my Body Talk session today

After hearing about all the recent surprises, my Body Talk practitioner asked me in for an on-the-house session today because she just had to ask my fibroids what was up. I think on a professional level, she was both upset and curious about recent developments, and for herself as a professional felt the need to get to the bottom of that. I really appreciate that kind of attitude.

For those of you who have not seen prior posts, Body Talk is a form of energy healing in which the practitioner "talks" to the body to uncover information and heal imbalances. I've been doing it for the past year and find it helpful, however have not been doing it intensively (for awhile because I was too busy with other appointments, and more recently because the practitioner told me my body said it only needed to come every 6-8 weeks).

A bunch of interesting things came up.

First of all, when she "asked" them the fibroids said that they were there to protect me, from "hostility" in the world. She asked me what was going on earlier in my career before some of my career achievements, what might have made me feel that I needed to "prove my worth" to others by being successful. In response to this I told the practitioner about how ever since my family moved to Chicago when I was 9, I never felt at home there and always wanted to somehow feel better about being different and rise above what I felt was being surrounded with people who didn't "get" me. That was a big part of going away to an Ivy League school on the east coast, doing something different and "better." Somehow I wanted to prove that I was made out of different stuff than all those kids in my high school I didn't like -- the same reason I wore ultra-preppy clothes in dark and primary colors to distinguish myself from the girls who wore pink and purple outfits with glitter on them.

The main reason I came back to Chicago was that for many years I strongly believed that I had to be there, due to my sister's handicap, both to be supportive to my parents and perhaps someday to take over managing her care. I just didn't consider any other options, it was like a promise I had made mentally somehow. And indeed except for the 2 years I lived in Japan, I stayed in Chicago for years and years. It wasn't until I was 40 years old and read the book Calling in the One (dreadful title, fabulous book) that I realized this subconscious promise I had made that was not serving me, that I was not helping anyone by feeling like I had to stay in Chicago, and within several months I had split town.

In hindsight, how stupid it was of me to come back to a place where all the people I hated from high school (highly materialistic and whose world did not go beyond the Midwest) and people like them were in the majority and were the ones running the town. A place where someone like me, who went to an ivy league school, got an MBA, lived in Japan for awhile and learned fluent Japanese, etc. was viewed as kind of a freak. (Sorry to sound so down on Chicago, there are many wonderful things about the city and I have so many wonderful friends there but it was just not the right place for me!) But I valiantly tried to make it work, spending years frantically scrambling to find those few like-minded people to be friends with (successfully) and to date (unsuccessfully).

It wasn't until I came to California where all the things that had made me seem like an oddball in Chicago just made me average here, and where I suddenly went from never having a date to being what I jokingly told friends was being "the Prom Queen of Palo Alto". (I am a kind of dream gal for the typical Silicon Valley PhD type guy -- a brainy gal who is also cute, and once I got here for the first time in my life I had my pick of guys, and quickly nabbed a charming software programmer who is now my dear husband...)

My practitioner picked up on the words "frantically scrambling" and said that my body has not figured out that things have changed, that I don't need to to frantically scramble anymore, that somehow I am stuck in that mode, especially my endometrial tissue, she says it's like it's scattered, not coherent.

Indeed, there was a lot of frantic scrambling in my life in my 30s, during the time that the fibroids were getting established -- frantically scrambling to establish my own company and to make it successful, scrambling to try to carve out a satisfying social life in a place where there were not many people I could relate to (for example I started not one but two successful social clubs!), and trying to meet the right guy (I put huge amounts of effort into this for years, countless blind dates and showing up at every flavor of social event, before I finally realized I was fishing in the wrong pond).

She said that I need to change my relationship with time, and not always feel like I am scrambling to meet a deadline. In that sense, this whole fertility thing with "we have to have a baby while my eggs are still good" certainly has played right into my issues with time.

She then asked me about my father's mother, an interesting question because I look exactly like her and share some similar interests (e.g. yoga and health food (she was ahead of her time on those)). Sadly, my grandmother had lots of difficulties in her relationships with other people, she was always combative and alienated many of her relatives, and although I didn't spend enough time with her after the point where I would have noticed it, evidently she was a rather difficult person to be around. Even though I don't have those kinds of issues, the practitioner said that I do carry that combativeness at some level. The practitioner said that I need to let go of that kind of combativeness, the feeling that I always have to be primed for a fight or to defend myself. That I need to learn how to switch this off, and only turn it on when I need it, as opposed to having it on all the time.

She said that beneath these issues was also what she called a genetic layer, consisting of "stuff" that had been passed down to me over generations, of feeling that the world is out to get me and is full of enemies. I laughed and said yeah, that's kind of the message you get when you're Jewish and your ancestors were all persecuted for centuries and for the generation before you the horrible memory of the Holocaust is only all too fresh and you are only too aware that many of your relatives were murdered. (I also feel like I got way too big a dose of this kind of information and feeling as a child when it was too hard for me to process it, including lots of coverage in religious school, seeing the TV miniseries Holocaust and the movie Sophie's Choice at too young an age (high school), and things like having the Hebrew school teacher skip class one day when a big report about intermarriage came out so that she could lecture us that we should only date and marry Jewish people or otherwise our people would disappear (don't you think that's a bit much for a 10 year old to have to shoulder?). So in addition to whatever stuff is there "genetically" I think there is a lot there based on what I heard/was told in my youth.

All of this ties up with what Walter, the clairvoyant, told me about my system being too geared up, that I need to get a lot calmer. It seems like I have been on high alert at some deep level for way too long a time. The challenge is, how to get my body and spirit to realize that I am safe, and that I am at home, and don't have to fight the world... I think my fibroids are telling me that I have a lot more work to do...