Sometimes my clients are working with stuff that won’t budge despite all their efforts- therapies both physical and emotional, diet changes, lifestyle tweaks… everything helps a little but the sticky stuff is really stuck.
Many years ago I was stuck in just such a cycle and a trusted colleague gave me a brochure for a shaman she knew. I rolled my eyes and threw it into a stack of stuff and kept trying with the therapy, the massage, the Rolfing, the acupuncture, and still, I was waking every night in pain. I got fairly desperate. I gave the shaman a call.
He could tell that I was reluctant/skeptical and he was kind about it, encouraging me to go ahead and allow myself to show up for the work since I had already gotten myself there and paid for it. He had a point, so I went with it, and we did some soul retrieval work together around a traumatic incident that had occurred a few years prior. I remember not knowing quite what to make of it, but thinking as I left about how spirit doesn’t often factor into health care in our modern world. From a pragmatic and less woo-woo standpoint, he had made me confront something I had been avoiding and had given me at least a metaphor to help me release it. And my pain went away, I began sleeping through the night again.
Since then I have seen a few other practitioners who I would generally fit into a “spirit” category- intuitive healers, a medium, shamanistic healers. Sometimes the work they do would feel weird to that earlier version of me, but I have surrendered at least some of the skepticism (when working with a vetted practitioner) and can allow myself to receive what they offer. Many times what they offer is help discerning the work I have to do myself, and I then have to go and do it. I would credit one such healer with basically giving me a list of beliefs that I had to surrender and some possible techniques that might help me do that. That list didn’t include but eventually led to the Somatic Experiencing work that I now practice.
I want to put this out there as a real and valuable tool for you. Mind/Body/Spirit is not just a catchphrase. I can usually help you with your body. Check my resources page for folks who can help you with your spirit.