I have been waking up in pain almost every morning for years. I don’t typically talk about it with friends but my mom and past partners witnessed me crying many times. The perception of pain is something I defined as “unpleasant” in my mind which creates the “painful” experience.
If I defined the burning and the heavy stone sensations with limited mobility as “pleasant”, then that’d have been my experience and it would have proven the concept of “mind over matter”.
I visited dozens of healers in the United States and Guatemala. Embarked on journeys of ancient breathwork practices where I passed out. Threw myself into the hands of a Mayan woman in a temescal, and got my bones manipulated.
I burnt my skin and ingested Kambo (frog secretion) medicine through the burnt holes on my spine, breasts, ears, and arms several times and vomited the “toxins” out.
I went to train at a metaphysical school and asked my teacher about the neck pain. She told me: “Get rid of the pillows.” I did. Sometimes it helped and sometimes it didn’t.
I kept trying to find a formula to heal the neck pain that kept spreading like snake venom. I studied Reiki and completed level 1 & 2 training. I gained the intermediate mastery of redirecting the energy sources that are available to everyone. Clearly, the energy sources weren’t available for my neck for more than a session’s time.
Mayan abdominal massage.
Micro-dosing on mushrooms during 2018-2020, art therapy practices, getting rolfed, laying down on double wood blocks to release my fascia, and the list goes on..
One day I got a book on “dynamic alignment through imagery”. I started visualizing a symbol of a balloon or flowers blooming out of my neck and shoulders to help bring ease. Since I deeply believed that what I perceived in the external came from my internal world, I wanted to bring healing to my internal world.
It’s tricky not to project pain onto the world we seemingly see when we experience pain, whether physical or emotional.
“Visual thinking was a truly revolutionary development that pervaded all areas of human cultural evolution. It became the basis of rituals, as humans imagistically transformed into other animals and elements for various purposes such as healing or hunting. The healing and performing arts both grew out of the rituals engendered by imaging.”
“The very good time enjoyed in the “theater” by peoples even of the most primitive cultures shows that the deepest roots of theatrical effect have nothing to do with complicated stage mechanisms, individual stardom, or fashionable playwrights. Imagination is the magic cue.”
In fact, while I was watching Sponge Bob last night I took a screenshot of this scene:
Spongebob says:
“With imagination, I can be anything I want. A pirate, a football player, or a starfish...”
The book is full of different approaches to alignment. Some techniques attempt to create postural changes and some don’t.
With the Feldenkrais technique, there is no right or wrong posture. It utilizes simple movement exercises to create changes in flexibility and movement patterns.
With Alexander Technique, we visualize the head moving up and forward before we move (ie; stand up, walk, sit, etc.). We train our minds to be aware of any extra tension we might be holding while doing daily activities such as brushing our teeth, steering our car wheels, etc.
I studied the Alexander Technique with an amazing teacher at the American Conservatory Theater and we would work on embodying the famous saying: “I allow my neck to be free so that my spine can lengthen and my lower back can be free.” (something like that)
The book made me curious about the role of posture as I trained in many movement disciplines and none were concerned about creating postural changes. Awareness of the posture, yes. Being asked to tuck your butt while you spin in a jazz dance class, yes. But that’s about it.
The momentary practices, awareness tools, and bodywork brought less than a day's worth of release if it did any.
I started seeing a need to observe every little thing I do. How I sleep, walk, hold my head, etc. I came across the book: “8 Steps To Healing Back Pain” during a yoga class and asked my yoga teacher. She said she witnessed tremendous healing in one of her students who practiced the methodology with Esther Gokhale. One day she runs into the student at a grocery store and sees him balling with joy.
I clocked this story in my head. Eventually, I drove for about 5 hours to take one of Esther’s free workshops in Palo Alto and learned to activate my glutes when I walked. I could see that the knee pain from a past injury had softened during the workshop.
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Months later, after completing my solo theater performance training, I went down to take her “Foundations Course”.
I learned so much about the primal posture that radiated through the stance of non-industrialized societies. I researched the bodies of indigenous cultures and babies from different parts of the world, and how they did the most basic -yet complicated- activities: standing, sitting, bending, walking, and sleeping.
We incorporated dynamic visualizations and imagery into re-learning how to do all the activities involved in a day. It’s not as simple as: “Relax or tuck your pelvis, pull your shoulders back, don’t puff your chest, and relax your neck.”
Hours of practice went into creating kidney bean-shaped feet.
Hours of practice of walking while engaging the gluteus medius.
Anchoring the ribs.
Mirror work.
Spine trackers to see the detailed posture of each vertebra.
Adjusting the neck and head with hands (some similarity with the Alexander Technique practices here).
Activating an inner corset.
Practices to elongate the psoas and calf muscles.
Weight distribution.
Food and knee relationship.
We analyzed dozens of photos of people from Africa, Thailand, India, and the United States.
We kept feeding our imagination with “new” symbols.
Who would have known that the secret pass to healing was through deconstructing every little step I took, not by injecting frog poison?
I am still integrating new sleeping, sitting, and walking habits. It turns out that the stretch lying exercise on my back instead of my side, was full of healing potential for my neck! Ironically, the position I avoided to practice has been the most fruitful.
Where there is resistance, there lay the seeds of healing.
Changing habits is similar to letting go of a relationship that doesn’t resonate with our hearts.
It’s a journey of detachment and trust.
A new neck and posture, here I come!