I listened to Donna Eden talk about energy medicine this afternoon. She’d healed herself from MS after the doctors had told her to get her affairs in order—she was going to die. She started out by simply holding her leg and patiently being present with herself. She began to see the energy her body was made of and realized she had the power to heal herself. (She was born with the gift of clairvoyance.)
I sat listless thinking about doing her energy routine to try to get my own energy going. I’ve had next to no energy for a long time with another type of autoimmune dis-ease. Tai chi/chi gong helps me maintain a life but lately I’ve felt my energy simply slipping away despite my practice.
But how do I even get started without energy. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is a metaphor of courage and fortitude but courage and fortitude require some degree of energy. It all feels impossible without some kind of help. I need an “other” to help leverage some degree of movement to get started.
Annie’s been hanging out here this morning and now the clouds are clearing, the sun is shining, it is cold and windy, but the mud is dried. I head outside to the laundry room and Annie gets excited—a walk. No Annie, just the laundry. But she insists—a walk. And before my enervated resistance can shut the idea down I realize she is the instant answer to my, as it were, prayer for help.
Annie moves into we’re going for a walk mode. Her tail is wagging her body, and she’s making sounds that if she had the kind of mouth that could form words would be saying, “Come on Hannah, you said you need more energy.” So I get my Uggs on and wrap myself up against the wind and move listlessly out to the meadow behind my house, where there are a couple long man made ponds. Annie is excited and she keeps checking up on me to make sure I’m keeping up with her. We walk to the end of the first long pond and walk up the slope of the berm that contains it. Annie’s found some luscious dried horseshit to roll in (I’m sure there is something homeopathic or healing about horse shit, because dogs always love to roll in it).
Suddenly I hear a splash and then a whoosh of air. I look up and see a great blue heron taking off for the other end of the pond. I’ve never seen one here before. Annie sniffs around a bit while I do one of Donna Eden’s exercises (raising my hands to the sky and feeling that I am touching heaven). Then we walk the trail toward the other end. As we approach the heron’s hiding spot it takes off again away from us.
Here is what the “Medicine Cards” by Jamie Sams and David Carson says about Blue herons: “Heron medicine is the power of knowing the self by discovering its gifts and facing its challenges. It is the ability to accept all feelings and opinions without denying emotion or thought . . .
I know that my body is not independent of my feelings and thoughts. The natural and spiritual worlds seem to be answering my conundrum about self-healing by telling me to go deeper inward.