Acupuncture has different results for me each time I am "stuck." Sometimes I am just pleasantly relaxed during it, sometimes I fall asleep, and other times I have a crazy out of body sensation. The latter is my favorite. It feels like all the energy of who I am rises slightly above and outside of me. It swirls around in a little heavier than mist river of color that I watch as if I'm not looking through my own eyes. The only way I have come up with to explain this sensation is to describe it as a "reorganization" of the energy in me.
I am a very logical person and I like to think there is a scientific explanation for that experience. I mean, acupuncture is meant to help move energy through your body properly. Well, a basic "what does acupuncture do" is usually answered by me this way: We are made up of energy, molecules of moving energy. Actually, any "solid" object is just an accumulation of attracted particles of energy that form a "whole." Acupuncture works to tap into channels of energy in your body, unblocking where they are "stuck" and helping make sure they move where they should and how they should. To me it's very logical and scientific. Even the "out of body experience" part is pretty logical to me. We are energy and we are not actually discrete like we appear. Everything around us is also moving energy. We interact with it. Our energy, during acupuncture, is interacting more, or we are more aware of it's interaction, with the energy around us.
That said, during these fabulous sessions where I feel like the energy in my body is doing a little river dance above me, sometimes I have images that come to me. That happened this last time and I can't get those images, or don't want to get those images, out of my head. That's what I've been thinking about the last few mornings when I wake up.
It hasn't really happened recently, but I used to have a single image that would come to me when I was in chivasana in yoga. My relaxation image was me beneath a large oak-like tree. There was a light rain all around me but not on me. The tree I was beneath was on a very small, warm island of grass surrounded by cool, dark-blue water that rippled outward. Everything around me was tinged a pale-blue, calm.
In my last acupuncture treatment, I could see the image of the tree before me, but I was no longer beneath the tree. I was in a wooden boat on the water and a mist kept blocking my view of the tree. When I tried to see through the mist to where I was going, it became thicker. I thought about my most recent philosophy of dealing with pain. When I try to deal with physical pain by tensing in order to somehow block it, it just doesn't go away. If I accept the pain, really embrace the pain and allow myself to fully experience the depth of it, it can dissolve away. I thought about this in relationship to the mist and I accepted the mist. I accepted that I didn't know where I was going or if I was going to get back to the tree. When I did this, the mist would clear.
Suddenly I was on the island, but not directly beneath the tree. The tree was now something like a maple crossed with a willow and all made of light. Amber, rust, rich red, and sunbright leaves of light floated around me. I was this light, but the long sweeping branches of the tree provided protection, enclosed me.
Then I saw myself. It was me as a girl, maybe six or so. I was tan, smiling, wearing jean shorts. My child self waved to me. I waved back and couldn't help but also smile. She had a presence about her that said, I'm always here.
I have been wondering what, when I work out all my grief in therapy or anxiety in massage, I will fill the emptiness back up with? I have wondered what I will replace the melancholy with and who I will be if I am not broody and dark sometimes? The child me, her smile and wave, her ease of presence, reassured me I am just making room for something that is already in me.
