Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68178
THE POWER OF SELF-HEALING By 2005, I had sunk so low that contemplating suicide had become as much a part of my morning routine as drinking a cup of coffee. That year, a friend dragged me out of my urban apartment—which I had become afraid to leave—and took me to a bodywork retreat in the middle of the desert. The morning after we arrived, I participated in a gentle yoga class that ended with a meditation. "Feel the ground beneath you," the teacher guided. "Feel the weight of your body pressing down; feel the sensation of the mat on your skin." He paused for a moment. "You are not the ground. You are not the mat. You are not the weight pressing down. You are more than this." As he led the group through numerous other sensations, each time reminding us that we were more than any of them, I was so in the moment that it took a while to notice my pain had disappeared. Throughout the previous decade, I had tried physical therapy, yoga, acupuncture, Feldenkrais, swimming, weights, qigong, chiropractic, tai chi, and other modalities as pain management techniques. I knew how much effort it took to reduce pain through natural means. So how could someone just talk me out of it? Recognizing a crack in the cement of my incessant suffering, I felt enraptured. Something magical existed in a realm beyond what I'd experienced up until then, I knew, and I could access it myself if only I could find the gateway. Days after the retreat, still fresh with the possibility that an alternative was out there, I dusted off my iPod, strapped on a knee and ankle brace to help stave off the pain that inevitably would come with motion, and headed off to the beach. Something happened along the way: I danced. It was a flashback to life before the car crash, before the slew of physical injuries and emotional traumas I'd accumulated over the years. Maybe it was the music. Maybe it was the fresh recognition of possibility beyond reality as I had known it. Maybe it was both. Once at the beach, I pulled out my journal, and began furiously writing about my experience in the desert. When I couldn't write any more, I closed the book, walked to the water's edge, and let out a deep, long yell from my gut—releasing anger, pain, and suffering, and expressing the joy of new possibility. Somehow, the yell morphed into me running down the beach—running! Once upon a time I'd jogged 12 miles a day down those same shores, but it had been almost 15 years since then. Certainly over the previous two years, I hadn't jogged at all; I'd barely been able to walk three blocks without excruciating pain forcing me to stop. So there I was running from one side of the beach segment to the other—full of surprise and gratitude, crying and praying my heart out—when the run transformed into a dance. And not just any old dance, but the furious leaping-twirling-stomping dance of days gone by, when my body reflected the manifestation of my spirit. Where had it all come from? THE DANCE Over the next few months, I learned to reconceptualize dance as something other than leaps, twirls, and fancy footwork. I danced at my edge, wherever that edge was on any given day—even if it meant standing in place and dancing only with my arms. Once I began dancing, I usually found my edge of limitations moving out farther and farther. It was not unusual, in fact, to start off barely able to move and to end up bouncing around my living room. 48 massage & bodywork september/october 2009