Angels of Joy visited today and left that lovely snow on top of everything, easy to brush away and eye candy for those of us in love with a white morning. The angel brought beauty to our eyes and delight to our feelings. We were in the snow globe looking out the windows everywhere to the white feathery flakes falling.
I made my way to the PT place and went into the wrong parking lot due to the cover of snow on everything. I locked my car. The parking signs were different but that did not stop me going toward the door. There I found a much different door and at last stopped and realized this was not where I was supposed to be. It felt a little surreal, like a dream even, until I realized what I had done.
I am working hard on getting my legs in order with the help of the PT team. I try and explain where I am at, to my therapist, fearing to be too enthusiastic, in case the treatment ceases, and at the same time knowing I am making some progress. Some healing is going on in the dark recesses of my psyche. Am I able to walk she asks. I avoid it like the plague I reply. In reality the pain levels have gone from a ten to a three. I am feeling warmer in my lower half all over. I am exercising their exercises for an hour or more each day.
In addition I am interspersing yoga breathing into my exercises, doing breath of fire sometimes and at other times other complicated yoga breath exercises I learned in my Kundalini class. These are accompanied with words, in another language, prayers really. And I am using my familiar Our Father to center me in my body also.
And just for good measure I have an array of oils, some plain like castor oil, others like peanut and olive oil as well as pine needle and sassafras oil mixed. While I am doing all of the above I am rubbing in oil to offending places, fingers, neck, lower back, knees and feet to name a few. A yellow band is around my kness some of the time to create tension in the body part being exercised.After about an hour or more of the above, I go into my meditation period for a further time, totally relaxed, and ready for some silence, some releasing with the breath, some waiting to be blessed and some blessing of my own for others.I finish off with “The Lord is my shepherd” psalm 23.
Inner Opposite, Animus, doodle
Other modalities I am using are castor oil packs, and exercise in the water, hot tub, baths, gelatin salads with lots of raw vegetables and an alkaline diet in general, avoiding constipation like the plague also. This is working for the most part except when I travel home from New York, do not drink enough water and generally graze the potluck fare presented to me.
Passing the time in a New York restaurant
I have a castor oil consciousness as I have used castor oil packs since my twenties after reading about them in the Edgar Cayce Readings (edgarcayce.com.) Castor oil is known as the “Palm of Christ” in Europe. I did not hear of it in Ireland and my mother did not make use of it in any way. I love it as a massage oil.
As you can see from my agenda above it takes what it takes to change things around. But the big categories remain the same. Exercise, relaxation, diet, etc are all needed. Getting the unconscious involved for me is also part of what I am doing. I draw pictures of my hip pain sometimes and I feel that brings in another level of awareness and consciousness. The art brings me around the corner to see what will help, what will heal.
I love working with dreams. I sometimes am drawn around the corner and see more than is obvious. I love this connection that comes in amid the art and the attention to dreams. The Psychoanalytic is the way for me. I sprinkle in the cognitive behavioral as needed also as the both together are a great combination. Deciding what to do as a result of having a dream is acknowledging the unconscious, paying attention, being in the moment and disciplining self for a new way forward. The cognative/behavioral piece is “do the exercises, Rose.”
She is not too fond of discipline
I loved visiting with my family in New York, taking a break from my life here in Harrisonburg. Being with my three grown children and my sister, who is soon to retire to Ireland was a lot of fun, especially the music connection. We made a music video under the direction of my music daughter and we laughed a lot.
I will conclude with a short piece I wrote after meditation:
Water holding together without any support 
We are the stars, five-pointed stars, meeting others at our points and getting closer into jigsaw puzzles. When we withdraw in meditation, in Jap, we go into a one pointed center in the center of our stars, that brings us close to others, as they are in their centers, and this is the place of the portal to the center of God, inside and outside, into the collective unconscious that holds those who can help us and those we want to help. Dreams may come from the collective center with some message for everyone or from the individual center to help me and others we are concerned with. Love from Rose.
Rose Longworth Counseling 