Alternative Medicine
I was drawn to the river, to sit in the sun and eat my lunch while I pondered the incredible morning of healing I had just experienced. As I sat down four seagulls took up positions around me, one just a few feet away and three others like sentries on the spot where the water met the land. I so wished I had known their language so that I could have conversed with my lunch-time companions.
I had just come from a massage session that was like nothing I had ever experienced. As my bodyworker and I sipped a cup of tea and did our usual gossiping before my massage began, she told me that she intended to focus on my head, neck, and upper chest, which had taken the brunt of my recent radiation treatment. She sensed just what impact this whole thing had had on my body. She told me that one of her roles as a healer was to absorb the negative energy my body was ready to release, with the assurance that the birds would carry it away from her.
As I lay upon the massage table, I found my body to be so confused that I couldn’t even get my head to relax. So I pictured myself as one of the mermaid babies in my recent dream, breathing through my gills and just gliding through the water. This image released the tension that was making my head so rigid. I luxuriated in all the reiki and the work on my salivary glands, my face, my neck, my pectoral area, and my scalp.
After I turned over and she had started those long strokes using cream mixed with lavendar on my back, I felt her large hot tears fall onto my skin as she quietly sobbed. At first I was afraid, since I had never heard her cry before. But then I experienced a tremendous emotional release and realized that I too had a lot of tears that needed to be shed as the negative energy rushed out in a torrent from my body.
Today’s massage was all about letting go of strain and stress and the residual poison from my radiation treatment. We both came to realize that it had in fact been a far more powerful intrusion on my body than either of us had previously imagined – sort of like an atomic bomb going off internally.
At one point during my massage I momentarily sensed the presence of God and the angels. I filed this away as just one more encounter with the essence of holiness. How utterly breathtaking and awesome!
As I was leaving, my bodyworker left me with the disturbing thought that I had been led into the depth of hell to be raped by Pluto and that I would forever carry the scars and the memory. Meanwhile she opened the windows and turned on the ceiling fan in an attempt to clear the room of the negative energy before her next client arrived.
I walked out feeling both drained and relieved to be free from so much excess baggage. As I sat down at the river’s edge, the gently flowing river reminded me of the healing water of the mermaid babies. My attendant seagulls reminded of the birds who were waiting and ready to carry away any last remnant of negative energy. But most of all I was reminded of just how well my bodyworker understands everything about me. It’s almost as though she has a window to my body, mind, and soul. She always knows just what magic to work to have the greatest cathartic impact on my whole being. Who could ask for anything more?
I had just come from a massage session that was like nothing I had ever experienced. As my bodyworker and I sipped a cup of tea and did our usual gossiping before my massage began, she told me that she intended to focus on my head, neck, and upper chest, which had taken the brunt of my recent radiation treatment. She sensed just what impact this whole thing had had on my body. She told me that one of her roles as a healer was to absorb the negative energy my body was ready to release, with the assurance that the birds would carry it away from her.
As I lay upon the massage table, I found my body to be so confused that I couldn’t even get my head to relax. So I pictured myself as one of the mermaid babies in my recent dream, breathing through my gills and just gliding through the water. This image released the tension that was making my head so rigid. I luxuriated in all the reiki and the work on my salivary glands, my face, my neck, my pectoral area, and my scalp.
After I turned over and she had started those long strokes using cream mixed with lavendar on my back, I felt her large hot tears fall onto my skin as she quietly sobbed. At first I was afraid, since I had never heard her cry before. But then I experienced a tremendous emotional release and realized that I too had a lot of tears that needed to be shed as the negative energy rushed out in a torrent from my body.
Today’s massage was all about letting go of strain and stress and the residual poison from my radiation treatment. We both came to realize that it had in fact been a far more powerful intrusion on my body than either of us had previously imagined – sort of like an atomic bomb going off internally.
At one point during my massage I momentarily sensed the presence of God and the angels. I filed this away as just one more encounter with the essence of holiness. How utterly breathtaking and awesome!
As I was leaving, my bodyworker left me with the disturbing thought that I had been led into the depth of hell to be raped by Pluto and that I would forever carry the scars and the memory. Meanwhile she opened the windows and turned on the ceiling fan in an attempt to clear the room of the negative energy before her next client arrived.
I walked out feeling both drained and relieved to be free from so much excess baggage. As I sat down at the river’s edge, the gently flowing river reminded me of the healing water of the mermaid babies. My attendant seagulls reminded of the birds who were waiting and ready to carry away any last remnant of negative energy. But most of all I was reminded of just how well my bodyworker understands everything about me. It’s almost as though she has a window to my body, mind, and soul. She always knows just what magic to work to have the greatest cathartic impact on my whole being. Who could ask for anything more?
posted by Barbara at 6:26 PM
4 Comments:
ONE OR TWO THINGS
by Mary Oliver
1.
Don't bother me
I've just
been born.
2.
The butterfly's loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes
for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.
3.
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice, now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever.
4.
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.
5.
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning - some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.
6.
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.
7.
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
"Don't love your life
too much," it said,
and vanished
into the world.
Thank you, thank you for sharing this beautiful poem. I have a definite feeling of re-birth right now. But I hope it's actually not possible to love life too much, because I would definitely be guilty if it were.
Gosh, I wonder with your blogger "stats counter," if you've noticed that I've been catching up on your entries! I haven't seen you for so long it seems. Remember a conversation we had last year, before your surgery, about having radioactive pee? I'm glad you're done with it.
Snapsgf -- I have been thinking a lot about you lately, wishing we could connect and catch up. May be time for another lunchtime rendezvous. I'm looking forward to our trip together in late March. Meanwhile, I had wondered who my recent reader in Annapolis was -- you solved the mystery!
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