Help Your Body Let Go and Process Emotions
(If you prefer to watch, check out my video on YoutTube!
In my last blog I told you guys about my introduction into the practices of acupuncture and acupressure, so if you haven’t already read it, I suggest you do before reading this one because I wanted to build on that information here. I’ll link it here.
A few months ago, I was talking with a friend who had recently become a licensed massage therapist. Somewhere along the line, we started talking about getting older and everything that comes with it.
At some point I admitted to her that:
“I never thought pain would be a part of my everyday life.”
So, naturally, she asked what I meant, arguing that I was pretty healthy and that we weren’t that old. So I told her that, for the last few months and maybe even for the last year, I had an aching, slightly radiating pain in my mid-back just to the left of my spine. And to that she said that most people she had ever talked to or treated tended to have low-back pain – maybe a few had upper back pain. But never in the mid-back.
We left the conversation there, but it stayed with me. A few days later I started to wonder if the pain was being caused by a knot, which I knew could be targeted through acupuncture based on the information I’ve shared in my other blogs.
So, since I had been getting acupuncture for spasms in my right arm, I decided that the next time I went back I would request that we also target the pain in my mid-back. I did and the therapist agreed. After palpating the area of concern, he confirmed that it was hard as a rock and that it was even visibly raised compared to the right side of my back.
Fortunately, I did experience relief after just the first treatment and after a few more, the therapist said that he could no longer visibly tell the difference between the left and right sides of my mid-back. I thought I had finally found the solution to the pain I had been experiencing for months, if not longer, so I stopped getting acupuncture for it. But within a few weeks I felt the tightness come back, so I booked another appointment. And again it helped, but I didn’t want to keep having to come back, so this time I asked if he had any idea what could be causing the pain in hopes that he would help me identify its root and eradicate it from there.
His answer, though, wasn’t convincing. He said that it was probably due to an old injury that the body was still reacting to by tightening, thinking it was protecting itself (kind of like a prolonged flinch). But, while I think that can happen, I don’t remember ever injuring my back, so I didn’t think it applied to me. I thought there had to be something more to the story. Especially since, even though he’s a licensed therapist, he looks at acupuncture from a Western, more literal and physical perspective without also taking into account the spiritual, emotional and psychological aspects of it.
So, I started developing a theory that the pain I was feeling was indeed caused by a knot which was itself caused by fear – which I’ve been dealing with and processing a lot of lately.
I’ve already spoken on the fears I have surrounding my career path, money and success in some of my blogs, but I’ve also been fearing not having shelter soon because I have to move at the end of the month, but I haven’t yet found a new place to live because of how crazy the housing market has been. I also noticed that I had been eating a lot more sugar than normal (I’ve always preferred salty, more savory foods and snacks) and that I always felt thirsty no matter how much water I drank. All that is to say that, I started wondering if my fears were somehow at the root of it all. At least the sugar cravings made sense to me as I thought my mind was subconsciously using them as a form of distraction from my fears.
The thing was, I wanted relief sooner rather than later and, like I’ve said in some of my other blogs, fear is a heavy emotion and processing heavy emotions takes time. And, although I knew that acupuncture definitely helped with the pain, I also knew that it works best when done regularly and – at $75 a session – it was starting to get expensive.
I had to find a way to bridge these two facts.
A couple weeks passed when, one day, I remembered the powerful experiences I’ve had with acupressure. Immediately, I tried pressing on the point of the pain with my fingers, but unfortunately, because it’s an awkward location, I wasn’t able to apply enough pressure and my hands soon started cramping anyway. Then I remembered that I had heard of people using tennis balls to massage their backs. So, I wondered if rolling one up and down my mid-back might provide me with the relief I was looking for. A tennis ball, I could afford.
To my delight, I did feel a difference after doing it just one time, so I committed to doing it the next few days. Each day, I felt more and more release for longer and longer periods of time until, eventually, there came a day where I didn’t feel any tightness or pain there for the first time since getting acupuncture for it. As a result, I stopped massaging it because I thought I had finally found the solution and the pain would be gone for good.
Unfortunately, it only took a few days for the pain and tightness to come back, so I started using the tennis ball again. But this time, instead of massaging the area, I tried just applying constant pressure to it. And Read this blog next, to find out what happened.
what happened next shocked me.
Read this blog next, to find out what happened.