Death By Bra - Pt. 3

Healing phases, clean up, and harvest

This is the third part of a three-part case study. You can find Pt. 1 here and Pt. 2 here.

In that first, most-welcome IMT session, my healer told me that, perhaps due to my own or Linda’s interventions, the damage to my heart muscle was minimal, and that my issue now was spiritual. My conscious mind was mystified by this, but, that night, I dreamt about a dragon swimming in an amniotic sac. The sac was Earth and the dragon was the Gaia and she was agitated. On her ankle and around her neck were iron collars and chains. As I watched, the restraints popped off—Gaia was being freed! I woke up in the next seconds and felt my ankle and neck crack and shift into better alignments. I felt as if the message was about Gaia’s healing, which I was witnessing in my body.

Dragon in Chains by Cary Eisenstein

This shift resolved old issues in my neck and ankle, but also revealed the depth of the sleep apnea problem. Now it was plain that my heart was stopping every night. After another terrifying episode, I called my friend Zach in the middle of the night to see if he could help. His presence, even over the phone, was comforting and reminded me that, often, the simple act of getting help can bring about healing.

Bolstered by his energy on one side and Charles’s energy in person on the other, I started to explore my diaphragm, which I realized was spasming, preventing me from taking a full breath. For years, in yoga class, when the teacher asked us to breathe from our belly, I simply couldn’t do it. Now, using Resonant Attention, I began to probe the knot and recalled my thirteen-year-old self, terrified by the sexual culture of my peers. I suddenly realized that I had been “holding in my stomach” since then, trying to fit in. For the first time in forty years, the spasm in my diaphragm released and I could fully expand my belly. The significance of being supported by two beautiful men in this wasn’t lost on me, especially because Zach looks a lot like my first boyfriend. I was once again moved by the coming together of the specific elements (the doppelgänger of my boyfriend and my husband, who holds such generous and safe space) that I needed to revisit and release that early trauma—the resonant attention.

Holding in my stomach around boys

This release was obviously massively helpful, but it too revealed new problems, most alarmingly, a reorganization of my internal organs. My lungs and heart, which had previously been crowded by my stuck diaphragm, were now flapping around in there without enough pressure. If I turned to one side or the other, I could feel my heart flop, like a cutlet being slapping down on a cutting board. Worse, my vagus nerves, which had been tethered by fascia, were still tethered in their now-too-tight positions—and my nervous system was in constant alarm mode as a result of this. This phenomenon of healings creating major problems is an important one to consider and watch out for. ‘Cleaning up’ after a big shift—where you wait for sequelae to arise and treat it before finishing the session—can prevent these crises.

Another IMT friend, David, who happened to visit in the first week after my episode and saw how much I was struggling, had gifted me a session with Tom Giammatteo, the former husband of IMT founder Sharon Giammatteo, who still runs the IMT school that I recommend for people wanting to become next-level healers. At this crucial juncture, I was therefore able to get Tom on the phone. He taught me a two-minute trick for getting the vagus nerve unstuck that moved me out of panic mode. And his subsequent treatments were world-class. 

Once my vagus nerve stopped firing all the time, I banked hard into recovery mode. I spiked a fever and didn’t get out of bed at all for three days. During that time, Charles went into high panic. I remember lifting my head long enough to squeak, “It’s a healing phase! It’s a healing phase!” before collapsing back into sleep. For those of you who don’t know, ‘healing phase’ is the term the GNM people use to reorient perception around ‘illnesses’ that will result in resolution of the crisis pattern.

Knowing this, it felt so good to give myself over to this process. I probably slept fifty hours out of seventy-two. At the very end of it, though, my heart palpitations returned and I despaired that nothing had changed. But then I revisited the GNM material and read their prediction that, for the kind of heart issue I’d had, a resurgence of symptoms would be the last sign of the healing phase, like a final tap dance. My task was only to relax and let them go without worry. I felt so grateful for the wisdom that has been collected in that paradigm.

After all this, there was still clean up to do. More IMT treatment, more check-ins with Linda, and much more rest. The rest piece, I’ve come to realize, is crucial for being in balance with your heart. Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money, spoke with me soon after my initial episode. She’d had a heart issue of her own and wanted to share with me a diagram that she’d come to live by. It is two triangles touching in the middle with their points, which is where she places the heart. “Heart people give all this,” she said, pointing to the upper megaphone. “But to do so, they have to rest an equal amount,” she said, now indicating its inverse shape. Said another way, for all the yang you expend, you have to nourish an equal amount of yin. 

Meanwhile, my father died. His health declined precipitously once I had to stop treating him so often, which was a bitter fact. But he was very clear that I should prioritize my own health and taking care of my son, so we made peace with it. The dignity he embodied in his final weeks was precious to witness. I’ve been honored to learn from him. And from all the healers who grace my life. 

Turns out, I am better than before. I no longer have apnea and sleep more soundly through the night. My palpitations are gone. My energy levels are steady, with no need to nap in the middle of the day, which I’d always done before. I can kick around a soccer ball without my heart threatening to seize. The menopausal journey seems to be in a lower key.

My relationship with Resonant Attention has shifted, too. I feel even more cautious about creating rigid ‘classes’ around my work. I stand by my core perception, that attention and allowance are what shift us into healing, but turning that perception into an RA methodology must come with a strong caveat about dogma. We would do better to return that word to its Greek root, meaning, ‘that which seems to be true,’ to which I would add, in the moment. In other words, timespace is such a huge influence on the healing encounter as to reveal it as an expression of it.

Here’s what I mean by that: A couple of weeks before the episode on the highway, which happened on July 4th, an assassination attempt was made on President Trump’s life. In the aftermath, the world felt tenuous, as if everybody was waiting to see what might come next. The outbreak of war, another assassination attempt, or any other outcome seemed possible. It was during that window that my own life also seemed to be hanging in the balance. Would I not wake up some night? Would I end up in the hospital? Would my next treatment completely fix me? I couldn’t predict anything.

On August 23rd, Kennedy dropped out and endorsed Trump. And on August 27th, my dad died. By then, I was mostly out of the woods regarding my health and the end of Kennedy’s campaign marked, at least in our household, the closing of one timeline and the opening of another, just as my dad’s dying also marked the end and beginning of a new era. My microcosmic reality was resonating with and reflecting the larger one, a blurry perception no doubt heightened by my vulnerable condition, but nevertheless astute to our interconnectedness.

It left me humbled by the vastness of the web in which we influence and co-resonate with one another. And determined to embrace this core paradox: That our healing is both within as well as outside of our control. And the best we can do both for ourselves and our clients is to show up to our healing sessions in reverence to that mystery.

Love,

Stella