Meditation Informs Healing Facilitation

Chop wood, carry water?

My quasi-retreat is some days, anything but a retreat. For instance, yesterday I went out to my parent’s house (Mom and step-father to be precise) and loaded wood, made runs with the wheel barrow and stacked it in the wood shed. They should have enough wood for this winter unless it is extremely cold.

Not exactly chopping wood and not much water carrying, but it still felt like it as I may have helped move a ton of wood over two hours!

Then, my younger brother was home, so we went down to a beautiful brewery for lunch and ping pong. Wood Ridge Farm brewery is on a hill near Faber, Virginia in the heart of Nelson County. It was rainy and misting, but I can see how they have some of the best 360 degree views around! Ping pong was fun, but now that my younger brother is attending table tennis clubs, he has been very difficult to beat for a few years now. And yesterday, in playing close to a dozen games to 11, I think the closest I came was scoring 8 – as in, I didn’t win any against him. It is fun though. And, for some reason, when it comes to playing ping pong, I am ambidextrous. So with my left hand, I spit out some ace serves. And when my Mom played me (using her dominant hand), I barely beat her with my left. Fun!

Finally it was off to bed early after a delightful day. I think having a beer around late lunch time added to my tiredness. 😀

I have been so very fortunate, advanced process-oriented bodywork

I want to write a post about how lucky I am to be one of my bodywork teacher’s senior students. Her name is Janet Evergreen. She is in her 60’s now, and she just, in a recent class, made a comment about starting to slow down how often she teaches her classes. This and her husband has been retired for a few years now, and they are ready to have some fun and travel. So I am yearning to take as many of her classes as possible to keep learning little tricks of the body-intelligent-mandala-oriented-heart-extension bodywork that she practices (those are my descriptions).

Just one example might be enough to explain how lucky I am to have met her and to be able to work with her for the past 12 years:

Some somatic experiences cannot be written about properly (but I will certainly try, ironic eh?). At least you will get a sense of how many layers we are tracking in her advanced classes.

I am on the massage table, about to get a treatment from one of Janet’s students, who has taken at least 3 classes with her (and I assisting).

She uses leg-arcing, a technique where you lift the legs and see where they want to go, follow the legs as they float. Then using the legs as a dowsing rod (basically), you look to see where in the torso they are pointing. We have tested this technique against acupuncturists measuring people’s organ pulses and gotten the same results.

So she wasn’t sure if the legs were indicating left lung or heart. I thought that sounded right.

I am going to fast forward (else this will be a ten thousand word diatribe about a 30 minute bodywork session). Suffice it to say that by this point, she had moved to sit at the head of the table with her arms over my chest, “listening” as it were to my lungs, mediastinum and heart and doing some movement to track both the motility and mobility of those organs. When she realized there was at least one sluggish point on my left lung where the tissue was kind of stuck, she got Janet’s attention to ask about it.

Janet came over and of course seemed to know what was needed before coming close to laying on of hands. She said, “Kirby, can you bring some micro movements into your body to bring some movement into your chest?” I was happy to oblige!

I started moving my arms and just making tiny movements of my belly and ribs. I wanted to double check – I asked, “the thumbs have the lung meridian on them right?” And yes, sure enough, they did.

Janet suggested, “Let your thumbs lead the movements.” By now my arms were gracefully weaving a pattern above my body, and then I started focusing on my thumbs. They started leading the little graceful dance above and off the sides of my torso, sometimes doing the same thing, and other times being dissonant.

Then Janet mentioned, “Let me hold those meridian points.” I should pause for a second and note that for at least ten years, Janet wove baskets when she and her family lived in West Virginia. And not just any baskets – she used oak, which means that her grip, even years after her basketweaving days, her grip is like having a clamp applied, or like vice grips. I noted this saying, “Wow. That is quite a hold you’ve got of my thumbs! What, did you used to weave baskets or something?” It was funny. And it kind of hurt – in a it hurts so good kind of manner.

