The Biggest Missing Piece

Nov5

I want to say that if any of you have felt bad for me and my experience, I want you to know that it is not helpful for either of us. I want to say to you, that you are feeling worse for me than I am feeling for myself. I want to say to you that I WANT to have the power to heal myself, all to myself. Feeling bad for me just makes it a little bit harder for me to take my power back and makes you just feel awful about something you have absolutely no control over. So stop trying to fix it! Stop ruminating on mine or another’s pain. Instead, focus on coming fully into yourself. Focus on softening your fascial resistance and seeing and accepting yourself as the powerful person you are. Then, and only then, will you see accurately, the true powerful nature of another. Only then will you be able to help another in the most effective way they can receive it.

Now on to what I have discovered . . .

I cannot accept that I created this awful thing that happened to me. I CAN however accept that I had a deep desire at 19 for my life to mean something. At that time I felt I was just one of the crowd and I wanted badly to stand out. I did not want to be a cog in a wheel. I had this deep sense that there had to be something more to my life. That is exactly the thinking I was immersed in when I was run off the road on my bike and taken.

Was my desire to stand out THAT strong? Did I get what I wanted? Well, I wouldn’t have asked specifically for that horrible experience in order to bring about my desire. I DO know, however, that that horrible experience has caused me to move, with great depth, into the feelings about myself I strongly desired at 19. I can say that I feel that the tentativeness of life I have experienced has caused me to feel, very deeply, how valuable life is. All the interesting and wonderful experiences I would have missed! So, yes, my life DOES mean something very deeply to me – much more deeply than I feel I had before.

Before my horrible experience, and it was horrible by any standard, I didn’t think about enjoying life – I just DID life. So, now that I’ve cleared a large majority of the bracing and fear of my horrible event of being physically taken, held and raped by someone I didn’t know. After experiencing all of that and in the aftermath . . . feeling it fully, it has lost its tight grip on me. I had an experience that allowed me to feel what most people just read about or watch on TV. I had the opportunity to feel fully, the depth of terror, shame, and loss of control. And by feeling through these things and in the depth that I did, what emerged was also the incredible rush of feeling . . . joy . . . of feeling deep love and trust of myself . . . of feeling complete, absolute freedom from limitation. I have mastered getting into channel 3, from way, way into channel 5.

Until now, I don’t feel I appreciated the depth of good feelings that have come out of my honed ability to feel all of these horrible things deeply. I don’t feel I have, until now, accurately acknowledged that my extensive experiences of letting go of resistance to completely awful feelings, gave me the ability to feel very good things deeply as well. I distinctly remember these feelings. They were moments of ecstasy I came into unlike any I had experienced prior to my horrible event. I admit, I have not been letting them in – not for lack of wanting to feel good. I go home every night and have a drink and wait for the good feeling to hit me. I want it badly, but not this way. I did not know how to get at it. I’m pretty sure the missing piece – and it’s a really, really big missing piece – was that I hadn’t acknowledged the ecstasy I was coming into. The lack of acknowledgment of the truth of the good I was feeling, caused me to ignore it even when it was happening. The other shoe is not dropping. I’ve stopped waiting for it. In fact, I’m pretty busy being in the flow of life and enjoying it, to care if the shoe even exists.

Life is supposed to feel good. And I have to admit . . . it honestly does, so much of the time.

Softening into Shame

Aug23

Having visited Canada and the motel room I was held in, early in my visit here, I have felt free to explore Niagara Falls. I could be a tour guide now. I’ve run alone early in the morning when no one was on the road or at the falls. I’ve spent a lot of time upriver, down river, at the falls, continually feeling the past washing through and out behind me. Keeping this visual alive has given me the momentum I needed to fully feel and clear out any of the dark, heavy parts that have come up here. Nature, and especially the enormous power of the falls, has been integral in bringing me into the present. This place is now beautiful and sacred to me. I will come back and bring my family to share in its beauty also.

On Day 3 of MFR II, John invites me onstage for a sphenoid release. I feel safe. It’s safe to let go. Energy begins to surge through me and I start to quietly cry. The wave goes through and I spontaneously breathe in, filling the space with air. I feel many surges go through me and my body softly moves. The energy becomes more intense and my back arches – my entire body hits a still point and I feel my muscles contracting, compressing me tighter into this position. I soften – another wave and a similar position. I feel my arms floating. They are coming up to my chest towards my throat. “Let the sound out,” John says. My body holds its breath. It is not allowing it. He softens and I soften out of the tightening. John has everyone go back to their tables so he can talk them through the technique and continues to work with me.

He soothes me with his words, then asks me to feel my pelvis. I can’t feel it. Where is it? He asks me to do the frog position. I bend my knees and self-consciously wiggle my feet together. I hesitate. My diaphragm tightens. “Open your legs,” he says. A wave of embarrassment blankets me and I start to cry. This is exactly what my captor said to me the first time he raped me. “Remember it’s me here,” he says. It feels safe to move my legs and feel. Deep shame; ugliness, my legs feel weak and vulnerable. I can feel my pelvis now past my legs – it’s too much. I stay in my inner thighs and soften my upper body from there. John says, “you have nothing to be ashamed of. This guy did what he did because he was a creep.” I laugh at that and this loosens my hold even more. John says many encouraging things to me, keeping me feeling, in the present. He draws out more positive words from somewhere inside me. “You are beautiful. Let it feel good. Let yourself feel pure … innocent again.” These are the words that stay with me.

