I was thinking about where to go with this, and decided to treat it as if I was working with a new practitioner. It'll end up a bit more thorough because of the medium, and I don't always tell every new practitioner everything because it's a lot and not always relevant to their practice. Have you ever seen that meme that suggests you need a PowerPoint presentation to get your new therapist up to speed on your past experience and progress? Well, I guess I bring you my PowerPoint. I would honestly do it in PowerPoint because I love a good corporate presentation, This really feels simpler.
So, what's up with my body, and why do I seek healing treatment for it?
Well, I hold a lot of pain and am rehabbing a lot of body parts from past injuries. I'm also approaching perimenopause and it's fair to want to best support my body as it navigates it's humanness. There are a lot of diagnoses in my experience that are full of letters and generally seem to root in autoimmune disease, but I haven't been diagnosed with any sort of specific autoimmune disease. I find this is because I've always been glazed over as a result of always kind of being on the fringe of normal on hormone marker tests. I cried and a lot of doctor's appointments — I always felt so misunderstood and unheard. My mother had a similar experience with thyroid testing and she finally said f*** it, I'm going to pay for the test. Government funding and policies prevents doctors from being able to request this test be completed which is why I've never done it before. My understanding is that you have to test out of range on the first two tests to be allowed to take the test in question. For my mom and I, we test fine on the first two tests. When she paid for the test in question, it did show thyroid malfunction. This is recent and they just biopsied it so I do intend to use that in my next discussion about this in a medical capacity, but today is not that day. I digress though...
Paramedical practitioners, which is what the insurance company called them when I started seeking out their care, seemed to listen differently and we had different goals and plans. When I found my physiotherapist when I was pregnant, i finally felt like i had a good point person with my care but she's an hour away now, and I don't see her like I used to.
I have had several accidents. I've been t-boned in vehicle accidents and I've fallen in multiple ways onto multiple materials with different impact points.
My physical body is twisted. I can feel it very clearly now but my work with Cali, my physiotherapist, has helped me gain that awareness. When we started working together almost 8 years ago, huge sections of my body were "dark zones" to my inner knowing. If I was to close my eyes and stand in mountain pose, I wouldn't know where my hands were or my feet were. I could feel the pain of how cold my hands are — that's been diagnosed as Raynaud's Phenomenon. I still feel that pain, but I can also trace my nerves up my arms in my minds awareness a little better now. Mental agility has resynced with physical agility slightly compared to before, which is good because my maternal ancestral line suffers from bad arthritis and I would love to mitigate any mix of what Raynaud's+ arthritis could be.
Lymph drainage has helped me feel less like I'm choking all the time. It's not gone completely, but I have an eye on where it's coming from now. I am optimistic about what The Booth can do to support further release.
Our body roots in our feet, and my awareness of what's down there has substantially increased in the last 15ish years since my Raynaud's was diagnosed. I know that some of that choking feeling mentioned above lays in my feet (and the inability to pump lymph fluid efficiency back up my legs to drainage ports). The balance of my Liver meridian in my heel with my Spleen and Bladder meridians in my toes is out of alignment between my right and left sides. Muscles from each side are both over compensating and and atrophied into one great big jumbled knot. A spider web that has been over grown and tangled.
Before I started all my practitioner work, and in alignment with mental health work I was doing with psychiatrists and therapists as part of my PTSD diagnosis, I used to recognize the same area that felt tightened and choked to be a great large mountainous rock that had crusted over and silenced the root of my mental anguish. I visually went in to this area to unpack my trauma with pick axes, singing the Snow White dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig dig dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig song. (Would it be awful if I took this moment to tell you that I'm voice noting this and google got the dig, dig dig and then switched to dick, dick, dick and I had really good joke about dicks popping up where they're not needed? A real conversation and assessment would include an awkward joke or two — I have my clown moments). Anyhoo, sometimes I cried, as one does when navigating huge emotions from heavy humanisms. Visualization can be an incredible healing tool. EMDR, also effective.
My 2009 right leg calf, knee, ankle, foot injury takes a lot of credit for my recognition of emotional healing through the physical embodiment. So often I would stretch into that leg and into that calf and memories of a time that required serious unpacking would release. The physical pain that has lived in my body that I'm working to release is also teaching me about boundaries and self-awareness. My weak spots.
My end goal is to be able to jog consistently without having breathing troubles. Maybe I'll get her there, maybe I won't, but I will become embodied and love my body wholesomely for all I does for me. . Even thinking back to high school in track or childhood chases, there was never a time that I felt like I had endurance breath. Even when I was running in Tough Mudders and living a Tone It Up Girl Lifestyle.
Yep, because of PCOS and IBS diagnoses, I have done the fit girl challenge to #TIULoveYourBody. The eating lifestyle was also a huge commitment but there were a lot of positives that came with grain and dairy reduction. My paternal aunt has Type 2 diabetes and my blood sugar isn't exactly fabulous. I know that some of the symptoms I'm struggling with currently can be addressed by tightening my nutrition ship again, and I do have goals and plans around that, but at this moment, I have the capacity for the eating I'm doing and that's ok for right now.
