The Reality of the Situation

This is supposed to be an interactive chronicle of at-home healing. At-home to make it realistic and affordable until I can find a way to open the reality-based Healing Farm. I’ve laughed through books like “Eat, Pray, Love” and movies like “Under the Tuscan Sun”. Who the hell can take that kind of time off? Oh it would be nice to have some money stashed away or a book deal to finance the sabbatical. But really. how many people can do that? The author of “Julie and Julia” is more realistic. Isn’t she? She went off to her job every day and worked on her project when she got home. Well, here I am. Somewhere in between. Although I have the advantage of being self-employed, I also have the disadvantage of not having much money and also not being able to completely check out for a month. In other words, I still need to make money. My goal became to work minimally. It’s the booking season for my business (I’m a wedding photographer) and I need to book weddings to make money. So I’m working one hour a day answering e-mails and if a new business meeting comes up I’m going to go and do the meeting. The rest of the time I’m going to read, walk, do yoga, go to the chiropractor and write. I’m going to take a bath every day in lieu of a shower and also work on my posture. I’m going to eat well and take care of my body so that maybe I’ll start losing some of the twenty pounds I’ve gained since my “injury”. Can this be done by everyone? That’s why I say I’m the middle=ground. I’m self-employed AND I don’t have kids, but I hope that with collaboration we can work together to come up with ideas for those who are in pain, but feel they cant possibly stop the hamster wheel. We’ll see. I’ve been at this for going on three days and already I’ve hit snags.

In the Beginning There Was a Eureka Moment

Right before Christmas my good friend Lyn gave me three gift certificates to a local chiropractor. She bid on them at her kid’s school auction because no one else was bidding on them and she’s been hearing me lament about my back for the past three years. Although extremely thankful at her thoughtful gesture, I was skeptical. I’ve been in pain for three years and short of major surgery have tried just about everything (including chiropractic very early on), so wasn’t exactly positive walking into the chiropractor’s office. When I arrived, she asked me a few questions, but seemed to wave off my claim that although I believe my injury to be cumulative, it must primarily stem from my long career in photography. She didn’t seem to listen to the part about my already knowing it was a cumulative thing and focused on telling me I was wrong for thinking it was about body stress from photography and that “rolling over in bed did not cause my injury”. Well, duh. I had already said that, but she asked how it happened and I told her. She didn’t listen to the part that I understood it wasn’t just from one thing.

LISTENING is so important. We know our own bodies and I think most of us are pretty intuitive. Those who throw their backs out know that it wasn’t really from lifting that feather-light box or stepping up that curb. We know it’s a lifetime of improper care. We don’t really need to have a practitioner ask us about our “injury”, not listen and then proceed to repeat what we kind of already know. Back pain and some other chronic pains are mysterious. As advanced as modern medicine is, there are so many things in the body that are still a mystery. Especially with back pain, it might not be one thing that caused your pain to begin with and it’s most likely (at least in my case) not one thing that is keeping it from healing either.

Back to the chiropractor. I know she cares and I am actually still seeing her for my pain, but let me get back to that first appointment. She put me on a traction table and stretched me out for about twenty minutes. Then she did some deep muscle and tissue massage and then some general chiropractic stuff (all that cracking and pushing and bending). The pain raging out of my tailbone area (although that’s not where my real pain is) was on fire and then slowly it released. She told me to get up and when I did, I realized I was gloriously pain-free. One of the only times in three years I was pain-free. I couldn’t help it. I started crying. Balling. Right there in her office. Of course I was so excited, I signed on for ten sessions which is why I’m still seeing her.

She warned me that the process would be like the edge of a jigsaw (I think was the analogy). That she truly believed that although there was and still might be an injury, I’ve been protecting it so long that my muscles are in constant spasm and that most likely with walking around, the pain would come back and we just have to keep working at it until eventually the muscles are re-trained to not instinctively protect the area that’s been in pain.

I went home and took a bath as she instructed and when I got out I was still pain-free! It was a breakthrough. Glorious and inspiring. My husband was out that night and I was alone to luxuriate in being pain-free. It was a release. It was a physical release, a mental release and a creative release. It was the few hours that inspired me to do what I’m doing now. It was a humbling moment too to know how repressive chronic pain can be. It’s horrendous to be in chronic pain. It’s always there. It’s exhausting. It’s depressing, it feels hopeless. It effects your body and mind equally. I’ve gained weight not just because I eat when I’m sad or stressed, but also because exercise hurt me. I used to run. I used to do yoga, I used to hike. I stopped doing anything that would worsen my pain (except sex). Suddenly I was pain free and I was reeling in ideas and hope.