I slowed down my movement, but the whole body movement from my thumbs continued. Sometimes my torso would lift off the table a bit, other times it was just my hands and arms moving. With Janet’s fingers attached to my thumbs, two little vice grips squeezing my lung meridians for dear life (or so it felt).

But something started to shift in my chest. As I moved from my thumbs, with the meridians being so stimulated, I could suddenly track the course of the meridian down my thumbs, running up the inside of my forearm, and then up the inside of my upper arms and close to my pectoral muscles into my chest. It was wild – warm lines were being drawn on me from the inside. Janet commented, “the right has settled down, but the left still has warmth coming off of it.” (Referring to my thumbs.) And she was right. My right lung was feeling open and calm and happy, while my left lung was still be bit tight or sluggish or sticky.

It just took a few more minutes of gracefully feeling through those meridians and dancing over my body with my arms. And I felt my left lung release, and so did Janet (through my lung meridians on my thumbs). And we both commented on it, she saying, “There it goes,” first.

She had been squeezing pretty good. So when she let go, I was left feeling the meridian lines for several minutes. She went on to squeeze my pinkies – the heart meridian in this case. And it was similar results. The practitioner still had her hands on my chest and was feeling and listening to my inner organs (through the ribs, through the fascia, etc).

Long story short. I had never felt my meridians come alive quite like that. It was another level of deepening of my learning.

I have experienced things in those bodywork classes (or retreats or meditation sessions) at her Sanctuary space that most people can’t even dream of, let alone talk about. I am so very fortunate. Maybe I have been Janet’s teacher in a past life, but I know she has been mine before.

Whatever the case may be, I thank my lucky stars that I have teachers and mentors in my life like her. Heart teachers who go above and beyond, who charge less than they could, who give back to their communities in so many different ways.

I intend to repay her kindness by teaching worthy students. They say that is the greatest way to repay a spiritual teacher (and by practicing what they have taught you). So I must practice self care. I must know that my heart has received valuable and precious transmissions which most people only wish for but never experience. And I must kindly hold my heart in the highest regard, not only because I (we all) have buddhanature coursing through me, but because I have been shown how to work with babies, children and adults in ways that most scientific health practitioners would scoff at (saying, “those results aren’t possible”). And then I intend to teach this material as well.

Advanced somatic therapies. That is a possible title, or like Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen, one of our heart teachers says, “Call it Process Buddhism” when asked how to describe what Janet does. That pretty much sums it up. 🙂

Yet again, thank you for reading,

A day of errands and bodywork

Not a lot to report today retreat wise. Rather, I am selling my nursing books, so I am making a bi-weekly run to the post office and shipping store. Then this afternoon I am assisting in a long bodywork session – birth process oriented (resolving, releasing, re-negotiating birth issues which in the past led to birth trauma).

I am working on a couple of drafts of some juicy topics though, so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading again!

Working on an astrological post (about politics)

We will see if I can get all my thoughts together and put on paper in a grok-able manner. I had a very interesting conversation with a friend who is a practicing Buddhist, astrologer and yogi. The United States’ chart is having a tough time right now (in case dozens of examples don’t remind you about that).

Maybe in the next couple weeks I will put my notes together into a decent post. 🙂

Until then, be well!

Staying accountable – addictions and the ANS

In the past, I would write blog posts when I was really feeling good or when I had done a lot of practice. In other words, the “Facebook” effect was happening. That is when everyone only posts the best about themselves or about their travels, and the rest of us are left going, “Good lord! They have it so nice. My life sucks.” It is rather disheartening. If I am having a hard time, and all of my friends’ posts look so amazing, that would be hard to deal with for long periods of time. Therefore I hope no one is experiencing that from my blog! (So let me remedy that problem if it is happening.)

In an effort to be more transparent, in the past, I definitely had an issue with playing computer games. In fact, 15 years ago and more, I would binge out on games, sometimes for hours at a time. There were even a couple of occasions where I played for 12 – 18 hours straight. (Good grief – if I could have been putting that much effort into enlightenment, I would already be beyond suffering by now!)

