Clearing My Throat

            I had a muscle in my neck that cinched up like a girdle on a drag queen, so I went to my chiropractor, the Kook Doctor. 

            “My God, what did you do?” He asked.  “This muscle in your neck is never like this.”

            He was working on this muscle on the left side of my neck, and practically strangling me.  I asked him what he was doing, which is what I usually do – I’m not always convinced he knows what he’s doing, but he’s so easy on the eyes, I have patience for him.  Ease on the eyes, as you might imagine, is the first and foremost requirement in my healthcare professionals.

            “What muscle?”

            “The one that connects your chest to your neck.  Keeps your head on, and is attached to the lymph nodes in your neck.”

            Jesus, I thought.  Heart – throat – head. As I had been working on advocating for myself, finding my voice, and declaring my needs, my throat had been ultra sensitive, getting strep throat several times over the past year.  I couldn’t help but think it was related to the emotional work I was doing.  For the past few weeks, they all had been interconnected in a variety of ways.  The Kook Doctor massaged the muscle out, and for the rest of the night, snot seemed to drain from my sinuses down my throat.

            He asked me about what was going on, and I told him the Paralegal was in rehab.   He’s been tough on me around the Paralegal, thinks I should just be done with him. Thought that from the moment it started.  I told him about Body Electric, and some of the stuff that bubbled up around shame, powerlessness, selfishness and fear.  He told me that I should stop dwelling on moments with my father, and just let it go.

            “How do you let something go if you’re not consciously aware of it?”

            “If you’re not conscious of it, then it doesn’t matter.”

            “But your body remembers, and you react emotionally.”

            He’s enough of a Kook Doctor to know exactly what I was talking about.

            “You’re not considering getting more panchakarma again, are you?”

            “Considering it.”

            “No! Don’t! I’ve never seen you so depressed and out of it as what you went through after panchakarma.”

            “I had to process some stuff.”

            “Listen, before you go for more panchakarma, you need to get a second opinion.  Call the psychic.”

            For a moment, I wondered what sort of alternate reality I live in that my chiropractor is recommending a second opinion from a psychic.

            I could see in his face agitation and concern as he rattled on all the reasons he felt I should not get panchakarma.

            “Listen,” I interrupted.  “I think you need a hug.”

            I threw my arms around him. He shut up and we just stood there for a moment, holding each other.  The reality was I needed a hug, and not his judgment.

             * * *

              The wood table in the center of the room could easily have had a previous life in the water-boarding interrogation treatment of a terrorist. But about a year ago, it was where I lay naked while I receiving my first panchakarma treatment -- a hot oil massage designed to help expel toxins from my system.

             Dr. S. appeared from around the corer, wearing a white lab coat underneath a vinyl apron. He had the stance and presence of a well-fed Indian butcher. We had a short conversation about the trauma that was leading me to panchakarma, where he explained that the process takes care of both the physical toxins and the emotional toxins as well.

            “You have memories,” he explained, “and emotions are attached to those memories. Through the chakra work, we remove the emotions from the memories. So if you have sadness attached to a memory, then we remove the sadness. Then the memory is just information. See?”

            The process consisted of five treatments, the first being the oil massage. The second was an oil application in the nose and the ears. The third was an enema, which he down-played. Oil dripped on the third eye, the forehead, helped to connect to the outside world. And finally, a pulse treatment would help to build an energy field like a coat of armor.

            All this, he said, would balance the three elements within my body, the water, the fire, and the solids. He said I was weak on the water element, and being a Pisces that was problematic. It would help me see people in a different way, he said. I’d be able to see their true energy, rather than long for the energy I desire to see in them. The feeling that he, or she, is there, and is enough, would come through.

            I climbed onto the table face-down. He sprayed hot oil across my back. I winced. It could have been hot wax for all I knew. For the next hour, he massaged my body with a lipid oil, which he explained seeps down into the cells of the body, nourishing the nervous system, which is also made of lipids.

            “It’s providing nutrients to the nuero pathways,” he said.

            Slathered in hot oil, he had me lay on my side. He informed me that he would be administering the oil enema, and pulled out a syringe, explaining normally he waits to the third treatment, but because of my deep-seeded first chakra trauma, he’d have to start the enema today.

It occurred to me, lying there naked, covered in oil on a wood table, as he spread my cheeks to implement the enema, that I could probably receive this exact same treatment at the International Mister Leather Convention from a butch muscle daddy wearing nothing but a jockstrap, assless chaps, and a harness.

            * * *

            When I woke the day after the first treatment, my blood pressure had gone from 140/98 the morning before to 130/80, and a sense of calm and balance was manifesting itself. I arrived for treatment two, and Dr. S. had asked about my experience, and what had happened since I left. I explained the calm and balance and how it had manifested itself throughout the day, that even the most difficult people didn’t get me flustered.

            “The process works automatically,” he explained. “The process works to make your system detached. Attached but not detached. Because if we are ever totally detached, we are dead. But we want to be attached, but detached so that your core energy is not affected. You will be able to go anywhere and not be impacted.”

            Dr. S explained that politicians have to be good at this, because they can go to a funeral and be in the moment feeling sad, shedding tears, but then an hour later they might have to be at a pep rally.

             “Making you free from obstructions is the whole idea of the treatment.”

            I asked if this state would be something I would have to maintain, and how I maintain it.

            “This is a non-reversable process, but in the next step, the body will try to fight it.”

