The Ink-Pot and the Palette

When you turn 60, joke-getting-old cards actually become funny. Who knew?

This one was from my little sister, who's only 58.

My doctor and I are looking over the results of a recent set of blood tests. Since my tests a year ago I've given up most red meat, cut way back on dairy, gone vegetable-crazy, lost four or five more pounds, and added several walks a week to my exercise regimen, which already includes daily cycling.

The lipid numbers we hoped would go down have remained stubbornly in the red zone.

Before I can get all freaked out and start making a new list of dietary improvements, Doctor John says, "Your diet is damn near perfect, and you exercise way more than the majority of my patients. I do not want you planning more changes to your diet. I don't think further weight loss will budge these numbers either. At this point, I think we're looking at something genetic."

He thinks out loud about this for a while, then kind of slaps his forehead and says, "Oh! I know what we need to do!"

( MTHFR! )

After listening for at least the fifth time to Margaret Lynch's training session on healing the second chakra, and feeling as frustrated by it this afternoon as I have the other times, I decided to do some tapping.

I work alone (and type really fast), so I've developed a method of recording as I go. The "tapping" is as much fingertips on keyboard as on actual meridian points. It seems to work.

( EFT for the strange )

I don't follow anybody's standard protocol, I just raid Gary Craig and Nick Ortner and Carol Tuttle and Pat Carrington and Margaret Lynch for parts, and construct my own. The basic structure, however, is standard: negative setup statement repeated three times (with some choices inserted), followed by all the short negatives that pop up, until I yawn, or sneeze, or feel the emotional intensity drop, or get really bored. Then some positives, all while tapping around the points.

Then, if you're me, repeat till you can't stand it anymore, then call it a day.

Hormones. Can't live without 'em, but look at this: getting 'em back reawakens the bitch within.
( Here's an interesting conundrum... )

"You look cute!" Tiffany all but shouted, interrupting her phone call to deliver this opinion to me in the crowded lobby. My friend Todd, escaping with me into an elevator, muttered, "She's trying to hook us up." I just laughed uncomfortably.

---

Comments on my post about Zumba made me grope a little harder to express why taking a dance[like] class was such a big deal for me. In a nutshell, I don't live in my body very much. I've made other attempts, I've made progress, but "overcoming the straitjacketing of physical shame is the hardest thing about going and practicing and re-trying."

To ground myself more reliably in the physical realm, I've taken extensive Alexander Technique lessons and have undergone a variety of body-based therapies (some of which I've written quite a bit about here). I've been a gym-bunny with 19% body fat, I've done theater and voice training, I've been a dedicated long-distance walker, and as everyone here knows, I've become an avid bike commuter.

But you know what? ( Sex. That's what. )

So this morning, when Tiffany declared me "cute," and my good friend Todd muttered, "She thinks we should hook up,"⁴ part of me laughed uncomfortably, and part of me said, "Oh, Universe, you work in such unexpected ways." Because I think I know a sign when I see one. And that sign said that I'm on the track of something significant.

The hip-swiveling of Zumba is just a bead on the scarlet gown of the girl who went to fairy prison five decades ago.

¹(I just realized that the "single breath story" I'm supposed to be writing is about this restoration, and that's why I've not been able to finish it: not enough of it was conscious until just now.)
² Not that I need or want any more money than I've got. I'm fine. Really.
³Too late ho-ho! Ha ha ha ha! Ho ho ho ho!.
⁴No, we shouldn't. People have thought it for years because we look alike and we're friends and of opposite genders and the same age. It'd be...sibling-ish.

I went to medical school over the weekend and have diagnosed myself with piriformis syndrome.

The piriformis is a butt muscle, involved in rotating the hip. When it gets balled up and inflamed, it presses on the sciatic nerve, and when the sciatic nerve gets pressed on, your ass hurts. A lot. And your thigh, and maybe your knee and calf too.

The syndrome has been building for a few weeks, and became acute last Sunday as I was shuffling through a crowded IKEA and couldn't readily get off my feet. The pain was...significant.

The treatment I've prescribed for myself is a series of fun little stretches, some of which involve sitting on a tennis ball. I'll probably get acupuncture this week, and I expect I'll wind up at massage therapy too. Maybe some BodyTalk if I can afford it.

The cause of piriformis syndrome in my case is almost certainly bike-riding. And stress. I think I'll try giving up stress first.

I went to Bev Martin the other day for help with my terribly slow writing. Bev's a hypnotherapist--one of my teachers--and a writer herself. I was sure she could help, and she did.

She used Clean Language, a questioning technique designed to guide the client to her own metaphor of change, completely uninfluenced by the practitioner. It's the inverse of standard hypnotherapy, which explicitly seeks to influence.

All the questions start with "And..." Each question feeds the client's own words back, and never makes assumptions, so the questions are odd and ungrammatical, and your rational mind gives up and hides.

( It went something like this: )

Change work without change is just self-indulgence. Any change so far? Well, I got up an hour early yesterday and wrote a missing character in a pivotal scene that I've been avoiding for a month. I think that counts.

In the spirit of the holiday season, I thought I would describe my experience of going to a shaman the other day. As I was lying there on the ritual rug having a gourd rattle shaken over me, I thought, hey, some people on my LiveJournal friends list may not have been to a shaman. I should describe this.

I used to go to an acupuncturist whose office was in a converted house in Northwest Portland. When my quest for a) enlightenment, b) healing of the Nameless Darkness In My Soul™, and c) relief from this weird and unaccountable swelling of one ankle went beyond what Mr. Needles could do even with The Seven Dragons, acupuncture's nuclear option, he referred me to "the shaman down the hall."

Intrigued--not to mention desperate--I made an appointment. The shaman down the hall, it turns out, was Sandy, a Reedie from the Sixties with a Philadelphia accent, a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and a specialty in trauma therapy. But he's also a trained shaman.

Shamans journey. They travel to Lower World and Upper World, accompanied by totem birds and animals, demanding a cure for what ails you, sometimes wresting the answers forcefully from whatever's hanging onto them. Then they either remove the problem from your body--extraction--or find and restore missing bits--soul retrieval.

Over the course of three years' work, Sandy encouraged me to learn the shamanic journey myself. I took several courses, and he helped me refine what I'd learned, but journeying wasn't a part of my therapy. We accomplished miracles with slightly more mainstream methods, and concluded our efforts three years ago.

The NDIMS™ made a big comeback recently. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that after three years of living in daylight (standing on my feet, being a girl) I was ready to deal with the next level.

Whatever. I called the shaman down the hall and asked if he could find my soul.

( Exsanguination ensued. Twice! And yet I feel very grateful today. )

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.