February 19, 2014

Subject: sacrum history

Hi Dr. Brian.

I don’t know that it is even relevant anymore, but I realize I never told you about my back history.  In order to understand my journey with my sacrum, you have to understand my love of dance.

I fell in love with dance late in life—age 38.  I started with African dance.  I have a really strong sensitivity to percussion . . . my cells literally bounce with excitement.  The depression was extremely heavy at the time.  I looked pale, with a deathlike cast to my face.  But there were live drummers in the class, and when the music and movement would start, it was like my brain was shot with a bolt of lightning and it was hard to believe the woman dancing was the same sullen women who had entered the room moments earlier.  At that time, when the music and dance would end, I would return immediately to the depression; the cast of death would wash over my face and spirit again.  One hour a week, I could feel joy.  I did African dance for a year, and then I started belly dance.  A few months into belly dance, I was getting a manicure after class and sat down after washing my hands.  I felt something “shift” in my sacrum, and I knew it wasn’t good.  I felt panic in my chest.  I was not able to move from the chair, and they had to carry me home.  So in one moment, my whole life changed and I lived the next couple of years in an invalid-like state.  No one could figure out what my problem was.  Sitting was the hardest.  And I couldn’t stand in one place.  The only comfortable position was in bed lying on my side.  They eventually gave me steroid injections, which helped a little, and with time I got a little better, but I was not fully functional again for a long while.  This was all while I was still living in St. Louis.  

In hindsight, I suspect that belly dancing was starting to open something that I was not spiritually and psychologically ready to open.  This injury was not psychosomatic in the sense that it was a real physical injury, but there were definitely underlying trauma issues.

This part of my body, the sacrum, is not just about injury; there is also great wisdom in this area.  Once I was partially functioning, I would have a relapse every time I dated a man that “my body didn’t like.”  My body would try to tell me through minor symptoms that it didn’t like a man and, if I didn’t listen, then my body would raise the stakes and incapacitate me, most often leading to the end of the relationship.  Eventually I caught on, and thankfully began to use more discretion in choosing the men I dated.  I began to choose from a place of self-worth and abundance rather than self-hate and desperation.

I am writing about relationships because it was an abusive relationship that got me to leave St. Louis.  I moved to a small town three hours from St. Louis to be with a man who had children and was unable to move.  When the relationship failed, which I pretty much knew it would, I had already faced my fear of leaving St. Louis and took the opportunity—in my once-again invalid-like state—to move to L.A., where I met Dr. Farrey, the chiropractor I made reference to when I first came to your office.  He was the first person to look at my spine as a whole unit and to make a connection between my neck and my sacrum.  At that time, I had almost no mobility in my neck.  It took a few years, but he got me back to about 85% functioning, and the rebounding [bouncing on a rebounder] got me to 100% functioning.

The rebounding was important because my sacrum did not want to be fluid!!!!  It wanted to find one position and stay in that position.  It didn’t care what the position was, as long as it didn’t change.  So I could find one chair, and I could sit in that one chair in one particular position.  If I changed chairs or positions, I would feel pain.  My spine wanted to be fixed in one position.  Anything that challenged this one-position lifestyle created pain.

Rebounding kind of tricked my body because at the moment of impact from the bouncing, everything kind of vibrates in an unpredictable manner.  I think I confused my body so it could no longer find the “one acceptable position.”  Yes, rebounding strengthens the core and does many other wonderful things, but the two most important things it did for my back was to get me having impact movement again and to make my back less rigid by helping it to let go of this “one-position way of living,” which obviously was not serving me.

So after about seven years of spinal recovery, I returned to dance—this time tango—and it felt like a miracle.  I have been pretty functional the last few years, but you are educating me that there is still a lack of connection and movement in my sacrum.

Okay, that is the condensed version of my back history.  There are many potential past traumas that could be locked in that area.  I have extensive childhood sexual trauma.  My mom was physically violent when I was a young child.  I was a victim of a violent crime at age 25.  Perhaps there are other underlying factors, as well.  In order to complete my healing, all these traumas have had to be addressed.

I’m going to eat dinner now and return to lighter thoughts :)

Blessings and see you on Friday.

in continued gratitude,

Laura