Last week, my mother drove me to the chiropractor, about 45 minutes away. I was anticipating that this might be my last visit for a while, and was preparing to say my thank you’s. I came to my chiropractor in a time of great suffering starting about a year and a half ago (horribly dizzy and dissociated every single day, only could be out of bed a few hours a day, could only eat a few things, severely blurry vision, etc.) and from him, I learned much about how this brand of chiropractor moves energy in the body. Anyways, I had my last visit and asked what I thought would be my final question. (I ask a LOT of questions). I asked how he would recommend I choose between all of the cervical treatments available, and he answered.
I gave some acknowledgments to the host/receptionist and then thought mom and I would be on our way. Went to the car and the car would not start. My mom said the lights had been on the whole time and the battery must have run out. We looked for jumper cables in the car, asked others in the office, and no one had any. We had to call the car service company to come and give us a jump. It was already past business hours so we were anxious about my chiro having to wait with us and take up his time. We waited probably an hour, constantly checking if the car service guy was coming.
They finally came. As I was walking out the door, I commented that in the last couple years of treatment, he was one of my “jumper cables” and I was the car, that he helped to jumpstart me again. I gave him one final acknowledgment and let him know that the “impulse” as he calls it that he gave to my body (the force applied to my body that moves it and tells my nervous system that it is okay to rest) was not just an impulse coming from his hand, but from his whole body – all of the energies of his body transferred into mine. He let me know that many people do believe in chiro- that the intention of the practitioner is what makes the difference between a great adjustment (a “healing” one) and a not so great one. He emphasized that all he was doing was giving my body the information it needed to recover itself. The car was now starting (somehow started really, really fast) and we were ready to go. I got back into the car, and what did my mother say? She said the guy from the car service company did not even need to use the jumper cables. The car re-started on its own. It just needed a rest.
In my mind, I said WHAAAAAAA. Hahahaha. I wanted to run back in and tell my chiro- of the synchronicities that just occurred. Just as my prophetic chiro had told me that he was only there to give my body a little info to recover itself, the car, too, actually just needed rest. My body has needed years of rest – not only from the last several years of loss, death, conflict, transition, and suffering – but from my whole life, my whole LIFE. Many of us have been forced to rest in the last few years because of our collective and personal loss, because of our collective and personal grief, because of our collective and personal overwhelm, because of so many collective and personal transitions, because of our collective and personal physical health.
Our bodies, collectively and personally, have needed the rest, the recovery, and every single “impulse” that we’ve put into ourselves to help our bodies recover themselves. But that experience was a message – that it is not simply what we have done in the past few years that is helping us recover. It has been the rest ITSELF helping us re-start. As I let this message simmer in my body, it touched shame within me and let me know that I haven’t done anything wrong. My body needed and needs time to recover from complete and absolute overwhelm. It has needed deep rest, and and I have needed to understand how I even got here. For many of us, within and after the actual breakdown, loss, death, grief, suffering, transition, conflict, there has been information – truth – that we have needed to recover ourselves.
Many of us, including me, are “just” beginning to re-start in new ways. There is nothing wrong with how long it is taking us to recover and restart. (It is an absolute lie that everyone and everything is completely back to “normal”. We will never be the same. Capitalism, nationalism, racism, etc… embedded in our culture create this illusion that everyone and everything has normalized and we are to blame for our individual suffering and yet we are not. It is collective, my friend). There is nothing wrong with us. Maybe our bodies have needed this time to rest all along. Maybe we are not behind. Maybe we can remember that it was an outside FORCE, an impulse, that has been applied to our bodies telling our bodies to rest. Our bodies have needed this time to rest, to receive the information they need, to recover themselves. And after rest, we are naturally energized. The Body knows what it is doing and it knows when it is ready. We cannot physically move until our Body is ready.
November 9, 2022
After rest,
We are naturally energized
After stillness,
We naturally move
After loss,
We naturally find
It is a cycle
It is a system
Let no thing
Make way
For something
This is only
The preparation