I went to get a massage today. This doesn�t fit into my newer, more frugal lifestyle, but it was a necessity. When I went, I also found out that I still had one massage leftover from a massage package I bought last year (woohoo!). My neck and upper back have been bothering me for the past couple of months. It got to the point where the pain radiated up to the base of my skull and was giving me migraines.

I�m basing my assessment on other people�s reports of migraines. It doesn�t feel like a headache. It feels more like someone is giving me brain surgery, but forgot to administer the anesthesia. Since this sensation is accompanied with dizziness and nausea, I categorize it as a migraine.

I was trying to tough it out and not complain too much (because I�m just so hardcore, like that), but it was limiting my ability to function.

A couple of months ago, when it got to that point, I went to the chiropractor twice, which helped it a lot, but didn�t totally alleviate the problem.

Last week, it reached that point again. Once again, I was only able to accomplish the bare-minimum of living, and spend the rest of my time either in a hot bath, or flat on my back in a dark room. Even then, I wasn�t totally ready to give in, but Adam�s begging me to call both the chiropractor and the massage therapist, and that I do it, like, yesterday, tipped the scales.

I saw the chiropractor last week, which helped a lot, but I still have a lot of tension back there. I went to see the massage therapist today, and I left feeling 1000 times better. The muscle tension is not totally gone, but I suspect that my second visit to the chiropractor on Wednesday will help a lot. I�m not stopping there, though. That was my mistake last time. I didn�t want to spend the time and money on getting fully better, so I stopped at �good enough.�

I really should have gone to the massage therapist immediately. The woman is incredible at her job. With those kinds of results, it feels like a crime that most people consider massage a luxury, and not a healthcare necessity.

It�s kind of strange, massage, and other various ancient techniques; things my reiki teacher would call �folk medicine,� have been around for way longer than conventional medicine, but most people are still very skeptical of anything that doesn�t require pain, needles and side-effects.

I hope it�s obvious to anyone who knows me, that I believe conventional medicine is also important. Even if I am planning on becoming a healer, you can bet your bottom dollar that I will not be leaving my job until I have secured health insurance. Even if I become the most powerful healer in all the land, I�ll still go get my annual pokes and prods until my doctor says that I don�t need them, anymore.

While my reiki teacher is the first reiki master in her family, she comes from a long line of folk healers. Because of her family history, and her own curiosity, she started making a documentary about Italian folk medicine, which I find fascinating. She�s had trouble finding enough interviewees because hardly anyone practices, anymore.

It would be a shame to lose a lot of these practices, not just Italian folk medicine, but all ancient practices.

In the past few hundred years, we�ve moved so fast - in one direction - reason and logic above all else. There are lots of aspects to the human mind, though. There are many aspects of the human mind that we currently can�t understand within the context of our current scientific framework. However, that doesn�t mean that there was never any understanding. It just exists in a different kind of framework.

Anyway, I actually started this entry to talk about one particular aspect to my visit to the massage therapist. I told her about my plans to go into integral health. I think I made her day. She was practically jumping up and down hearing the news. She was wonderful and supportive about it. She encouraged me to email her with updates. She told me that if I�m in a place where I�m feeling unsure and questioning my decision, that I should email her, and she�ll be happy to provide reassurance and support.

I am still having some anxiety and self-doubt, for sure, but I�ve been getting help to keep me going. If the universe were a magic 8-ball, I�d constantly be stirring up, �All signs point to �yes.��

So far, anytime that I�ve been in doubt and have needed encouragement, all I�ve needed to do was hit-up some kind of fortune telling anything, and I get instant reassurance. Even the lamest, typically uninformative signs, from fortune cookies, to online tarot readings, are cheering me on with frightening specificity. If I didn�t believe in synchronicity, I sure as hell would be believing in it now.

It�s not just me being creative with interpretation, either. Adam is a fairly skeptical guy, but is also an open-minded person. At first, he was blown away by my incredible acausal connections (as Jung would put it), now it�s getting to the point where he just expects this kind of stuff from me.

0 comments so far

Tuesday, Mar. 20, 2012 at 12:03 AM