All Your Body Wants…A Little Respect July 2014

Dear Friends,

I used to get bruises and never knew how I got them. Sometimes the bruises weren’t even painful; nevertheless I’d have this ugly mark.  It would baffle my mind trying to remember what happened to cause these bruises but most of the time I’d come up with zip.

            In the mid nineties I worked with a nurse named Barbara, who claimed that if you bumped yourself hard enough to cause bruising you should rub that area with Vaseline and that would prevent said bruise from forming.  Now I couldn’t understand how applying a petroleum product would help prevent bruising.  It doesn’t penetrate the skin, which is good because, did I mention it’s petroleum? We would debate this until she finally said, “Next time you bump yourself, try it and see.” I agreed and as it would happen several nights later I whacked my upper arm pretty good while catching a patient who’s leg gave out on her.  When our gimpy patient was back safely in bed, Barbara reminded me to use the Vaseline. As I applied it I told her that there’s no way this isn’t going to leave a mark. She smiled.

            Guess what?  There was no bruises at all and as I was giving Barbara her creds for being right on the money, I told her that I would have forgotten about it had she not reminded me to use the Vaseline.

            Fast forward to 2000; I got my Reiki Master certification and I had a little shop in Stroudsburg called “A Touch of Reiki.”  It was in the back of brother’s tattoo shop and I Reiki-ed everyone whether they could afford it or not. I was doing a Reiki Treatment on this big strappin’ guy and it was going great. He was seeing all the colors of the rainbow (which is really the colors of your chakras). This is really quite common for first timers because I use an eye pillow that creates total darkness and as each chakra opens up, the person receiving the Reiki can see the colors quite vividly. But at the end of the Reiki treatment, he got off the table holding his right shoulder and he seemed to be in a substantial amount of pain. I asked what was wrong. He told me that he was in a car accident twelve years prior. He was in the passengers seat and that’s the side that was hit.  He said the shoulder would give him some trouble on rainy days, “but nothing like THIS”, he assured me. It hurt almost as bad as right after he’d sustained the injury.

            I was taught that this was a possibility; sometimes during a Reiki treatment the pain of an old injury can return but it is temporary and it is a sign that the cellular memory of that injury has been released.  So that’s a good thing Right?  Hell no! This poor guy had tears in his eyes and I was close to crying too.  His pain only lasted for about ten minutes but I was beside myself. After all, I was fairly new to the Energy Healing profession and empathetic people don’t handle it well when they cause pain.

            I had to learn more about the mind/body/spirit connection to healing so I consumed everything I could get my hands on. Somewhere in the pages of the many books written by brilliant authors on the subject like Barbara Ann Brennan, Caroline Myss, Joyce Morris and Edgar Casey, I read a passage that made the whole bruise/Vaseline thing make perfect sense. It said that the body when injured should be treated like a wounded child. You should rub the offended area and apologize to it. WHAT? So it’s not the Vaseline; it’s the acknowledgment that you injured it by rubbing it. But I must add that the apology is very important too.

            I had the opportunity to put this to the test big time! My husband, Bill and I had just returned from a beautiful ride through the country roads of Pennsylvania on his old shovelhead. As he pulled in the garage I slipped the lift under the motorcycle and started to pump it to raise it up. My foot slipped, the spring loaded foot pump snapped back and hit me square in the shin. I saw stars…literally!  I dropped and grabbed my shin; I rubbed it and apologized over and over.  My husband must have thought I was nuts even though he knows that I am far from conventional.  I expected to have an egg and a bruise that turned all the colors of the spectrum, but I’m here to tell you that none of that happened. It only felt slightly sore when I touched it.

             The moral to the story…Don’t neglect your body! Of course we will do things that injure our bodies. It’s inevitable.  But when you do, don’t neglect or ignore it.  Remember I would have forgotten to apply the Vaseline if Barbara had not reminded me.  That was me neglecting my body after I injured it.  Acknowledge the injury and apologize to it. You don’t have to say the apology aloud, after all your body hears everything you think.  This can save some awkward explaining.  “Oh, I was just talking to my leg…I mean…..”

            By the way…my Reiki client with the sore shoulder…I saw him about six months after his treatment and he told me that his shoulder no longer bothers him on rainy days. In retrospect he believed the ten minutes of discomfort was well worth having it gone for good.

“Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.”   

– Buddha – 

Love and Light, Lori

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