A Culminating Event - 20 Massages in 2 Months (Massage #11 continued)

The hot stones Avery used on me.  They are resting after the intense massage experience!:)

If you read post 1 and post 2 on Massage #11 at this point you may be asking, “So what exactly happened in this massage with Avery to (1) provoke the rush of kundalini energy that lead to (2) muteness, light blindness and an inability to move and (3) confined me for my own good in the lobby for the Well-Being Center for Health for a full 3 hours after my massage?

The answer is this:

During the massage, Avery used smooth beach stones heated and covered in oil to soften muscles and fascia. After the hot stones she used a technique that was new to me called side-lying somatics.  In this technique the client lies on their side to allow deeper access to certain muscle groups.  Finally, she combined the whole thing with a little Jin Shin Do to create a powerful experience.  I was amazed at her skill in moving through a complex set of massage positions in our one hour session. 

 

Avery employed techniques that in the course of the massage moved intense emotions, including fear, out the hip and root chakra area. With the hot stones she worked tight quadriceps muscles which further opened and cleared the gallbladder meridian we had focused on in our Jin Shin Do session a week or so ago. In the side lying position she worked my tight hamstrings. She hooked one hand around the curve of my hipbone and with the other massaged my gluteus muscles until I saw concentric circles of black and fearful energy flying out of and away from my body. Avery, did I miss anything here?

Because Jin Shin Do works to clear the body’s energy channels, including the kundalini channels, and because kundalini energy travels upward from the root chakra (or hip area), in hindsight, it is no surprise that this massage culminated in the rush of spiritual energy that landed me mute and still the lobby for 3 hrs.

While Avery’s massage was powerful my reaction was likely caused by the coupling of her skillful approach with the affects of previous treatments.  For instance, the euphoria experienced in Massage #9 with Aiden in retrospect seems like a hint of what was to come with Massage #11. My system was primed for the release of kundalini energy and altered state that followed.

As I write this a voice I would call the voice of spirit assures me, “There’s more to come.” I can only guess at what will come in the remaining 9 massages!

 

Struck by Lightening & Metallica's "One" - 20 Massages in 2 Months (Massage #11 continued)

I felt like I had been struck by lightening!

When I left Massage #11 I found myself thanking Avery more than once from across the lobby as I had seen others do. 

“What, is everyone here a genius?” I said to Jennifer who sat at the reception desk.

“What?” she replied.

“Is everyone here some kind of genius?”

Jennifer did not answer, too modest to say “yes,” whether the potential referred to is tapped or still developing.

A client who sat in the lobby said of Avery, “She’s good isn’t she.” 

I had underestimated the power of Avery’s massage.  I became dizzy. Within minutes I had lost the ability to move, talk or hold my eyes open for more than a few seconds.  For nearly 3 hours I sat silently in the lobby of the Center, mostly mute, blind and still, meditating and working to come back to myself.  I felt like I'd been struck by lightening.

I am beginning to see that the goal talked about in this blog’s first post - to explore the outer limits of massage - is being reached. Setting out I imagined that these 20 massages would relieve physical discomfort and help me process emotions. While it is doing these things it is also catalyzing the awakening process!  It makes sense. All the signs point in this direction including the fast physical changes brought on by massages 1-7. Likewise, trauma often precedes awakening and 2009-2010 were, for me, years of painful though necessary change. (Though there is a school of spiritual thought that says all change is good, it has not been easy or glamorous!).

For the 3 hours I stayed in the lobby I was not sure that had I been able to move sufficiently to ride my bike that I could get home safely.  My reflexes had slowed dramatically.  Once I got up to get water.  It took approximately 3 minutes to walk the 12 feet from my chair to the water cooler, another 7 minutes at the cooler and then 2 minutes back to my chair.  Each step was painfully slow and the trip required a substantial hiatus at a potted tree to commune with the leaves.  Though self-conscious I could not will myself to move faster or to stop paying attention to every detail of existence.  Removing my eyeglasses became an epic journey as I could both feel and was distracted by each hand muscle as it contracted allowing my fingers to grasp the arms of the glasses and after this this by the sensation of the plastic end-pieces compressing the flesh over my cheek bones as they slid off my face. I opened my eyes, each time hoping to find the light dimmed only to have to shield them again by closing them.  I opened my mouth to speak only to mouth soundless phrases.

Jennifer, Aiden, Avery and other staff checked in on me periodically though seemed shy about disturbing what they have said looked - from the outside - like a mostly peaceful, though extraordinarily long, meditation. A client who said “hello” on her way into a session asked me if I needed a ride on her way out. It was funny, embarrassing, educational and scary. 