            I went through the treatment again. He applied the hot oil with a massage, dropped oil in my ears and nose, and administered the enema. My mind was everywhere, but when he dripped the oil on my third eye (forehead), my mind went blank. There were no thoughts, just presence, as if I was an observer outside of my body, looking at the world.

            Over the next day, while my blood pressure had gone to 118/80, I began to experience conflict in my mind. Complete uncertainty. When I arrived for the third treatment, he said that is my old self fighting with the new self, that I was grieving the loss of the old self and this was the “withdrawal” process.

            “When a person is missing something, they project it on another person. And when they get something back, maybe even just five or ten percent, that is enough. That becomes energy wasted. Your body is learning to recognize this, but you are addicted to the old ways.”

            The third treatment was filled with sadness, and I cried throughout. At the end of the treatment, I lay on the table, slathered in oil, crying.  There was no apparent reason for my tears, but it was a sobbing wailing that I just could not seem to control.  Dr. S. stood over me, and told me to just let it go before he left the room.

            When he returned, he reassured me.

            “This is good. Your body is releasing the emotional garbage. It is coming out. You were very restless. The old self wanted to run away, but the new self kept you here.”

            He explained to me that this sadness may continue.

            “If you want to analyze, analyze, but the body knows what it is doing.”

            * * *

            For the next several months, my body might have known what it is doing, but I really had no clue.  It was a wild ride, at first, and the Kook Doctor picked up on it. It was not unlike Space Mountain at Disneyworld, where you strap in a car and then venture into complete darkness, unsure of what the next turn or dip will be. It was wild, amazing, stomach-turning, and in a twisted sort of way, fun.

            The 24 hours after the third treatment were filled with great sadness. Great in both senses of the word: gargantuan in size, but also good. It wasn’t a painful sort of sadness, but floods of weepy sadness were seeping from my body, tipped off by almost anything: a picture of my cat who had passed the year before; a Hallmark commercial; a thought. I couldn’t go anywhere near Lifetime Television.

            But by the morning after the third treatment, the weeping had begun to slow. And in between the fits of explosive weepiness—incredible joy. A joy I had never felt before. It was as if the sadness was leaving, and all that was left was joy, and a joy that had been overshadowed by such deep, cellular sadness, I’d never been able to experience it before.

            When I showed up for my fourth treatment, Dr. S. asked how I had been feeling. I explained the sadness. He asked about anger. Had I experienced any anger? I hadn’t. Just sadness and joy. He nodded.

            “If you feel yourself wanting to react emotionally,” he said, “try to just observe. Feel the sensation, and observe. Don’t react, just drink a glass of water.”

            Following the treatment, he asked how things where. Nothing, really. Not necessarily relaxed. Not sad. Not agitated. In fact, I began to wonder if it even worked. With one treatment left, was I completely stuck?

            He explained that when my emotional damage left my body, it created a space. And now, that space will be filled with something.

            Panic.

            “What will it fill with?” Could it fill with something worse than my emotional damage?

            “I can’t say. It could be a person. It could be new people, or a person who you have not heard from in a while. You have changed, and the vibrations you are sending out to the universe have changed, and the universe will respond. You’ll begin attracting new people. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

            His words were not completely comforting, but his statement, you’ll just have to wait and see, shifted something. It was as if fear of the unknown had melted into a curiosity of what might happen next.  A sense of adventure.

            When I got home, everything about my evening was irritating. My roommate. The dogs. The lack of food. The fact friends were not calling. Everything seemed to irritate the heck out of me. And that’s when I realized this was not irritation, but all these little things were setting off anger. This was the anger Dr. S. had been asking about.

            I had a glass of water and went to bed.

            I woke up on Friday and went about my day. The irritation continued. In fact, I found myself exploding at the office over silliness.

            I ran to have a glass of water, and came back to apologize.

            “I’m sorry, my panchakarma is making me irritable.”

            On the fifth treatment, I explained the sensation of anger, Dr. S. nodded. We did the final treatment, and he explained that we have now completed a cycle. I felt as I had at end of the first treatment: complete relaxation and a sense of calm. He said that if I felt stuck, I could come back for another treatment, but he sensed the way I had responded, and the progress I had made during the week that I was well on my way and wouldn’t need a follow-up. I asked him if I should come back in a year, or how frequently I should do this.

            He explained the total process is 21 days, and I asked what the difference was between five days and 21. He said it just speeds up the process, but I’ve completed one cycle and it works automatically from here.

            He encouraged me not to make any major life decisions regarding relationships, finances, or career for the next six months. I now see how that is connected to the cycle, and that in moments of great sadness, or even irritation and anger, the urge is to act, but drinking a glass of water slows that down.

            “In life,” he said, his final words to me, “those with compatible energy can stay. All others must go.”

            * * *

            What has happened in the year since my panchakarma treatment has been a continuation of the cycle: groundedness, sadness, anger, calm. The cycle seems to have shortened with time, where immediate weeks following the treatment, I’d experience those segments for sometimes days at a time, even feeling stuck in sadness and anger. But through exercise and meditation, I’ve been able to push through to a point of grounded emotional clarity, and now I can experience the cycle within an hour, or sometimes minutes.

            Of course, the cycle suggests it’s not all up, and I have to say the low points have sometimes been very low. At one point, I found myself declaring enlightenment is for the birds! Medicate me! I was listening to Terry Gross on NPR and she was interviewing a Zen meditation master, and he said, “Now that I’m enlightened, I realize I’m just as unhappy as I was before.”