This is the last technique of the day and we have the afternoon off. I feel completely vulnerable. “Like an egg yolk laying quivering on the sidewalk,” as I’ve heard someone say. My roommate Judy is so understanding. She says she’ll stay or go – whatever I need. She reads my body language and says she’ll go out for a walk so I can have time alone, but to text her whenever I need company. Thank you Judy!

I can’t stay with the feelings anymore and I curl up on my side. The tears come. I feel safe. I fall into a deep sleep for an hour. When I wake up I feel an urgent need to get out of the hotel room. I put on my ball cap and sunglasses – incognito – and go out. I walk in a direction I haven’t been yet. There was a hidden path I had found that morning on my run beyond Terrapin Point. I feel where that is and walk that way. Judy texts me and we meet up and walk, by footbridge, to the farthest islands at Niagara Falls. I continue to let the rushing water wash away the past. I tell Judy the most shameful things I have been feeling – things I had only started to write about privately during my Therapy for the Therapist in Malvern a year and a half ago. Gradually, over the course of our walk on the hidden path, the words come out. The only time I feel pleasure is when I’m by myself and picturing myself being raped and sodomized. The visuals have gotten more vivid and demeaning and now I’m visualizing them being done to me in my office. I feel defeated. I feel like I’ve done no work at all. I know this crossing of wires can happen. I am realizing my body responded sexually at the time. I know it’s not my fault. I still feel ashamed.

The next day in class, I suddenly realize I’ve locked my keys in my trunk. I say to John “well, I guess I’m not going home.” He says, “that’s pretty symbolic.” I’m not locked in the trunk . . . my keys are.

The front desk calls a cab company. A foreign guy with very limited English says “come with me.” I’m a little nervous – so is the concierge, but he doesn’t follow. He asks where my car is. I point to the parking lot. He walks me to the passenger side of his minivan and says “get in the car”. Jolt of terror. He waits beside me. I let the feeling go through me and realize he needs me to direct him to the car. As I shut the door, I am ready to bolt if this goes sideways. I point out my car and we go over. He breaks in, the alarm goes off. I scramble into the back seat, pull down the seat into the trunk and drag out my backpack, grab the keys and unlock the car.

Afterwards, I am shaking as I work in the seminar room. Just the jolt I needed to break me open. Nothing bad happened. Even though “get in the car”, was the exact phrase my captor yelled at me (with a knife in his hand and walking quickly toward me), I’m still here and I got what I needed – my keys. I feel the significance of the difference and how an innocuous situation can be quickly misinterpreted – if I hadn’t let the fear go through me and brought my power back in, how would I have responded? How would this man have felt – acted?

I’m open enough now to tell John about what I told to Judy. I need guidance. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s very common.” He gives me homework. Pleasure myself. Bring whomever I need into the visuals. Let it hurt. See where it goes. I tell him I did some of this last night and I was beginning to sense my beauty under it. We hug goodbye and as he’s walking out the door he says “do your homework” 🙂

I get in my car and drive over the Rainbow Bridge to Canada. The falls look open and beautiful – not closed and dark like they did when I drove over 11 days ago. I smile at the opening. As I’m driving past the street where the motel is, I ask myself if I need to go by it again. There is no one there anymore. There is no need. I see only the beauty in this place and want to bring my family here to enjoy it with me. I feel the road – so familiar a feeling. I realize I am in the driver’s seat. I’m not in the passenger seat with my eyes closed – terrified. I smile and tears of self-assurance bubble up. I breathe in and feel taller. All the way home I feel free and relaxed. I’m free.

Returning to the Scene of the Crime . . . and letting it go

Aug23

Niagara Falls, NY

3 months ago, I received an email from John Barnes Myofascial Release offices asking if I would instruct (help John) at the vacation series in Niagara Falls, New York. There was a moment of fear and apprehension. This is where I had been taken when I was abducted in 1988. I had been back once in 2005 after my first intensive treatment of MFR in Sedona, Arizona. I had let go a lot, but I clearly wasn’t done. The mention of Niagara Falls brought up surges of fear. I was afraid to take my family there because I didn’t know what my body would do or if I would enjoy the experience with them. I wanted them to enjoy the falls, but that wasn’t going to happen with me there in this state. I talked it over with my husband John and we agreed this would be a perfect time to clear the past – in a safe space with the best support and an opportunity to transform it into better place for me.

This is what I wrote of my experience of the first few days there:

Since arriving in Niagara Falls, New York, my room mate Ann and I have seen the falls during the day and at night (including the fireworks), hiked Devil’s Hole gorge, and gone Whirlpool Jet boating in the rapids … all on our time off from instructing at MFR I. I feel I’m transforming my previous traumatic experience of being held captive here into a present with good feelings and memories.

