Richardbrook@hotmail.com (I practice acupuncture in the West Midlands)
A lot of my friends think It's all a bit of a mystery with some of this ‘healing’ stuff I’m into (well most of you who know me from the more conventional and ‘normal’ side of my life anyway – bless you all without you I think I’d go completely mad!) but to be fair over the last week to 10 days I’ve not been feeling so good myself (hadn’t been to work since before Christmas, until I went back on Sunday!) and while out dancing on Saturday night and feeling mighty euphoric I must say I had quite a lot of inspiration passing through to write a bit about my experiences of the last 10 days or so, perhaps they might be quite useful read about as maybe could give insight into how I perceive illness and what’s been going on in me or perhaps just interesting to read about what kind of stuff passes through my mind and some of the types of experience I have. I have had two or three ‘interesting’(!) healing type moments during that time too which might be interesting to read about. Although the last couple of weeks have generally been ‘healing’ it’s always cool when you have a really pronounced healing moment! – like seeing the Light! It’s a bit of a long one this (!) and it meanders a bit, but there you go x
Infact because it’s so long I’ve tried to break it down a bit into sections, so the rough sections are titled;
- Getting run down;
- Finally the Flu takes me down!; - Winter is meant for stillness!
- Startling Healing Event 1; I saw the Light! And connection to the Liver!
- The need to move – but am I listening? Energetic stagnation and disarray
- Bringing Balance and moving energy blocks; Acupuncture treatment and time to dance! New Year’s Eve
- More Dancing and more things changing – Ecstatic experience and Body re-alignment
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- Getting run down;
Perhaps best to start about two or three weeks ago, I’d been pretty full on busy for most of December, still riding a really strong wave of energy that I’d been feeling since about October time, but I began to notice a bit of a dip in my energy levels kicking in and also starting to feel a bit sniffly. Also every Thursday I go to Birmingham and do a dance practice called 5 Rhythms, it’s a free spirited ecstatic dance practice, done loads of it over the years, but doing it on a weekly basis is pretty useful as every week I feel it gives me chance to tune into what my body is doing and feeling like, as the very nature of the practice gets you out of your head and thoughts and into what you are feeling. Anyway I began to notice about two or three weeks before Christmas that I was beginning to spend way more time at the class feeling a bit more interested in my own state and a bit less interested in what was going on around me. By that I mean I would spend much more time than normal doing healing on my own body and less time feeling immersed in dancing or feeling engaged with what was going on around me. To explain ‘doing healing work on my own body’ - as it’s quite a free space, you can allow yourself the freedom to really let your body move in ways that tunes into it’s own intelligence for what it needs. And as I say when I dance or do other kind of movement work I tend to get out of my thinking mind and a bit more into my body awareness. So whereas when you are working you generally have to just play out whatever movements you need to do to get your job done (like with me it’s making drinks when I’m working at the pub!) in this space you can let your body lead the dance and move in the ways that it wants to, without really having to ‘think’ about what you should be doing or having to really do anything. So about two or three weeks ago I noticed I was spending large parts of the class with my energy facing inwards and using my hands to hold certain areas of my body or press certain points (again not coming from my mind, it was my body’s spontaneous actions in order to try to bring healing to itself) as an acupuncturist it often fascinates me to see how spontaneously, when i’m aware enough to notice, I just press certain points on my body, and of course I can try(!) to make some sense of them with my acupuncture knowledge. For two weeks I was spending more and more time doing this. My body was beginning to struggle a bit with the full on schedule I was working between jobs and all the social stuff. I was sinking, but of course like most people I didn’t think I could possibly slow down or even stop, I mean I need the money right and I can’t take time off work that close to Christmas when it’s so busy are you crazy man!
-Finally the Flu takes me down!; - Winter is meant for stillness!