This “addiction,” I believe, arose from my having built a body around being stuck in a frozen or shock-filled place. When I was born, I was taken from my mother for at least 12 hours, maybe longer, because I had an unusual rash on my body. Poor little baby Kirby! I just want to scoop him up and cuddle and hum and sing lullabies to him!

Anyhow, this event, along with other factors, led to my little newborn amygdala saying, “the world is not safe! We have to constantly produce cortisol and catecholamines (adrenaline or epinephrine etc) in order to be on guard against a dangerous world!” This is what I built my body around because no body in my environment knew that this could be healed and repaired, and therefore no-one even attempted to make repair in little baby Kirby (me). 😦

Hence, I learned to compensate by dissociating and leaving my body altogether sometimes. I had an extremely high pain tolerance – or another way of saying that, is that I was never fully embodied to feel the pain (until I hit 27 or 28 years old!). [If you want an example, when I was in high school, I went through one of the MOST painful situations a male human being can experience – I had bad testicular torsion, and only a prompt surgery saved both of my testes. Thank goodness my mother forced me to go to the Emergency Department. I was in so much discomfort that I was forced to crawl around the house. But I did not admit to being in any pain. It was very weird. I was grossly dissociating and struggling to stay in my body.]

And in dissociating, my body produced endorphins (and all nervous systems when they are in parasympathetic shock do this) which meant that dissociating was actually kind of blissful (as my body went into shock mode slowly preparing for the worst – preparing to die).

Is this heavy stuff? Yes! Addictions are not a light matter. They are present because of some deep unmet need and healing this void in our psyche takes very careful time and attention and mentoring / coaching / healing / therapy. Long story short though, upon learning about the Autonomic Nervous System – the ANS – and how some “addictions” are really just an attempt to go back to old ways of feeling (which is all some people know) – I realized I wanted to move toward a healthy nervous system.

As a result, I have mostly left computer games in the past. Thank goodness! But I don’t need to be too hard on myself. Just last night, I played for a couple of hours. An old pattern arising, trying it on again. You could say weeds continue to grow in the garden of my mind. I just need to be KIND above all else, and vigilant. But kindness toward myself – all parts of myself is MOST important. And remember to bring the little wounded parts of me along. Saying, “Yes little guy (Kirby), you had to decide whether the world was safe (which there were way too many stress hormones to say it was) or if the world was dangerous (good decision in this case). For a baby, there is no gray area – it is either black or white for baby brains. And as a result, you did the best you could. That dissociation pattern, that reacting to stress by fantasizing and going into fantastic worlds, that was a great survival mechanism. Now, you can put that tool in your back pocket. If you require it, you can take it out and use it consciously, knowing you can stop at any moment and put it back in your pocket. Now, you can resource those little wounded parts and slowly walk them forward toward health. No need to be stuck in those ancient double bind patterns. Any time you feel yourself subconsciously twisting up into a pretzel shape, pause and ask, what is my objection to this situation? What do I need to be more grounded and centered? How can I be explicit about my boundary needs?”

So that is where I stand. When I forget to bring my little parts along, I am tempted to play games quite frequently. The only time I am not tempted is when I am in good company and being in my social nervous system is easy (the most healthy functional coherent resilient level as it were). Otherwise I need to make a cozy nest for my baby parts to re-do building my body in. And I can. And I am. I just wish this process were faster.

However, one of my favorite sayings from the Pre- and Perinatal Therapy training is, “the slower you go, the faster you will get there.”

Having to blog like this every day is good. I am being held accountable. If I am tempted to do something depleting (like say playing a game for longer than an hour), I realize that it might make me feel depressed for a while afterward. So why would I do it in the first place? 🙂 And then I would have to come on here and post something depressing. No one wants that!