I admit, driving here was a series of shocks – the feeling and sound of the road, seeing the Skylon tower, driving past the motel I was held at. Everything a bit muted and surreal. Yet each day is a bit clearer. A huge improvement over my first visit here back in 2005 after my first intensive. What a difference 10 years of JFBMFR has made.

This is my time of integration. That means applying the results of my MFR treatments into my life in and outside this tribe.

My next goal is to bring my husband and daughters here with me and have it feel good and in the present.

And even though, right at this moment, I feel like I’m going to puke and I’m getting the sweats, I don’t feel it’s too much.

Thank you Ann for keeping things light, easy and fun. It has made all the difference.

Thank you John. I got here because you never stopped nudging me.

Devil’s Hole State Park

**************************

Rainbow Bridge to Canada

On Sunday, Ann and I took the pedestrian border crossing over to Niagara Falls, Canada. We sat at an outdoor patio, eating lunch and enjoying live music. I soak up the good feeling – a new memory of the Falls is being created. I am so happy, it warms my stomach and I grin.

After lunch we wander through the gardens and down to the waterfront. We reach the head of the falls, mist floating down on us, cooling us off in the hot sun. Leaning on the barrier, looking out across the falls, the roar of the moving water draws me in. My focus takes in the entire horseshoe and as I watch the water pour over the edge, I see my past disappearing. The closer falls feel like the recent past . At the far end, out across the expanse of water below, the feeling of the distant falls is of ancient memories falling away into nothing. Moment by moment, the present is letting go into the past, falling off into the mist. The motion reminds me that nature is constantly and rapidly changing – do we feel that? The feel of the past leaving is now embedded in me, and we wander away from the falls. Ann says to me that she will go wherever I need to go. We walk uphill and behind the Skylon. We walk into an older part of the city – Lundy Lane. I follow the street names and we head up Ferry St.

As we are talking, I get a glimpse of the motel where I was held. My stomach drops, I stop briefly with my hands on my knees. I can do this. We continue on and I point out the empty property beside the motel which used to be a restaurant. Driving into town that day in 1988, as the car slowed, I had opened my eyes briefly, despite the yelling of my captor to keep my eyes closed and noted the restaurant sign. It’s how the police found the room later.

I walk along the parking lot and view the office that we stopped at so he could get a room. I had continually thought about running naked, blindfolded and handcuffed from the room to the office for help, but it seemed too risky – I didn’t think I could move fast enough before he caught me.

Ann and I walk down the row and I come to the room I was in and stand outside. I briefly try to picture myself in the room – it seems hard work and I sense that the 19 year old me is no longer in there anyway. That’s all I needed to know. I turn around and see the Skylon tower tall and innocuous. Not the shock it was three days ago when I drove by it.

We walk away and as we leave and walk down the side walk, I feel a drag in my walking. It feels like a magnet pulling me back. I break down crying and cover my face. I’m not afraid. I’m not even sad that the past is behind me. I am crying because I don’t know that I want to feel my power coming back into me – I’ve felt weak for so long. I feel stuck in the middle – I’m no longer a victim, but I don’t want to embrace my power either. As we walk, the drag lets go and I feel spit out of the past into the present.

View from the motel room

Later, in the hotel room on the States side, I curl up in bed and let the tears come.
I barely sleep, even though I am exhausted.

The next day in class – day one of unwinding, John asks us to look at one belief we have about ourselves that is no longer serving us and to ask ourselves what would be a more positive, helpful way to act and be now.

I immediately think – I believe that people feel sorry for me. I hate this. I hate people worrying about me. The alternative is that if I embody my powerful self, that people will no longer feel sorry for me. Great – but I don’t want to be powerful – I don’t want to diminish those around me. I want them to shine. I’m stuck in neutral.

I don’t get too engaged in the belief and how I’m going to change it. I focus on feeling my way through the day.

I feel guilty for feeling powerful.

I go up on stage for the 3 person unwinding. John and Donna facilitate my unwinding. I stay in my body as much as I can. I let go as much as I can. John says to me “run out of the room”. I feel sooo heavy, but I pull myself up and slowly get to the edge of the table. I stop. I feel nauseous and cough that up. It lightens me enough I get off the stage and run faster and faster to the back door and push out into the hall. I run to a corner and crouch in it – automatic response. I get up and walk around and around — then I walk further than my belief. I walk outside the range of pity. I feel power trickling into me and I cry at the discomfort.

I make my way back in and Judy is there. I sit beside her and the waves of sadness come again and again. I feel myself bracing against letting the energy come into my upper body. I stifle the sound.

After class, several people come up to me say that what I had said and done today helped them. I’m stunned. It’s what I wanted – to help others. I’m really not healing from the past anymore. I am trying to sort out how to have a new present and still help others.

Seeing

May17

Day 1 of the MFR II seminar and I feel the tension of so many new people in the room. This seminar has more people than Unwinding and I feel intimidated by the sheer number of people; I feel their minds working. I try softening my diaphragm. A little better.

Half way through the day, John demonstrates a three person technique. He asks for two therapists to go up. Donna starts walking up and I get a nudge from Dave sitting beside me to go up. Thanks Dave. I’m going. We work with two people. They are great and I have fun up there. I look into the audience and I see all the faces looking at John and the volunteer demo person. I can see them. They are clear.