My pelvic floor is out of alignment because of the imbalance in my feet. I actually suspect this is childhood trauma related, and I have some ancestral work to do as part of figuring out how to strengthen and realign that area of my body. It also shows up in my knees, which is reflected in the Patellofemoral syndrome I was diagnosed with as a teen for knee pain. It had been worsened by each additional injury on my legs. There was another big injury to the right leg in 2012, a massively sprained right ankle in 1999, and a broken left ankle in 2021. The 2021 broken angle was dislocated and fractured. I required two metal plates and nine screws and in 2023 I had all of that hardware removed because I could feel the metal inside my body and it made me feel icky. I'm so grateful for it and the doctor that did my surgery. Her vibe was all brilliance and I couldn't have asked for a better person to perform surgery on me. When I had that hardware removed, I felt like a flush of awareness flooded upwards in my leg towards the rest of my body. I was also very grateful to be able to remove that hardware once it had done its. This whole twisting of my body thing really wasn't helped by the 2009 fall because I had to walk on that hurt leg unsupported for several weeks. I did my best to minimize that, but I also had a lot of physical baggage to carry that was bulky, awkward and uneven while I walked. That injury extended beyond it's zone and up into my arms and shoulders. I really held myself together with my neck on that journey, and my cervical thorasic junction is a huge epicenter of radiating pain throughout my entire body. It pulses from here. At one point, my shoulder pain was given the diagnosis of thoracic outlet syndrome.
I'm also nauseous often. Some days are more nauseous than others. Some days I might be nauseous in the morning and not in the afternoon or vice versa. The nausea is a line from just above my belly button to kind of where my Adam's apple would be if I had an Adam's apple. I understand this to be the vagus nerve so I listen to a lot of vagus nerve solfeggio frequency and similar music. Well, food can help. It's also triggered by posture and just the way that I can feel this twisting squeezing my internal organs in ways that leave them displeased. This is why I see osteopaths and massage therapists for visceral manipulation — the organs need help moving. There's a spot on my liver that has been called benign, but has showed up in two ultrasounds. It also makes sense given my current connection to my liver meridian.
Hips are rotated in all the wrong ways, and connected to the glutes and (don't be a child about this) the anus. I've come to recognize that the symptoms that led to me being diagnosed with IBS in my 20s were related to the strength and posture needed to evacuate stool effectively more than it was about how much bread I ate. My paternal grandmother and I have terrible hemorrhoids — I had mine banded off twice. Not being able to poop is such an overwhelming feeling and it finally coming with blood is unnerving. The mental and emotional health that intersects with this body function is deep and I'm glad I've improved my relationship with my poop factory.
One really curious thing or, at least I find it really curious, is that the physical restraint and pain in my neck can be traced all the way into my vocal cords. I can tell this because of how I just lose notes when I'm singing. What I mean is that air might come out but no sound does. I could be doing a scale and all the sudden one of the notes in the middle of the scale is just gone. I might be able to hit that note in a different key, And I might be able to hit that note if I change my posture.
Most recently I was diagnosed with migraines...which...I guess so. Maybe I have to narrow of a view on what migraines are. I have had them before, I just hadn't considered that migraines could be an umbrella diagnosis for me. I'm looking at adding more vitamins into my life to help with this, but my body is having this issues right now when it comes to taking pills. When I was pregnant I took all the prenatal pills. I took all of the vitamins every one that I needed. Horse pills, multiples of them, taken until for over 2 years. Then one day I just could not take those pills anymore. I could not take other pills either. My throat just did not want to swallow pills anymore. Magnesium Calm helps me get the magnesium in a non pill form. I also drink a lot of electrolytes because I get a lot of cramping and one of my chiropractors always lectures me about getting in more electrolytes when I'm cramping. I actually think a lot of the cramping and spasming that I experienced now is the reversal of the cramping and spasm that I had when I was super injured in my legs. I healed but I healed twisted and now as I untwist, I have to experience the same spasmic shift but backwards. It's not fun jumping out of bed to stech out an insane pain you've woken to, but telling myself it's because we are untwisting helps me release grumpiness about it.
So, what I'm looking for from the Halotherapy is support with my lung function and skin health. I also have had life long struggles with eczema and some itchy dry spots (even when I use lotion) so knowing that at present, my baseline is thst I can't hold up a conversation while walking briskly without losing my breath a bit (when I was pregnant just talking for a few minutes while I was sitting could wind me).
What I'm looking for from the red light therapy is muscle recovery and wound repair. There is a lot of deep and soft tissue and fascial nerve work to be done in my body. I feel like I've come a far way from where I was at the peak of my injuries, but I know I have a ways to go. My ankle surgeon said to me, after I came out of surgery, "I fixed your ankle perfectly and you will still probably end up with arthritis in your ankle when you were older". I'd like to stave off the arthritis as long as I can. Let's see if I can build up my activity level and my muscle strength and my posture so that I can meet that goal of being able to jog with a a strong breath. I don't want to be a runner. Don't get me wrong but I would like some solid fun Zumba and some kickboxing.
I will continue to share more about my journey with a booth on the blog. I believe that the proof is in the pudding and from my experience so far things are promising. I can't wait to share more with you.
Xoxo
T✨