So at Christmas, or actually Christmas eve it really finally got me. I’d had a sore throat and some pretty full on flu symptoms a couple of days earlier that had moved through, but then I woke up Christmas eve and felt rough, my glands were swollen and I most definitely wasn’t happy. Although our body mind spirit are interconnected, a shift in one level or the other can sometimes have a bit of a delay before it affects the other levels, when my body first started to feel rough I still felt more or less okay in myself as I’d been having a pretty decent time for a while before that, but by Christmas the various imbalances had started to take more of an effect and I wasn’t happy! So why this time of year is so prone to illness? Well apart from the obvious that it’s cold and wet and more demanding on our immune system, it’s also from a Chinese Medicine perspective the time of year when we should be allowing our energy to be relatively still and inward, maximum ‘Yin’ as they say (as opposed to the maximum ‘Yang’ and outward moving energy of summer – and remember Yin and Yang must balance each other to maintain health) and so while the animals are going off to hibernate, and plant life relatively still, we humans are rushing around like crazy trying to get things ready for Christmas! I also really notice the ‘Rhythm’ of a season, like how it just actually ‘feels’. This last week or 10 days when I’ve been mainly at home, I’ve felt much more in tune with the actual energetic rhythm of the season. Before I was just too busy to notice! It doesn’t really feel like it’s actually calling me to do much, a little bit of something each day for sure, but nothing like compared to say Spring when the energy is really rising, and if you’re like me probably can’t keep still even if you want to!
So also in Chinese Medicine each season corresponds to an Element in the body, which in turn corresponds to particular organs. So they say that during each season you need to tune into that season as fully as possible in order to ‘fill up’ on that particular energy that feeds those organs, so that another good reason to try to tune into each season. (For example the summer corresponds to the Heart, and the emotion of joy, so if you get your fill of that during the summer it can keep you going during the more inward times such as Winter) So in Winter we need to look after our Kidney and Bladder, these are organs which store our energy reserves, hence why the animals go hibernate and why we should take it easy ourselves, as we should be filling up on those reserves ourselves ready to keep us going and underly our energy throughout the rest of the year. What chance do you have for the rest of the year if you come out of the Winter already knackered! The trees don’t grow all year round, they stay still during the Winter preparing themselves for the growth of spring.
Anyway, so I was knackered from over work, and had picked up a few nasty bugs. It was no good. By Boxing day I felt so bad I felt I had no choice but to call in sick into work, which I rarely do, it was one of those situations where I could probably have got myself up and out, but it wouldn’t have been a good idea as underneath I needed some rest urgently, and would have just been postponing the inevitable. So instead I stayed in bed and slept most of the day till the evening. For two days I needed to keep pretty much still and do nothing. I slept a lot. I’d overworked for a while so movement was the last thing I needed and stillness was king.
Startling Healing Event 1; I saw the Light! And connection to the Liver!
I gradually started to feel a bit better, and during my sleep on Monday night I was aware of one of those beautiful healing type moments which happen in a more pronounced way than a gradual shift which is what you sometimes get. Probably best explain this one from the Chinese Medicine perspective of the Liver. Energetically I often get issues with my Liver energy, will explain more around it in a mo. Whilst I was feeling unwell I just had the feeling that everything felt very ‘murky’ I just didn’t feel very clear in myself at all. My inner sense of perception felt like crap. I was also aware that part of my energy felt disconnected – literally like someone had pulled the plug out. I had no get up and go at all, and this is possibly indicative from a Chinese Medicine perspective of a block or certainly a polluted channel. Anyway, whilst I was sleeping part of my consciousness was sufficiently still aware to notice that all of a sudden I was experiencing being in bright Light, like someone was wiping away mud from my inner windscreen of perception, it really was feeling like before that I had like a windscreen on the inside of my being that was coated in mud, and all of sudden it was as if someone had put on the windscreen wipers to clear it away and there I was lying in this semi – aware sleep state felling like I was basking in bright light that went on for seemingly ages, very blissful state to be in. I fully woke up feeling much more normal. So what has this got to do with the Liver? In Chinese Medicine the Liver, amongst other things is connected to vision, both our external vision, or ‘out-sight’ with the functioning of our eyes and also our inner vision, our inner sense of where we are going and capacity for ‘in-sight’. The Liver is also partly responsible for our get up and go and moving into action. During the previous few days when I’d been feeling so rough I’d noticed a few signs that all wasn’t well with my Liver energy (Not to be confused with having a ‘problem’ with my Liver from a Western Medical perspective, Chinese Medicine perceives things much differently and more subtly – so even a slight imbalance in the energetic functioning of an organ will have a subtle effect, without being diagnosed as ‘medical condition’) as I’d find myself continually resting my hand on points and areas of the body which correspond to my Liver energy. I also most definitely had no get up and go, and very little sense of vision of what to do. I think that what had happened is that I had gotten a bit of a build up of toxic energy in my Liver, and combined with the overwork it had compromised it’s functioning sufficiently to make a bit of a mess of my Liver energy basically. This probably happened for a few reasons, the Liver dislikes excess of any kind, so overworking is a bit of a no – no as it makes it overwork to keep on top of things, and I’d also had a bad habit of eating very late at night before bed, when again the Liver likes to be doing other work (cleaning your blood) rather than helping the digestive process. So basically I think my Liver energy went a bit south, so no get up and go and also couldn’t ‘see’ clearly from an internal perspective as the Liver energy wasn’t functioning sufficiently well. So what I think happened during the night, was after a couple days rest, the Liver managed to clear through some of it’s energetic backlog which had been obscuring me, with the sense of my inner vision clearing, so I could see the Light again and also therefore a bit of a return of my get up and go! I actually got up at a decent hour on the Monday, (and got dressed!) and generally felt much better!