During lunch I ask John what I can do about my racing and skipping heartbeat. It’s been skipping on and off for a year and has gotten worse in the last six months. It had dissipated after unwinding, but was getting progressively worse today. It was concerning me enough to mention it. He asked if he could to some work on it. I was hesitant, again, but agreed I needed it.

I laid down and he began to work. He starts with putting some ribs back in. Then some structural work. I was getting my first treatment from him since my Intensive in 2005. Back then, I was too far out of my body to feel and trust. “When you feel yourself going back in time, let yourself come back to the present”, he said. He does some work. I feel myself slipping back; tensing. “Are you in the present?” he asks right at that moment. I come back. “I’m trying”, I say. Then I fall into my body. “There you go”, he says. My body relaxes. “Soften even more,” he says. I do and then the waves come. Waves of emotion. I let them come and every time I stifle or hesitate, John dialogues and my walls come down. Crying, fear washing through me, movement to contract, softening, another wave of emotion, and another. A small sound escapes me. John echoes it. More crying and with it this time, the sound. I hear people walking into the room and instructors talking and organizing. John keeps me in the present and I let it happen. I am being seen, but it does not frighten me. I soften more and begin to tremor, then shake; my legs, my abdomen, my shoulders; more crying and sound comes out and I let it. Then my jaw shakes and my teeth chatter. “That’s it. Let your body shake”, John says. I do.

He has me roll onto my side. I feel safe. Sobs involuntarily escape me. “Sometimes, life is not fair”, he says. I hesitate. I have been thinking it is exactly what I must have asked for and that I am beyond this thinking. But my body does not lie and more sobs escape. My past, my story, flashes before me. I want to leave it behind and live. “I don’t want this”, I say out loud. This truth has me sobbing even more deeply. He pulls me in so my legs form a C around him. I feel cradled. It feels comforting. It feels so good. “I love you”, he says. “I love you too”, I say and sob some more. Yes, I really, finally, can feel that love coming into me and feel myself sending it back to him. Finally, I trust him. I must be in the present. “So much for getting on the stage”, I say to him. I had no idea that would happen. The unknown just broke me out of a pattern.

That night I have my first real sleep since coming to Troy.

Day 2 is much slower and calmer. I feel so much love for my MFR family.

I walk the tables more freely. My diaphragm is softer. At some point, I learn to trust my feeling sense of which tables to go to. My focus has widened. The blinders are off. The blindfold is off. I see.

The day before, John had mentioned maybe I could to go up for the sphenoid release demo. He will demonstrate with me up there, then have the therapists pair up and work while he does some work on me with the lights down. Today I ask to do this.

When the time comes, I am doing something in the back. I hear “where’s Patti?” from John. Yikes, better get my butt up there.

There is no hesitation. I walk right up and get on the table. I am even calmer than I have been on stage as yet. After the demo, John does the sphenoid release on me. “Stay here”, he says. “I’m trying”, I say. I get softer with his guidance. Then softer still. John is doing the most gentle work I have ever experienced. It is so soft. He does a dural release and then rebounds it. I feel my pelvis. “Let it feel good”, he says. I do, for a moment. It is a moment I have never had. After a few seconds it is too much and I shut down the feeling. More rebounding. I feel a wave. “Let me move you”, he says. I do, as much as I can. I feel the movement from the rape, but it is not scary because I am in the present. After being moved like a puppet by my kidnapper, this feels ok. I feel myself floating and rocking as if laying on top of water. It feels good. I let the feeling in for a few seconds. More rebounding side to side. I feel where I am not moving and it releases there. I notice my shoulders are less compliant than the rest of me. My head is randomly moving. It’s all good.

After he leaves I stay up on stage for a while, letting my body tremor and move a bit. Then a calm settles over me. It is no longer the calm before a storm, it is just calm. I get up and walk to the back. We are done for the day and people are packing up. I feel a different reality. I see people buzzing all around me, yet I am still and calm. Wow, is life really this agitated? The calm lasts. The calm is still here as I write this. I am not afraid to be seen. Thank you John.

I still love you. Now I see you.

Fear of Being Seen

May17

At some point I realized that I was terrified of going on stage at seminars as a demo. The fear was dominant and so, I avoided going up as a seminar participant.

Now that I have been onstage as an instructor and feeling scared but centered, then more comfortable, I am beginning to look more deliberately at this fear. Turns out, after some inner dialogue, that I am afraid of being seen. “What would happen if I was seen?”, I say to myself. I’m afraid I would be taken. I would disappear. This brings back the memory of being on my bike and being run off the road and kidnapped. If I hadn’t been seen, I wouldn’t have been taken. I feel fear, then hear John’s voice “let yourself be taken”. Yikes! After some thought and being so, so tired of being afraid, I am open to letting myself be taken, however that comes about; not knowing where that will go.

My diaphragm contracts, yet I put my words out on the MFR chatline in hopes of creating momentum in doing what I fear … being seen.

