What's Energy Got to Do with It?

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are." Joseph Campbell

My dive into Wellness started with Illness.

It started with nightmares. Repeatedly I dreamt that I was lying on the kitchen floor at night, with my toddler lying on my chest, weeping because my children were going to have to grow up without a mother.

I finally made an appointment to see a doctor, and indeed, I had a condition that was life-threatening. After enduring painful treatments that I never once doubted would work, my world melted the day I was told that the illness had deepened.

I consulted a practitioner at Women to Women, (a holistic healthcare practice in Maine founded by physician and author, Christiane Northrup, M.D.). She sat quietly after her follow-up exam, then said, "I think that this is energy." I blinked, wondering what she meant. "Have you heard of chakras and auras?"

"Yes," I said tentatively, "Kind of." I held my breath - I didn't want to hear any more.

"There's someone who works with several of our clients. She's a former nurse. She works with the energy field and it is my sense that the disturbance is there."

The "energy field"?! What would my husband say?! And how can I pay for this? I scheduled an appointment anyway and shook my head as I drove the hour to her office. I remember the sun shining behind her as she came out to greet me, and the comfort of her face.

Her questions intrigued me - no one had asked me such things before. When she began the energy session, although I wasn't familiar with what she was doing, my body kept relaxing - I even fell asleep. Near the end, as she held her hands on my my low belly - one hand on top and one underneath - I felt a warmth begin to pool. I saw it at the same time - a red energy began to spiral at my womb, and then suddenly a pain opened up as if a muscle deep inside, that had been squeezed shut for a long, long time, had suddenly opened.

I gasped with pain and the practitioner said that if I could be with it just a little bit more, it would pass. Tears ran silently from my eyes to my ears, and then it eased. I watched the red energy drain through her bottom hand into the air beneath, and then it was done.

How could I describe to my husband what just happened? Pain I didn't even know I had, drained from the area where the illness was... I had to go back. Something that had been closed was now open. I felt free... I felt exuberant! Something very important was happening! Changing...

My body wasn't failing me - it was protecting me. It had been trying to find a way to reach me. We became partners that day - my body and me. A door had opened, one I'd never anticipated.

I went through it. And kept going.

“We live either by an inner faith or are guided by outer circumstances.

Which is our path and on what do we depend as our guiding star?”

Dr. Randolph Stone, Health Building, p.110