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Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

~ Recovery from PTSD & depression + yoga, silliness & poetry…

Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

Tag Archives: unstuck

Kick-ass kinesiology ftw

11 Thursday Nov 2010

Posted by Svasti in Health & healing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

affirmations, Anger, bush flower essences, cheated, confession, crystals, finger-in-the-pie, Forgiveness, giggles, Kali, Kinesiology, lost years, muscle testing, rape, Shiva, spring clean, tuning forks, unstuck, Zombie

So here’s a confession for you, although not a particularly juicy one: I have no freakin’ idea how kinesiology works. I just know that it does.

Perhaps it functions as a channel to communicate directly with the body, or the higher self, our guides or even the universe. Or perhaps all of those things are really just one and the same and it doesn’t matter what you think you’re communicating with. What matters is that it gets to the heart of things. The truth. The stuff that needs to be heard and dealt with – kinesiology connects with all of that beautifully. Intuitively.

Also, by way of a secondary confession: I giggled heartily throughout of Monday’s kinesiology session, tears seeping from the corners of my eyes! I giggled at myself and at the very, ummm… finger-in-the-pie spot-on-ness of stuff that was coming up. I’m pretty sure I didn’t become hysterical in my laughter (right, Kerry?), but it was probably close.

I knew, totally KNEW without a doubt, there was more to do in my inner world. More to clear out. More to resolve. Because I want to become as functional a human being as I possibly can. I have no idea how much work there is to do still – and of course, that’s not counting any gunk I’d accumulated before the last five years. But hey, if I can even spring clean those last five years from my body, heart and mind then I’ll be an extremely happy lady…

My very first encounter with kinesiology was years back, when I worked for a chiropractor. She’d use it in practical ways to assist her chiropractic treatments, but then she also once used it to help me clear out a really bad dream (that was, if you like, related to a past life). And yep, that’s a story I haven’t written here.

I had a little more kinesiology several years after that to combat yet another traumatic dream memory – but that one was related to experiences from this life time.

Then there was a little kinesiology about four months after I was assaulted – still living in a daze, still thinking that I could wait out all of the nightmarish things that made life so unbearable… The treatments I had at that time, however, were about just getting me to a somewhat functional state. The months preceding that, I was little more than a zombie. Floating through my days, and trying not to feel. Trying to ignore the photo negative imprint of his eyes seared onto my retinas… trying to sleep my days away as obliviously as I could. Wishing for all the world that I’d just stop existing.

My kinesiologist at that point related her own horror story: being raped by someone who’d become infatuated with her. Raped at knife point, over and over. I remember being amazed that she could speak so calmly about it. It’s only been in the last year that I’ve been able to talk about my own experiences without completely losing my shit.

It was through the lovely Nadine that I learned of Kerry. I went to Kerry and Nadine’s first Unstuck workshop (which was awesome, by the way) and through the synchronicity of these experiences, I knew I’d end up going to see Kerry at some stage. I just wasn’t sure when.

Well, the ‘when‘ is right now. So turn up the heat, baby!

Monday night included much head nodding, many ‘doh’ moments, and the aforementioned hilarity. Kerry would do her thing with the muscle testing and speak words that couldn’t have been more spot on if she’d been inside my head. Lots of my ‘stuff’ was demanding to be heard and in no uncertain terms. Very blunt, it was.

We’d talked about what I wanted to do with these sessions, and Kerry wrote a series of affirmations for us to work with. I think the list went something like this:

  • I trust myself
  • I trust my decisions
  • I trust that I’m headed in the right direction
  • I find my perfect weight
  • I forgive myself
  • I can forgive the past

Uhhh… say WHAT?

I. Can. Forgive. The. Past?!?!?!?!

Ermmm, well not really, actually. Not right now.

I could barely get the words out of my mouth when Kerry asked me to say them. And right then I wasn’t laughing any more. In fact I was choking a little, the way I used to in therapy when working on something really difficult.

Oh. Apparently, forgiving the past wasn’t okay with me. And perhaps for the first time, I explained it out loud and in fully formed sentences…

I feel that in some really important ways, the last five years were stolen. Wasted. Despite what I’ve learned and how much I’ve grown and had to come to terms with myself, there’s a part of me that would trade ALL of that to get those years back. To be as fit and healthy as I was then. To still possess the same level of happiness and confidence. To have been in a position to date and/or be in a relationship. To have possibly met someone I wanted to have kids with.

That last one is HUGE. I’ve been grieving for those lost years.

And I love kids, really, really, really. I wanted and STILL want the opportunity to be a mother. Like a lot of women, and I know I’m far from alone in that. I’m thirty-eight, and in December I’ll be thirty-nine. While I know that some women are fortunate enough to meet their partner and have babies at this age and later, I feel… good god but I feel so ANGRY and CHEATED out of those years! Prime years, where the chances of me being able to get pregnant were better than they are now. Better than they’ll ever be again.

Those years are gone and I can not get them back. There’s nothing I can do about it. And the person I’m angry at of course, is me. Kali and Shiva help me!