Well thank you for putting up with my musings again,

P.S. I somehow did about 3 hours of practice all totaled yesterday, plus I assisted in teaching a great bodywork class where I learned some incredible tools – like how to bring acupressure into a Craniosacral or Visceral Manipulation session. Amazing stuff. So lots of virtue yesterday, along with a couple hours of numbing out. Three steps forward, one step back. =^D

Quasi-retreat continues, tiny blips wax and wane

Old habits die hard. Right? My “retreat” that I am attempting to conduct in the month of November is starting off pretty well. However, I should admit that this “retreat” is primarily a refraining from any activities which deplete me – namely computer games or binge watching shows (like Netflix type series). Can a time of restraint actually be called a retreat? Not sure, but I’m doing it!

I think for me, that due to the transmissions I have received, whether in Zapchen Somatics or the Buddha-Dharma from Tibetan lineages or somatic awareness from birth process work etc, that just resting in spaciousness might be enough for me. Opening the mind and the heart, slowing down, persisting gently with kindness to myself (listening to my kidneys – what do they want / need / yearn for?) might be enough. 🙂

However, when I can I am doing a teeny tiny bit of refuge practice or meditation as well as the above list. Which is good. When I can, if I am not throwing myself out of balance by doing too much inner light practice (after taking months mostly off from these practices – doing too much would not be kind to my system).

Today I assist in a bodywork class, which is another opportunity to be present with my social nervous system. Smiling, making eye contact, being present with others, maintaining my energetic boundaries while around others, this is all good practice. Plus being in good company is always nourishing.

I haven’t done qigong just yet today, but I’m sure I will do some. I somehow ended up doing an hour of it yesterday! 20 minute morning routine, 20 minutes of the 8 Brocades in the park again (warm sunshine, gentle river sounds) and then before bed last night I did a gentle 20 minute evening qigong routine! Wow! Self care can be fun after all! :^D

Thank you all for reading my wandering musings,

May all beings know boundless equanimity!

Chasing after happiness, falling flat on my face

October is / was an interesting and wild month for me. I got back from Canada, raring to work with babies.. I treated three of them, plus another family that lost a newborn (which is so tragic and terrible by the way). I sometimes wonder if that treatment of the grieving family is still affecting me. I may have fallen flat on my face at that point…

Then it was dating. Using a dating app, I somehow found myself with three dates with three different women over three weeks. I went on those dates and (due to my sensitivities and being equal parts yin and yang, I am looking for a special woman I think) was generally less than overly impressed. Don’t get me wrong. Here in Charlottesville, we are very fortunate in that most men and women are very well educated. You could say this is a bit of an enlightened population. Having UVa intertwined in the community certainly helps.

Nonetheless, I went on several dates and I do not believe any of them will pan out to be romantic. Friendship might be possible, but that is probably not what most women are seeking with dating apps (am I right?). So it seems I fell flat on my face again. Although I did remedy my loneliness for a short time – good company in any form is good company!

Here is the key: when we seek for happiness outside of ourselves, we will always be disappointed in the end. It is like drinking salt water – the more we drink, the more we crave, and our thirst is never satiated! It is time for me to realize that true happiness lies within. And hopefully I can find a partner who also realizes this! True contentment can only be found within. And we must discover tools and techniques for tapping into that inner happiness – whether yoga or meditation or qigong or another modality which helps us to feel more alive and joyful (within our selves).

I am getting there. But I have definitely not reached the other shore just yet. Samsara still has me in its grip. At least I am aware of when I am about to fall flat on my face, and I can avert it before it leaves a lasting mark!

Thanks for reading, and good luck discovering your inner joy and easeful contentment!

Qigong continues, spaciousness arises with ease

Hi All!

I am attempting to blog more often, and who knows, maybe post once a day. I did qigong in the park by the river yesterday, in the warm sunlight. It was majestic and warming. Plus I had semi-privacy as there was a lot of shrubbery between me and the path by the river.

Today, so far, I have listed most of my nursing books on Amazon. I am finally closing that chapter of my life for good. I will write more about that soon (if I am suffering from any writer’s block for the next month, I will definitely explain my complex relationship to nursing). That feels good. Of course it would be nice if they actually sell – most of the books are low priced because they are an edition behind the current books being used by students. Cross your fingers 🙂

I am really excited about a new direction in my life. I am pretty certain, provided I get accepted, that I will be attending a massage school early next year. That makes my heart glow with barely concealed glee – I like knowing what is next, I enjoy having something hopeful to cling to about the future… Yes, samsara continues for me.