Also have to add here though that again from Chinese Medicine perspective all our energies interconnect, so I know I’ve mentioned my Liver and Kidney’s already, but much like the seasons, one form of our internal energy tends to feed in and affect the others. (indeed all our Five Elements and organs / meridians have a regulating and balancing affect upon one another, and operate on a cycle) – how this related to the seasons, the analogy which I mentioned, is that in nature for example the stillness of winter gives rise to the growing energy of spring, which then matures into summer before falling away into Autumn and back to winter and so on, it is a natural cycle. So when I mention my Kidney’s being out of balance, that is much like my internal ‘winter’, and so then it’s already putting pressure on the next organs in the cycle, which are you guessed it the Liver. So how could I expect to have any get up and go, when I wasn’t having any stillness when I needed it? It’s much like expecting Spring to just happen without Winter first for nature to take a break and reform ready to go. And then indeed, how can you have Summer (associated with joy) if Spring hasn’t been good?
- The need to move – but am I listening? Energetic stagnation and disarray
However, since I was still feeling a bit vulnerable, I generally still took it quite easy on Monday and Tuesday - by now my mind had started operating a programme that I needed to continue to remain quite still! But see that’s the problem with the mind it’s quite often one step behind, trying to re-hash old ideas and make sense of things usually on a bit of a time delay! But of course the body and all our needs actually keep changing from moment to moment, as no two instances are ever the same, so while I had now started to get hooked up on the idea that I needed to be still, the truth was that now I actually needed to start to move!
So the Sergeant Major ego type character who lives in my mind (who I actually think is connected to the Spirit function of my Liver) was busy barking out orders, however in this case since ‘he’ was slightly in disarray they had a somewhat ‘sour’ taste to them, ‘No you can’t do that!’ ‘No you must do it the other way!’ and so on. Incidentally I think all the organs of our body have an associated ego character in our mind, or a dialogue which can come with them, as it’s our way of intellectual level or mental level making some sense of what they are trying to tell us – when our Stomach is hungry we hear a energy /voice saying ‘I’m hungry’ when our Heart feels open to someone we hear a voice saying ‘Oh, I Love this’, when our Kidney’s feel tired through over work, we hear them saying ‘Come on take a rest please!’ and when our Liver gets over worked we often hear a somewhat angrier voice saying going ‘grrr (or any suitable 4 letter word!) won’t you give me a moments peace please! It’s sometimes difficult to know which aspect of you can be saying exactly what though, and I hasten to add it can vary from person to person, do I might be hearing in my head the message ‘No you can’t do that, which in one particular moment may be coming from my Liver, but in another moment it may be the same message but coming from my Heart, or in another person it could be from their Kidney’s – it depends on your own internal configuration and balances and points of strength and weaknesses. I add that as I wouldn’t want anyone to read this and think that everytime they hear a voice in their head saying ‘no you can’t do that’ that it’s coming from the Liver! So anyway, Sergeant Major was saying keep still, and my Kidney’s were also still pretty knackered, but there was no doubt about it what I actually needed to do was actually move a bit. See because I’d now been sitting on my bum for about 5 days my energy was actually starting to get a big stagnant, so some of the other energies and elements of my body were actually starting to suffer from the lack of movement – my blood hadn’t pumped around the body, my Lungs hadn’t exercised, muscles hadn’t moved, so digestion wasn’t stimulated which affects stacks of things like Stomach, Spleen, Large Intestine and so on as all that heavy Christmas food wasn’t getting processed properly. But that’s what happens you see when we get a bit out of balance and too much pressure is put on one particular element within us, you get a choir in disarray, so instead of all my lovely internal energies all getting roughly what they need and singing from pretty much the same hymn sheet, you get some saying ‘no I need to be still!’ and others saying ‘No I need to move’ others saying ‘but oh I’m bored I want some company’ ‘but no I’m too tired for that!’ and then the poor Heart who is meant to running the overall show starts to get affected too and before you know it you ain’t very happy either! As one of my own acupuncturists said to me once when i was going through a particularly imbalanced period from doing too many things that opened me around the Heart to too great an extent and I became ridiculously sensitive to everything that was going on‘Your Heart is wondering where all the little soldiers have gone, they have all deserted him!’ The Heart is considered so important as it houses our ‘Spirit’ which above all else we need to protect and look after, bless x
- Bringing Balance and moving energy blocks; Acupuncture treatment and time to dance! New Year’s Eve
But instead I woke up on Wednesday morning feeling worse than I had done for a couple of days with a cracking headache (and I don’t normally get them) and it’s New Years eve – and I don’t mind being a bit out of sorts for a few days but I wanted to do something nice on New Years Eve! The fact that I felt worse when I should have been feeling better told me that my system was now having a hard time in eliminating some of the accumulated pathogenic energies ‘bugs’ that had been ‘bugging’ me for the last few days, and also that since there had been no real movement that there was also no smooth flow to my energy (also the Liver’s job!) I felt like I needed a helping hand, and although I do acupuncture it had been quite a while since I’d had any myself, my practitioner was off till Jan 5th so I picked up the phone book to see if I could find someone working on New Years eve, but was no good, so I called a friend off my course who was willing to help! I went to see Natalie (I’m sure she won’t mind me plugging her ‘Natalie Saunders!’ as she did a great job and I felt so much better later it was ridiculous) and as I say she just did a very simple treatment on me called an AE drain which basically taps into your whole energy network and allows some of those nasties to drain out. For the first time in quite a while I felt peaceful, with the needles placed in my back I sat, and unlike me I just shut up and sat quietly. I didn’t want to talk, it felt so relieving for want of a better word! It was about 5.30 and now I felt ready to move – it was time to dance! I jumped back in my car, had a quick think about it to make sure (I’m pretty sure that over the years I’ve begun to get a bit wise to what I need) and decided to drive to London and go dance the New Years in at 5 Rhythms. I felt very tentative at first and even somewhat delicate, but the direction was clear, I was doing the right thing as my body began to gradually spontaneously and gently do it’s thing. And the contrast was clear to my previous most recent memories of dancing before that when I spent most of the classes feeling disengaged. Although I still actually felt quite rough on the surface level – and to be fair there was definitely a core seed of underlying energy coming through that felt much better and clearer. They say that when we heal we do it from the inside out, and although sometimes this can feel quite subtle and not always immediately easy to communicate I’d gotten itchy feet by now so I headed off to Camden to a club (the Underworld, in my opinion one of the best clubs in the known, and infact unknown universe!)
