I had never heard of a trauma like this before.
A seventy-four-year-old woman presented with neck pain and headaches. She was diagnosed years ago with a bulging disc at C5.
She has had this condition for sixty-six years. When I asked her about what caused the problem, she told me a story that she had only recently been able to talk about.
“During my second/third grade summer, I had gone to bed after playing that afternoon with some tools in my backyard. My mother was away shopping with a friend.
“Later on, my dad discovered his handsaw, hammer, and screwdriver had been left in the wet grass. He became enraged and came into my bedroom.
“He approached me, grabbed the hair on the top of my head, and lifted me up by my hair out of bed. He carried me through the house by my hair, then out to the backyard.
“He threw me face down on the grass by the tools with instructions to clean and dry them.”
I believe that this action was the root of her problem by causing fascial strain in her body, most notably in her head and neck.
Sixty-six years later I found that she had a zero-second brain cycle and severe neck fascial tension. The rest of her body felt relatively loose.
When she did not respond to my normal craniosacral fascial therapy techniques, I tried an out-of-the-box approach. While she was sitting on the therapy table, I asked her to grab her hair on the top of her head where her dad had grabbed her and create some lifting tension.
I was asking her fascial web to go back in space and time to recall that specific trauma. I wanted to see if the web was ready to access, clear, and heal that injury.
I was behind her, holding the back of her neck. That technique triggered that suppressed strain in her fascial web by responding from her head and neck down into her trunk.
I spent the visit working through many twists in her upper body as her brain cycle opened to 60 seconds. I found it incredible that the body immediately began to heal that injury after all of this time.
One of the major principles of our work is that the web has to revisit and clear a trauma for authentic healing. On her second visit, her brain cycle went to 120 seconds during the week with no therapy.
The goal of the Gillespie Approach is for the provider to just facilitate the healing. In that respect, her body was healing itself beautifully.
She ended the visit at 160 seconds, a terrific result for only two visits. I expect her to do well with more therapy.
I am continually amazed by the power of the body to heal itself. Gillespie Approach Training can teach providers the skills needed to work on patients with unusual health situations.
The Patient Emails
“In the few days since I received my first treatment at your office, I have experienced a wide range of subtle changes in my body, mind, and spirit.
“At night, I:
- lie down and fall asleep easily instead of thrashing around trying to adjust my back and neck angles using multiple pillows.
- have discontinued taking Tylenol to get to sleep.
- sleep through the night.
- feel rested in the morning.
“My head and neck are free of the ‘crackles.’
“During the day, I:
- move around the house easily.
- chat with my husband regularly about events in my life before we met. He says I have shared things I have never told him before.
- have felt lighter, as in ‘lighter on my feet.’
- notable absence of negative thoughts.
- baked a cake.
- experience vivid images of childhood memories growing up with my sisters and parents during the times we lived in Texas and in several foreign countries.
“Specifically I remember:
- my father (later a self-acknowledged ‘rage-aholic’) destroying things and hurting us and our mother.
- the onset of my mother’s alcoholism, personality changes, and hospitalizations until her divorce in 1965.
- my three sisters’ coping mechanisms emerging and my efforts to protect my younger sisters (twins).
- my parents’ divorce and their subsequent partners.
- my alcoholic stepmother, RIP at 79 years old after divorcing my retired and broke dad at 77 years old.
- my alcoholic and violent stepfather #1 (murdered at work by an angry customer), 1968 at 34 years old.
- my alcoholic-drug-addict-dealer stepfather #2 RIP at 40 years old 1970 to 1975.
- my alcoholic-in-recovery stepfather #3 – RIP at 65 years old (who ‘rescued’ my mom from a Texas state hospital after she had been been committed by her mother (my grandmother) and her sister (my aunt) following her threats to injure or kill my grandma).”
“Had my husband not remarked on some of these changes, I may not have noticed at all. The awful memories and images are unpleasant but helpful and slowly dissipate in energy after recalling.”
#####
Later in the week she wrote:
“I do not yet know how to characterize what I am feeling. I am just experiencing my life in a different way.
“It seems as though two layers, like filmy filters or pre-set permanent parameters, are slowly lifting. One filter made certain that whatever I do will feel hopelessly insufficient.
“The other filter is ‘I gotta get outta here,’ also known as dissociative disorder. My mind takes me away, and I don’t know I’m gone.
“I see these now—always ready to ruin my day, my husband’s day, and any other event or encounter.”
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