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It has been one hell of a ride since mid-August, when I sustained an auditory injury.  There have been so many stories I have wanted to write about, but I have been in survival mode and have not been able to, or shall I say have chosen not to, prioritize blogging.

Suffice it to say that things have been challenging in every category — physically, emotionally, financially, socially, you name it.  It’s been tough.  Tonight, in fact, I was feeling nearly paralyzed by fear about my current financial situation.  So here’s what I did: 

I stopped trying to do anything about it.  I took a scalding hot bath with Epsom salts.  Then I lay on my bed, in the dark, and ticked off things for which I am grateful — counting on my fingers.  By the time I got to the first round on my second hand, I was already feeling significantly more relaxed, as well as happy.

I got to 30 gratitudes and only stopped so that I could take another dip in the tub.  Then I kept going.  In fact, I can keep on going.  I have such abundance in my life.  Which puts it all in perspective.  And once I achieved that sense of calm and perspective, I felt a burst of energy to roll up my sleeves and get down to business.

But first I’m going to dance.  Because with all this stress, I keep pushing off the primary thing that heals me.  But not tonight.

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I love my new doctor! She has the markings of a great doctor:

1. She’s friendly and caring in a genuine and totally matter-of-fact way. Not trying to go overboard in the “I’m a caring person” routine. She just is.
2. She’s matter-of-fact and professional in her intake. No commentary, no drama, no unsolicited opinions about what kinds of injuries I have had or what that says about my karma or luck or fate or any of that crap. She just wrote down what happened and when.
3. She’s responsible. Once she took down the information about the various things going on, she got down to business setting me up for different appointments with specialists.
4. She’s responsive. When I told her about my hypersensitivity – asking her to communicate with me before doing anything, so that my body would have time to prepare, and also asking her to be very gentle — she was, again, no-nonsense about it all. She communicated and paused before doing anything, and get this: She actually asked me how pressure was, to ensure that she was touching me gently enough.
5. She’s thorough. She initiated asking me questions about some different matters, to make sure we had all our bases covered and that I was getting all the care I needed.

Seriously, all the drama I have been through in the past would have been avoided if the doctors had this basic approach — you know, one of CARING FOR THEIR PATIENTS. D’uoh! I guess they forgot to teach that in most medical schools.

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I feel that the mind and soul are hungry and that we pick up on information around us as if we were mentally or energetically eating it. For this reason, I think it’s important to feed ourselves information about healing — to do daily readings in the morning and evening that affirm the power and possibility of self-healing.

In fact, as I write this, I am understanding a possible reason that Judaism has people praying three times a day (morning, afternoon, and evening) and why Islam has people praying five times a day: The world is filled with negativity that can bring us to a state of despair. We need to keep coming back, and coming back, to a place of positivity. We need to keep focusing on the light, love, and healing.

There was a period where I was actively inundating myself with thoughts about healing — through reading the work of and interviewing various mind-body medicine practitioners. Over the past year, my company launch has pretty much taken over my life, as have matters of survival, and I’ve fallen out of the habit of reading this material.

Today I’m in positive setback mode, lounging around in bed and nursing my toe (thanks to my mom’s reminder to take it easy and ice and soak my toe). The book Intention Heals, by Adam/DreamHealer, was sitting on my nightstand. I had actually felt like reading a novel, but I was already icing my toe and didn’t want to settle back in with the ice pack again. So I picked up Intention Heals.

Just starting to read it was like coming back home. I felt my breath moving through my body more freely. I need reminders, affirmations, nourishment, supporting my self-healing. So that my focus is not on basic survival issues or on anger or fear about the challenges facing me, but rather, on something transcendental — a spiritual ability to heal myself.

When starting off on the healing path, I think that one of the most difficult things is figuring out what information is spot on and what is crap. For those who resonate with my work and my thinking, you might like to check out the Amazon store I compiled, with books, DVDs, and CDs by practitioners whose work I value. I suggest reading at least a little bit — even five minutes — in the morning and in the evening, to affirm your healing path.

I’ll be reading right along with you!

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I’m moving again. And I can’t wait to get the fuck out of my current abode. While my home is more than twice the distance from the dumpster than my previous apartment, the injury to my ear and hearing left me so sensitive that I have ended up with horrific nerve pain and further compromised hearing when people have thrown away their trash.

My living room — which is always my dance studio — is closest to the dumpster, as is my office upstairs. Those two areas are the ones with the most space to dance. I know I should just dance on whatever wherever. I know I know. In retrospect. As I look back on the past month, though, I have barely danced. It just feels so constricting, after the glorious two years of spacious living room dancing and healing I did in my Los Angeles sanctuary.

So I can’t wait to get out of here and create a new sanctuary elsewhere. But meanwhile I’m going to do some guerilla dancing. Challenging my ass to take my advice and dance on or in chairs, tables, floors, kitchens, hallways, bathrooms, beds, whatever, wherever. Because we can’t always control our circumstances. But we can always dance.

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