And so we worked those affirmations, and a whole bunch of other stuff I probably can’t remember correctly. In addition to muscle testing, kinesiology uses some awesome tools – like bush flower essences, tuning forks, crystals (apparently I need to acquire a blue lace agate) and prayer cards (cheeky things!). And there’s a bunch of stuff associated with the results of whatever comes up and those words as I mentioned were cutting right through. No messing about!

But we weren’t done yet. There was another message for me – seems I’m not doing enough to satisfy my creativity. Apparently the blogging and the yoga teaching are good, but my body/higher self/guides/the universe wants more. Wants me to write more!

Say what?!!

Which is, y’know, terrifying. I like my little blog here, and the idea of drawing more attention to myself by getting stuff published makes my mind turn to mush. In fact, I don’t have the faintest idea how I’d go about getting published! Or what I’d write or for what sort of publications.

Kerry did suggest perhaps writing more about what I know – perhaps stuff that would’ve been helpful to me five years ago if I’d come across it… and that’s a great idea because back then, it wasn’t easy to find support groups or even websites that were specific to people in my shoes.

For now, I’m just putting it out there that I plan to make inquiries, see what I can find out and perhaps even plan a few pieces. Which still sounds scary but actually, somewhat manageable.

So Monday was AMAZING (and that’s not even counting the two calls I had about upcoming yoga teaching work!). We shifted a lot of energy and made a good start on the spring cleaning. Even if I looked and felt a little fried when we were done!

There’s more to do though, but that’s for next month…

~Svasti

P.S. ftw = for the win

-37.814251 144.963169

Bit of an eclipse, sans vampires

15 Thursday Jul 2010

Posted by Svasti in Health & healing, Yoga

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

acupressure points, banana bread, Broken heart, eclipse, energetic patterns, evil frickin’ genius, expectation of further injury, foxhole, Hanuman, Healing, heart meridian, Kinesiology, meridians, solar eclipse, unstuck, vampires, Yoga

Last Sunday (11th July) the world experienced a total solar eclipse – and here’s a Vedic perspective on such things, if you’re interested.

An eclipse is a very interesting time – the earth being bathed shadows when there’s normally full daylight (even if we aren’t in the right geographic location to see it personally). Energetically, it’s a bit of a turnaround from our normal experience of the world. For example, consider how some plants and flowers close up at night, or how jetlag impacts us (different time zones and exposure to light when our body isn’t expecting it).

So I tend to interpret an eclipse as a bit of a pregnant pause and perhaps a resetting of certain energetic patterns in the world.

And in this sandhi, this time of change, I went back for my second week of yoga teaching, hoping that at least some of the people who called during the week would show up. They did!

Well, two of them did, anyway. There were meant to be teenage boys joining in, but they had that “yoga, yeah right!” look on their faces. So their social worker left a sixteen year old girl in my care while she and the boys did something else. The other lady was possibly in her 50’s and hadn’t done any yoga for around ten years.

It was so much fun! I’d arrived early to set things up (lighting some incense because the room – while bright and spacious – is a bit musty, music and getting my notes ready), but my students turned up early, too.

Teehee! I have students! 😀

So I didn’t have time to get nervous and we started with a bunch of questions – what’s yoga, what is it used for etc. I was a little surprised that even though I’d written a fairly short class plan, we didn’t get through it all. There was a lot of stopping to demonstrate things, and talk through frustrations (I’m 16; I should be more flexible than this!). I taught them how to enunciate “Aum” properly, the KYM-style breathing, some asana and we finished with a little meditation. The hour just flew by! Hopefully they are both coming back next week, and I’ve had two more calls from people wanting to come this week. So yay!

Right after that I cycled straight home as fast as I could, and caught a lift to the city with a friend who was also attending Nadine and Kerry’s yoga and kinesiology workshop. WHOOP-WHOOP!

The purpose of the workshop was to help us all get “unstuck”. Energetically, emotionally, physically – whatever we needed.

Given the imminence of the eclipse, I have to say nice work with the timing, ladies!

Nadine and Kerry opened by sharing stories, which I think is a lovely way to ease people into the vibe that’s being created. They spoke of the preparation for the workshop, their own stories of coming to yoga and kinesiology and some of the emotional/mental health issues they’d each faced.

It was a brilliant way to oh-so-gently say: Just like you, we’ve had (and sometimes still have) stuff that keeps us stuck. And it can and does get better!

Message received loud and clear, chicas!

Earlier in the week, we were asked to complete a survey focusing on the areas in our life where we feel stuck. As a follow up once we got started, we were asked to draw our “stuck”.

Then we got into the yoga portion of the day, led by Nadine. Some standing poses and sun salutations (creating heat and energy in a little room packed with yoginis!). Next, some more specific asana held for longer periods of time, specific to various meridians within the body that help us access our fears, frustrations, anger, implementing the plans of our heart (I LOVE that!), self-acceptance and love.

During this, I realised that my ongoing-nagging-refusing-to-get-better shoulder injury is tied into the heart meridian that runs out along both arms. Left side of the body is the feminine, right?

