I Just Want to Feel Better

This is the ONLY reason I tried BodyTalk. I was a complete skeptic, did not believe in any of that weird energy stuff, there were not published studies showing how or why it worked, no mainstream medical or psychological support for the system at the time. I believed in “false hope” back then. Why would you ever make someone feel better by having them believe that there may be any hope for them which in turn made them feel good if you could not guarantee that they would have a successful outcome? (I have a very different understanding and belief system today). So with all of my skepticism and negativity, I went and had my first BodyTalk session for one reason only. I JUST WANTED TO FEEL BETTER. And that made me open enough to surrender my logical, fearful, skeptical side just long enough to receive something I had never heard of before.

What led me to my first session was my fourth pregnancy loss. Prior to my first session in November of 2005, I had previously had two ectopic pregnancies and one miscarriage. Then we were blessed with a healthy beautiful baby boy in 2003. As we wanted more than one child, we started trying again when our first was 18 months old, in January of 2005. Months went by and I finally became pregnant again in August of 2005. Due to my past history, I was always sent for very early ultrasounds and lots of doctor appointments. Everything seemed to be on track until 10 ½ weeks into my pregnancy when I miscarried again. This one was very different from my first miscarriage as I was about 4 weeks further along which makes a huge difference in pregnancy development. Not only physically was it much more draining, but emotionally it was the worst.

So I “recovered” from my most recent experience, and went about my life. I contemplated if I could ever go through that again, or if I was done.  I was drained, physically, emotionally, but being that I had a 2 ½ year old to take care of full time I really didn’t have a lot of time to heal, physically or emotionally. And not because no one else would give me the time to take care of myself, more accurately, I did not make the time to heal. I had many family and friends I could call upon for support, my husband was a very hands on father who loved spending time with our son. But nobody could really know what to do to help, and I never asked. I also never showed my true feelings, thinking “well, I just have to get through this and decide if I am going to try to get pregnant again or see what our other options are.” My OB wanted me to wait at least three months before trying again to give my uterus a chance to heal. But it wasn’t my uterus that needed the most healing; it was me, as a whole. I don’t even know what to call it..soul, consciousness, mind…whatever label works; it was certainly not the physical part of me that was in the most pain. So I did what all “good” mothers and women do. I sucked it up and moved forward with my daily stay at home mothering duties. Or so I thought. 

The final miscarriage occurred October of 2005. Of course I was at the age where women all around me were having babies. Friends were getting pregnant. I knew people who had experienced one loss, but I did not know anyone who had the experience of four. There were many platitudes as people who are searching for anything to help you seem to have plenty of. And although I know deep down all they were doing was trying to make me feel better, all it really made me do was want to punch them in the face! (of course I did not, but I have to be honest here!).

About a month after my final loss, my mother came over one day, told me that she was worried for me because I seemed so sad, handed me a pamphlet that said “BodyTalk” on it, and told me that she had paid for a session for me. I believe her exact words were “I have no idea what this is, but Maria has a lady working in her clinic who does this and she said it will help you”.

A little background is necessary here. My mother was a woman who never had a problem making decisions. If she saw something that she thought would be good, she just did it, bought it, moved houses, whatever the case, no second guessing. She went forward with the positive thought of, this is good and what we need, and never looked back. Now Maria was the lady she had gone to for probably 20 years to get her nails done. And my mother was known for having everyone share everything with her and she shared with others. We used to joke that by the time the guy from Safeway carried her groceries to the car (this was back in the day when that was automatically done), she would know his name, probably his mother’s name to see if she knew her, what he was doing in school, and basically what his life plans were. And just because she loved to talk and was truly interested in people, they shared everything with her. So when she shared my story with Maria, was told this BodyTalk thing could help me, she did not hesitate to make the decision for me.

