the Living Matrix
Bones carry the weight of the world, and they are anything but hard and dry as we are taught from childhood to believe.
Bones are crystallized minerals flowing with information and life.
Flowing. By their nature bones are not dry; bones are spongy and alive! Just beneath the protective outer surface of compact bone, gelatinous matrices of living information from all tissue layers coalesce. Bones have lymph channels, blood cells and vessels, and marrow harboring stem cells. Bones even have nerves; and nerves transmit impulses instantly through fluids. Bones are absolutely foundational to a strong body structure; “having a leg to stand on” in life is a very literal thing.
When bones are injured they undergo shock, contraction, and compressive force. Bones even twist and distort under pressure, and can bones reshape for better or worse.
In any injury, the sympathetic nervous system spins into overdrive (fight or flight). Microcirculation and other vital life processes shut down.
Communication, connection, and healing within body tissue stops during sympathetic hyper-arousal - fight or flight - and with time the body’s compensatory tension, limitations, and pains become chronic.
The body speaks bio-energetically and bio-chemically in signals and impressions, and is forgiving, but direct and honest in what it says.
This is especially true when the fight or flight hyper-arousal alarm bell is triggered. Survival is no laughing matter, and the brain is wired to read the environment to preserve its life. As a manual therapist, i am graced and grateful that bones and bodies trust my intention, reverence, education, and touch enough to relax their castle gates and guide us to the source…
Love restores us to a space of trust where body tissues can finally relax, start to unravel, and let go. i humbly honor the gift of that trust and vulnerability in my clients’ bodies, and the fluid wisdom of their bones. i will always listen with my heart first.
Cellular Fear: “Am i Safe?”
When i scanned her, the right leg and same-side pelvis were loudly telegraphing what we call “cellular fear”.
It’s like this: after small animals escape a predator, they shake off the fear of the chase and go on with their day; but we do not. We staunchly block the trauma, carry on, and try to forget.
But the body never forgets, at least not til somebody hears its scream.
Cellular fear is the shaking that gets trapped in the nervous system and held there, unconsciously governing how we feel, respond and behave. It pushes my hands away, until we become friends.
To my hands, cellular fear is a palpable boundary in my client’s magnetic field that pushes me away until it feels safe. Cellular fear is protective. i must negotiate at this boundary and wait until granted clearance to approach, which only happens in a space of trust.
Sometimes i must start the appointment standing across the room…
and if i just keep opening all the ears in my heart and hands, i may enter the sacred palace of the wounded soul.
The Story in Her Bones
…the twist and trembling in her right sacrum and leg…the scar tissue i feel inside…her sensation of “being hungry” when i touch that spot…the image of her angry impatient dad…of being three years old…then the memory emerged >>>
She got whacked across the sacrum by a swing when she was two years old; i both sensed and felt the impact, the jarring chaos, and the way her tiny body was thrust and thrown. The right leg seemed to pull forcefully out from the pelvis as if it were running away, dragging the hips along…, the sacrum shook madly, shockwaves flashed through my hands…the right leg running the electricity of escape.
…then suddenly she’s a little girl with an angry dad, and when the swing walloped her, nobody was there to see her fly and fall flat - on her sweet little face.
When dad came, he yanked her up by the arm, all but dismembering her injured little bones with the sheer force of his tug; and her flat little swollen face and nose didn’t seem to matter at all.
In that session we worked the structure, first calming then enlivening the right femur (thigh) bone, supporting and guiding the hips to float fluidly to central alignment, giving the nervous system time to reorganize with new connections into every single cell. Thus came the cascade of release and change, as her bones migrated and settled back into place.
Gravity ceases to be a burden when we are aligned and open through the core; and then not just the bones but all parts speak life into the flow.
But alignment is not purely mechanical, and as long as we expect to just have a joint adjusted or swallow a pill, we can’t find lasting resolution…because every cell has a heart and soul and voice and longing to connect…into the plasma of the universe…and be held and loved simply for who they are.
And this happens in the interstitial fluids, the extracellular matrix, the primordial ocean in which our nervous systems float…the living matrix where the secrets of the universe lie. My teacher Dr Chikly has shown me this.
And yes, we can hear, feel, and touch this matrix - follow it to any part of the body or brain - and help it heal - by listening with our hearts to the story in our bones.