The Body Really Does Keep the Score

Late 2019 was reasonably busy in the world of photography. I covered two interesting events for Fellowship Chicago, a client that Steve and I worked with in the past. The founder, Rev. Clay Evans, passed away and pastor we worked for, Rev. Charles Jenkins was retiring. The funeral service had just about every Illinois politician up to and including Governor Pritzker in attendance. Rev. Evans was a force in Chicago. He brought Martin Luther King, Jr. to the city in the 50s and, as a consequence, had all the building permits for his new church revoked! It took several years to get things restarted. Rev. Jenkins built the church’s gospel choir into a formidable force. When we were photographing them in 2012 and 2013, they had the number 1 album on the gospel charts. The first time I photographed a service, the choir fired up and I had tears running down my face! His retirement party was quite the bash a week later at the Hyatt on E Wacker Drive. Biz Markie was the DJ. That said, I worked both while in a considerable amount of pain. Shooting good photos of groups at parties requires squatting down a bit. This would send shooting pain right into my urethra. I remember counting the minutes until I could limp away from the party. That is how most of my work had been for the past several years. It was getting really old.

Governor Pritzker eulogizes the late Rev. Clay Evans | December 6, 2019, Chicago, Illinois

Rev. Charles Jenkins & Rev. Jesse Jackson | December 13, 2019, Chicago, Illinois

As a result of getting “out of the box” with the various medicines (including THC), I was starting to understand my core issues. I’m was beginning to get in tune with some of the more subtle energies and blockages. There were also many synchronicities occurring in my life, which were encouraging. Here are some excerpts from my journal in late 2019, early 2020. I’m including them with the intention of providing some insight as to where I was mentally / emotionally.

“The expansive feeling brings up fear. Unfamiliar. [i.e: the expansiveness]

The “holding” / constraint is an old old pattern and familiar.

Atlanta job [Tyler Perry] was particularly triggering - big deliverable, tight timeframe, lack of self care, poor diet.

Pain is from Constipation; lack of flow

Anxiety prior to / during a job, especially a big one

Always waiting for something to go wrong/bad

Tied back to the unpredictability of early life - moving, dad’s temper, etc

Less of self-sabotage than self-protection that manifests as self-sabotage

Cleaned my place last night and stopped to appreciate/enjoy it a bit

Starting to be able to discern when I go into my head and ignore body.

Old pattern of resistance stemming from being forced to go to school no matter what. I often/always feel this in the morning while in bed and especially when I have a gig. Shows up as not liking the gig, not wanting to do it. Particularly strong when it is an event or if I have to drag my gear to Peter’s [studio] for a headshot. [Periodically, I rented a studio from a friend and colleague - which was amazing, yet it was always a big production getting everything there and set up.]

My parents stole my agency because they never had any of their own. My being was an extension of their own. Always having to look good, do well in school, behave. Much of my early life was in rebellion to this. That pattern still ingrained.

I did everything that was demanded of me and more. And the love never came. There’s a lot tied up in that. Relationships, work, self-sabotage.

The blockage/construction during the breathing, the Aya, all of it is resistance to what is. There’s a direct link to this early trauma that I can’t quite elucidate.”

In January, I booked a session with a woman my sister recommended. They were friends in high school. I remembered her. Jessica worked with the diets of mostly women to assist with autoimmune issues. We had a chat and she had me do some stool and blood tests, the outcome of which I don’t recall. What I do recall is that she suggested the practice of Ho Oponopono (read more about it in this post where I eulogized my mother) and referred me to a medical intuitive named Carol. I had read one of THE Medical Medium, Anthony Williams’, book and was intrigued. A medical medium goes in energetically and is able to see things at a higher level. Sounds wild, I know. It was really only because of the openings I’d had with psychedelics and all the strange synchronicities that I was even partially inclined to try these things. That, and I didn’t really know what else to try! Getting an appointment with Anthony was nigh on impossible, at least on my timeframe, which was right-fucking-now). I had a session with Carol in early February. She told me many things, which I wrote down. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

• It’s a muscular issue tied to the urethral sphincter

• Yoga is too extreme; avoid

• It’s related to the birthing of new consciousness (whoa!)