What does John say about day 2 of unwinding class? Chaos. With chaos surrounding me, I could feel myself slipping into an old familiar place of disconnection. But instead of getting lost in my old patterns, I pulled myself into the present long enough to be aware of what I was actually feeling. Then anxiety would overwhelm me and not wanting the expression of that to come out, I would do things to distract me from feeling. I could feel it building inside though. It wanted to come out. It wanted to be free.

Day 3 of unwinding class – integration of my goals. I reach out to the chat line, asking for help and receiving it. I was not expecting that. I mentioned to Dave at breakfast that I had posted on the chat. He said “I know”. I said, “oh shit”. I had not expected anyone at the seminar to be reading posts. Then, while we are walking between tables instructing, he purposely bumps into me. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” He gives me a few more intentional bumps. Yeah Dave, I read you loud and clear.

Part way through a rotation of a three person unwinding at the tables, as I was walking between them, I came to a path that crossed John’s. I stopped. I knew our paths would cross. Hesitation. Avoidance. I waited for him to pass, then looked out on the tables to feel where I was needed next. Unexpectedly, I felt John’s arm wrap around me from the side, gripping me tightly. I was caught off guard. “I see you”, he said. I became aware my solar plexus was tight. He placed his hand on it. “You can soften now” he said. A wall comes down. I begin breathing deep and fast. “Don’t control your breathing”, he says. I let it go where it wants. Another wall comes down. He gives me permission to go with it. “Find a place to sit down”, he says. “Don’t worry about the tables.” I walk, wandering; feeling my way to where my essence needs to take me. I am being taken.

My essence takes me to the side of the stage where I sit. Then the thaw happens. Crying, shaking, then a feeling of coldness leaves me. I cough violently; gagging on nausea rising up. I let the feeling go through me again and again. John comes over and puts his arm around me again. “You are having a quantum shift”, he says. “Stay with it.” He leaves and I go on. The physical responses subside and I am stood up by my essence. I walk a circuitous path which takes me to the back of the room. Then it says “leave now”, so I do. I walk out the door into the lobby. I walk right up to a mirrored door and look into myself. My eyes look old and dark. I begin to cry. Seeing myself cry without looking away I look ugly. I hear a door opening from the seminar room and I panic and walk towards a distant washroom. I walk in and there is also a full length mirror in there. I look into myself again. Same ugly crying. Then, I soften my focus and step back. Still crying, I look beautiful. Which one is real? Both. Neither. I let the waves of crying come, continuing to look. Curious.

I walk back into the seminar room. John is reading The Scared Little Boy and the Warrior. I feel the words – they sting. So familiar is the warrior. So familiar is the scared little boy. Then he reads the final sentences:

“The boy frightened and in tears stepped from behind the wall,

not sure of what to do he looked frantically around.

Then he heard the Warrior whisper.

“Be yourself and you’ll be fine.”

Tears rolled down his face,

as he watched the warrior die.

But the warrior smiled as he watched the boy begin to live.”

My body begins to tingle and grow warmer. I want to live too. Out from behind the wall.

Dave and I then pair up for the two person seated unwinding. I go first. I start sitting, then push myself to standing slowly. Anger erupts and Dave is there with a pillow. I walk into it, pushing hard. My voice yells loud and deep. I am pushing my kidnapper away. Then with a final shove I turn and walk away. I walk away from my past. I walk away and my fear of him is left behind. I keep walking and my essence takes me to the stage again. Right before I get there I stop. The gravity of walking away from my past hits my fearful self. Am I ready? The urge to move forward is too strong for my fear and I start walking again onto the stage; right to the table and I stand in front of it. More emotion comes up and I let it go through me. In the dark, I can see the crowd of people clearly. I rotate my body to one side, then the other and notice how little range I have. My world is not much beyond a set of blinders. My peripheral vision is a place of fear. The place where the car came up to me on my bike and ran me off the road. I stay up there until the waves of fear dissipate and I become calmer standing and looking out at the crowd. I am more comfortable there now. I leave the stage.

Next, the group does an on the floor self unwinding followed by an inner journey. My body is moving freer. Emotion and sound is coming more easily than ever before. I hear more words than I have ever heard when John talks us through the inner journey. A little girl appears to me and takes my hand. The younger me. She is smiling and happy. She whispers in my ear “I’m ok. You can rest now.” I see myself outside of myself. I see the little girl looking on the older me with compassion and innocent joy. I see her looking down at the older me like a child comforting an adult. She is perfectly confident and undisturbed by what she sees in me. I realize that I am not hurting her by having her see me like this. I relax and let her take me. I hear John say “find what you are passionate about”. The little girl, still leading me by the hand, sits me at a table. She puts a pen in my hand. She wants me to write. My left arm begins to tingle; it gets stronger and stronger. I am shaking all over. Waves of tremors move through me. I don’t want to do what she is asking, but the innocence of her request is too much to ignore. The feel of her holding the pen in my hand and the calm joy in her request are burned into my body memory. It is too strong to ignore.

Later that night, as the instructors are having dinner, I am feeling all kinds of sensations I have never felt before. I take the time to notice the feeling of each one. Remembering. John asks “are you all right or are you still processing?” I am both.

