Friday, January 13, 2012

The Girl on the Swing

I lost two days this week to the most Herbert-awful headache; probably the longest-lasting headache I've ever had. I would have willingly hammered a six inch nail into my forehead to relieve the pressure. I did everything. Visualised packing the headache into a tiny box and shooting it into space, every over the counter painkiller you could think of until I was near a dangerous dosage, but to no avail. I was stuck with lying down in a not-very-light room until I woke up yesterday and it had all but vanished. Thank Herbert.

I lost a third day of work yesterday for a different reason. New contact Susie runs a brilliant new startup called My Face My Body My Soul. She does facials, has a whole body vibration machine, and is a reiki practitioner. Face, Body, Soul, geddit?

My visit to her was to take pics of her relaxing little room so she could put them on her website; in return she gave me a mini combination facial and a turn on the vibration machine and the foot massager. With half the day gone by then, including a sushi lunch, I asked her for a reiki session at my cost.

Before I get onto the reiki, which is the real purpose of this post, a brief note about the facials. The combo was half an hour of the Micro Current Facial, which uses a very week electrical impulse to stimulate facial muscles and tighten them, followed by half an hour of an serum delivered deep into the skin via an oxygen machine, using a device that was first cousin to an airbrush. This plumps the skin up and fills in minor wrinkles and if you have deep lines helps them too. I swear I looked about 30 by the time she'd finished. Ideally you'd have a full course - six weeks - of both these treatments for maximum and longer lasting results.

And then the vibration machine. I want one! :-)  It stimulates your muscles and gives you the equivalent toning of a one-hour aerobics class. In ten minutes. Given my host Susie's trim taut body, and she uses it every day, if I lived closer to her salon I'd be in there every week using it.

But now to the soul bit. I asked for reiki as I've had it before and was blissed out for about 3 days afterwards. If anything was going to kick that headache into touch, it would be reiki.

Many people are sceptical about reiki and other 'new age' and alternative therapies. Not that reiki is new, it's been around for millennia. I'm a hippie at heart and believe that 'there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your constitution'. (Shakespeare occasionally comes in handy, although I am more likely to quote 'blow wind, and crack your cheeks!' when I hear someone fart.)

The lovely Susie is a grade 2 reiki practitioner - the first person I went to was a reiki master and I did get more of a sensation out of the first person, but I gradually sat up at the end of an hour feeling very much at peace and a bit tingly all over.

The really interesting thing was what Susie said afterwards.

"When I started with you, I got this very clear image of a little girl of about ten or so on a swing. She was wearing a long white dress, old-fashioned, and in a beautiful garden. Lots of roses and other flowers, flowers twining up the side of the swing even."

Bizarrely, my first reiki person saw that same little girl, although she was wandering in the garden rather than sitting swinging. She was wearing the same white dress and had the same long brown wavy/curled hair.  I told Susie that and asked what it might mean. She said, as did the first person, that the girl was either me in a former life or a guardian angel or spirit. Susie suggested that if I'm passing a children's playground, I should get on the swings :-). It could help lower my stress and clear my thinking.

I'm wondering if that little girl is my grandmother as a child. Nan and I were the best of friends, and a tarot reader once told me that Nan was still about, looking over/after me. In my head now I'm calling that little girl Ivy, my nan's name.

Susie also had a strong vision of me walking by an ocean with a dog, and told me I was at my happiest and healthiest near the coast. "You need the negative ions you get from salt water and the surf, even if you don't swim. You work all day with computers which emit positive ions so you need to balance it. Heading out to the Blue Mountains for a day will help restore your negative ions too. But try to get to the beach regularly all year around, just walk by the water in winter.  You could also try standing in the rain." Fat chance with the rain, I hate getting wet when I'm fully clothed! :-)  The ocean is nearly an hour's drive away but I think I'll have to make a regular effort; it's true I am happiest near water, whether it's the river or the ocean. I'm a Virgo, an earth sign, so my need for water is a bit weird!

The headache, she said, was coming from my stomach area, and she did a lot of work around that chakra (which made me fart later when I went to the loo after my reiki session!). It was stress-related. Given that it's January and my stress levels are pretty low as work is light at the moment, I wonder whether it was a year's worth of stress just releasing itself.

Isn't it weird that both reiki people saw the little girl? She is obviously a key part of my psyche.


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