My New Companion

Part IV of What is my Body Telling Me?

I have acquired a skeletal shadow, a figure that haunts my every step, mirrors my every move…

“Are you all right?” Barbara asked me yesterday on my fifth visit.

I smiled. “How do I look?”

“Not comfortable,” she answered. “I can see your energy body as well as your physical body,” (‘Yes?’ I thought.) “and there is a blockage at your shoulders where the energy is not flowing well.”

She was spot on. All week, whether I was sitting, standing, or walking, I had been aware of my shoulders like never before. I could feel them – high and tense – almost clamped around my ears. I would try to drop them, to relax, only to feel them creeping up a few moments later. I felt as if my centre of gravity was so high that I was struggling to balance.

When I was on the table, Barbara started to work on my back, mostly on my left side. “You’ll feel lopsided after this treatment,” she informed me. “Because I’m only working on one side. Your left side will instruct your right side how to carry itself, and pretty soon your body will balance itself again.”

She worked on my neck, my shoulder, my hip, taking the weight of my limbs, rotating my joints. We talked of cats, of friends present and past, of life in Cyprus.

When I stood up at the end of the session, she looked at me critically. “That’s better. Your centre of gravity has dropped right down and your shoulders look much more powerful. You looked all hyped and ethereal when you came in.”

“But how do I keep myself like this?” I asked. “I feel as if every session I take three steps forward, then by the end of the week I go two back…”

“By integrating your whole body into every movement,” she replied. “What are your most common work actions?” I mimicked the straight-forward chopping movement that I make every day with a hoe.

“Try and use your pelvis more, and don’t lock your head,” she suggested, imitating me, but adding a graceful wiggle and allowing the weight of her head to lead the movement. It looked almost like a dance, but I wondered how it would adapt to a two-kilogram implement being used on somewhat uneven ground. “Remember that if the energy is blocked in any one of the body’s three girdles, the others will be affected. Even if you hold your head, thus,” she stiffened her neck “—or grimace – it locks up the energy.” She continued ‘hoeing’ with a wiggle. “Do you see how my whole body is working together? The vertebrae are opening up, closing. The spine is a unit, curving.” Superimposed on her body, I imagined a medical diagram – skull, shoulders, arms, spine, pelvis, legs. It moved with her physical body; hoed, as she did, with a wiggle.

When I went to put my sandals on, Barbara stopped me with a “No, no, no!” I was standing on one leg. “Your body’s struggling with balance issues at the moment,” she reminded me. “And standing on one leg is way too threatening for it just now. As soon as you do that – a habitual movement – your body goes ‘Ooo-er!’ and reverts to old habits. Once you’re stable and have learned to control your head, by all means stand on one leg, but not for now.”

She bent me over from the hips. “Now, soften your knees. Follow your head and touch the ground. Come up slowly. Drop your shoulders. Lovely! Did you feel your weight go back down?” I had. She touched just below my belly button. “Your centre of gravity’s gone right back to where it should be… When you feel all tight around the shoulders and ungrounded, reach down, let your neck go, touch the ground, then come back up. You can also stamp your feet, or do the tai chi exercise of ‘Rooting through the Toes’ – stand firmly and literally imagine roots growing out from your toes and sinking into the earth. It will reconnect you.”

As she showed me out, she ‘hoed’ again, and I watched the graceful movement, followed it, and tried to commit it to my body’s memory.

I have a shadow companion now. It is my own medical diagram, a skeleton that mirrors my every move. When my children were small, they had a computer game of human anatomy; an animated skeleton, Seymour Skinless, guided them through the body’s magic, discussing bones, digestion, nerves, and other subjects in a friendly, accessible way. His sister has moved in with me, and Seymoura sits beside me in the car, walks me to the field, works in my shadow. I raise a hand and she raises hers. I sit and she sits. To check my position, I slide my glance sideways to see if her spine is working as it should. If it’s not, I correct mine, and her position magically corrects itself.

As I lean forward for my tea mug and take a deep pull, I reflect how glad I am that she is but a figment of my imagination. If not, there’d be a hell of a mess to clean up on the couch!