Still later into dinner, I look at John’s profile beside me. I think, ‘I can’t believe I’m here’. I did not think I would be alive to witness this moment. I could not believe I was sitting, looking at the profile of the man who started me on my path to living. Waves of gratitude washed through me. How do I thank him for that. It is so big. How do I thank John for saving my life? The tears come now as I write this. Feel this John. Feel my gratitude. See me living. See me free. See me sharing my experience in my writing and speaking. This is what I am here to do.

Thank you John. I love you.

I Belong

Jan15

Back in 2009, about two years into my new career as a massage therapist, my sister and I attended our first myofascial release seminar together. My sister introduced me to John Barnes Myofascial Release back in 2004, hoping it would help me heal. It did more than that – it gave me my life back. Attending a seminar together meant a lot to both of us, but it was tough. As a patient, turned therapist, I was now in her territory. This was her career, not mine. She is an amazing therapist and I was not coming into this career to one-up her. I was coming in to help people as I had been helped. We are both very good at what we do, in our own way. We are also very good together, now that we’ve reconnected.

Here’s what I wrote about my experience . . . and then read in class . . . with my sister sitting beside me.

***

Hi tribe,

I wanted to share a realization I had this morning on day 4 of the Advanced Unwinding course here in Sedona.

I have been doing this work as a therapist for 2 1/2 years now. My sister has been doing it for over 10 years. This seminar was the first one we have gone to together. Siblings all have a history and a story. . .

When my younger sister is talking on day one of the seminar, it feels very intense. I feel her anger towards me. I’m taking over her space as an MFR therapist; the thing she had that was her own and she was really good at. I sit beside her and make myself as small and quiet as I can. I’m afraid of her. I remember my perception of how angry she was when I was kidnapped – I left and didn’t come home. And when I did, I felt my whole family was angry. I came home physically, but really I never came home. I felt the anger and interpreted that as “you don’t belong”. I have been homeless. John asks the two of us to come up with goals – both individual and separate tonight. Mine is to come home and to reconnect with my sister.

Day 2 and 3 of the seminar, I am thinking I should speak up. Lots of people have come up to us and are relating to our sibling story. Hearing my sister speak and seeing me remain silent.

Half way through day 3, I start becoming very quiet again. I can feel myself getting smaller and quieter. I want to become invisible. We go to Therapy on the Rocks so my sister can receive a treatment. I wait on the waterfall deck. As invisible as I was trying to be, another seminar therapist (also an older sister), comes down and tells me she’s been watching me be so quiet – holding myself together. She sees my shell becoming tougher.

I confide that I feel I don’t deserve to take up space; I don’t deserve to take up people’s time by speaking in class. Old thoughts of suicide are coming up. Thoughts I thought were gone. I picture drowning myself in the hotel tub or hanging myself. This therapist brings me out of my shell enough to see what I am doing to myself.

That night, we go to bed and I wake up at 4 am. I go into the small feeling again. I get very small and feel the anger towards me. Then a moment of grace happens. I realize that my sister was not angry when I came home after the kidnapping. I realize that I had left such a giant, gaping hole in my family when I was gone, that their love had nowhere to go. They were sending it out like a calling card to me so I could come home. And when I did, my heart was so closed the love was bouncing off me and back at them. The love was so powerful that it created turbulence. That turbulence, I perceived as anger. Really, it was love in disguise.

I pictured the gaping hole I had left. It was really big. Geeze, I took up a lot of space. My family needed me to take up that space, so I could do my part to hold them together with me and now there was this whole and only a thin thread holding them together now. This is when I realized I belonged . . . I was essential to the whole.

I then had another realization, from my time in the hotel room with my kidnapper. I realized my willingness to comply with him – to be raped and sodomized – was me opening myself and letting his stored-up energy – flow through me. I learned afterward that his girlfriend had just broken up with him the day before. He was desperately trying to love her, but she wasn’t receiving. So he forced it on me. My ability to absorb this turbulent anger/love was not me being weak. In fact his energy was discharged and I know this is why he let me go and didn’t kill me. In my greatest moment of fear, I finally had the courage to open my heart. How wrong my perceptions had been.

Now, lying in bed in the hotel room in Sedona, I feel myself and the gaping hole I left. I feel myself filling the whole. I feel my whole body warming and tingling. I am coming home. I am home. I belong. I feel and see this whole – my family, embedded in a larger whole – my MFR family – and a still larger whole – it looks just like a fractal.

I hear John’s words “just stay with that”. And although it comes and goes and feels very, very raw, I will do just that, for as long as I can.

Thanks sis, for waiting for me to come home. You’re the best.

Love,

Patti
***

After I had read this to the class, my sister and I hugged and cried. John had the whole class join together and embrace us. The feeling was amazing. I will never forget the feeling of connection I had that day.

Coming home . . . again

Nov5

The MFR III Gang atop Airport Mesa, Sedona, Arizona (photo courtesy of my friend Karen)

This is long, but it’s my journey from cocoon to butterfly and it took 3 years 🙂 Never give up. . .

When I came home from MFR III in 2011, it was a bit of a rough entry. The turbulence was what I needed. It broke open an understanding of where my sensitive intuitive nature had been shutting down. I became aware of an old belief: if I stop feeling and anticipating what my kidnapper is feeling and going to do, something really bad will happen. I think I felt some level of control if I could sense what was going to happen next and brace myself for it. Then he did something I couldn’t imagine and I went to a place I didn’t know. I cocooned with this until I was ready for another intensive – my first as a therapist – in December 2013.

