Gadhafi out of my Torso! – 20 Massages in 2 Months (Massage #18)

 "If 6 turns out to be 9, I don't mind!" - Jimi Hendrix

I received Massage #18 from Karen Joy at the Well-Being Center for Health in Monroe, WA.  Click here to see a picture of Karen.

During Massage #17 it became clear that an overthrow of ruling energies – one paralleling the populist movements in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – was happening within my own energy field.  In this personal revolution, my inner-attorney plays the role of Mubarak or Gadhafi – overbearing energies that do not take into account the true needs of others, and that rule, it seems, without true awareness of the suffering they inflict.  In my case, my inner-attorney wants to enforce a lifestyle that for me spells the death of the soul and importantly, in the past, led to persistent physical illness and emotional imbalance – in short unhappiness, a decline in health and emotional imbalance as well as a host of other challenges.

To date my inner-attorney, through an unwillingness to let go, has brought numbness in the right arm and shoulder and tightness to my right lower back or QL muscles.  (Importantly, while work on these muscles  revealed my inner-attorney ranting about the impracticality and even danger of a spiritual calling, work on the left side has shown a female ballet dancer.  She has not danced in a while but knows that it is time.  While my inner attorney argues and refuses to gives way, she quietly ignores his protests, shuts herself in her dance studio, straps on her ballet slippers and begins to stretch. When she does speak it is only to say, “I want to dance.”)

At the end of yesterday’s blog post, I wondered if and how the violence of upheaval in the middle east might show itself in my energy field during this personal revolution.  Parallels between individual and collective change and revolution are not merely symbolic.  Both involve the breakdown of outdated consciousness.  Both involve the movement of kundalini energy which brings lost power back into conscious awareness thereby enhancing our ability to affect the realities in which we live.  Finally, both processes are potentially volatile.  This is because as forces push from the bottom – whether repressed people as in social upheaval or repressed energy as in the personal revolution – and gather strength and determination, if energies from above refuse to yield, the pressure of upward movement with no relief will create an explosion.  This explosion can take the form of violent protests or, in the case of the personal revolution, injury to body or energy field. 

This is I learned firsthand as my question about how the violence of upheaval might show up in the personal revolution was answered shortly after finishing yesterday’s blog post.

After drafting the post I was feeling the spirit of change taking hold in the middle east.  I put on one of my favorite songs of rebellion – one I used to listen to frequently when I practiced public interest law:  Jimi’s Hendrix’s “If Six Was Nine.”  What stands out about this song for me is Hendrix’s defiance and his refusal to be defined by a social reality that does not serve him.  Key lyrics go something like this:

“If the mountains fall in the sea, let it be, it ain’t me… if all the hippies cut off all their hair, I don’t care… I got my whole world to live through and I ain’t gonna copy you...!"

I’m sure you get the point. 

And yet, even within Hendrix’ defiance, one that helped to define a epoch of social change - including advances in the rights of women and people of color - there was an element of destructiveness – or rather self-destructiveness - that could or would not acknowledge that energy which harms and represses from the outside is a reflection of what we carry inside– witness the early demise of this great artist. Therefore, the revolution will be most complete and successful when outer and inner transformation is achieved. 

As I danced to “If 6 was 9,” at the place in the song where Mr. Hendrix says with gusto, “I don’t care!,” I flipped my head and something popped in the right side of my neck.  My neck seized up and I was caught in a loop of pain and restricted mobility.  All night in my sleep the right side of my neck throbbed.  Today, at 5:15 pm, my neck was still sore and very stiff, when I reported for Massage #18 with Karen Joy.

(for more, see next post)