One of those mornings. I wake up several times at night. A web of dreams. Woke up with my left side, from my neck to the inner left shoulder blade, tight and stuck with a searing pain. As I move, tears follow. This is different, this isn’t just a ‘I slept on a wrong angle’ kind of pain, this is ‘listen to me I’m trying to tell you something’ kind of pain.
So I listen. I lie down with my crystals on my chakras. I invite light to shine into my energy vortices one by one. The sadness shape-shifts, this isn’t something new, this is my old friend of feeling helpless and trapped. I see myself as a teenager, so full of passion, and so angry at being said no to and not having any control over my time and choices. The good thing is I am not a teenager any more, the challenging thing is this feeling is between me and my arriving to this moment fully. So the inquiry continues, right in my belly I see my cells desperately wanting to control everything. So exhausting. What if they can let all that go. So I ask, and they let the light in. A sigh of relief, my body melts. I continue to scan my body chakra by chakra, letting the energy of the crystals in, and believing that I can let go of this illusion of control, and so it is. My eased body joins my family to have some breakfast.
As I go about having breakfast, making tea and chatting with my daughter and husband, the sadness returns. Like a lost puppy, it is still trying to teach me something. The real work is right here, right at my breakfast table. It is knowing that no one did this to me, no one is to blame, it is a pattern, a condition, a conditioning, coming by to say hi. And I have no right to lash out to my child or husband or myself or anyone in my life. But I do have a responsibility to tend to this searing pain, this aching sadness.
I go back to solitude to be with it, and this time to dance with it. I choose a soothing rhythmic song. I start to move slowly, with no words, with a lot of tenderness and gentleness. I can clearly feel the start and the end of my pain, all the tightness, and with my inquiry I know that some of my deepest fears are behind it: feeling helpless, not being able to do anything I want and need to do, and losing my connection to the flow of life. My movements progress. I am not trying to understand anything. I am simply being there for this expression of life. I move, my pain moves, sometimes expanding, sometimes softening. Soon, my inner voice adds a mantra to my dance ‘Om Shanti Om’. My movements get bigger and stronger.
Suddenly I am reminded that I don’t have to carry it all by myself. I can rely on the vibration of ‘Om Shanti Om’ chanted by millions of others through millenia, I can rely on my ancestors, the invisible helpers in my DNA, and ask them to carry this fear with me, I can ask the light in the universe to give me a helping hand. My movements are not mine any more, the life and light are dancing me. I move and I am lifted at the same time.
And something magical happens: no more pain. My neck is free, my muscles no longer aching. I dance with a newly found connection to life and joy. Still chanting, releasing and allowing life to move in me, through me, with me. I hold my heart, my movements slow down, I truly feel the vibration that is carrying me through it: ‘Om Shanti Om’. I offer it all to the light, vibration, and the unique expression of life that we all are.
The strong neck and shoulder pain I woke up with disappears in the face of an honest inquiry with the help of crystals, mantra and dance. When you show up with the intention of a fully engaged presence, and a loving willingness to be with what is, and use the tools available to you, your feelings, sensations and pain open up to you and share their secrets with you. You open up to the possibility of ease, joy, freedom and lightness.
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With love and light,
Damla