My left side bracing had been steadily increasing since 2011. In December 2013, I went to Malvern in hopes of resolving a chronic left foot problem which had pretty much stopped my ability to run. It was an opening, not a resolution. In June 2014, during Advanced Unwinding, John facilitated another opening and I got out of the trunk of the car. I also was pulled out of the back seat and watched it drive away. I felt a sense of completion. The experience of being kidnapped seemed a memory and not a current event anymore. I continue to feel the tethers disentangling from me.

At MFR III this year, my goal came from a sense of “now what?” I felt the urge to continue to integrate a newer feeling of lightness of being and becoming the foam on the wave – but I had left a huge void where the terror and shame had been. I knew I needed to fill it. I didn’t want it to back-fill with old beliefs again. This was too important.

The “now what” became clear, while assisting at Subtle Energy, prior to MFR III. Peggy, our speaker, asked us to ask ourselves what we wanted out of this time here. An answer comes to me – clarity. Then a message, a very clear voice says to me: the healing you are doing in this lifetime is clearing your karmic debt from every lifetime – all of it. This is what you are here for. I feel the enormity of this mission. It is a lot of responsibility. It is important to my essence. I also feel the result of this message. This feeling of actual joy I have been trickling into feels entirely foreign and new and right.

At MFR III, the night of our inner journey unwindings, I stay on my feet the entire hour and a half. I am flying expansively, driving up into the galaxy and diving back down to earth. Then I notice I have no voice. I have been completely silent throughout the unwinding. Sobbing, I go looking for it on the ground. As I crawl around desperately, my inner guide says “look up”. I do and a new sound of sobbing I have not heard before comes out. The sound leads me to standing and I walk through a door. On the other side I meet three spirits. The one says “Welcome home. We’ve been waiting for you.” I feel the middle one downloading information into my head. He says “don’t worry”, sensing my fear, “you will only access this information in your dreams.” I relax. They are still with me strongly now as I write this.

The next day, I am silent as we are out on the rocks. I listen to everyone talking about their insights from last night. I am so glad we don’t have to each say something like we did in 2011.

After class, I went to see my very first therapist at Therapy on the Rocks. She immediately caught on to my automatic anticipation of what was going to happen next. My trust in the process was bigger than my fear and I went into that still point from 2011. I let my kidnapper do what he had done back then and stayed present. Then I escaped to a safe place. I said to my therapist that there were some little bits left but for the most part, that was it. “Yes,” she confirmed, “they’re just breadcrumbs.”

Feeling more spontaneity in my movements, the group unwinding the following day became a demonstration of complete trust in my group, my intuition and the power of the unknown.

I let my energetic body lead and take me off the ground. I am falling, twisting, struggling not to come down. Just before I touch ground, I have the sense of being in my mother’s birth canal. I don’t want to come out. My left shoulder gets stuck coming out, frees itself and I emerge, newborn, lying on my back. I feel betrayed. I didn’t want to come down this time – in this life. Knowledge of what is going to happen in my future – knowing what I am here to do – I just want to crawl back up that birth canal and go back from where I came.

In an instant, I remember a story my mother told me about five years ago. She said that the first week I was home from the hospital, I got myself into snitfits and cried so hard I turned blue. She had no choice but to put my head under a tap of running water to get me breathing again. This happened more than once. She went on to tell me that by the time I was two, we would be out shopping and I’d be set off and she would hold onto my hand until I passed out and then put me back in the cart. As I got older, I no longer cried that hard. My voice had been pretty much silenced by then. But there was only resignation.

Lying on the ground, I grieve for what I have been through. I grieve for the enormity of responsibility for clearing my past karmic debt in this lifetime. Resignation turns into resolve. I say to my group urgently “I need my feet on the ground! I need my feet on the ground!” They let go and I feel them solidly. A new wave of crying. I can’t get up. “Bring your power back into your body,” I hear my inner guide say. I fill my abdomen up and expand out. I try to stand from my supine position. I can’t figure out how to do it. I contemplate going into channel 5 and sitting first. No. I have to stand from my own power. As I fill myself up more, a feeling of acceptance comes in behind the energy and accelerates it. This is what I need and I launch up to my feet from my back. And I fly.

There is some residual resignation and I say to my group, “well if I’m going to be here, I’m glad I’m here with you.” I feel their support and love softly embrace me.

After the group unwinding, we are instructed to go off on John’s property and find a special place for ourselves to be with our power animals. I am ready to go like a horse in a starting gate. We set off and I skip along down to the riverbed. Once there I am no longer skipping – I am flying. I realize there is no one in front of me. A realization hits me. I don’t feel chased – I am leading the way. Instead of fear, I feel exhilaration!