Feldenkrais Therapy

Part III of What is my Body Telling Me

I picked a clump of celery and some stalks of rainbow chard, and rinsed a forkload of freshly dug carrots. Then with half and hour to spare, I turned the Land Rover’s nose east along the old coastal road, past the limestone cliffs of Aphrodite’s birthplace, through the scrublands and vineyards, and up the winding village road to Barbara’s eyrie high above Pissouri Bay. It was my third visit.

My right hip had hurt for the last four days – so badly sometimes that I could not lift my foot to put on my socks and shoes without a grimace.

“I suspect it’s something to do with the treatment,” I added after answering Barbara’s ‘How are you feeling today?’ “So I’m not too worried about it, just inconvenienced,”

She nodded. “It’s just your skeleton learning how to fit together in a different way.”

This time she did Feldenkrais therapy – a treatment developed by an Israeli engineer and martial artist. Treatments involving non-invasive touch and the therapist’s verbal instructions help people to use their own innate abilities to heal themselves and improve their body use.

I lay supine on the table and she positioned herself at the top of my head and started the session by ‘re-engaging’ my upper back. Sliding her hands and forearms under my shoulders, she moved and kneaded the muscles on each side of my spine. The left side was tighter; the right, almost floppy. “That’s because the left side is doing all the work of balancing your head,” she said. “You carry your head slightly to the right and your right shoulder tends to droop, whereas your left has far more tension.”

When she brought her hands from under my back and began to work around my collar bones, I noticed that her palms and fingers were burning – strong contrast to the ‘long, cool fingers’ that had done last week’s Bowen work. “I use different parts of me for different healing methods,” she said when I commented. “And, yes, you would notice a difference in the energies.”

I asked her as she worked about auras and energy fields. “Well, I could tell you, but there’s no point in talking just a bit,” she answered. “If there’s enough interest, I can do a workshop at Turtle and Moon,” -- a friend’s community-oriented art studio in the Paphos village of Trimithousa where I had recently helped to install an organic vegetable garden and was planning to establish an Amnesty International letter-writing group. “Learning about things like that is always better in a group situation, as people can work with each other.”

Then Barbara moved to my legs, explaining the relationship between the body’s three girdles: the jaw, the shoulders, and the pelvis, and how an imbalance in any one always reflected in the others.

“Am I easy to work with?” I asked as she gently moved my hip joints.

She gathered her thoughts. “Your issues are complex, about daily use, and I think that as we progress you will make some interesting discoveries about how you use your body. You’re very trusting – for instance now, you’re giving me the whole weight of your leg.” She bent my knee, a supporting hand under my calf. “Many women won’t do that – they see their legs as too heavy for me to hold, reflecting their image of having big thighs, being overweight. You have none of those issues, and you’re alert and curious about this process, which makes you a pleasure to work on.”

Moving around to my other side, she hooked my right knee in the crook of her elbow, and bracing herself against the table, gently pulled upwards. I felt the head of my femur move in its socket.

“You use an enormous amount of energy just keeping your head balanced,” she continued. “When you learn more efficient use, you’ll have a lot more energy to spare.” She replaced my leg on the table and did a little jig, hands waving. “I don’t mean bubbly energy, but grounded energy. You’ll be capable of a lot more in a more substantial way.”

That should be interesting.

At the end of the session, I noticed that I stood solidly on the ground, without having to compensate for my collapsing ankles. My weight was more evenly distributed between and over my feet than it has ever been in my life – all without my trying.

Barbara looked at me critically and made an adjustment to my shoulders.

“Now I feel as if I’m leaning to the left,” I told her.

“But you’re not,” she replied. “You feel like that because you habitually lean slightly to the right and your muscles have accustomed themselves to that feeling. Now, you’re straight. Experiment with how you feel when you stand or use your body in different ways. Know how it feels to be straight, but don’t consciously adjust yourself. It will all come together.”

I drove home marvelling how, in only three weeks, the landscape had changed. The sky had lightened from cerulean to Wedgewood; the meadows and wild-land acquiring the golden tinge of ripening grain, and new wild flowers replacing the old. The vines had grown their full coat of foliage, and cistus splashed pastel pink along the verges.

In the shadow of the mighty rocks where, according to legend, Aphrodite stepped ashore from her scallop shell, the first tourists of the season shook out their towels and anointed themselves with sun cream. Summer is coming.