Hmmmmmm........? - 20 Massages in 2 Months, Massage #14

As this marathon progresses, I struggle to keep pace with my experience.

I received Massage #14 from Richard Oliver.  Based on events in this massage I predict that more changes are ahead, physically and otherwise. 

Lately, my legs have been doing strange things.  It’s uncomfortable to have any pressure applied to them, like the chair on the back of my legs when sitting!  They don’t look swollen but they feel it.  When I drag a finger along my thigh, I feel the same movement in my lower calf!  (I’m trying not to think too much about how weird this is as my naturopath can’t think of a medical reason that would cause it).  

In this massage Richard Oliver continued with the experimental use of cranial-sacral therapy on the feet. Cranial-sacral therapy works – at least in theory – with the cranial-sacral pulse, or the rhythm of the spinal fluid as it circulates the length of the spinal cord and within the cranium.  Richard explained, “In theory you can feel the cranial-pulse anywhere, not just in the cranium or sacrum.  So it can be used anywhere on the body.”

In truth because alignment in feet affects alignment in hips, and tightness in hips affects comfort and strength in lower back, the new focus on feet and ankles has morphed into a combined focus on everything from QL muscles down.  Or - for the non-anatomy experts among us - everything from the waist down.

I know that western science can’t make heads or tails of cranial-sacral therapy.  This confusion notwithstanding, I experience its power directly.  It appears to be the shamanism of benevolent angels.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, energy and emotion moving in the lower part of the body has been harder to decipher as the images are more impressionistic and emotive, the connections being perhaps more deeply buried.  This has not prevented dramatic changes from emerging including a new ability to write right-handed & backward in addition to the usual left-handed & backward writing and right-handed & forward writing.

In Massage #14 the therapy brought out anger in the right ankle.  Within a visual impression of this anger, I wore metal braces on my legs.  I was confined to a wheelchair and could not stand without support.  I did not understand this as a past life memory but rather the emotional story of my ankle - much as my inner-attorney told the story of numbness in my right arm. 

As Richard worked my ankle, defenses rose to the surface. I discovered that I was angry not only with my disability but with the therapist willing to dig deeply enough to help.  The version of me in the wheelchair swung her crutches violently and shouted – silently and from inside of myself of course -“Leave me alone, we live in different worlds.  There are certain things I can’t have!” This is a side of myself I am not well acquainted with.

As mentioned in earlier posts, past life memories stored in the neck came to the surface readily in just over one session of focused neck work.  This is the seventh massage focusing on feet and ankles and no new past life memories have surfaced.

However, what happened next, when cranial-sacral was applied to the right ankle, suggests that there is more than one way for emotional patterns to impact physicality and even contribute to the structure of the body – past or alternate lives being one way.

In discussing cranial-sacral energy I have heard both Tasha and Richard refer to it as an energy that unwinds.  This is exactly how I would described my experience with massage #14. It felt as if the cranial-sacral work began unwinding from deep within my feet the emotional foundation of sore ankles, flat arches and bunions.

Richard held my right ankle and rotated it gently - as he said, in response to the cranial-sacral pulses. Accompanying the sensation of emotion being pulled from my flesh - like a thread from a hem - was a message, “You are letting go of a disability and its ability to keep you small.” 

Hmmmmmm………..?????? 

I do not know what else to say except for that as this marathon progresses, I struggle to keep pace with my experience. The consciousness driving these events proves its intelligence.  More and more the ability of my mind to decipher and describe the process is surpassed. I, a witness to my own transformation, am overtaken.

That, and my legs did feel much better afterward!