* It’s long, I know, but I’m baring my soul here people. Feel free to print it out to save you from screen-staring.

Flash back about thirteen years ago and you’d find me pretty beat down physically. I had a jaw that was completely locked shut and chronic pain in my spine and head that was severe enough that I spent some days focusing simply on getting out of bed. Ugh, I still remember the recurring nightmare that someone had bolted a thick, heavy, steel helmet into my skull and I was fruitlessly trying to find a way to pry it off, unable to even lift my head from the weight and pain of it. These were not my brightest hours.

All this pain and body yuckiness had been (most likely) caused by a birth injury, so I had grown up with some form of chronic pain and seizures since childhood. As a child all the doctors I went to simply scratched their heads, finding it hard to believe that a child could have chronic pain. “Growing pains” they’d say. Seizures they could believe and I was endlessly tested and medicated, but the pain didn’t factor in for them. My family and I didn’t know that there was anywhere to turn other than conventional medicine, so there were a lot of years spent with head scratching MDs.

I don’t mean to turn this into a mythical story- I wasn’t born with a debilitating disease that I had to struggle with. Many are, and I don’t mean to boo hoo my situation into something bigger than it was. I was simply born with a glitch.

Because this glitch had always been with me, it took me until I was this broken, at age twenty-two, to realize that not everyone was feeling the way I was. My pain wasn’t normal. Something was off.

I went the only route I knew how to take and found a doctor who specialized in Temporal Mandibular Joint Dysfunction. He was a part of a new clinic out of Tufts Dental Hospital in Boston that was treating severe TMJ without surgery.

Meeting Dr. Murad Padamsee changed my life (and you thought I’d be bashing the docs… nah, they’re lifesavers too). He changed my life not only because he helped me to get my jaw open again- and without sharp pointy instruments and a titanium jaw replacement, yay!- but also because he realized that complete healing has to take into consideration the whole patient.

Because my pain wasn’t improving, he sent me off on a quest to find some good bodywork (other than a vague idea about massage, I didn’t really know what he meant) and meditation classes. That he saw the whole of me, and sent me off to find the things that would help, was profound.

I contacted Joe Wheatley, a Rolfing practitioner, feeling nervous and seriously fatalistic. I had spent more than a year now traveling an hour each way from Providence to Boston to see specialists three to four days per week, and this was on top of college and a part time job. I was ridiculously exhausted and didn’t have it in me to undertake a new quest. I wanted to get better. Now.

I remember telling Joe on the phone that I was truly at the end of my rope and that if he didn’t think he could help me that he really should just let me know so that I could find someone who could. Joe and I are friends now, so I can tell you that the man loves a challenge. He just told me to come on in for one session, and that if I didn’t feel any result at all, he wouldn’t take money from me. That felt like a pretty solid deal, so off I went into the wilderness of Rhode Island for my very first Rolfing session.

After that session I not only paid Joe, but I felt quite sure that if he had required that I sign over my first born child in order to could continue the work, I would have (fortunately no such deal was struck- my firstborn is pretty dang cute).

I could turn my head to the right for the first time in years and I felt my pain reduce by an astonishing degree with just that one session. Joe and this magical Rolfing stuff had found a way to take the steel helmet off, which was pretty freaking euphoric for me.

I knew that day that I could be free and the words that my mind kept screaming to me as I drove home were, “Why the hell didn’t I know this existed before!!” A lifetime spent trying to ignore the pain when there was help for me all along seemed ridiculous. There’s nothing that pisses me off more than needless suffering. It’s, well, needless.

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in my local yoga studio, Fresh Yoga, in their wide-open and gorgeously light filled space. I was one of about twenty students who had shown up for a workshop on how Alexander Technique can be incorporated into one’s yoga practice.

I sat on my mat and watched Rachel, my Alexander teacher, work with the first student in front of the class. As she worked I watched the student light up and have that series of a-has that we can all have when we find a way to be more happily inhabiting our bodies. She got giddy and looked like she might cry for joy. I know this moment well.

As I watched this woman light up a wave of extreme gratitude washed through me. It was actually kind of shocking in how intense it was. It was like this physical warmth that ran right through me and said loudly (yes, I’m hearing voices now), “Thank you, thank you, thank you for letting me serve this community.”

In many ways, that “why the hell didn’t I know this existed before!!” voice has never gone away. I want more people to have that giddy, cry for joy moment that this student was having in the Alexander workshop and that I had after my first Rolfing session (and many times since). To steal a favorite Alan Keightley quote from my friend Chris Guillebeau, “Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.”

I became a Rolfing practitioner nine years ago because I wanted to contribute to the number of a-ha moments going around. In recent years, I decided that if I can help more wellness providers to give more people that moment- then the word will spread in a much bigger way and there will be less of the maddening needless suffering.

That decision led me here, to the creation of The Well Practice.

So this Thanksgiving I’m thankful for a birth injury, chronic pain, all the people and work that led me out of it and into a whole new world.

And mostly thank you to all of you. Thanks for doing the work that you do and spreading more a-has and healing goodness around. It’s needed. Keep it up.

What are you feeling grateful for as we roll into Thanksgiving?

Tags: Alexander Technique, gratitude, holistic healthcare, Rolfing, TMJ

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 4:16 pm and is filed under For When You Feel Like You Can't Keep On Keeping On. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.