Last time I shared a bit of my story with my mom. Thank you for holding me in your heart with empathy and compassion. I had a bit of a vulnerability hangover, I often share other’s stories and I wanted to open up and let you know that I too am human. I have had my own pain, and so much of my work involves holding people in their trauma, and offering and sustaining a loving presence that offers compassionate understanding. Awareness doesn’t judge, value, compare or have preferences. It is the higher self, the ultimate loving self. My healing capacity comes from honoring people in their unique human experience, and this includes holding myself in this container. I hold my clients, and I offer my story so that you have the opportunity to hold me. 

So much of life the world has taught me to deny my own feelings, to suppress my own impulses and desires. It’s up to me to create my own freedom.

We are trained to numb and dumb down to conform. It is important we find refuge and support in human relations and connections that offer us the ability to feel safe, to be vulnerable and honest. I am devoted to learning and remembering to have greater trust in myself. Thank you for holding me as I trust you. It is a great walk to learn to trust. To trust myself, to trust that gravity is here to hold me. To trust that I will be provided for. To trust that the world is here to support me. To trust in humanity. In these times it takes great courage to continue to offer trust to a world that operates in many ways in fear, power and control. I choose to love a world that has not always loved me back. I trust that love is the way, the truth and the light.

I help people with chronic pain patterns get out of pain and back to their active lives with Myofascial Release. I am forever grateful to the wisdom keepers who have shared with me the ways of healing through bodywork, movement and mediation practices.

When I walked up the path towards Lee Joseph’s Pacific Center for Awareness and Bodywork, I was filled with excitement and anticipation. I parked at Ko’olau Road and walked up the hill through a narrow valley. A meandering path along a flowing stream, past several shantis- bamboo shelters for caretakers, through tropical trees with fruits to the old schoolhouse overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Each morning Lee began with a meditation circle. There we sat together for 7 months. We got to know more about ourselves and each other than we had ever learned about anyone.

Lee taught us how to hold space for others by first holding space for ourselves. He had a way I had never experienced before. His knowing presence pointed to the truth that I was the most special me there was. Each moment was sacred and each one of us had a unique light, he invited us to arrive. He was open, available and he valued me for exactly how I showed up, no matter what. Without comparing, without preferences he did his best to honor and value each one of us, as is. That was his mission, and in that he initiated me on the path to hold this flame. As we began and continued our studies, it was up to us to learn to do this work. To be truly present and available to ourselves and to learn how to then offer this to each other. As a result, we realized in which ways we shut ourselves and others down, or how we were shut down by others in the past, during the process of being with what naturally arose, we learned to observe what was happening, what our process was and how in the practicing of being present, we found a new way of being. At peace with what is. By learning to notice, to observe, to be still and watch. We saw our habits and patterns, where and how we subconsciously chose pain and suffering, where it came from, and ultimately how to love it, which led naturally to being more free of it. Lee was in his 60s and his playfulness & joy was contagious. He was authentic, real and curious about what was unfolding in the here and now. He was completely himself, confident and yet not unhealthily identified in his ego. I loved the way he gently guided me to my own limitations, and then helped me set myself free. The work was done first in the consciousness and then followed in the body's structure, for they are not separate. Everything is interconnected.

You are your own greatest healer. You have the power to set yourself free.

She came in on two ski poles. Her groin was pulling and on the opposite side her glute and internal rotators were tight. She’s had severe pain and walking was increasingly difficult since the beginning of the summer. She didn’t feel stable, said she could barely walk, she was without the strength to lift her legs well, so walking and stairs were becoming nearly impossible. In order to walk she was leaning over to the left then right side trying to pick herself up with the sideways momentum. Her lumbar vertebrae were compressed, her sacrum was pulled out of center by the adhesions and tight gluteal and external rotators- the superficial and deep muscle groups of the buttocks. On the other side of the sacrum her gluteal tissue was overstretched, the hamstrings were straining to pull the pelvis into balance. Her pubic bone was tender to the touch at the ramus of the pubis-attachments of the adductors- the inner leg muscles and the ASIS were gripping and pulling. I could tell from the initial body read that her pelvis was fighting to keep her erect and walking. But it was fighting with itself. The ankles are laterally rolling out, and there were cysts- the body attempting to pad by creating fluid sacs.

She has been dedicated to working with me because she felt immediate and ongoing relief. During treatment she’s learned how to listen to her body. She is relearning how to walk in a new way using natural momentum as she works with gravity so her psoas muscles are lengthening and are learning not to pull her pelvis out of alignment. Her recent MRI impressions showed exactly what I had told her in my body read, to a T. She also is walking better than ever, she has very little pain, she’s getting back to her active life, and guess what she has current fractures in several places in her pelvis and sacrum, tendinosis in the hamstring, glutes and external rotators inflamed and yet, she is healing, she is able to walk and she is impressed. I am teaching her practical ways to support her movement in everyday life with awareness. She has mobility and is getting back to a pain free active life with MFR.

Angela Rose is an Injury Specialist and Myofascial Release Therapist at Sol Bodyworks in Grass Valley CA.