The next day I was back in pain. I was also hit with the reality that I’m self-employed, it’s my slow season (not a lot of money coming in) and I’m in pain. I was NOT inspired to start a blog. I also had a good week’s worth left of work to do before I could even think about taking time off. One week turned into two weeks of work. The “jigsaw” of pain was hopeful sometimes, but also discouraging. Could I really be inspired?

Why I Think My Healing Farm Vision Doesn't Exist

Admittedly, there are places I’ve found online that are healing places. There’s even one that’s in the works called “The Healing Farm” (which as far as I can see is not yet happening). But I’ll be darned if they aren’t all hippie dippy, new age, or spiritual retreats. So I said in my initial post that the closest thing I can think of to my fantasy is a spa. But who can afford to go to a spa for a month or two? Also, although I’m a firm believer in massage and sitting in hot tubs, I think a chronic injury needs some collaboration and other practices to really get in there to find where the problem stems and to try to work it out. Honestly, a hospital bed would be good too.

This is my fantasy. This is my vision. I go to a place for a month, six weeks, two months. Where I might have my own little tent or cottage or room with bathroom. There’s a hospital bed with a REALLY good mattress. One of those latex mattresses. There’s a team of practitioners I meet with at the beginning of my stay who will all interview me about my pain, feel around and confer about what treatments might be best. There will be a massage therapist. There will be an acupuncturist. A physical therapist. An Osteopath. A Chiropractor. A feldenkrais practitioner, a yoga instructor and a pilates instructor. Maybe even a nutritionist. All of these people would be happy to collaborate treatment and ideas tailored to my personal healing attempt. I think one of the biggest frustrations I’ve come across is to have conflicting, even competing opinions from different healing disciplines. I don’t want to hear someone slamming another process. I want to hear why they think what they are doing is best for me and how it might work in tandem with other practices to heal me.

I might have my own little kitchenette so that I can do a little cooking or have the option to buy a reasonably priced meal at the common space. There might even be a garden I can walk in that would grow organic veggies and fruits for the guests/patients to eat. There would definitely be walking trails and yoga/pilates classes. And a hot tub. Maybe a pool too for gentle exercise without stress on the body.

Expensive to run (translate: expensive for guests)? Yes. There’s the glitch. I would want it to be affordable for those like me. Those who can’t afford to heal their backs. Maybe someday I will be able to create this place and somehow figure out how to make it affordable. In the meantime it’s a “staycation” (in the words of my friend Laurel) for me. My mini-healing project.

Not a Farm?

OK. This is not a farm. I know. But it stems (no pun intended) from an idea I’ve had, a fantasy really of my Shangri-la. My healing shangri-la. I’ve done a lot of traveling in my life. I love it, I dream about it, but I’m going on year-three of chronic back pain and my current fantasies revolve around going to a place where I can heal. Naturally. I really don’t have anything against healing back pain with western medical practices and maybe if I could afford it, I would go for major back surgery, but I can’t afford it. I also have read loads about unsuccessful back surgery. Not too appealing to get something that invasive done and to not have it work. Ouch. I do believe, I want to believe, in natural healing and I REALLY believe now in preventative. It’s too late for me to go the preventative route, but I want to reach out also to those who don’t yet have back pain or some other chronic pain in their body about the importance of preventative care.

So since my Shangri-la doesn’t exist (at least as I visualize it) and I can’t afford the nearest thing, which would be a spa, I’m creating a test. This is my virtual Shangri-la. This is my personal healing project that I hope will be a sharing place for people in chronic pain who want to heal naturally or who might have crappy health insurance like I do. A place where we can share ideas, successes, failures and hopes of being pain-free.

I’m a photographer. I don’t have a shoot for another month and I want to do an at-home healing test. This is my mini-at-home healing sabbatical. I hope to bring ideas, inspiration and hope to other people who are in pain. And maybe have a little fun in the process. This is,  after all, supposed to be my Healing Farm Shangri-la.