Floored

I bought a Groupon for a massage a couple months ago and the therapist was so busy she couldn't schedule me until yesterday. I failed to read the fine print on her services, and when I arrived she told me she does structural integration. Basically, rolfing, about which I am deeply skeptical. She explained that it wasn't really massage so much as deep connective tissue work to resolve musculoskeletal imbalances. All I heard pretty much was blah blah New Age bullshit, blah blah. 

However, as she was explaining her work to me, she said, "You chew on the left side, and you're a side sleeper, mostly left side, and you lean to the left when you sit, so most of your lower back and hip pain is on the right side. You prefer spicy food. When you run, you pronate with your right foot and have knee pain only in your right knee." 

It was like sitting across from the Sherlock Holmes of body work. So I figured even if the method itself has no scientific basis and might be a giant load of hooey, at least she seemed to know what she was doing. 

The Groupon was for 90 minutes, but she said, "You'll only be able to handle half of that this time, because I can tell you're a mess, so we'll just schedule another appointment. And I'm going to give you a list of things you need to change." A lot of my defenses went up at that point also. I can handle anything, you can't hurt me, I'm not a fucking mess and I ain't changing a goddamned thing. 

But I have been frustrated by certain misalignment issues, sleep issues and difficulty stretching into certain areas, so I figured I'd give it a try. It was strange, because it did hurt, but not in a bad way. It hurt in a way that is hard to describe. Definitely not pleasurable. I guess the closest I can come to describing it is that it felt true. Proportional to the pain I myself was storing in my muscles. I could tell she was getting deeply into some areas where I had a tremendous amount of stored tension, where I was holding a lot in my muscles. In particular, she manipulated the whole suite of muscles around the pelvic girdle: thigh adductors, iliotibial band, hamstrings, glutes. Basically, the down low. Very powerful. 

The main thing I noticed when she was done was that most of the pain was gone from my pelvic region. I had been too shy or protected or something to tell her that I've had pelvic and prostate pain, which is silly but typical of me, so I researched why it would be that "structural integration" would relieve that pain when I got home and started learning all about the pelvic floor muscles. 

I knew absolutely nothing about these muscles before yesterday, except where they are and what they are called, since I teach human anatomy. I also vaguely knew that they are often considered of clinical significance for women, and that Kegel exercises specifically target the tone and strength of these muscles. But as I started researching more, I discovered a whole physical therapy and "alternative medicine" thing involving the pelvic floor muscles and chronic pelvic pain syndrome in men. Most of this work is being done in other countries, for some reason. 

The main recommendation for working with the pelvic floor muscles around pelvic pain is to learn toning and strengthening exercises as well as relaxation techniques to release these muscles. The theory is that chronic pelvic pain in men is not a problem with the prostate, usually, (of course, after bacterial prostatitis and cancer have been ruled out), but with tight, hypercontracted pelvic floor muscles, and prostate and other pain in the region is referred pain.  

So I figured I would try the main relaxation technique, which is to lie on the floor and do deep, diaphragmatic breathing for at least ten minutes, and imagine the pelvic floor muscles "melting." I could use general relaxation practice anyway, as I am the type of person who tenses up while meditating because I am afraid I'm doing it wrong. I sometimes find myself yelling at myself, "would you fucking RELAX!" I carry a lot of tension. One of the huge benefits of exercise has been the way it burns off a lot of that constant clenching of all of my muscles. One of the huge gaps in recovery literature and the labors of recovery is the body-- and an enduring part of what keeps me sober has been re-entering my body, so to speak, and slowly, painfully, getting it to trust me again. 

I started the deep breathing practice and slowly began to relax. As I began to try to release the pelvic floor muscles, I couldn't even feel them. It's weird that we have muscle groups with which we are so out of touch we don't even sense them when we turn our attention to that area. But I kept with the practice anyway, figuring it couldn't hurt. 

Suddenly, on one of the deep breaths, the whole region absolutely released and did in fact feel like it was melting. At the same time, an enormous dark wave of graveyard grief, sorrow, loneliness and deeply forlorn sadness rose and opened up my chest. This was such a surprise that I immediately felt the muscle group tighten again. Now I am much more in touch with both feelings, the completely relaxed opening and the fearful and controlling tightening. So weird and unexpected. 