• I am masterful at moving / controlling energy (Therese had told me this during my first Akashic / Soul Clearing reading - I just wished I could use this so-called ability to FIX MYSELF for fuck’s sake!

• In my past lives I was a Native American; lots of Shamanic energy in lineage (Therese mentioned similar!)

• And (weirdly to me at the time) - The old paradigm with my brother still has power over me; release it and cut the cord - this one will rear it’s head soon.

• Pooling energy in first (root) chakra; congestion in the second (sacral) chakra

She suggested doing kegels, Lamaze breathing and medical Qi Gong / Tai Chi. The first two were painful, thus I never did them. Tai Chi had always interested me.

My oldest daughter “assisting” on set at a law firm | January 15, 2020, Chicago, Illinois

At some point with all the doctors, etc, I had realized that I was constipated. I was drinking “Smooth Move” tea, taking Miralax & magnesium glyncinate regularly and eating a lot of fiber as I was still on a restrictive vegan diet. It would help and then it wouldn’t. In early January 2020, I finally took the advice I’d gotten several times and went to a Tai Chi class on a Friday night in order to learn how to move energy. While I found it interesting, it required me to basically stand in a moderate squat for about an hour. My legs were trembling and sore at the end. Saturday I was ok. Woke Sunday with intense pain around my anus. I popped a Valium suppository which did little to nothing to assuage the pain. So I took a Flexiril and an edible and slept all day. Repeated this Sunday night and by Monday afternoon the pain had subsided. This was getting really fucking old. So much for Tai Chi.

In early March, I flew to Phoenix and drove up to Sedona. It was my first time there. It was love at first sight! I had booked a five day “intensive” session with Jonathan Tripodi, a skilled coach, bodyworker and Astrologer. While I didn’t know much about how he worked, other than what I learned in the interview I watched, I had a very strong sense that I was in the right place and I was eager to get to work. Jonathan had several colleagues he encouraged me to go see - Petr, an incredibly talented massage therapist; Adam, an acupuncturist and Kurt, an Alphabiotics practitioner (this technique involves a rather barbaric-seeming twist and “pop” of one’s head as if the guy is trying to pull it straight off. The result is a piezo-electric shock down the spinal cord, which results in the feeling of warm fluid being disbursed throughout the sacral region of your low back.) As you probably know if you’ve been reading these posts, I’m pretty good at following the advice of the practitioners whom I work with. There was definitely a bit of internal resistance to spending more money on myself than already planned, but I got over it and booked the various appointments.

Cactus found while walking | March 12, 2020 Sedona, Arizona

We were scheduled to spend five hours a day together for five days. The first I was eager to have healing hands on me, but the first couple hours were spent going over “my story” - how I got here and what I was currently experiencing. Over the course of two days, he alternated between chatting and working on me. The body work mostly consisted of very long, slow, deliberate touch - arm, leg and neck “pulls” where he would spend 20-40 minutes pulling strongly on an appendage while moving it through various ranges of motion. While it was moderately painful - 6-8 on a scale where 10 is brutal - I did feel looser and a bit of relief. He pointed out that I had an unconscious startle reflex that was activated when he would slowly slide his hands under my ankles to pick up my legs. Interesting. He prompted me to see how I had a hard time staying in my body as I would immediately start talking about what was going on. This would take me into my head, a much more familiar (and safe) place than my body.

It was either late on the second day or the morning of the third day that I had a breakthrough. Jonathan had been pulling on both legs and then had them about 30º up off the table and 30-40º toward my right side - not a position you tend to find your legs, unless you are a gymnast on the rings, maybe. He was holding them like this for what verged on forever. There was intense, nearly unbearable pain in my low back. After what must have been 30-40 minutes, suddenly there was a “pop” as my iliopsoas muscle let go! (The iliopsoas muscle is your “tenderloin;” it connects your legs to your back. It is also where we hold a LOT of emotion.) My pelvis began shaking uncontrollably (not unlike during some of my psychedelic journeys) and I began to cry. I didn’t know exactly what I was crying about, but it sure felt good.

