The story of a fall

One of the most challenging things about working with the great art that is Amatsu, is the deep education that comes with it. The Western medical model of the body is deeply ingrained in most of us and we see the body as a vehicle that we often only think about and notice when something goes wrong.

A few weeks ago, messing around with my son, I slipped off the sofa and landed, hard, on my coccyx and my elbows. The pain was breath-taking. Knowledge can be a double -edged sword. I have the ability to work on myself immediately (really brilliant in reducing longer-term symptoms), but I also had the sinking feeling that this was a really nasty impact and there would be repercussions if I didn’t act properly.

When people come to see me with pain, it is often unexplained pain, something that has come seemingly from nowhere. They have usually tried many other approaches before and seen medical professionals for diagnostics, which are very useful, but very often inconclusive in these cases. It isn’t easy for us to believe that the kinds of blows or impacts that I had can, many years later, show up as something else.

But when we learn and accept that everything is connected to everything else in our body by fascia, and that our amazing physical being is constantly working to create balance, perhaps it’s easier to understand why strange things can rear their heads later in life. (It can also be true for emotional blows, but we’ll stick to the physical for now!)

Imagine for a moment that you had a tennis ball that you threw as hard as you could, into a wall of mud. It would hit the wall, travel inwards to a certain depth and then stop. The density of the mud would slow down the ball, but it would still travel some way in.

Now imagine that is the force of the fall. The density of my bone and muscle absorbed the impact, but that force continued deeper into my body, affecting the soft tissue and organs of my pelvis along the way. I lay on the floor for 5 minutes, one hand on my coccyx and the other on the opposite side of the impact, my lower belly, as best as I could ‘unwinding’ the impact. Boy, it was sore!

The next morning, despite my best efforts and doses of arnica, I woke in pain with discomfort in my right knee and pelvic floor. Over the days that followed, the feeling of instability in my right knee increased and, thankfully, three days after the injury, I managed to have an Amatsu session. As I lay on the treatment couch, and my practitioner lifted my leg, it felt totally disconnected from me. I couldn’t hold it up at all. The messages just didn’t seem to be getting through. The impact had travelled!

After a good session, I walked out, still feeling unstable and a bit disorientated. It took a day before the knee pain resolved and I am due another session this week.

So what would happen if I left it?

Actually, over a few weeks, the pain would have resolved by itself, most probably. But, (and this is a BIG but) the pattern of pain would remain. My amazing body would adapt and adapt and work hard on the inflammation. After a while, I might forget about it and feel as though it was better. But, I would be walking just a little differently, moving slightly differently. A muscle or two would have tightened up in my pelvis, my pelvic floor may have to work differently. My body would adapt - until it couldn’t. And it is from these places that unexplained pain starts.

I now know, after over 15 years of working with the body, that these unresolved blows to our precious body do have an impact - eventually. It’s not about being afraid of life, or afraid of future pain. It just that in the same way that we try to keep on top of maintenance of our car or home, our body asks for at least the same care and attention.

Another dose of arnica for me!