So what happens when I dance, I can actually feel the changes going on throughout my energy network as the creases and blockages start to shift and release and unravel (especially when I’m in a bit of a quieter and less chaotic place like 5 Rhythms) Your energy and meridian network is a bit like having a network of pipes, say for example water pipes flowing around your body, and without the right kinds of movement the energy can get stuck and stagnate in certain places, and almost like a kind of debris build up. Your body actually knows what movements it wants to do to clear this through, and when you allow your body spontaneous movement it can find ways of moving which almost like flush through the pipes and get things back balanced again so all Elements of us begin to balance again, our Yin and our Yangs can come back into balance, as remember we are made up of 5 different Elements and emotions and it’s not so great to get too stuck in any of them, or any one emotion or state to become too predominant. Gabrielle Roth who put together the structure for 5 Rhythms dance has this great phrase she put in one of her books, Maps to Ecstacy I think, something like ‘the fastest way to still your mind is to move your body’ and I was having some reflection on this while dancing the other night and my take on it is that the dancing and movement just actually allows our inner state to re-set itself to a more balanced state, as in harmony we don’t have a pounding mind, that’s probably the result of the imbalanced lifestyle’s we have from moment to moment in our everyday life where energy gets stuck in a certain Element, and thus we experience an imbalance in our inner state, such as our Earth Element, - Stomach and Spleen constantly full of worry about holding ourselves stable in this crazy world or our Wood Element – Liver and Gall Bladder not properly asserting ourselves or growing properly so we end up with a preponderance of energy affecting our mental level perception (also cos sometimes our emotions ‘energy in motions’ aren’t allowed due space to move themselves either) so when we dance our more Yin aspects, which are the quieter aspects of ourselves can come back and rebalance with the more Yang active aspects of ourselves, thus giving the sense that our mind is becoming quieter, though in effect it’s just the Yin rebalancing the Yang – our more natural state where the active functions are held more in check with the ‘quieter’ functions. I’m aware I mention a lot around stillness and movement as being quiet distinctly different states, which is quiet often the case on a very simplistic physiological level, but sometimes you can be still and almost continue to be in movement when you are ‘aware’ as quite often when I dance I’ll have a moment when I’m still but my energy is still very much in motion and my awareness is still switched on – I’m still fully aware and in my body (as opposed to the kind of stillness when you might be sitting immobile infront of the TV – the key is that your energy and attention is still awake) So anyway – energies moving, I was dancing on New Years eve, and for quite a few days before when I hadn’t been feeling so well I’d had a growing sense of frustration and irratibility going on inside, within one of my Elements – (that there Liver and Wood Element again, becoming stagnant due to the lack of movement) and so in my moment to moment perception that feeling had become part of who I was, I’d identified with that energy as part of me, and this is where I find things can get a bit bizarre when you dance and flush some of those pipes as it had the ability to change those feelings in an instance, which is quiet often a bit mad when you’ve built up an entire story, which we do sometimes around a particular emotion we have going on! So I was dancing away, and all of a sudden this feeling of anger that I was carrying inside just shifted, and it was such a bizarre feeling to almost feel it just drifting away, that emotion had become part of my state for a few days, and like any emotion we have going on it can tend to get projected out onto whatever we have going on in our lives, but as meditation teachers often like to emphasise that whatever we are experiencing will indeed pass so don’t get too attached to it! Was very weird, that anger was actually being projected out onto a situation around me at the time too, and for all intents and purposes I would have been ready to ‘act’ on that anger and engage in a situation around me had I not continued moving – and then it just dissolves – bye, bye anger! Reminds me sometimes I do need to trust my wisdom which tells me not always necessary to act when I get stuck in a certain emotional loop or feeling, as it does sometimes pass of it’s own accord – that was a common energy block for me, where I feel angry about something and can’t help but feel that the only answer or way to move it is to engage with whomever you feel is prompting it, but that isn’t always the answer (if you’re in a situation where the conditions lend themselves to that block keep re-occuring then sometimes we do need to act to change that, as that’s not particularly healthy) but other times it will dissipate of it’s own accord, the trick is knowing the difference, and that’s where a bit of wisdom (hopefully!) kicks in.
