chiari malformation - a malformation that forms at the base of the skull - which doesn't present until about 28-30 years old (as it turns just when my first bouts of nausea started!).

At my first appointment with Dr. J. he found four "problem" areas that he felt he could "manipulate" to the point of fixing them, but he said, he didn't know whether or not fixing those problems would be the key to relieving me of my nausea. My feeling was that any problem area that needed "fixing" could only help my overall health so I was definitely on board even if my nausea didn't go away. So, I had that first appointment. Then a week or so later at my second appointment I asked him what his evaluation was from the the first appointment and he said he felt I had a 10% improvement on what he was working on. After the third visit he felt that I had a 35-40% improvement. But of course, if my nausea had decreased at all, it certainly hadn't gone away. It still overwhelmed me, both physically and mentally.

But then, a month or more into driving this long drive to see him, I had my fourth appointment. And almost immediately, when he began to feel with his hands (manipulate) the first problem area, he seemed taken aback. He said out loud, "This is very strange!" I asked him what he meant, i.e., was I worse, was my condition different, what was going on?

He took his hands out from underneath me and told me it was very difficult for him to explain, as what he had felt within my body - the movement - for, he had said to me, he had come across something remotely similar, only once before (and that being fifteen years earlier), in his twenty-five years practicing this medicine. He explained to me it was if my body had slowed down so much that it was almost undetectable. He seemed flabbergasted and he actually said he was - "floored!" He said, "Now I understand how my students must feel!"

Since he had told me he had once experienced this "slowness," which he tried his best to describe, but felt he could only come up short, as he himself didn't fully understand it! I asked him about the other patient, if there was any correlation, but he couldn't recall that exact patient situation (he did recall it later in our talk, but it wasn't like me, however, it was "strange" - in an amazingly positive way!).

Anyway, I kept trying to understand him and so he kept trying to allow me to do so. He said to me, "It is as if your body is "thinking." It is slowed down so thoroughly it has stopped to just "think!" He then tried another explanation, saying, it was as if my body was in a decompression chamber trying to balance itself out. He went on to again try to explain the slowness of what was going on inside my body; it is like, "The peace before the storm," he said, "No, storm isn't the right word," he quickly added, "The peace before something major is about to take place, some shift, something, I believe, to be positive in its change." And he said he would be anxious to see me back in two or three weeks time to see what, if anything, had developed.

During this time, because he had used the words, "my body was thinking" and "it's as if your body is trying to balance itself out," and further that it was the, "peace before a major change." I confided in him, in very short words, my dream of having a biological child of my own, my just having returned from a silent retreat and having had all kinds of "signs" coming at me seeming to tell my spirit that some wonderful things were just ahead in my future and then I relayed to him that story (I'm sure I mentioned it in and earlier post) about getting the infection after my hernia operation and when I asked the surgeon why I had gotten it, had I done something wrong to have gotten it? She had said, "Only 1% of all surgeries result in an infection, meaning 99% of people don't get one!" I explained to this D.O., Dr. J., how happy hearing the surgeons words were to me... my feeling of jubilation at being in the 1%, telling him that I knew that if I could be in the 1% of something negative, it just told me that I could be in the 1% of something positive! And do you know what his answer back to me was after he had just experienced this, what was to him, an astonishing medical "unknown" within me? He told me, "You aren't in the 1%. You are in the .0000001%!"

And when I left him, shaking his head at the phenomenon he had just felt my body going through, and walked out of his office to my car, it was like I was in shock. I was shocked into the realization that though the logic of my mind seemed to have no comprehension of what was taking place in my life, in my near future, it was as if my spirit and my body were on the same "page!" It was like my spirit had been sending me these signs telling me to keep my faith strong and continue on this difficult path I had been on and now my body was seeming to reiterate exactly that which my spirit "knew." Again, my logical mind didn't feel any change; I still felt as nauseous as I ever had, but "something" was happening... even if I didn't yet "know" it myself.

It was an exciting time; an exciting feeling and I wanted it to be true and to see a different result from all the results of my past...

I'll tell you about my fifth visit to Dr. J., this D. O., in my next post... it too was "different," but in another "strange" way...

Bear with Me

"Some people grin and bear it; while others smile and do it." ~ Mike Jones

Please bear with me... I have so much to write about (don't get your hopes up for me just yet though!), but have not had the time (taken the time!) to write about it all. I will, within the next three weeks, have plenty to say...

Life Song of the Child

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." ~ Helen Keller

I couldn't have come across this story at a more perfect time...

There is a tribe in East Africa in which... the birth date of a child is not counted from the day of its physical birth nor even the day of its conception, as in other village cultures. For this tribe the birth date comes the first time the child is a thought in its mother's mind. 

Aware of her intention to conceive a child with a particular father, the mother then goes off to sit alone under a tree. There she sits and listens until she can hear the song of the child that she hopes to conceive; the child that wants to come to her. 

Once she has heard it - the song of this child - she returns to her village and teaches it to the man who will be the child’s father so that they can sing it together as they make love, inviting the child to join them.

After the child is conceived, she sings it to the baby in her womb. Then she teaches it to the old woman and midwives of her village, so that throughout the labor and at the miraculous moment of birth itself, the child is welcomed with its song. 

After the birth, all the villagers learn the song of their new member and sing it to the child when it falls or hurts itself. The song is sung in times of triumph, or in rituals and initiations. And it goes this way throughout their life - when the child is grown, as part of the marriage ceremony, the songs are sung together.

And, then, at the end of life, his or her loved ones will gather around the deathbed and sing this song for the last time.

Excerpted from the book, Welcoming Spirit Home: Ancient African Teachings to Celebrate Children and Community - Sobonfu E. Some