I took the pamphlet, went to the computer and looked up what this thing was all about. Remember, this was back in 2005 so there was not the plethora of information and social media we have today. BodyTalk was newer to Canada, only having been created in the 1990s in Australia, and therefore there was not a lot of information online. What I did read was enough to convince me that I was not going to be asked to take any sort of vitamins or medications, and nor was it something I had to go to every week for the next year like talk therapy. A couple notes here, I am not in any way opposed to medical interventions when necessary. I am quite grateful to have access to knowledge and technology and skilled physicians when I need it. But by this point I had undergone two surgeries and numerous visits to doctors, hospitals, ERs and extensive poking and prodding. I did not want anything more done “to me” from a medical perspective. Having a degree in psychology, I am also very supportive of traditional psychological interventions. But the mere thought of having to talk more about what I had experienced made me feel drained. I did not want to talk about it anymore, I JUST WANTED TO FEEL BETTER.

So off I went to my first appointment. I was very skeptical, thinking to myself “what is this lady going to tell me that I don’t already know. I understand about cognitive behavioural therapy, changing my thoughts to change my behaviour.” Intellectually I knew what I needed to be doing; emotionally I could not get past what I was feeling. I got onto the table thinking this can’t do any damage so I will just see what happens. The first session is a bit of a blur; all I know for sure is that I cried the entire session. At the end “this lady”, Valerie, told me to come back in 3 weeks, and that I may be a little more emotional or maybe not for the rest of the day. Considering I had just spent the better part of an hour crying I was sure it was going to be the emotional way. It was not. That evening, sitting up in bed, I distinctly remember saying to my husband that I had never felt so relaxed. The only way I could describe it is that heavy relaxation you feel coming out of an anesthetic, without the nausea. (I have had several of my own clients tell me they have never felt that relaxed without being asleep). On top of that, up until my session, I had cried, privately of course, every single day. After my first session, that stopped. When I shared that part with people, the standard response was that I just needed a good cry, that’s why I felt better. If a good cry is all that I needed then I should have been better about 32 cries ago! Interesting that one of my clients who had a miscarriage and was told she would never have a baby without medical intervention had the same experience in her first session of a lot of releasing through tears. After she felt better, everyone told her the same thing. I knew exactly what she was feeling as I had been there after my first session. Nobody could understand how this was a different better as they had not experienced such a change of feeling. I could. I am happy to say that today she has 2 beautiful children, with no medical intervention.

I went again 3 weeks later, then 3 weeks after that. Then Valerie, who is now “my” lady, not “that” lady (I still see her to this day for my own sessions), said come back when you are pregnant. This was December of 2005. So I did. June of 2006 I found out I was pregnant again, I went every month during my pregnancy, and in February of 2007 I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.

Now as most of us have a tendency to do, once I had what I been struggling to get for several years, two healthy children, I kind of put the idea of still going to sessions aside. I was busy being a full time mom with two young kids now, not really thinking I needed anything more from this BodyTalk thing, kind of forgetting about it. Then in May of 2008 the hardest experience I have ever had to go through on an emotional level happened, my mother died very unexpectedly. So once again, we all did what we had to do to get through that experience. I had a 1 year old and 4 year old needing my attention almost every hour of the day, so I probably did not, okay I definitely did not, process my grief quite as effectively as I could have. I remember it was about 3 or 4 months after my mom’s death that I was on the treadmill when I just had to stop, I could not get a decent breath. This kept happening. In my gut, I KNEW it was emotional and nothing physically was wrong with me. But still learning my way along as a client of energy therapy, I was looking for a physical explanation. I had my daughter at an appointment for a checkup and asked the doctor if she could just listen to my lungs and heart. Of course everything was physically fine. I said I was sure it was all related to grief, she suggested I perhaps go see a professional to talk to. Again, I did not want to talk about it anymore, I JUST WANTED TO FEEL BETTER. Now part of what I had been doing was having weekly coffees with my good friend whose husband died 13 days before my mother died. We had our weekly grief sessions which were tremendously helpful, so I really did not want to start at the beginning with someone else. But I had to do something about this inability to get a full breath into my lungs. Finally I thought, oh, maybe I should go see Valerie for a session. Of course that is exactly what I needed. She explained how in Chinese Medicine the Lungs process grief, so my symptoms were most likely from that, and they just needed some balancing to get that energy moving. Of course it did, and my breathing was much better afterward. Since then, I no longer wait for some huge difficult thing to happen in my life to have a session, but if I wait too long, it is always my breathing that changes telling me it is time.