In my consternation I thought of notes that might explain the situation. I considered writing, “There is a storm of time within me,” or “kundalini crisis” or “Metallica’s ‘One,’” as if any of these phrases could have explained the situation. (Metallica’s ‘One’ is a music video about a patient being tortured in a hospital. He is only able express himself through morse code tapped with a finger. He spends most of the video pleading for help in his head!)

Two and half hours into this siege, Avery, obviously worried, sat down next to me.  By this time I was able to will myself to move and talk a little bit.  Inside of my date book, in an attempt to explain and in markings so light Avery had to strain to see them, I wrote the word “kundalini” and showed it to her.  When she looked puzzled I tried to explain that I would be okay.  After all, I had been through something similar in 2001 when the awakening first took hold and gifts made themselves unmistakably apparent.  Soon after Avery’s visit, movement began to return to my body and then speech.  My eyesight normalized.

At this point you may be asking, “So what exactly happened in this massage with Avery to provoke such a state?”

My answer would be, “What didn’t happen?”

(for more on Massage #11 see next post)

Hallelujah! A Tipping Point – 20 Massages in 2 Months (Massage #11)

Hot stones used in massage

I received Massage #11 from Avery at the Well-Being Center for Health in Monroe, Washington, one massage past the half-way point of 20. In the aftermath of this massage I was reminded that when the human and invisible worlds find willing partners in one another, it is best to expect the unexpected. Fortunately, what happened was not without some precedent.

In retrospect, I suppose I saw it coming. I can see now that the timing was perfect and that events unfolded as if choreographed, requiring only agreeable participants (albeit with some training).  Through these 11 massages, beneath the work of easing physical symptoms – including chronic neck and back pain, reduced neck mobility, right shoulder and arm numbness, pain in feet and ankles due to bunions and other structural irregularities - something else played out, an emotional and spiritual soundtrack, the drama of consciousness unfolding.

Key in points in the journey include:

·         Massages 1-6 - culminating in Massage #6 with Richard, liberating deeply held terror and past life memories from the neck area. 

·         Massages 7 & 8 - a change in focus from neck and shoulder to feet and ankles. Jennifer, whose technique is so pleasant, began to move defenses in my lower body. 

·         Massage 9 with Aiden - discovering QL muscles, searching for the anatomical connection between neck and feet symptoms, euphoria and the need to sit down afterward to collect my thoughts.

·         Massage #10 with Rose - sacredness and creativity, moving in deep unforeseen places, a knowing that the impact would be felt later. 

Then, yesterday, Massage #11. Avery had decided to heat smooth stones collected from the beach, cover them in oil and use them during the massage, a technique called “Hot Stone Massage." While waiting for the massage to begin I felt unusually grateful and, I felt something else.  But what?  A sense of willing submission to something greater? The pull of mystery?

As some of you may know, beginning in 1995, I experienced a dramatic spiritual awakening, an awakening that continues today. As with most events in life, this awakening had triggers. One trigger occurred in 2001 in the form of a Reiki attunement, an initiation/ceremony that confers the ability to use the hands for healing.

I went to this attunement chiding myself.  I told myself that I couldn’t believe I was paying good money for what seemed like hocus-pocus. Though part of me was enthusiatic about the attunement, another part of me thought I was humoring my healer at the time, Chriss Slivinski, who in spite of my skepticism had helped me to heal from abdominal pain and discomfort. Though I had experienced  the healing power of Reiki first hand, the theory of an attunement – the placing of symbols in the chakras – did not seem plausible. Imagine my surprise when I emerged from the ½ hour ceremony unable to talk without great effort or to open my eyes for more than a few seconds due to the fact that light had become blinding. Following this was weeks and months of insomnia, appetite loss, euphoria, terror, visions and nightmares when I did sleep as cleansing kundalini energy washed through my system, driving the awakening. During this time I practiced Reiki on volunteers – everyone from the stay at home mom in the apartment downstairs to the elderly man with arthritis in the laundromat.  In my case, what came with the attunement was an ability to see more deeply into people’s body’s and lives and more than this, to help  – all as the result of an energy I did not fully believe in.         

Although the learning process ensures that events are always clearer in hindsight, today - in 2011 - an equivalent spiritual trigger may well be these 20 Massages.

I left the massage with Avery feeling that I had had a powerful healing experience.  Afterward I stood at the front desk with Jennifer hoping to schedule some massages. Within minutes I was unable to talk or move without great effort.  I could not hold my eyes open for more than a few seconds as the sunlight which moments before had seem glorious was now blinding.

(for more on Massage #11 see next post)