Presence Matters

Olga has been in low, and sometimes not-so-low, chronic pain for the last five years from a huge fibroid resting on her sacral plexus. Recently, after some long inner conversations with her body she decided to have a hysterectomy. Although her pain threshold is high, the pain has been slowly wearing her down, causing her to cut back on the activities she loves the most.  She told me that recently she had even considered letting go of teaching her beloved yoga classes. She truly has done everything she could to deal with this non-surgically. But now there is no other alternative.

She rests quietly on the table as we begin. Her surgery is about a month away and her body feels ready for it. I am immediately drawn to her kidneys and ovaries, so I begin by cradling her kidneys and the small of her back in one hand and her ovaries with the thumb and fingers of the other hand. I let my conscious awareness spread out and relax with her system.

Suddenly a question pops into my consciousness out of nowhere. “Are they going to take your ovaries as well?” She chuckles, “I have been asking myself that question for weeks – and getting differing opinions from everyone. And I cannot make up my mind. One doctor, an old-timer I know, told me just to have everything taken out at the same time – that ovaries are of little use after menopause. On the other hand, my surgeon told me that we don’t really know all that the ovaries contribute to our system after menopause and that it was up to me.”

As she says this, the ovaries – under my thumb and fingertips – start to pulse as though to say, “Right on – we are important.” I am also noticing that a connection is beginning to happen between the kidneys/adrenals and the ovaries – as though a long forgotten path connecting them is being re-opened. I point out the movement I am feeling and she concurs that the warmth is growing inside her body between my two hands.

I suggest that perhaps she should ask the ovaries what the best choice is for them. She quietly drops inside with me. The ovaries feel like they are coming alive. There is a sense of them as rich, round, pulsing energy centers – the home of her deep feminine energy. I say this out loud and she concurs. The answer to whether they are useless and should be removed is a resounding “No!”.

I realize that with the chronic pain she has lived with for the last five years, her sympathetic nervous system has been in overdrive – causing her endocrine system to be depleted, along with everything else, because the pain is constantly draining her. So it truly is as though her ovaries are coming back to life – or waking up again with the energy we are offering them.

As they pulse and fill up even more, it feels as though they are finally getting their voice – as though they are signaling to her that she is going to have a return to a better balance when the pain is gone – one that she has not yet experienced. As a highly intelligent left-brained woman with a PhD. who has been very successful, this balance may be about an awakening awareness of her deep feminine – the right brain’s domain. She is in complete agreement with this sense of new balance coming.

Next, I go to her legs, where a lot of the pain has centered, and they seem to be saying that her inner discipline and spiritual practices have enabled her to endure this long with this level of pain – but that they, her legs, are ready to be taking her to deeper places spiritually, rather than helping her simply live with chronic pain.

As we come to a close I hold her ovaries again and it feels as though they are like golden energy hands – ready to gently deliver the uterus and fibroids to the surgeon and hold a healing space for the whole process.

We are both in awe as the session comes to a close. It has been a quietly powerful experience that will remain with both of us for some time to come.

If you would like to read my client’s account of this session, here is the link to her blog http://aligningwithgrace.blogspot.com/

Thanks for your willingness to share, Olga! Our collaborations have always been rich and fruitful.

Please Note:  Every session or interchange described by Suzanne in this blog has been done with the express permission of the individual(s) involved, or has been changed significantly so as to protect the person’s privacy. Where a person’s actual name is used, it is done with their full permission, often with a link to their own blog post about the session.

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