A nice little additional “effect” I experienced from my sessions was a dissipation of my anxiety. I had experienced anxiety my entire life. My mother called me her “what if kid” because all I did was worry about what if this or that happens. Bless her soul, I do not know how I did not push her to the edge with my constant worrying. I remember being home sick from school with severe stomach aches, all from anxiety and the stress that accompanied. I had high blood pressure as a child from my anxiety. No wonder I couldn't support a pregnancy, I was a mess! I grew up in the seventies so there really was no talk about any sort of mental health, other than the most severely mentally ill people who were locked up on psych wards. I am 100% certain I would have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and most likely prescribed all kinds of pharmaceuticals. On one hand I am very grateful that was not an option at the time. On the other hand it would have been nice to have something that could have eased my anxiety other than everyone telling me to stop worrying.

I never went looking for relief from anxiety and don’t really recall spending much time telling Valerie about it. Really it happened so comfortably and gradually that it took me a while to clue in to what I was feeling. Not anxious. For anyone who has dealt with anxiety in their life, that is a very strange feeling. I remember something happening one day that in the past would have given me that feeling in my stomach, and all I noticed was that I did not feel that way. That in itself made me feel ….odd. Then I thought, “Oh, that did not make me anxious, so this is what normal people feel like!” Since becoming a practitioner I have worked with many people with anxiety and although I cannot tell you with scientific specificity why or how, energy treatments work tremendously well with anxiety. And again, as soon as I tell people that I get what they are feeling and I was there, I love the relief, and hope, I see in their face. If you have never experienced generalized anxiety, not associated with a specific obvious cause, it is extremely difficult to empathize with those who are going through it. That is why this is one of my favourite areas in which to help people.

Throughout the years I had experienced many physical symptoms that seemed to be related to, but could not definitively be diagnosed as auto immune disorders. I no longer deal with any of these except Raynaud’s (losing circulation, usually in toes and fingers, causing the tissue to go white. This happens not only in response to cold, but emotional upset and, surprise, anxiety as well). The Raynaud’s is not near as bad as it used to be. I am not a physician and of course cannot make a causal link, but I knew how much better I felt after adding energy work into my life, so I am comfortable saying that I believe it certainly played a role in my physical health and ridding many of the symptoms I had experienced over the years.

About a year after my mom’s death, I decided I was going to become a practitioner. Even after all of the incredible experiences I had as a client, I honestly have to say I was skeptical. It sounds very odd even as I am writing this down. I knew with every fibre of my being that BodyTalk made a huge difference in my life, but I still thought it was weird and had such a hard time getting my intellectual, logical brain around how and why it should help. Yet at the same time I just knew that this is the direction I had to go. I had MANY fears taking that first step, mainly that people were going to think I was crazy for believing in this. But I listened to my gut, signed up for the first course, and off I went. That was probably one of the first times in my life I truly listened to and trusted myself, especially when all of the sensible thoughts in my head were telling me this was too weird. I am so grateful that for once in my life I listened to my heart.

I went to the first day a little apprehensive, looking at the people who were the “obvious” energy people. You know, the ones who are looking at you and feeling things and seeing things and just seemingly knowing things. Several times that first day I thought I had made a huge mistake, this was just too weird, what have I done?! So I calmed myself down, told myself that I did not have to accept everything right away and I would just listen and learn and if something seemed too out there for me, I would simply put it aside for now and come back to it when I was ready.

This was a full 8 hours per day 4 day course so I was very immersed in all kinds of energy “stuff” that I really had no knowledge, experience, or idea of apart from my personal sessions. I did have an interesting physical experience after about the third day. The right side of my brain felt very different. Of course the brain itself does not “feel”, it only responds to signals being sent to it through our sensory receptors. But that is the only way I can explain it. The right hemisphere of my brain felt like it had finally woken up. I even felt like it was heavy and I was tilting to the right. I was suddenly very aware of a part of myself that I had never paid any attention to in the past. I believe it was my insightful, intuitive, energy systems finally getting some attention and acknowledgement and being allowed to really connect to the left logical, linear, intellectual part of the brain.

