Months earlier I had an eerily similar yet worldly different experience. I was lying on a hard surface, ingesting medicine as healers stood above me and "sucked" the spirits out. The medicine these healers gave me knocked me out though. I could feel nothing as they sliced me open and zapped me with hi-tech instruments. They cauterized and flushed my insides with warm liquid and charged me thousands of dollars for a procedure that had to be repeated three weeks in a row and still left me in a good deal of pain. That time though, I got to keep the video.
A few days after my experience in the Amazon I found myself in another situation that I did not expect--I was hanging by my knees, held upside down by a shaman's husband, as she performed her ritual. This time I was naked as my fellow travelers watched in awe and intrigue. We were now high in the Andes after an exciting journey by dugout canoe, plane, and bus. Once again, I was doused with alcohol, herbs were shaken and waved over me, smoke was blown all around me and then a small stuffed doll and an egg still encased in its shell were rubbed harshly all over my naked, raw, and sticky body. I can honestly say that until a few days earlier not one of us had seen, much less experienced, anything like it. Yet by the time we reached Maria Juana's casa, we seemed prepared for anything. At least she wasn't spraying us with alcohol as she held a flame to her mouth like the shamans the evening before.
Each of us on the journey were honored to witness our co-travelers' healings. We watched and participated with sheer reverence as the healers we visited performed their rituals and invited us to partake in their magic. Of course, we often mused at the idea that they were secretly laughing at the gringos as we paid good money to be spit on, whacked with herbs, and given hickeys. Perhaps they were, and perhaps our medical doctors also are laughing behind our backs. "Look at these silly people who let us cut them open and prod them with instruments," they might say. "We give them medicine and they give us lots of money; what a great thing."
Believe it or not, I actually do have a good deal of reverence and respect for healers of all cultures including western medicine. I trust in the human desire to serve, in our innate ability to heal, and in our individual understandings of the universe. My healing journey has taken me on an intense, diverse, and very winding path through healing cultures from all over the world. Most of them have been explored in various offices throughout the US, however, rather than in exotic tropical jungles.
I was diagnosed with endometriosis six years ago via laparoscopic surgery. Endometriosis is unfortunately a relatively common condition where normal uterine tissue is found growing outside of the uterus on the ovaries, bladder, fallopian tubes and even in other places throughout the body. While not life-threatening, it can be extremely painful, especially during menstruation and ovulation, and is a leading cause of infertility. There is no proven cure.
I realized I needed to find alternative ways to heal myself a few weeks after my first surgery when I told the doctor that I was still in a great deal of pain and she responded "You're not in pain, LABOR is pain." One day shortly thereafter, after crying in my room for hours and coming out for a cigarette and a milkshake (I needed something to cheer me up, didn't I?), I wandered into a bookstore and came across Dr. Christiane Northrup's Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, an inspiring and empowering look at female anatomy, and the relation of our emotional and spiritual health to our physical bodies. From there I was led to more books and then on to nutrition and yoga, to acupuncture and herbs, back to specialists at Stanford, to hypnotists and therapists, to medical intuitives and Tibetan doctors, to naturopaths and massage therapists, to personal growth workshops and community, to Ecuador and, eventually, here to Lost Valley. It has been quite a ride. The good news is it's been an incredible journey. The bad news is I still often find myself in a good deal of pain. Despite the pain, however, I am continually thankful for my body and its lessons.
Many days (although probably not many enough), as I lie with a pack of castor oil on my abdomen, I wonder, "Haven't I learned enough? Didn't I get the lesson already?" I guess I haven't. And I go on, "Maybe I need to get more surgery. Maybe I really need to give up the milkshakes and the cigarettes for good this time. Maybe I need to go back to Ecuador or eat more kale or practice more yoga or unblock my second chakra, or heal my sexuality or take birth control pills."
Or perhaps I merely need to trust. Trust in the perfection of it all, trust my process and my journey. Trust the healers in all of their wisdom, trust my own innate healing powers and my ability to know what is best for me. After all, does it really matter if the shamans were laughing behind our backs or, god forbid, the doctors? I wonder how much we need to believe in the magic for it to work. While I can't say that any of my fellow travelers to Ecuador were spontaneously healed in my presence, I do know it has been known to happen and I don't doubt for a second that it could.
I am learning as I travel along this journey that true healing comes in many forms and often, like many of the best things in life, it doesn't always come in the form or time frame I was anticipating. I have also realized recently that none of us can ever truly know what is best for another and perhaps even for ourselves. So, slowly but surely, I learn to invoke more trust and let go of any rigid definition of health I am holding on to. On a good day that feels easy, on other days that trust feels much harder to grasp. Sometimes my efforts work to reduce my pain and sometimes they don't. In the meantime, I try my best to follow my heart, do my yoga, eat my kale, and to love myself and my process. If I'm lucky I feel good, and if not, well, at least I get some interesting stories to tell.
Abigail Leeder recently celebrated her one-year anniversary of living at Lost Valley and is the program coordinator for our Naka-Ima workshops. After her last contribution to TL she commented, "There is nothing like putting your personal truths into print to call them all into question."
©2001 Talking Leaves
Winter 2002
Volume 11, Number 3
Diversity, Wholeness, and Healing