It is an intensive program, so if they take me, I will be in class / practice for 10 hours a day Mon – Fri for three months. That is how they pack 6 months of material into 12 weeks! Very exciting, and I must practice self care to prepare myself. I feel good about doing an intensive, but I will definitely need to be in great shape regarding my health and well-being prior to the program starting. I will be working on the application this week.

The intensive school is out-of-state as well, so I might be moving for a few months. Meaning I have a lot of sort through in my apartment as I prepare to put things in storage for a bit. Another move… ugh! But at least it is for a very important stage in my “career.”

By having a massage license under my belt, I will be licensed to touch and I will feel much more confident teaching bodywork classes. In fact, I would be able to teach at massage schools here in Virginia. It is my intention to be teaching some classes and workshops in BC, Canada again next summer. So this will help me in that area as well!

Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading,

P.S. I am loving this new qigong phase. I do anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour / day of qigong and the flowing movements really help to free up my chi. Plus doing it in the park yesterday made me experience a radically different relationship to my center of gravity, I felt more grounded, and the 8-Brocades really help to strengthen the legs. All to the good!

Yearning to see what arises

In my last post about spaciousness, I was just coming into relationship with the idea of having lots more space. And in case you didn’t notice, that is not exactly easy for me. I am typically a do-er or a project worker or a study-er. For me to have two or three entire days off per week is mind boggling and to be honest, a bit intimidating!

But I am about to put my nursing books on Amazon to sell. This is a major step, as I step away from a convoluted subject. It took me over a year to realize that attempting to force my way through nursing school was not unlike butting my head against a brick wall, over and over again.

A couple weeks back, when I went through all my nursing school notes, and recycled about 1000 pages (!), I felt an incredible relief and it was as if a burden literally lifted off my shoulders. Therefore I am even more interested to see what could arise when I make even more space.

And BTW, it rained for about 12 hours straight here yesterday, which we desperately needed. It is a gorgeous day today however. Hence I will go for a walk, soak up the sunshine and do some qigong in the park. It is a good day! ❤

Everything is subject to impermanence, including sour moods and Autumn breezes!

Thanks for reading,

Drowning in spaciousness

In the past year, I have made several massive changes. I transitioned out of a serious relationship. I transitioned out of nursing school (long story for another day). I even left my full time, well-paying job which felt was suffocating me (not to mention extreme mismanagement and poverty-level wages to a third of the employees). Then, in the month of September, I did an incredible training in Canada on Pre- and Perinatal Therapy or Birth Process Work. I learned a ton about myself, about the patterns of my ancestral line, and what tension fields I experienced upon being conceived. (In case you haven’t noticed, I have been contemplating and chewing on some pretty heavy stuff. Also, nothing confidential being revealed here. I realize my parents did the absolute best they could, which I love them for. In fact, when it comes to family situations, I am extremely fortunate. I love my family. AND there is almost always a series of psychological double binds to negotiate when we come into a human body. So that is what I am working on digesting, resolving and walking the little wounded parts of myself forward toward health and clarity and differentiation.)

But where does that leave me now? Having been back from Canada for about a month now, I am floundering a bit. I am only seeing a few bodywork clients, in spite of my awareness of the energetic field having deepened considerably (but my modesty is still as strong as ever, as in, I don’t enjoy selling myself or my talents). My touch skills have refined even further – now I know the difference between feeling anesthesia drug imprint (memory) coming out versus cigarette chemical imprints versus marijuana. And all this by having my hands on someone for just five minutes or less. Plus, I am barely doing any astrology at all, in spite of my awareness of the psychological double binds showing up in the chart and being able to point them out precisely and skillfully.

