but you can't make him drink. Or so the saying goes. I'm having a bit of a quandry about a handful of recent clients that I've seen on my table. They all have varying degrees of aches, pains, symptoms, lifestyle issues in which they aren't able to do the things they enjoy because of any of the above. I ask them if they have played with any of the strength exercises I've suggested, or if they've been adjusted lately, if they drank water after their last massage, if they've done any stretching, if they've taken steps to fix the computer work station that increases their pain, if they've decreased their sugar intake (which when injested into a body that has any inflammation, is like pouring gasoline on a fire), and the answer to all these questions is no.
It's not that I don't understand not taking the time to do these things, and it's not like I haven't been very lax in the past about taking care of my own body's aches and pains. But for the past few years I've made different choices, and it's shown results and helped decrease symptoms as my lifestyle has changed. I think, in the end, it's a matter of me being a cock-eyed optimist. I see so much potential in so many people I work with. I see ability, strength, movement, and capability in their bodies, I hear it in their speech, and I want to empower them to create more of that in their lives. That's what it ultimately comes down to. I'm still working on my delivery, because sometimes I can be a big annoying Seattle bodywork hippy, but I want these people around for years to come, and some of them won't be if they don't make some changes.
Insert transition phrase here (little sister, you could help me with one of these). I seriously sit here and type and think of my English teacher little sister, my English teacher friend in Cedar City, my English major critic hubby, and well, I feel grammatically lacking. I seriously want to go back to 3rd grade, and cover basic grammar, and fractions. I feel like I was really sick those weeks during grade school.
Ly and I saw the Simpsons movie this weekend. I woke up about 3 times last night singing the choral version of Spider Pig - imagine Ly's surprise. Of course I may have only been singing it in my mind, but it makes for much better telling if I'm singing it as I sit up to pee, n'est-ce-pas? I can't get it out of my mind. For anyone with the inclination and time, I highly recommend the movie. There's a reason that they've been going for 18 seasons now.
I'm also getting a new tattoo. One of my clients has a friend who comes into town for a few weeks, and my client rounds up a bunch of tattoo clients for her. So I'm getting a tattoo on my sacrum. I figured it would be a nice balance to the ones on my feet. So this is a rough idea of what it will look like. The skull part will be much cooler, and there will be no words on it, of course. I've been learning a lot about how the pelvis and the jaw/head have a lot in common. For example, to help release my hips, and some muscles there, my acupuncturist will put needles in my jaw. The temporal bones in the head mirror the movement of the ilium(hip bones) almost directly. And well, most of my medical past has had to do with one or the other of these two areas. I just felt really drawn to this picture.
Like I said, it will be much more proportional, it will have a cooler face in the skull, and there won't be any words on it.
So after seeing the latest Harry Potter flick(I haven't read ANY of the books yet - I know, I know), I have decided that it is time for Ly and I to bite the bullet and get the books. I need to know what all the hype is about. I need to be swept up in the love and fury of the fandom. I have enjoyed the movies, I have become invested in the characters, but I need to know the intricacies of the storyline now. The movies can't do justice to those threads that can only be tied together with clever storytelling. I will say that the movie made me feel like a bad, bad man. I mean what is the male equivalent to "Lolita", because I was SO feeling it watching that latest movie. He IS legal now.
Insert another pithy transition here:
And it closing, my lovely little Beige man sent me this, and it pretty much sums up how I see the world:
5 comments:
I'm reading the Harry Potter books for the first time (thanks to our lovely sister the Rookie for encouraging me by buying me the first one). I am finishing up the third book all I can say is that I wish I had read them a long time ago. They bring me back to when I was 10 and spending all day in the big white house reading The Chronicles of Narnia and the Encyclopedia Brown books.
Don't most people have some "illness" of which they won't let go? Some resistance to love, to healing?