Metaphors that present themselves are that it was like visiting an ancient place that had fallen into ruin from neglect. Or it was like finally turning my attention to an extremely lonely person who has just been waiting for years to be seen and heard. Or it was like confronting some kind of deeply buried shame that absolutely centered around control and not being embarrassed, like, stretching all the way back to potty training. And there was a powerful cascade of all sorts of darker emotions around all of that. 

So I kept at it for the full ten minutes, which seemed like a long, long time. The only sentence that presented itself was "I've been so unhappy." 

Huh. Shut the fuck up. No I haven't, I've been fine. That's life. Get over it. Nobody ever gets what they want and that is beautiful, say They Might Be Giants. No, I'm not unhappy. No. And with that resistance mentally came the unfamiliar but all too familiar sensation of the tightening and armoring of that muscle group. In the relaxation phases, up welled that simple and plain fact and its attendant feelings of dark grief. 

I've been unhappy. 

I am unhappy. 

I've been unhappy for many years, bottom line. Instantly the defense or dismissal kicks in. You've had stretches of happiness! Stop complaining. What the fuck do you expect from life anyway? It's just self pity. I'll give you something to cry about. Get over it, everyone is unhappy. You think you deserve better than everyone?

Okay, but. I am unhappy. 

I don't want to be unhappy anymore. 

Then, instantly, the strategic voices kick in. Well, what are you going to do about it? It's your fault. Fix it. Stop bitching and get busy. If you had made better choices. If you were less self-centered. 

Okay, but I am unhappy right now. 

And that's that. And it feels amazing to just accept it and quiet the voices that would either deny or mock my unhappiness. It's good to keep it simple for now and live in the gentle acknowledgement that I am unhappy and that I would like to be happy. For one thing, it helps clarify all of the weird permutations, contortions and desperate behavior in which I engage, in an effort to run away from the simple fact that I am unhappy. It's right down to whether or not to have dessert, for example. I have been increasingly aware of how I use sugar to avoid feeling sad, and how sad and deprived I feel if I abstain from sweets. That seems odd to me-- I mean, damn, it's just fro yo right? No, no it isn't. It's also self medication. 

Exactly how this was all tangled up in the pelvic floor muscles is beyond me at this point. 

After the practice, much of the pain was alleviated, at least until I started the habitual re-formation of the armor. It's promising, however, on two levels. One is that maybe a way of at least managing the chronic pain I've been experiencing is to practice both pelvic floor muscle exercises and relaxation, even if there is some clinically indicated prostate issue or whatever. It felt that way yesterday. I tend to think I can manage chronic pain in a lot of ways without changing my life. But sometimes the message from the body is like Rilke: You must change your life. The other is that maybe work with this muscle group will continue to unearth stored sadness, which in turn might offer yet more freedom and clarity, going forward. 

I used to be skeptical of the Ericsonian idea that we "store trauma" in our musculature, until, years ago, I had a shiatsu session with an expert body worker in Santa Fe. It was a turning point experience for me, and many strange and unexpected things happened during that hour. Huge waves of heat escaped from my body, for one thing, so that I was drenched in sweat. Certain pressure points opened channels of intense anger. Others of intense grief and loss. Others of fear. The other such experience I had was during an acupuncture session, also in Santa Fe. The therapist and I were working on releasing tension in my abdominal region. She put needles into a vertical line of points along my skin above the linea alba, and I melted into one of the deepest experiences of sadness and grief I'd ever had, followed by astonishingly indomitable and blind rage. The region of my body did in fact seem to "hold" or "contain" a particular set of humiliating and traumatic memories I had suppressed for a long time. 

Around that same time in my life, I started to read Alice Miller. It was good to encounter all of this, but it also was too much for me at the time, and I put it aside. But obviously I'm in another phase of going deep. 

No trip through Hades is complete without a direct encounter with decades of stored misery. I tell myself.  

Get a massage, they said. It's relaxing, they said. 

Bro, I literally cannot even rn