Saturday, March 04, 2006

Holding up

I'm in the middle of my luteal phase and my breasts aren't killing me. Hows' that for an improvement? I think the acupuncture is helping out.

We went out with friends the other night and I wasn't drinking and I mentioned it was a chinese medicine/acupuncture thing and our friend's girlfriend who is an ear-nose-throat doctor asked me about it. I was dubious of how interested she was but I mentioned that I was having bad PMS, nausea for the better part of five weeks, really bad congestion and post-nasal drip, etc. Her response? That it was probably gastro-esophogeal reflux and that there's medication for that. I said I don't think acid reflux gives you bad PMS, and then she said, well no... I said that the dietary changes and the acupuncture and herbs seemed to be helping and the nausea was now gone. She said it was probably coincidence to which I replied I was sure that it wasn't. Oh sigh.

I went for a massage today, the first time that I've seen this practioner since September 2004. She practices Lomi Lomi massage, a technique that comes from Hawaii. Sometimes she chants during the massage, and she usually starts out with a type of prayer, but she always checks in with you on an emotional level before she starts so she can help use the time for more healing. When she asked how I was doing I said pretty good. But then I told her about the recent EDD and anniversary and I started getting teary. I filled her in a little about the second loss, about my frustrations with Western medicine having nothing really to offer since they don't really listen, and about how depleted I've felt since last June.

We started into the massage and I started crying a bit, it was hard just being touched. Before I got there I thought I might fall asleep during the massage but there was no chance of that happening. She worked a lot on opening up my hips and that didn't hurt but it felt like there was a little grief hidden there. Then I asked her to do some abdominal work and when she started doing that it felt like there was a big tight knot in the middle there. So she pulled back some and started asking me to do some visualizations and breathing and after a while my hands started buzzing, sort of like an electric shock but ongoing. She had placed one hand on my heart and the other on my belly and they were just buzzing and buzzing with energy. Then suddenly I started sobbing and crying and it was really intense, I told her I supposed I had been holding a lot of grief in there. She told me to just cry if I needed to and the tears rolled down the sides of my face into my ears and down my neck. Big fat tears.

She told me to breathe in and on the exhale to direct hope, or light or healing to the part of me where I'm holding my grief. I kept thinking of it like my shadow, a full body of myself but only a few inches thick that was dark and I held in my back. She asked me to acknowledge the place in my center, to ask it if it had a name or perhaps a shape -- what came to mind was the color green and the shape of a kidney bean. It was so odd and emotionally intense.

I'm going to go back for another massage in a few weeks to keep trying to resolve this, to help my body move on more. It's amazing what you can find hidden inside the folds and curves of your body.

3 comments:

Rhea said...

Wow, thank you for sharing that moment with us. I know that it must have been hard opening yourself up to releasing that kind of pain. Wonderfully written.

Anonymous said...

Yes, wow. I had goosebumps, as your experience really brought me back to some similar experiences while getting Reiki after my losses. I hope you were able to really release some of that pain, though I realize it will never fully leave you. ((hugs))

agness said...

Momma Bee -- weird that you had something similar. I find it amazing to have these experiences which western med would refute but that are undeniable if they have happened to you yourself.

Crystal -- how have you been doing? Surely you must be in need of a massage ;)

I told my acupuncturist about this experience and she thought it was really interesting. They wanted to know her name and whether she would be willing to work with infertility patients.

I've got another massage schedule in 10 days to keep working on it, I don't expect it to be as intense this time, but hopefully we can make more progress. My acu asked me if it was hard for me to let the grief out, on my own outside of crying at various appointments. I told her that I found it really emotionally uncomfortable on the whole and that occasionally I would but mostly I don't want to have to be that person who has all this grief because outside of all the infertility and loss my life has been pretty good on the whole.

What are you supposed to do, you can only wallow in it for so long, ya know?