- More Dancing and more things changing – Ecstatic experience and Body re-alignment
On Saturday night I felt ready for a bit more dancing action again and had another fascinating and pretty remarkable experience. I drove to Birmingham first and went to Snobs club but it wasn’t really happening there for me for whatever reason, so I went back over to Wolverhampton and Blast Off. Upstairs in the back room there was a fair amount of space, and the DJ was playing some killer tunes of 90’s indie that really connect with me and my experience over the next couple of hours was really something. Having shifted some of the more emotional stuckness from my system a few days before, part of this experience came much more about my physical body, but not before something beautiful happened that I don’t get that often but is certainly welcome when it does, an ecstatic dance experience! When I first parked myself at the edge of the dancefloor when I first arrived I felt very vulnerable, I think with being a bit ill for a few days and all that I just still felt a bit vulnerable and sensitive, which is O.K when you are somewhere like 5 Rhythms and everyone is sober and aware, but not always so great in a nightclub with people who are sometimes a bit less ‘aware!’But sure enough bit by bit my body started to move with the rhythmic waves of energy and vibrations, and before long I was gently off and away dancing and had a lovely spot at the back of the dance floor. Bit by bit I started to feel more and more fluid, I get this moreso if I haven’t danced for a while (when I’m dancing a lot it can tend to seem a bit more like effort), but this time my body was relishing the experience of being in motion and loving the tunes. My entire system started to feel completely free of restrictions, and I started to feel a bit less dense and ‘physical’ I suppose as the endorphins started to move at the pleasure of moving my spine so freely and loving the music, and gradually this growing feeling of intense pleasure started to amplify, and before I knew it I was having an ecstatic dance experience right on the dance floor at Blast Off, I’ve had a few before, but sometimes have been in situations where you might feel a bit less vulnerable, my body felt completely free and at one with the music, completely at one and fluid, and I’d had this continued feeling of warmth starting to come over me, and the all of a sudden I felt an intense high and realised I was actually in a place where I didn’t feel I would immediately be able to come ‘back down’ either should I need to, like an indescribable feeling of intense pleasure like warm liquid gold running through my veins, I just can’t describe it but I do remember thinking at the time and wondering if that is what it must feel like to have morphine pumping through your veins, also on the mental level I was getting all this great inspiration for things to do, feeling like I was making complete sense of the world and my life, getting lots of understanding and very clear about a lot of things, I felt completely ‘open’ also and a tad vulnerable, especially given where I was and I don’t know if I would have been able to string a sentence together should anyone have engaged me either, it lasted about 10-15 mins and as I say as often the case when you get in a bit of and altered state and am aware of it I didn’t really know how or when I would come back down either, but gradually I did, and returned back to a bit more of a normal state of consciousness! While I was in that state though, and this has happened before as well when I have been in a bit of a natural high state, someone does take it upon themselves to come over and do something like shake your hand or grab you, I think this can happen for a few reasons, sometimes I think like on some level they recognise whats going on in you, and maybe are either high themselves – perhaps sometimes off substances though and feel a resonance with you as you temporarily move onto the same wavelength or vibration, or sometimes perhaps they can just sense the joy or energy and ‘want’ some of that, either consciously or unconsciously, which doesn’t always feel so great, as it’s not always welcome when you’re in such a sensitive energised state, but what can you do – in this case a guy had walked over to me and wanted to shake my hand, I didn’t particularly want to but to refuse would probably have meant having to talk to him or something and I just wanted him away – I was completely sober and open in a really blissed out state and he was a bit drunk – not really what I wanted but on the balance of it I must have felt compassion and did it.
Anyway, having come down a bit from that, I found a lot of things altering in my body and energy system. Whenever you really raise your vibration really high like that it can have a profound effect on your energy and shift lower level blocks and restrictions, as that energy seeks to course through your entire energy network, and being in that body aware place I must have a really good self instinct for the places where it must have been getting stuck in my system and all of a sudden found myself doing quite a lot of spontaneous work pressing pressure points on my body and so on. As I say I think when you’re a bit higher vibration wise it can more clearly highlight to you where the energy is getting stuck, it sort of illumines those places. So again as happens quite a lot I found myself on the dancefloor feeling ever so slightly self conscious as my body set to work on sorting itself out, this generally happens to me at Snobs as that’s generally where I would do most of my dancing and there I generally tuck myself away towards the back of the dancefloor, and usually people are generally too interested in their own stuff to notice. So there I was parked at the back of the dance floor finding pressing and twisting and working into certain points on the body and stacks of really interesting stuff started to happen – the intelligence of the human body is pretty