Mainly, I do a little yoga or qigong or Buddhist meditation practices. I am on a quasi-retreat. I am assisting with teaching one or two bodywork classes a week, which is nice. Overall though, my guidance is telling me to persist gently and kindly. And I am forced to confront these uncomfortable double binds on a daily basis as a result of all this extra time and space. I am forced to feel how a part of me needs to be producing something or running after something (or someone) or working toward getting letters after my name, in order to feel worthwhile. In other words, there is a part of me that feels worthless the more time I spend in doing less (this is a double bind talking by the way – an introject or a pattern learned from something explicit or implicit communicated to me when I was very young). I am doing my best to stay present with my little baby parts. I am giving incredible treatments when I do occasionally see a client – the strong astrological Chiron in my chart coming through – the wounded healer who is able to work miracles with others and yet who is so far, confined to suffer inwardly as he is unable to heal some deep, non-verbal unmet need.

On top of all this, I have had two bizarre situations involving working with babies or mothers of newborns in the past month. It has kind of shaken my confidence (apparently it does not take much). In Canada, I could treat a newborn or infant or toddler like I was an expert. For some reason, I get back here to Charlottesville and I feel like I have regressed five to ten years… so I am doing less than I would like with babies these days. I have one appointment in the next couple weeks treating a toddler. And that might be it for a while as I’m not feeling called or supported to work with babies here.

Which leads me to entitle this post the way I did. “Drowning in Spaciousness.” I don’t want to work for a company that pays less than a living wage to ALL of its employees. I don’t want to be in a school program where I know 200% more about complimentary health care than my professors (that is just one of dozens of reasons why I left nursing, my personal health being near the top of that list). I want to be in a community of people who support each other and are yearning to lean into that support. I felt that in Canada. I am not feeling that here in Virginia any longer.

Having named all these issues, some would say it is exciting where I am at. I am hatching, that I know. I feel like there is an old part of me dying away, and it is blisteringly uncomfortable. Maybe a Phoenix will rise from these ashes. Until then however, I am wishing it was easier to rest in “Don’t Know” mind.

And now to shift gears: explaining what is going on in my astrology chart and how that might correlate with what I am mentioning above.

Chiron is Rx by transit, conjunct my Sun. I am ready for a spiritual blossoming as it were. I feel ready to get out there and teach and lead bodywork classes (but my guidance is saying not just yet). I have a hankering to teach a PPN astrology class – but the amount of support my students would need to explore this juicy yet heavy material would mean I would need an assistant who is well-versed on the topic as well. So that is also on the back burner.

Pluto is squaring my natal Moon / Pluto conjunction by transit. Did I mention a Phoenix rising from the ashes of an old dying self? Well here we go. Difficult and uncomfortable transitions as the old junk is being torn away from my being. My suffering is only reflected by my resistance in this case. There can only be distress if there is a story to hang my discomfort on. And boy oh boy am I coming up with some stories! Heavily intense (Pluto) birth issues (Moon), womb surround circles (Moon), Mother Earth-oriented workshops (Moon) all being brought to the forefront.

Neptune is conjunct my 8th house Mars and widely opposite my 2nd house Saturn by transit. Did I mention slowly gaining clarity around deep, nebulous topics, like ancient invisible ancestral double binds? You might give this authority to Pluto, see above, but I think when Neptune sits on a Mars / Saturn opposition for over a year as it slowly transits by, then the edges of this tense aspect will obviously start to melt away.

Uranus is nearing the end of its journey through my 9th house. And at the same time, it is making a square to my natal Jupiter by transit. Hence my having gathered up many useful healing modalities and techniques. Also this might explain why I am slowly starting to do more teaching (as Uranus prepares to enter my 10th house of profession / career / giving back to my tribe). Uranus square Jupiter could speak about my taking on a little bit more than I can realistically handle at present, which is another reason for my down-time.

Well before this gets extremely long and verbose.. I think I will pause there. Wishing for more easy support for myself and others. Hoping that I gain some clarity soon so this time of supposed confident abiding can pass. 🙂

Wishing you all contentment and may all beings know and implement the causes of happiness! (I’m off to do some prostrations as I attempt to rest easier in spaciousness.)

Thanks for reading.