I yanked my Jaguar suitcase along on its wheels, laden with thick textbooks and grubby laundry. I pulled it into my condo suite and slapped everything on the floor or on the dining table. I was in a vile mood. I’d been away to my second level of Craniosacral Therapy and nearly starved, and froze during my five days away from home. Edmonton presently has stronger winds than Calgary and the temperature dove down daily. My turtleneck and fleece jacket weren’t cutting it. I found my teeth chattering as I went from the bus stop to the hotel the “doo” was in.
I’d traded Craniosacral / Reiki treatments daily to buy my stay. But I was getting pretty hungry from too many simple carbs and not enough fluids. I found the visit tense. D.B.’s health has gone steadily down hill since I last saw her two years ago. It was a shock. Her oxygen tube whispered its presence constantly. Her face looked strained, skin blotchy and acne peeping out of a half-century-old face. Her shoulders shrugged up as she tried to breathe her arms are nearly unable to be used. D.B.”‘s M.D. (Muscular Dystrophy) was eating away at the most creative and vital person I’d met in years. It hurt to watch.
Diane had granted some family some of her cash and was now trying to build physical strength while watching her cash flow plummet. The organic foods and reverse osmosis treated water she tried to stabilize her health with were stealing money from her daily. As a result, I was allowed some leftover cereal, (but it was good) a sandwich and a bowl of soup nightly. I was getting very hungry. Hourly staff arrivals for “night turns” were to prevent her body from developing skin breakdown. The noise woke me constantly.
The ballroom in the hotel was noisy, (partitions just section a room -not the noise!) and so dry it was electrical to touch anyone! We were also forced to turn off air circulation as it was freezing the room participants!
The seminar itself was trying – they always are. If you don’t get any regular “bodywork” I don’t think you’ll understand the next comment – you might as well skip to the next paragraph! All the participants were getting “spaced out” from intensive treatments daily. We weren’t just taking notes”?we practice the new techniques daily. Most of us go to an appointment with our body worker once every month or maybe every couple of weeks. Few of us submit to daily work this intense!
We found the instructor helpful and clear. Most of us took up time asking her questions on individual cases. “Will this move assist someone with:?” “Have you ever used this for:?” She rolled with the punches and answered us all. This set us back on our time and my usual “Sure I’ll be glad to do a Chinese stir-fry when I come there” got put off an hour or so. We were forced to do a ten-step protocol (from our first course) on the person we were working with. It ate up time. Many of us did one that night and came in early the next morning to do the other partner.
Then the intensive work began: we learned advanced CST moves for the skull and mouth work. Click! Pop! Crunch, and combinations of all of them. There were of the usual smatterings of people blubbing as memories triggered from the bodywork. We found many people commenting on changes to their bite. Sinuses rocketed open. Headaches, chronic sore shoulders and back immediately shifted and/or disappeared. It was amazing. But what the layperson does not understand is that one needs to PROCESS this information on a deep inner level. A bit like taking notes in a course. The inner mind needs to re-write the information. The mind might say, “Oh that pain is gone and is now replaced with a comfortable back:don’t send endorphins there anymore!”
So why was I so crabby getting home? Class broke up early:around 2 p.m. I had some almonds in my purse and had scarfed the world’s fastest and smallest lunch on Sunday (last day of class) only to find, again, the teacher was late to start class.
I gave quick thank you’s and goodbyes to some teaching assistants and classmates and got a lift to the Greyhound station from a new chum. I sat for 50 minutes before the next bus to Calgary and staked out my terrain in the line up. My stomach made a couple of protests in line and by the time four hours had crawled by and every cow between here and Edmonton had been seen I was ready for a meal. As soon as the bus pulled onto MacLeod Trail I booted up the cell phone and called the hubby. I found out the lettuce had gone bad along with other foods in the fridge. “I didn’t know,” my hubby whined. IRK! Ok:I had told him of the situation and asked for something nutritious with vegetables. I’d spoken to him daily so I made the assumption that there would be a heat-em-up available. Apparently not! I found 4 vegetables being slowly chopped. I stomped in slapped the purchased skull on the floor, grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge. UGH! WATER!! My brain insisted. FOOD! It continued! I threw myself on the couch and glugged.’ I came up for air and asked, “What’s for dinner?”
“This,” Larry answered.
I grabbed my purse, avoided clocking the hubby with it and went out into more cold air for a hamburger. I stomped home and discovered one problem after another. A filthy sink, tub and stained toilet, no food and no plans:mix that with my five days away and I was in no mood to handle all of this! I cursed at the idiot personal caregiver who had taken care of Larry for all this time and set to putting the place in order.
The night drew to a close with little progress, a few tears and resignation that it had been a bitterly stressful time.
The first thing the next morning I decided maybe I was still “processing” and I should take it easy. I got Larry up for work and we heard a vague sound of a walkie-talkie screech. Then pounding on doors. Then our door. I asked Larry to get it as I wasn’t dressed yet. We were informed there was a major gas leak in the construction site butt up to our building and to vacate the building immediately. ARGH!
I grabbed pants, socks, the garbage, my purse and found the answer to the question, “How do I know what gas smells like?”
Grunt! Process the five days at Starbucks and talk to the husband’s caregiver later! I’m gonna hobble home and take a nap!
Laura Seymour first published herself, at age 8. She has since gone on to publish a cookbook for the medical condition of Candida. She is working toward her B.A. (Psyc).
For further information, please contact ausu@ausu.org, or call 1-800-788-9041, ext. 3413.