My broken heart and I have been working together for a while now, trying to plug all the gaps and heal every last drop of the pain…

BUT what I’ve suddenly realised just as I’m sitting here right now, is that there’s still a part of me that resists complete healing. Although I want to be free of this broken-ness, there’s a vocal minority somewhere in my body that says:

No! Don’t completely heal! We don’t want to go back to that really bad place again!! Right here, well, it’s manageable. So don’t go rocking the boat, okay?

Oh! So there’s an expectation of further injury. And lower than low expectations for any sort of lasting romantic happiness. Oh.

I guess it makes sense then, to create a blockage along the heart meridian in the form of a cycling accident. I mean, that’s one sure way to keep things nicely as-is.

[Excuse me while I take a moment to process this and let the tears pass]

…The same thing, I think, goes for my body’s refusal to lose weight. I mean, I do yoga, I swim, I cycle. I’m mostly a healthy eater. Regardless, my body is holding on to some of its external protection. And so I feel unattractive, which is just another way to stay safe from men being interested in me. That vocal minority of mine is an evil frickin’ genius!

Okay… let’s get back to describing the workshop now…

After a short break, Kerry took the reins for the kinesiology part. This involved holding certain acupressure points for each of the meridians we’d just accessed (kidney, liver, gall bladder, heart), and helping us tune into our own energetic states and blockages.

Before we moved on from holding one acupressure point to the next, Kerry asked us to repeat some affirmations. Some of those were harder to swallow than others (i.e. “I deserve to love my life”, “I forgive myself”, “I accept myself”, “I know I am enough”). Hmmm…

By the end of the workshop I felt very relaxed and quiet. My friend told me that “my face looked really open”. I have no idea what that means, but hey! All I said to her was that I needed to go home and write (duh!!).

After thanking Nadine and Kerry for a wonderful afternoon, my friend and I left. She was going out, but I was heading back to my warm and cozy foxhole.

That night I just wanted to sleep, and the same with the next night.

I knew that whatever was going on with me as a result of the workshop hadn’t yet surfaced. And although I started this post on Monday, I haven’t really looked at it for the last couple of days. Guess I needed more time to marinate!

Little did I realise that it was in writing about the workshop that the full realisations would come. And here they are. Probably with more to come.

So I’m just going to… ummm… go and make some more tea. Eat some (freshly made) banana bread and be a little quiet for a while.

~Svasti

-37.814251 144.963169

Getting unstuck (hopefully)

10 Saturday Jul 2010

Posted by Svasti in Health & healing, Yoga

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Kinesiology, melted plastic, Stuck, unstuck, unstuckness, workshop, Yoga

Got a full schedule today. Heck, the whole weekend is a bit of a full schedule, but anyways…

After teaching my class at noon (fingers crossed the people who called actually show up!!), I’m heading off to this:

It’s so exciting! Nadine and Kerry’s workshop combines yoga and kinesiology with an emphasis on getting ‘unstuck’. Just like the title says!

I’ve got a lot of time for kinesiology (and of course, yoga!), because at the very beginning of trying to deal with PTSD, it was exceedingly helpful for me.

You can read about the slightly round-about way that I ended up seeing a kinesiologist right here. Funnily enough, I haven’t written about the treatments I had at the time – I think that part of my story is a little too compressed still. Even now. Kind of like trying to evaluate a piece of melted plastic where the former shape has collapsed into something indistinguishable.

Anyway, kinesiology is a very, VERY cool technique for helping shift energetic/emotional states, and I strongly suspect that at the time it was one of the things – no exaggeration – that saved my life.

Combine that with some yoga as led the fabulous Nadine, and I’m expecting today to be very powerful!

And the timing is awesome. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m feeling a little stuck  right now. Okay, A LOT stuck. I’ve been hanging out for this, and now it’s happening today. HOORAY!

The rest of this post contains bits and pieces of a comment I left on Nadine’s blog as well as her reply, which all kinda relates to unstuckness…

This is part of what I wrote:

…the braver we all are, and the more we share about our fears and bravery, the better it is for everyone in the long term. Here you are, doing your pioneering work of bravery and courage and hoping. And that does inspire others, including me!

Seems we’re all carrying these packages of loss and sadness and anger around and unless we learn to unpack them and deal with them effectively, it doesn’t matter how old we get, we’ll always be wishing life was different than it is.

And what I want is a life where I’m supremely happy to be wherever I am at all times…

Nadine’s reply comment was:

I got a bit teary when I read this! Because that is EXACTLY what the workshop is about. Finding a gentle way into the fun and pleasure of life just as it is. Now.

And I’m with you. I’m totally hanging out for the workshop too. Because all this stuff?

It’s coming up because it wants to be cleared.

And I sincerely hope (please-please-please-please) that she’s right!

Here’s to a more successful yoga teaching expedition today, AND to getting a little freer and happier!

Yep, gotta get some flow back in my life, stat!

And I recommend that you make sure you’re getting some flow happening, too. 🙂

~Svasti

-37.814251 144.963169
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