incredible, and as I say as an acupuncturist it’s really useful as I can see what points I’m working on and feel the effect they are having – and also compare to what the descriptions say they should do! There is an often mentioned idea in acupuncture that sometimes you can do just one point on a patient and have a big effect, which I think is true if you have a big blockage, as just releasing that one block will allow the energy to circulate much more freely around the entire system again (I often say to people it’s like if the motorway gets blocked then there is a big block of traffic (or in this case energy) behind it and then the side roads start to get blocked too, the whole system starts to get snarled up as the energy seeks to find a way through – so clear that main block and then everything starts to flow more freely again) So I found myself doing a few points, (especially Liver and Gall Bladder ones – they are connected) and then I must have moved some pretty big restriction or block as then all of a sudden my spine started to self adjust itself straight again! The spine is inextricably linked to the rest of our energy system as it has a main channel running up it, but also I can see over the years of self awareness that my whole posture is effected energetically by what’s going on with the energy in different parts of my body. Also it’s important to remember that our entire energy system is linked so move a block in one place and it can affect somewhere else on the body. So here I was, I’d been working a point on my temple, and one on the left side of my torso and then all of a sudden my spine started to elongate and re-align itself back into correct position (I have a bit of a slump forwards sometimes) but I was also standing on the dancefloor and in order for the adjustment to happen my body was demanding that I put my arms up behind my head (a bit like when you are naughty at school and the teacher tells you to stand with your hands behind your head!) and really sort of help pull myself back up straight! It’s also a move chiropractors do to straighten your spine. For about 5 mins, avoiding the stares of two blokes standing to me, I was wriggling and contorting as my body straightened itself up. What I liked about it though was that as an acupuncturist something I often think about is that your physical body is actually a reflection of what’s happening in your energy body, and moments like that confirm it to me, the energy balanced itself out and then the denser physical body adjusted as a result of that. It would have been easy to have gone to a Chiropractor or Osteopath (and not for one second am I criticising what they do as sometimes it is fantastic) who could have straightened me up anytime anyway but it’s unlikely it would have held as the energy obviously wouldn’t have been flowing right, whereas in this instance the energy body moved and then the physical body followed. I definitely feel there is a lot to be said for helping balance the energy body and then the physical body will move as a result. They say that energy descends from the more etheric levels down through to the more physical, with the physical body the last stop and reflection of it, so when you effect changes at the enegetic levels it cascades down through the layers, whereas it won’t necessarily move the other way! That’s why there is some degree of scepticism around Western Medicine from an energetic perspective as it could be said it tends to focus more on the physical levels, which is the last stop of the symptoms. However once again I’m not criticising or dismissing western medicine in it’s entirety as some of the things that can be done are amazing and I for one have been very grateful at times for the help and assistance of Doctors.
The other things I found myself doing on the dancefloor acupuncture points wise that I found fascinating was I spent a lot of time working two particular points linked to my Pericardium and what is known as the Triple Heater. This was interesting to me as I mentioned I have been feeling noticeably vulnerable of late as if my Heart has been feeling slightly over –exposed and the Pericardium is energetically the Heart Protector in Chinese Medication. The two points together are known as Junction points and named Inner Frontier Gate and Outer Frontier Gate and are to do with balancing my connection with my own inner world with that of the outer world around me and opening and closing in a more balanced way. I can tend to go through phases where I feel overly open and then shut down the other way sometimes as my Heart feels a bit exhausted so be good to balance that, as although there is a natural cycle of opening and closing anyway it’s still good for it to be as balanced as possible.
Infact I think I may have picked up some energy nasties around my Heart centre in general, or certainly a bit over worked energetically as I also find myself frequently and on the dancefloor a lot placing my hand over my Heart centre, which I perceive as working on a bit of a slightly different level, perhaps working more with the idea of the Heart Chakra, that being an energetic centre of energy which spins at the centre of the chest associated with the Heart. I sometimes feel when I place my hand there for a while that I’m sometimes vacuuming out or drawing out any negative energies which have built up around that centre or certainly bringing some warmth and comfort to that area if there are any signs of depletion or deficiency.
Well folks thanks for reading if anyone did actually get to the end! As I say it did come in quite clear as an inspiration while dancing and having that ecstatic experience to write about this last couple of weeks or so, so maybe I’m sharing a bit of that joy with this too.
Bye for now! (I really should get some sleep or else my Kidneys will be moaning again!)
I felt bad so I needed to be still,
So I kept still And felt much better
Then I felt bad because I needed to move
So I moved
And then felt great!
And so it goes……!
