Today, I went to my chiropractor for my weekly adjustment. There’s been some odd, funky, dull pain in the middle part of the left side of my back. I can’t pinpoint where it came from either. My back has been doing quite well lately (knock wood.)

After the adjustment, I received a short massage from a massage therapist who is filling in for our regular therapist. She practices a form of “intuitive energy work” in addition to massage. I indicated that I was comfortable with her combining modalities as needed and she set to work. She did a form of fascia release, along with the energy work. It was quite gentle, unlike most fascia work. She spent most of the time with one hand on my heart area and the other at my back, where I’ve been experiencing discomfort.

Although I’m a Reiki practitioner, I am not always immediately sensitive to the feel of energy moving through me when I’m on the receiving end. It can be very subtle, and may express itself in other ways. Almost immediately, I felt like I was going to burst into tears but somehow the sensation wasn’t strong enough to push me over that threshold. The massage therapist mentioned that she sometimes receives information or insights when doing energy work. This happens with me sometimes too, so I told her she could share anything that came up while working with me.

She told me she felt something sharp, like a spear, energetically protruding from the space between my heart and back. There is no actual physical injury or scar, so the “wounding” (as she put it) may be either emotional in nature from a past experience or could have been intentionally placed there as a “psychic attack.” (This may sound weird, but yes, it can happen.) In any case, I intuited what she was going to say just before she said it. I have felt for a while that this wounding was there. The Reiki self-treatment positions I’ve been doing lately have intuitively led me to placing my hands on my heart space. Having someone else affirm it for me felt cathartic, like I’d released a bit of burden I’d been carrying and didn’t know it.

I’m still not sure of the source of this wounding. I don’t know if it was an old wound that resurfaced because something triggered the pain, or if it’s something new in nature. I struggle with PTSD that surfaces more keenly this time of year, but I don’t suspect that it’s that this time. Energy work generally doesn’t provide answers; it gives you clues for the journey towards insight, integration and healing.  As is often the case with true healing work, I came in for something physical to be worked on and left with a metaphysical issue to be resolved.

It looks like I have my work cut out for me.

(Photo credit: 200MoreMontrealStencils on Flickr)