Day 4 (is sore!)

Perhaps parts of my body are sore because when Thomas Hanna writes in "Somatics" about sensing the body, "Try to make this movement as pleasurable as possible--like a child, lazily stretching. Or like a cat." I go for it, I stretch, I feel the deep movement in my body, I breath with it, I release, tingle, open and ahhhhh feel so good doing the stretches.

Sometimes he says to move the knees toward the head and the head toward the knees while I am exhaling and pressing my lower back into the ground. My knees and head are not far from each other and can touch. I've always been flexible, but this allows me to look deeper into the journey of the stretch, I notice where my shoulders are, how much I am pressing my back into the ground and where my hips are, how I can feel better doing this stretch, where it feels if I do it slightly differently, really sensing my body and my muscles in my back.

This is a very large gist of Somatics, this sensing part, to sense ourselves is a gift that we all have, we just don't give it time, patience and consciousness so often during this rat race life that we face in our culture. That's another thread.

But for me, it's definitely been a time I've been looking for to clear my plate enough and to create a sanctuary for myself so that I get down to healing my spine. I know it's possible and maybe not that hard.

When I got the Milwaukee brace at age 15, I would lie in bed feeling my spine straighten along the piece of plastic border that allows the brace to unvelcro in the back of it. I would breath deeply and visualize it being straight. My mother taught me that one and also I knew it deep inside me.

The next time I went to the doctor for an x-ray (only a couple to a few months after bracing), my spine was straight.

The doctor said "that's impossible, that can't happen, the brace doesn't do that, it'll go back to 'normal' (meaning crooked) again."

With that knowledge and that let down from a doctor who couldn't see a "miracle" or just the relaxation and persistence of mind within body, I let my little teen head be filled with his ideas and I rejected all this "witchcraft" of healing thyself!

Since then, I knew it was true, I could always find a time and space to heal myself. I used to say mind rhymes (affirmations), but there wasn't the true spirit of belief behind them, nor responsibility to care for myself.

It's been MOOOOOONNS!! Finally, I have a home, a sanctuary, steady work, regularity, a place to release, adjust, be in tune with myself and support from my friends and family.

May I continue to do this for the next 24 days, my spine already feels pretty straight at day 4, it's just the opening up of my guts that have been sitting in this wacky position for 23 years - that's where it's sore. In that gaping crevice of no body space that needs to be filled with my body, my bones and my guts.

See the pictures where my right rib looks all funky? Below that, the empty gap, that's where my guts are now filling in -- I believe!