My healing journey through bodywork

Twenty years ago, I started working with my first teacher; I was 29. She was mild-tempered, extremely chill & with a tall-ish but petite build … but make no mistake about it, her bodywork was vicious. On more then one occasion, I left with the hinges of my jaw swollen & looking like a pit bull ... on those days my dinner consisted of a protein shake, enjoyed with a straw.

One thing that this type of work helps you with, is increasing your confidence in finding out what you & your body are capable of in a way you never knew before.

I don’t write this to scare you away or boast about myself, but rather to share with you a little about how I was introduced & delved deep into this work … & maybe a little proud of how far I’ve come.

I met my first teacher through a friend; he was a client of hers & unbeknownst to me he had been expressing to her for a year or so that he had this "Chiropractor friend that was just crazy enough to learn the work" & that she should teach me.

After my first session, I instantly became a dog to a fire hydrant when it came to receiving & learning the work. I was taking in the work as feverishly as I could … in part, because I was going through major upheaval in my life that started to reveal many cracks in my seemingly issue-free life & childhood. Also, I quickly realized as a result of the work that I was passionate about the emotional aspect of healing & how it effected ones physical life.

While I have always been an extremely sensitive person, I had difficulty verbalizing my emotions & was limited in using athletics or my physicality to do most of my talking. The bodywork helped me dive as deep as I wanted into feeling many things long forgotten. It’s impossible not to feel with this kind of work.

I’ve experienced so many things going through this emotive bodywork & healing. I’ve experienced sessions that felt like an exorcism, where I could actually feel something leave my body. I’ve also been in tune with all the terror I was going through, where one time I even had the feeling of a noose of tension encircling around my neck.

I learned how to emote when in physical pain, how to rage, yell & scream obscenities like you’ve never known. I’ve cried tears so hard my eyes were swollen & I looked like I belonged in a Rocky Balboa movie. I’ve also laughed harder than you could imagine, realizing that joy, laughter & even playfulness can be stuck in the body, just as much as anything else.

Everyone needs this work, but not everyone will take part.

Just as in anything experiential, one can’t learn from hearing about it, but must participate in it to truly know. If you want to know what you’re capable of in life, you must challenge your capacity & boundaries to find out … and I say that in the most literal sense. To know who you genuinely are & what’s possible, you must dive beyond your self-protective behavioral patterns & your deepest pains & into the essence.