I have told very few people about that brain experience of mine, only trusting those whom also work in related energy type areas. Again my fear of being looked at as weird presenting itself loudly. I am sharing it now with everybody because I simply do not care anymore. It has been a very interesting personally transformative experience for me since my first course in 2010, and I trust my experiences. With myself and with all of my clients. So call me weird, I feel good and I help people to get to a place where they too can feel good. If that is weird, then I want to be weird. However many of my clients have told me the only reason they tried a session was because I was “normal”. I’m neither weird nor normal. I have simply allowed myself to be open to different views and approaches from all ends of the spectrum.  And it is sooooo much more fun to see everything. Think of it like only allowing yourself to see the color green. A rainbow would not look quite so spectacular if you were missing 3 stripes on either side of the green. You don’t have to attach yourself to or even believe in any of the other colours, but allowing yourself to see the possibility of their existence makes for a much more interesting and encompassing backdrop after a rainfall.

I have not lost my questioning of things, I just do it from a much more positive place. And it feels so much better to look at something and think why not, rather than, no way. I am constantly running back and forth between mainstream and complementary systems/information/modalities in an attempt to look at everything from both sides. Without fail, the main thing I learn over and over again is that there is absolutely no reason to choose, or dismiss, anything.  I will place a large caveat here that of course if there is a likely inherent danger in something then I would not endorse or recommend it.  But simply thinking something is strange and could not possibly help anyone does not in and of itself make it dangerous. It is quite fascinating how information being presented from a neuroscientist quite nicely fits in with energy treatments, or how Traditional Chinese Medicine philosophy really explains some mainstream psychological therapies. It all fits together and works together so well…..provided you allow yourself to see it. Over the past years I have taken numerous courses, training, seminars etc. Along all areas of the health and wellness spectrum. I completed all of my Advanced BodyTalk courses, which interestingly enough involved Western Anatomy and Physiology as a requisite course. You can gain much clearer focus and understanding of the energies of the body when you have an idea of the gross anatomy and functioning of the physical body. I chose to take a cadaver lab after that just because it is so cool to see everything in a body and not just in a textbook. I have taken several Traditional Chinese Medicine and Eastern Medicine courses. Because of my passion working with anxiety and mood issues, particularly with youth, I completed my Children’s Mental Health Certificate, which led me to understand the importance of having my suicide intervention training, so I did that. Then I went back to other energy related courses and seminars, then to a Being Trauma Aware seminar, and then completing my Brain Story Certification (a program put together by many experts in the field of child development and the impact of ACES, adverse childhood events). Then back to more energy related training as I completed my Meditation Teacher Training. Some people may look at me and be thinking “oh my goodness woman, would you just make up your mind!”  The answer I have come to settle on is a definite NO. I don’t ever want to make up my mind when it comes to health and wellness, there is too much new information constantly being brought forward, and if I set my mind to a particular point along the spectrum, I might miss something really exciting!

This is not to say that I blindly accept and believe everything out there in regards to health and wellness. I am very committed to ensuring that I personally am only helping, not harming others with what I do. This is part of why I am constantly running from end to end getting more information. So that I am aware of things that require an intervention I cannot provide. I have suggested to many of my clients that they would benefit from seeing a medical doctor or psychologist. I send them with questions to ask their psychiatrist because of things they have said to me. But I am also open to the possibilities that exist when they need help getting through a treatment or medical intervention of some sort. And also when they have no medical explanation of why they are feeling the way they are. I do not prescribe, diagnose, claim medical miracles, or advise people to not follow sound medical advice. What I do is help them become aware of the relationship between their body and mind, and subsequently energy systems, and allow them to experience something they never have before.

My journey is nowhere near over, I am constantly learning, changing, becoming more aware of myself and my own processes, and working to develop myself into the person and practitioner I want to be. Does that mean I never experience worry, anxiety or fear? Of course not. The big difference is that now I can recognize it for what it is, and use all of the approaches, Western and Eastern, to help me stay healthy. Am I perfect? Definitely not. Will I ever be? No. And I don’t want to be. Perfection means there is nowhere else to go, nothing left to learn. It is the growth and change and learning that is the fun part of life. And if I can make that my career, then I look forward to working until the day I die, which hopefully will be well into my 90s.

So why am I so passionate about what mind and body sessions can do for you? I just want to help you feel better.