the daily practice

This morning I woke with a fever and sore throat and that horrible lung congestion that feels like catarrh and always comes after I've had a drink. In this case, I'd had two glasses of wine at my sister's three days ago and haven't been getting much sleep at all and the symptoms had been slowly coming on since Wednesday. Here it is, Saturday morning, and I had to bail on plans with a friend. Again. I hate cancelling on friends, especially last minute like I did this morning.

I got to thinking about what I could be doing to change this pattern of mine--of going out and doing everything I want until I reach the point of collapse and then bailing on all plans at the last minute, sleeping for days and then going out and doing everything I want until I get sick again--and it's so obvious but I resent it so much that I haven't been able to see it. I need to consider getting well and taking care of myself a daily practice. In the way that I write daily and meditate daily, I need to make those choices to keep me well daily. Yea, it was just two glasses of wine on Wednesday night but I know that that sends my health plummeting within hours.

Its the same for people with chronic injuries. I used to assist in the athletic training department at Hunter College and these kids who were playing sports would come in right after they'd been injured and then never follow up with either the exercises we gave them or with appointments--until right before a big game or meet, when they'd come bursting into the office, demanding that we fix them right then, they had a game in three hours. It drove me crazy, both how these kids treated their bodies and their expectations of us. and yet, it's essentially how I have been treating myself. I am burned out on taking care of myself, of feeling always on the edge of getting sick again, of never quite being able to step into the life I want to live for fatigue and a vague sense of unwell. It comes down to this: to the choices I make daily, to making the choices that I need to make to keep myself well and getting better every day instead of justifying them with, it's just one glass of wine, or, I'll be fine not sleeping tonight. It's not easy but the alternative sucks.

None of us exist in a vacuum

This article is the latest in a series of articles that I’ve read or stories I’ve been told (my friend went fishing with his friend, who is a fisherman. They caught a fish and my friend says, “You can’t sell that fish, it’s sick.” And his friend says, “all the fish are sick. I sell fish sicker than this all the time.”)  that stop me and make me really see that we are all interconnected, that nothing stands alone in this world and that our actions ripple out and affect everything.

The descriptions in this article, of the absence of bird calls, of the interminable mire of floating garbage, of fishermen trawling reefs of everything living make me really stop and think about my food choices. Last night, I made fish tacos and they were delicious. But if the oceans are dead, and much other meat we get in this country so polluted, the current trend towards veganism begins to make so much more sense to me. I was a vegetarian for ten years and have been a rapacious meat-eater for the past ten but over the past few months, I keep coming back to the idea that maybe, right now, with the environment clogged with chemicals, meat stuffed with antibiotics and fed who knows what and the oceans and rivers and streams dying, perhaps it is time to change what and how I eat.

The obvious reason would be, if the fish that I can get are indeed sick (and farmed fish are dirtier than anything) and I am working my way out of a long bout with chronic Lyme, why would I eat it? As a nutritionist once told me, what I eat literally becomes me on a molecular level so eating polluted food just adds another layer of crud for my immune system to deal with. There is this: choosing not to eat animals or animal products for my own personal health. And there is recognizing that, in changing my choices, I change my impact on the world around me. 

I'm not sure what I am going to do; I used to believe that I could eat consciously raised meat infrequently and not negatively affect the environment but reading "The Ocean is Broken" hit home for me more than anything else that we are nearing (or at) the breaking point. Over the past years, I have weeded out anything processed and moved towards mostly organic eating but we're long past that being enough now. Especially since Fukushima, I have been pretty careful about the fish I eat (nothing from the Pacific) but now I am going to stop eating it altogether. Food choice, I realize, is not enough alone, but it is a starting point and already, my perspective shifts.

What is CranioSacral?

Since starting CranioSacral, I've received so many questions about what it is and how it works so here is a post on my experience as recipient and practitioner and an explanation.

I think that CranioSacral sessions are exquisite--the work is subtle and gentle but the relief and healing is profound and lasting. After session, I feel so much better: less pain, more vitality and it feels like the benefits I get from sessions compounds when I get consistent sessions. 

CranioSacral is very light touch manual therapy. The touch is generally no more than 5 grams of pressure, or the weight of a nickle. In a world where we are used to thinking of deep massage as effective, it can be difficult to wrap our heads around the lasting effects of gentle work. CranioSacral therapy targets the release of connective tissue and works because of the viscoelastic quality of connective tissue, meaning that it is fluid-like and maleable with gentle, sustained pressure but becomes solid under quick, hard pressure. You can think of silly putty, how you can tease it apart into long strands if you work with it gently but that its only choice is to break if you jerk it apart. Connective tissue is similar so responds to the gentle touch of a practitioner.

Like massage therapists, CranioSacral therapists look to release restrictions in the body freeing up motion and moving the body out of pain. Instead of feeling for hard knots of tension and then working away at those, CS practitioners feel for the CranioSacral pulse, a pulse which occurs throughout the body. By feeling for the pulse at various places in the body, CS therapists will also feel irregularities or inconsistencies in the rhythm or intensity of the pulse in particular areas. These inconsistencies indicate restriction and the practitioner will treat that area to release the restriction.

When I receive a session and a restriction releases, it usually feels like pain melting away. As practitioner, when an area has been released, it feels like that area has been synced with the rest of the body and I feel a sense of harmony and flow.

For me, CranioSacral work has been huge in my healing path. Lyme Disease utterly destroyed me--I was depleted, lost all memory and language and was in constant pain. I had a migraine for four years. Getting regular sessions first helped me to get restorative sleep--I used to wake exhausted after sleeping for ten hours which is typically of the chronically ill and stressed out. The body never shifts out of flight-or-flight (or a state in which the sympathetic nervous system is at work) and into rest-digest (or when the parasympathetic nervous system takes over). My first sessions with CranioSacral, I went into a deep meditative state and came out of the sessions feeling rested. Following these sessions, I started getting restful sleep. CranioSacral work will also open up the skull--when I hold a head in my hands at the end of a session, it feels like the head is breathing--and my migraines immediately lessened with the work. Now, I hardly get migraines and when I do, it's always when I haven't been sleeping and I've been working on a computer for hours a day.

These days, I feel like Lyme disease is mostly something that I have left behind but in the way that, after a flu, there will be a few days when you're no longer sick, but still tired because your body is restoring, after being sick for nearly two decades, I am still restoring. When I get sessions now, I always feel like I've been filled up with some vital energy and count on regular sessions to keep me on the road to full recovery.