My osteopathic treatment process is finally addressing a neck injury I received at the age of eight when I was accidentally dropped on my head. This fall caused my neck to bend forcefully at the juncture where it meets the base of my skull on the right side. I have come to feel that this injury is at the root of most (if not all) the somatic dysfunction and resulting injuries I incurred years later, especially while dancing. (All my injuries involved the right side of my body, the side that was compressed in the fall). During a recent osteopathic treatment, however, I experienced the usual Grace whereupon I am taken beyond these dysfunctions to where dysfunction does not exist. While here, I took notice that the usual strain patterns (that often occupy my physical structure) were absent. What I "saw" was possibility and newness, and that is all. Bonnie Gintis, DO, from her book 'Engaging the Movement of Life, Exploring Health and Embodiment Through Osteopathy and Continuum', (© 2007), writes: "If we keep eliminating each recognizable motion from the filter of our consciousness, eventually we will ask the question, What else....? and there won't be an answer". This "what else" that Ms Gintis speaks of, where there are "no answers", is key, I believe, to healing. But for me, this "Grace" is short-lived, because soon enough afterward, the patterns re-emerge and with them a gradual return to stiffness and pain. Further along ihe process, this time, a brief interlude of "re-positioning" of the injury occurred, at which time I recalled all the memories of the fall. Are these stages of the treatment process? I always wonder. At any event, in an effort to illustrate how my memories returned, I will explain what happened next. One night, about four days after the treatment, I woke up in my bed and became aware of my head which was completely cocked to the side (almost 90 degrees to my neck). But for the first time, despite this extreme angle, all the surrounding tissue was completely relaxed; there wasn't the usual strain or pain in the sternum area and my ribs had shifted inward. It was as if my body completely accepted the abnormal configuration made by the impact of my fall and was no longer compensating for it (it had gained back it's original integrity). Subsequently, I remembered the last two treatments, and how they lead me “through” this configuration to the "other side", that "place of possibility". I remembered, that I felt as though I were falling through a labyrinth into a bright, open field. It was also like being released from a tight, dark, convoluted cave. Initially, the memory of my fall was vague, but as I laid in bed at 3 a.m, everything came back in detail, and my body was able to let go and settle down for the first time in fifty years. The front part of my neck and jaw (as well as my ribs, shoulder and collarbone) began to shift inward (toward my spine); the movement was slow and heavy, reminding me of a glacier sliding into a valley. As it slid "downward" and in, my head fell completely sideways but my upper body suddenly felt relieved of chronic density and displacement. Tears formed in my eye sockets as I was able to let go of the ancient grip. What a miracle. Today, I realized that, after the accident, in an effort to stabilize my body, my entire musculature became so developed as to be able to hold myself erect despite the evidently deep torsion and compression in the right side of my neck. My doctor feels that my neck was actually broken, saying, "I put the bone back into place” but I don't know the logistics of it. All I know is that after the accident, I felt a gazillion pins and needles swell through me. But before I could realize it the sensation was eclipsed by my father's reprimands (he yelled at my brother who accidentally dropped me; we used to play rough). At any rate, I recall no further physical sensations, only their lingering effects on my dance career, which weren't very good. But suffice to say, life goes on, and I managed to adapt (and even to fly on occasion). For this, I am forever grateful ---and grateful to be alive. And grateful to have my two feet firmly planted on the ground.