I, for one, always fear that the side-effects of all cures will somehow damage me in ways that the diseases won't (my fear of antidepressants has always been rooted in anecdotal evidence that it made people averse to sounds, art-forms, even ideas that were appealing before; I always said that anything that tricked me into believing that Forrest Gump was art, or that Sonic Youth was not, had no place in my life). Such fears are (mostly) irrational, of course, but rationality is just another construct to help us pretend we're making use of our time.
That said, I find what you do to be outside of that continuum. But for some, ALL healing is undesirable, even if they seek some temporary relief of the symptoms. And Western medicine has trained us to seek such temporary relief, in, of, and FOR itself. Too bad, really.
Some of us nihilists (not necessarily yours truly) might suggest that the will to live is, itself, an attachment to an inherently diseased condition (though idealists might suggest that any fixation on death is similarly problematic).
LOVE the tattoo-to-be!! I'm excited to look at it in context. :^)
Simpsons = Funny
Daniel Radcliffe = Dreamy
So much to say, so much to say...
Firstly, I would say that being ok to let the choices others make be THEIR choices is crucial in getting by in the world. Frustrating as it is, nobody sees things the way you necessarily do. And that is the joy of people: diversity means that what people do, think, or say can seriously piss you off, disappoint, and bother you at times. But then in turn, you might trigger a similar response. I know your job is to "fix" them, but sometimes you've got to just let it go.
As for Harry Potter: YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOKS, WHA? You, my dear, are the individual who introduced me to A Wrinkle In Time and all that Madeline Le'Engle shtuff! I don't even LIKE sci-fi/fantasy and I was a zombie for days while reading 5 & 6. (I am trying to decide when I have a day to commit to book 7). Read them. Read them when you have free time spread before you. Read them when you have found the most comfortable place on the face of the earth to curl up with a book. Because you won't get up. I seriously hauled these books to go pee with me because I couldn't put them down. It is sheerly entertaining fluff, but I counterbalance it by reading my sophisticated, philosophical, deep crap (by the way, check out Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek...it's a good one for you, methinks).
As for your little crush on the Potter boy...that's too funny. I guess he reminds me too much of a British science professor I had once...his nipples were always showing through his shirts (very distracting). I wanted to say "Put on an undershirt, man!" in full British accent. I refrained.
Morning Sunshine,
How fun for you to have the whole HP series ahead of you. I'm a little envious.
I totally fit the description you give of you clients. I don't know if my lack of follow through runs as deep as Ly's comment suggests, or is simple laziness. There is that "I must somehow deserve this" thing too.
XO
jinriksha - I'm SO glad you have a blog now too. Now you just have to post. All we have to do is get A on blogger now.
DJ - Yo, yo! Glad to see you in cyberspace.
My dear Ly - like I told you earlier, you could debate yourself out of the need for oxygen. Man, tiring. Although I LOVE your rationality comment, and have felt that same way, often. And this:
But for some, ALL healing is undesirable, even if they seek some temporary relief of the symptoms.
Pains me to read. I mean, I'm sure that there is a portion of the world for which this is true, but if they want the symptoms to go away, permanently, then some healing will have to take place. Sorry, part and parcel.
And that is the joy of people: diversity means that what people do, think, or say can seriously piss you off, disappoint, and bother you at times. But then in turn, you might trigger a similar response. I know your job is to "fix" them, but sometimes you've got to just let it go.
I think it's very cute that you are trying to tell me about diversity. And to be honest, my job is most definitely NOT to fix people. I do NO fixing. My job is merely as conduit for their body to do it's own "fixing". The minute it becomes my job to fix somebody, the client is taken out of the equation, as is their responsibility to their own health.
As to Harry, I know where there's a really naughty picture of him in Equus, the show he did in London, but I don't think you would appreciate it.
Becks - Don't think I don't understand the whole "somehow I deserve this..." I mean take the whole me not being able to have kids thing, or my vocal chord being messed up. I DO understand, and I think that's why it sometimes get to me, because I have been there, and work towards not being there each day. I just see so much potential, and sometimes it's hard to not want to take responsibility for people's health.
Post a Comment