QiGong Class Changed Us

I attended a QiGong class on March 22.  The teacher was a Master of QiGong with Chinese family lineage going back about five thousand years.  He spoke through a translator.  Although I found I could ‘hear’ another lecture by just observing him.  I expected to be influenced by being in his presence for 7 hours but did not know what the longer term effects would be.

I tolerated the class much better than expected.  I chose to sit instead of standing and the teacher was fine with my choice.  The majority of the class was learning active movements of Qi as we learned to interact with The Universe differently.  But I did not feel overly tired until the last hour.  For the 4 days after the class, I had no physical pain.  About 10 days after the class, my right side brain pain moved to the left side in a different pattern.  I also am experiencing less dissociative amnesia.

Curt does energy work on me weekly.  He noticed the overall increase of my energy, during my first treatment following the class.   During my second treatment following the class, he was able to physically release some Qi affecting my right hip*.  I could feel the energetic connections between my right hip, left side of neck, all of lateral most aspect of my back and down to my left ankle.  It felt as if Curt was twisting my whole body around my mid-line core, actually he was supporting my head as it turned slowly like a stretch to the left.

*There is a lot of ‘trauma’ stored in the area of my right hip.  Physically my gait is lopsided and painful.  It has seemed resistant to change but now I see it’s slowly changing.

I’ve also noticed myself just being more accepting, comfortable and less anxious  being me.  I’ve been thinking and processing about being OK to be me.  Accepting that I’m in different place of being than most individuals that I come in contact with here locally.  My life has been different AND it was ‘designed’ to be different from the beginning.  It’s beyond the influence of my early childhood trauma.  It’s like the trauma is just some layers of influence.

I’ve successfully removed white sugar from my eating lifestyle and thus I am needing less Xylitol to maintain a lower saliva acidity.  I’ve fired up my slow cooker making a couple of one-pot meals that were tasty and more adequately nutritious.  The Sleep With Me podcast has increased the number of nights that I actually sleep.  I am still unwilling to force myself into the potential terror of sleep.  But when I am able to listen to the podcast,  I usually sleep.

New Sleep Pattern Emerges

I’m sorry I was unable to post on earlier this week. It took me a few days to realize that my immune system was fighting something and that I needed to not work, take Chinese Herbs and rest.

 

Lack of sleep has always been a statement of fact in life. During my first 30 years, I never slept more than 3 hours consecutively. In undergraduate school, I used it to an advantage by scheduling my work hours during the time when everyone else was sleeping. My goal was to get 2 3-hour periods of sleep each 24-hour day. Since the return of my previously repressed childhood abuse memories, I have needed light to sleep. A friend expressed concerned when she discovered that I was sleeping with an overhead light on. So I transitioned to leaving a light on in an adjacent room.

I told my primary care physician about 7 years ago that if you grouped all nights in a year together, then I would say that 25% of the nights that I got 6 hours of sleep. More recently, my sleep study showed that I never go into Third Wave or REM sleep (the 4th and 5th stages of sleep).

The infographic by Heidi Hanson about her “5 Step Self-holding Exercise for Self-Regulation of PTSD Symptoms”, which was inspired by Peter Levine’s work ‘Somatic Experiencing’, recently came to my attention. See link below:

http://www.new-synapse.com/aps/wordpress/?p=616

I tried the first 3 steps. The third step felt very uncomfortable. So I have just done the first two steps at least once daily for a week. Voila!  I am sleeping for 7 consecutive hours per night starting Wednesday night 02/11. I am sleeping 1am to 8am. Quite amazing!  Since February 2013, I have been unable to get to sleep before 4am. The terror and sleep revulsion has been insurmountable.

When I changed the third step slightly to holding back of head instead of the front, then the discomfort dissipated. The concept of holding my head side-to-side and front-to-back is appealing to me. During times of active change, I often experience ‘brain pain.’ Brain pain is not a traditional headache. My brain pain has only been alleviated via ‘energy work.’

Sometime during my active psychotherapy counseling, it was discovered that my left and right brain hemispheres were not actively communicating. It was no surprise to us. Our perception was each hemisphere had ‘big picture’ job and they did not need to communicate to each other to get their job done. I have received a considerable number of hours of ‘energy work’ to facilitate and improve left and right hemisphere communications. And I can no longer state that my hemispheres operate individually.