The way I know to heal

After months and months of waiting, I’d forgotten that I’d jumped in Libby’s line for the audiobook, When the Body says No, by Gabor Mate. It showed up yesterday, with its hopeful white and yellow icon, and the calm warm voice of Daniel, Gabor’s son, as the reader.

I’ve known for a long time that my body is saying No to something. I feel it in the tangled knots of muscles in my shoulders, like the threads of a mop that’s seen one too many floors, and then been dragged around through the mud and over concrete. All that carrying.

For years during my meditation, I visualized combing out the tangled vines and ropy strings of vegetation that hold me together. Even a few minutes of this could shift my embodied feeling from the gnarled picture of the Crone to that of the Graceful Young Woman.

Today I am both. Aware of my body’s longing. Aware of the potential for healing. Last night I dreamt I was lying on a sofa, a recreational dose of an intravenous miracle sliding like gold into a fat purple vein.

“I’m not sure it’s working,” I said to the Healer.

“Oh, it’s working,” he said.

And I felt my whole body go blissfully limp. Even in the dream I knew how profoundly unique it is to find one self asleep and yet blind to tension until it suddenly, completely let’s go.

I’m left with the question of how to bring this level of golden surrender into my waking (or sleeping!) life. One way I know, is to listen to music and birds—to sit in the wash of their bluish purple offerings and allow myself to be transported.