Deep Shit

It’s Sunday night, and I’m processing dark yin energy on the left side of my body. It feels like a cold, dark, wet, moldy growth has encapsulated my left scapula. The capsule is solid, and about the size of a well-fed chihuahua, It has long dark paws that reach up and squeeze the back of my neck. Every few hours, I pull on my left earlobe, and am treated to a “pop!”  this releases some tension, and reminds me that my stuff is a’movin!  Hallelujah!  This is not unusual, I’m always processing some piece of myself. I just happen to be hyper-aware of the exorcism of past emotional stains that are slowly working their way out of my body and psyche,  because I just had a DEHP ( Developed Expression of Human Potential ) session with Josette. We spent two hours digging into my energy body, unearthing some heavy shit, balancing and opening, allowing the disowned pieces to float up into my awareness, giving me the opportunity to feel and release.  This was 5 days ago. Josette says this could go on for a couple of months, it’s that big.

I realize this must sound nutty to most, because, what the hell am I talking about?

Trauma and healing. I’m talking about the unprocessed emotions that are stored in my body. Things that happened that I wasn’t ready to deal with, stuff way too scary and far out for a child to metabolize. I popped up into my head and rationalized my way to sort-of -ok. I was simply surving, and still about half dead, not really sure what people meant when they said they were, “happy.”  I just felt numb, and maybe on a good day, angry.  If I told you that I was taking anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and anti-anxiety medications, you’d get that, right? Just another way to deal with the waves of free floating pain and anxiety. Or if I was an alcoholic, drug addict, or if I used sex or relationships, TV, or shopping to knumb myself out, I might be looked at as a loser,  but mostly normal, right?

I get DEHP sessions.

I did the drugs, antidepressants and marijuana, I did the alcohol and the relationships. Shopping too. Okay, maybe I did TV. I’m ashamed, but I did lots of TV. I’m still healing from those images, but , eventually, ( I  believe it all started to change when I began cracking myself open with yoga about 14 years ago) the junk stopped working. I started to feel, and now I just can’t stop. I may be addicted to it. If I start to numb out, that’s a pretty good indictation that I’m out of alignment with myself, I know it’s time to stop , drop, sit down, and shut up!

I have all sorts of tools that I employ for my healing. Yoga has become maintenance, like brushing my teeth. Now that I think about it, all this jazz is about maintaining some semblance of peace and stability while I’m thrown around by the energy that insists on moving through me at varying degrees of  speed and intensity.  It’s normal around these parts, my parts, to talk about integration of the disowned pieces of oneself. The work I do on a daily basis to keep myself from going stark raving mad, from shoving a needle into my arm, or marrying some rich sexy dude,  just so I can take a vacation from me, has a lingo.

So my yin is moving, y’all. And with it, there are tears, and fear, and memories, and what one might expect when relatives come for the holidays, and they start poking at you, and it brings up “what happened”, and maybe you’re on your period, you get it, right? The shit can be overwhelming, but with the help of Josette, and all the tools I’ve been collecting through the years, it’s manageable, even welcomed.

My dear friend, sister, spiritual facilitator, guru, shaman, whatever you wanna call her,  has been working with me and all my stuff for as long as I’ve been practing yoga. Josette and the yoga came as a set, she was my first formal yoga teacher. Just a few years older than me, she is galaxies ahead of me in her capacity to love unconditionally, and to always see and support the highest potential in everyone. I have healed through piles and piles of pain, and while I was the one doing the work, without her love, support, vision,  compassion, and uncanny perception, I would either be dead, married to an asshole, or addicted to something much more dastardly than my own growth and healing.

Josette says I let go of some of my anger on Tuesday.  I saw it in my session as a hot fire ball busting out of the floor in a closet where it had been locked away since I was a small child,  I let go after I saw myself at a table with my parents sitting across from me. I reached under the table, pulled out a rifle, and shot them both between the eyes, then I laughed. Josette says my anger was atomic-all anger is atomic. Massive energy stored in tiny spaces, the hot little ball in the closet. For those of you who know me, I’ve been kind of pissed off. I’m not mean, I’m just edgy. Underneath the anger is this stuff that is revealing itself to me now. Deeply personal,  profoundly painful and also comforting. Comforting because I see that I’ve been hiding parts of myself, it’s a gift. Like coming home to myself. I’ll share this: I now know that I’ve been afraid to even get a dog ( something I’ve been wanting for a long time…)  because I couldn’t deal with one more loss. I thought it was about something else, but now I realize there has been too much loss in too little time. There hasn’t been time to feel it all, to process it all, until now, my adulthood.

No wonder I’m still single and childless. I’m my own child, my own lover. I have to give all of this to myself, what I never received as a child, I must give to myself. I’m becoming more vulnerable and whole. I’m shedding skin, becoming softer….

This stuff is hard to talk about. It’s all very mystical, and still quite practical. We are injured, and if we don’t allow ourselves the time and space to heal, the wound festers, and we look outside of ourselves for the pain relief. This relief can come in all sorts of unsavory packages and addiction is one.

The only way to heal ourselves is to feel our pain. I’m not saying it goes away, but it can become manageable, and by feeling the pain, we make space for other emotions, like joy. Happiness? I get it now. I feel it all the time. And I feel grief and anger too, all with the same intensity. It’s deep shit.

For anyone interested in a groovy life changing shamanic journey, ( J doesn’t call it this, but I do…) go to www.godehp.com, http://www.youtube.com/user/godehp/feed?filter=2 to schedule an appointment and learn more.

I’d rather go deep….. than just about anywhere.