On the fourth day, I lay on the table on my back and he had my head in the “Giraffe” position. He lifted my head up off the table and turned verrrrrry slowly from side to side. Eventually he ended up with his hands on the back of my head, holding it straight up as if to look down at my toes. At times, he used my head to lift the entirety of my upper body off the table. Periodically he would “Ride the Dragon” which is a pincer move using the thumb and forefinger to access the first and second cervical vertebrae at the base of the skull. He would pinch and slide his fingers up and down while gently moving my head from side to side on my forward-bent neck - not a position one typically finds oneself. An eternity seemingly passed while I did my best to breathe deeply into the steady pain. Suddenly, without warning, something in my pelvis popped and it began to spasm rather violently once again and I burst into tears. Now we were getting somewhere! When I finally stood up, there was a new sense of spaciousness in my pelvis and only minimal pain.

The $6,000 Ganesha statue I REALLY wanted to buy | March 14, 2020, Sedona, Arizona

Jonathan developed his method - Body Memory Recall - after figuring out how to save his own leg from amputation in his twenties. It had been shattered by a car when he was a small child. He trained with and worked at John Barnes’ Sedona clinic. Barnes, along with John Upledger, is a founding father of Myofascial Release. A trained physical therapist who was distressed at his inability to help people with traditional PT methods, he began to have insights about how to heal people by releasing myofascial blockages. Initially ridiculed by his peers, he was eventually recognized for the visionary he was.

Fascial tissue is also known as connective tissue. It basically holds our bodies together, wrapping muscles, bones, nerves, blood vessels and organs. This connective tissue is a three dimensional structure of microtubules that run throughout the body. When healthy, it is spongy and moist, with fluid running through the microtubules, which also glide along one another. This video shows live fascial tissue in action (warning for the squeamish). Until this video was made, all analysis had been done on cadaver tissue, which is hard and, obviously, lifeless. When we are met with overwhelming trauma - physical or emotional, it is our connective tissue that locks down in an effort to protect us. Assaulted with repeated traumas, large and small, physical and emotional, over a lifetime, if our bodies do not release these blockages the result is a nervous system on high alert and blocked energy flow through the body. This will manifest in myriad ways - chronic fatigue, brain fog, fibromyalgia and a host of other autoimmune problems. Sound familiar?

Jonathan’s methods of working are a blend of Barnes’ techniques and his own coaching style. He guides his client to discover the source of the pain based on what happened to them and what is going on in their life. This is also coupled with teaching around the emotional and energetic systems in the body. Some of what I learned from reading “The Dummy’s Guide to Chakras” was now being put to use!

Toward the end of my stay, I went to see Adam, a very talented acupuncturist. We chatted for a bit before I got on his table. He put a few needles in me; no more than a dozen. He turned on some ambient music, dimmed the lights and left the room. A few minutes into laying there, I noticed a strange thrumming sound. It sounded like a generator or loud air conditioner outside. “Weird,” I thought. “I don’t remember hearing that when I came in.” I listened a bit more intently. “Holy shit! That’s ME!” My entire body was vibrating on the table as the energy coursed through the newly open pathways in my body. This is not something I had ever experienced in my many acupuncture treatments over the years.

Meditating on one of several statues of Shakti commissioned by a tech founder I met in an artist’s studio | March 15, 2020, Sedona Arizona.

Before I left, Adam and I chatted some more. He strongly suggested that I try the Carnivore Diet (or “Way of Eating”). Basically, if it walked, swam or flew, it was fair game for my plate. Eat when you’re hungry, eat until you are full. He said he’d been on it for some time and it really helped him in his own healing. He didn’t think my current diet was helping me. Jonathan seconded the recommendation. Sounded good to me! This is what I’m paying these people for. I might as well try it. That night I went to a nice restaurant in Sedona and ordered the first tenderloin I had eaten in at least three years. It was absolutely, positively, fucking amazing. I can still remember the first bite. I had to wipe the drool off my chin. I had at least two more steaks while in Sedona.

The day before I left, I wanted to take a walk in the desert. Without doing much research I drove out and parked at the entrance of a long trail. I got out and began to walk down the wide trail. My stomach wasn’t particularly happy and I was having some pelvic pain. Without making it even a mile, discretion got the better part of valor and I turned around. I made it back to Jonathan’s place just in time to visit the toilet. It seemed the effects of all that new meat and animal fat in my system were making themselves known.

I arrived home on March 17, 2020. I’m sure you remember what happened on March 20th….