The last day, we do intraoral techniques and I trade with my raven friend. She is on my vomer and I feel the sense of being forced – tissue memory. I get up and I have disappeared somewhere. I don’t know where I’ve gone, but I’m not there in the room. I wander aimlessly, soft and vulnerable. I make eye contact with John and walk slowly towards him. I carefully move into his arms, barely holding on to him. “Can you soften into me a little more?” I let down my guard a bit more and connect. I feel the grounding come into my pelvis and legs. Ami comes over. She is pulling stuff out of the back of me. She says to John she can do some more work with me back at the house. I feel soooo disappointed in myself. I was doing so well! Barbara comes over and I sink into her. She lets me rest my head on her chest and I feel a mother’s love deeper than I have ever felt it before. It is what I need.

In the parking lot, saying good bye, I pull out a heart-shaped rock I found here in June and put it in her hand. I say to her that I need to stay connected to her heart as I go home. It is really, really important. I still feel her now, as the tears roll down my face. . . there are some older breadcrumbs. How do you connect with your heart deeper than you have in this lifetime?

Coming home . . . again is new. In 2011, I cocooned. This time, I am transforming and expanding.

In my hot tub I let myself unwind. I float into a position that feels like I’m in a womb. I feel acceptance of this part of the journey I am about to take – softening into the unknown, now that the terror has been diffused, I softly and without resistance, flow down the birth canal. As I emerge, I feel myself say “this is going to be so cool!” The once seemingly horrible events in my life are filled with an anticipated excitement of what the resulting transformations will be. It’s going to be fantastic!

I am listening to Destiny by Zero 7. As the song plays and I feel the support of my room mates my arms drift together until they’re a foot apart. There is tension between them. I feel the handcuffs. I can’t open or close my arms. Then a voice says “soften”. My torso softens and my hands drift apart – opening. Wow! They stop at a distance and I know they have further to go. I’m looking for another feel. My inner guide says “now move into who you really are”. I have the sense of shifting to the left in my head and mind. My arms open, like wings, and I expand out more.

Out of my head and into my body

Sep19

Before I left Sedona after my second intensive treatment program, John referred me to, of all people, a male therapist in Michigan. I trusted the depth of resolution I’d had in my treatments and so I trusted John’s recommendation and set up my first appointment shortly after returning.

It was a giant step for me and one that has paid off in so many ways. Dave has been my source of constant reinforcement of the principals of healing I was just beginning to grasp. He has remained neutral and supportive, no matter what horrific or odd assortment of memories, feelings, emotions and positions in space that happened to be coming to the surface. Most importantly, he continually got me out of my head and back in my body so I could continue to soften the grip I had on the past.

A year after my first appointment, I sent Dave this email. It is my first record of writing anything down and it rightly displays the interaction I have with him. It also demonstrates what happens when a client begins to embody healing and fully take the reigns in their own treatment. Have a read . . .

Hi Dave,

I wanted to let you know that you have helped tremendously in bringing me to a new depth of healing. Your gentleness, caring and humor have been most important in bringing me to now. All my life, even before the time I remember, I have felt pushed. You have quite uniquely found the balancing place just behind me, where I can grow under my own control. This is so important that you have done this you can’t imagine – this ‘having only support’ – nothing else. Because nothing else is needed. It has helped me to find my power.

Now that I’m coming to that place with your support, I had my best self-unwinding yet the very next morning after seeing you. I was easy with myself, like you’ve coached, and softened into the place where I could unwind. This time it was not frightening. It was like I was below the frightened part and no longer freaking myself out. All the things I had been taught by you and others; all the information I had read; all the experiences of unwinding I’d had were suddenly second nature. I did not have to think – I just felt! I should also say that the other thing that got me to unwind myself was that the night before I was not feeling well. I felt very depressed and tired. I was feeling that no one else got this concept except the very few who do this work. I went to bed, slept, woke up early and started to feel the enormity of all the things that had ever happened to me, to my mom, to my sister, to my mom’s mom . . . I saw the cycle, the pattern that had unfolded to this date. It felt hopeless. Then, feeling cornered with no way out, I realized that my rational brain was creating all these thoughts. It was creating an elaborate shield to hide the truth from my intuitive and emotional selves. Then my emotional self would pitch in too and block my intuitive self. I couldn’t believe what I was realizing! So then I literally had a stern but caring conversation with my rational self. I said, “you have done an outstanding job. You kept me safe when it really counted. You kept my body still when moving would have meant pain. You kept me unemotional when crying would have escalated to injury. You focused on remembering every single little detail so that the information could be used for my benefit. You are unbelievably fantastic at what you do. You have gotten me to here in one piece. And now it’s time for you to take a rest; to move out of the way so I can heal. Let the emotional and intuitive parts do the job they’re meant to do. It’s safe now for the other parts to do their work.”

After that conversation with myself (that’s so cool that humans can do that) the unwinding was immediate. Feelings that my emotional self wanted to feel but could not at the time, came out. Movement my intuitive self wanted to make, happened. Every so often my rational self would have an aha moment and then step back again. And back and forth it went between the three parts – each sharing with the other – harmonious – cooperative – FINALLY!!

I hope that you benefit from this information Dave. I want you to know that you are a very gifted therapist and that you are helping me in a very big way.

All I can do is say, Thank You.

Patti

p.s. when self unwinding I learned I only need two things: a pillow for my head and a LOT of Kleenex 🙂

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