The Experiences that Healed Me
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An unfortunate part of life is that we’re never really taught how to process our emotions or the purpose they serve. And I believe that’s the root of a lot of the world’s problems today.
If you’re familiar with Somatization, or if you were introduced to it through my blogs, then you know that unexpressed emotions can manifest themselves as dis-ease in our bodies. But, the thing is, the link between the mind, body and emotions works both ways. Yes, thoughts and emotions can stay lodged in our bodies if we don’t take the time to process them, but we can luckily also use the body to improve our emotional well-being and stop the mental chatter that keeps us from enjoying life to the fullest.
I already told you guys about the first somatic experience I ever remember having, but, of course, this all happened only one or two weeks into my break-up, so I still had a lot more grieving, healing and processing to do.
One experience sticks out in particular.
I was in my room and I could tell that I was feeling off. My mood was heavy and I felt blocked. Whenever this happens, I usually lie in bed a lot longer than normal, so that’s what I was doing that day. But at some point, I, for some reason, felt called to sit up and press a point near the center of my left shoulder blade, which I sensed was particularly tight. To my surprise, I immediately started crying. Not crying, sobbing. And I couldn’t stop.
But, again, for some reason, I felt called to maintain pressure on that point despite my crying. Eventually I released it, but the tears kept coming. At this point of my post-breakup experience, I had grown to expect waves of crying and grief, so I let it wash over me until it subsided on its own. And when it did, as is the case whenever I allow myself to cry, I noticed that the tightness in my chest was gone. But this time I noticed that the tightness in my left shoulder blade was gone, too. And, like before, my breathing started coming easier and my mood improved. My lethargy lifted as well and I no longer felt as blocked as before, so I had the energy – almost out of nowhere, it seemed – to continue on with my day as normal.
That day, a seed was planted.
I had a similar experience a few months later at a time when I was concentrating on strengthening my solar plexus chakra. I had just finished doing yoga and was in the middle of my Savasana when, all-of-a-sudden, I felt called to end it early, sit up and start massaging the center of my right foot, in line with the ball of the foot. And, no, I didn’t cry this time. Instead, once I finished, I was led to look up reflexology points on the feet and then I started crying. Out of shock, probably, and because it felt like I had just been given a meaningful experience. See, when I looked it up, I found that the exact area I had been massaging is known to be connected to the solar plexus.
That day, the seed was watered.
The last experience I wanted to tell you guys about happened a year and a half ago, which marked my second heartbreak – this time caused by the early termination of a bike tour I had poured my heart into. I was in a car accident towards the end of 2020 that broke my left shoulder blade. Luckily, my initial recovery was really strong, but just when I thought I was done healing, I started experiencing spasms in my right arm at random times of the day. According to my doctor, this was likely due to an over-compensation of the right arm as I had to rely on it more heavily than usual during my recovery.
Amongst my treatment options were taking a combination of muscle relaxants and pain relievers (even though the spasms weren’t painful), physical therapy (PT) or acupuncture. I didn’t like the idea of relying on medicine (never have), especially knowing that it probably wouldn’t work to fix anything at the root and, even though I had already been through a span of time where I did PT to regain full range of motion in my left arm and it worked, I wasn’t too keen on it this time because it would’ve felt like I was going back to square one. This led me to eventually start doing acupuncture. And, anyways, I had cursory knowledge of acupuncture and had always been curious to try it, so I also saw it as an opportunity to strike it off my bucket list.
To my relief, the spasms started going away within a couple of months of treatments and the more I kept going and experiencing the benefits of it, the more my curiosity towards acupuncture developed.
Eventually, I started looking up different trigger points and their known effects on the body. Slowly, I was exposed to more and more anecdotes and evidence that the points on our bodies that acupuncture targets aren’t random and that they’re actually linked not only to specific organs, but also to the emotions, ailments, and maladies that assail us on a daily basis. One day, I also recalled the two experiences I just told you guys about and I concluded that all this information had to be related. I had the conscious thought that these weren’t just coincidences and that somehow this information had been stored in my body in two very specific areas.
So, with that theory in mind, I decided to verify if the point I had pressed on my left shoulder blade had been identified by Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as a trigger point.
And it had. In fact, I identified it as SI-11 (“Tian Zong” in Pinyin and “Celestial Gathering” in English ), which is one of the major points along the Small Intestine (SI) meridian.
Source: Five Seasons Medicine
What’s even more interesting is that the small intestine meridian is known to rule clarity, judgment, and discernment and that imbalance of this meridian can result in restlessness, anxiety, depression, moodiness, irritability, an unclear life direction, and melancholy, to name a few. It’s also known to be affected by separation/connection and to affect the mind, joy and confidence. If you’ve been through heartbreak, then you know that this is also a perfect description of what it feels like.
That day, the seed bloomed.
This was the beginning of my earnest, rather than just cursory, interest in acupuncture. And ever since then, I’ve been verifying whether where I feel knots is a known trigger point. Almost every time, it has been. And that’s what leads me to believe that knots and trigger points are one and the same.