Liberating Consciousness From The Body, Part II
Meet the Gatekeeper, which stands guard at the periphery of subjective human consciousness to ensure we are worthy of entering the objective realm.
This is part 2 in a 5 part series. Click here to read Part I and here to read Part III.
Standing in the rushing waters of Elk Creek, nausea coursed through my body as the adrenaline wore off. My reflexive longing to go back in time and stay on that dry rock was quickly morphing into stunned sobriety and a return of consciousness.
I was seriously injured.
Stefan was with me that day, and he was at my side within moments of hearing me yell as I fell into the river and twisted my knee. Declining his offer of help to get me ashore right away, I stood up, got my bearings, and paused.
How bad was the injury?
Looking down, I wasn't sure I had any control at all over my lower left leg, which, moments before while I extracted my foot from the rocks it had lodged in, felt as though it was dangling by a thread.
I felt as though I'd "lost contact" with a lot of my left leg; I wasn't registering much proprioceptive awareness there.
Proprioception is the ability to know where our body is in physical space, along with the ability to conduct movement appropriate to the space we're in.
Immediately, a feeling of helplessness washed over me; followed by panic at the thought of depending on Stefan to help me.
What if I couldn't walk out of here?
What if I never walked normally again?
I imagined decades of being house bound, trapped in a broken body and utterly dependent on other people for even the smallest daily tasks.
By the time Stefan arrived at my side, I recognized what was happening: my nervous system was automating the same exact programs that had prevented me from trail running and hiking for 8 and 6 years respectively in my twenties; coincidentally (or not?!), due to left sided knee pain.
"Hello, old patterns. I thought I was done with you!"
I reminded myself:
"We will always be tested on the path of freedom."
Wait a minute...
"I just injured my LEFT knee. Why not my ankle? Or arm? Why not my RIGHT knee? Why is it ALWAYS my left knee?!"
This was a mystery that would take half a year to solve entirely, but I'd get a really big clue in two day's time.
Suddenly, my window of focus narrowed dramatically, while at the same time I registered a spiraling tableau of related life events whirling around my body, like a field of knowledge I could tap into that would help me in this time of need.
"Not this time," I said to myself.
Not this time.
This time, I would stay fully awake and choose my responses.
The date was June 27th, 2020.
Since 2011, the nervous system had been a focus of my private practice work with clients, and something I still research and talk about extensively.
You've likely heard me refer to the nervous system as "the Gatekeeper" to the world of fascia.
The Gatekeeper (nervous system) also stands guard over the objective "knowledge field," or our ability to know "what is" - reality.
For years I've said "pain shows us where we are not yet free."
To find out where (and why) we are not yet free, all we have to do is observe ourselves whenever pain or injury happens:
► Which thoughts, stories and beliefs appear in our minds?
► What do we feel?
► How do we (re)act?
I've already described what I observed in myself during this event: beliefs that I'm stupid, and broken; feeling trapped and helpless; terror stricken at the thought of dependency on others; and grasping for control by trying to predict the worst possible outcome.
All reflexive thoughts, stories, beliefs, fears, feeling states and reactions can be traced back to childhood, and the nervous system.
Throughout childhood, our nervous system memorizes our repeated thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
Once automated, those thoughts, feelings and behaviors are carried out by the nervous system in response to specific triggers without our conscious involvement, and (most of the time) below the level of our awareness.
Neuroplasticity is a modern scientific term that is typically defined as "the ability of the brain to change itself."
In fact, the state of neuroplasticity is one in which the brain is temporarily restrained, or prevented from initiating any automations; in these moments, we are free to initiate our own thoughts and observe our feelings without attaching meaning to them; we are free to choose our actions.
The nervous system, with its memorized programs, is a closed-loop feedback mechanism that does not allow for free will.
Neuroplasticity is nature's invitation to evolve ourselves into spiritually free beings, and is primarily triggered by the following:
✦ Shock
✦ Novelty
✦ Errors*
✦ Play
✦ Curiosity
✦ Learning
✦ Gratitude
✦ Pure presence
*Errors here refers to interruptions of prior programming, when the brain registers that what was previously memorized is NOT being automated, and instead, something unknown is occurring. Think about it like a scratch on a record, or a glitch in the matrix.
During the long walk out of the canyon that day, I seized the opportunity to step into new levels of body and soul freedom.
I used neuroplasticity to do this.
You can, too.
Tuning in to my body, I sensed that I was very badly injured.
We had 6 miles and 1,800 feet of uphill hiking to do before reaching the car.
This trail got very little traffic. We hadn't seen anyone all day, and we would not have any cell reception until halfway home after getting in the car.
The only good choice was to walk out, no matter how painful.
With this realization, my thinking went like this:
Water is the best compression force on planet earth; cold water immersion is one of the best strategies for blood circulation; injuries need as much blood as possible.
Water this cold would also act as a temporary anesthetic and anti-inflammatory.
Declining Stefan's offer to help me ashore, I purposefully stood in that icy water until my legs felt nearly numb.
Please note: I never ever ice injuries, and if there's inflammation then I use heat (you'll learn more about this in Part III, when I share what I did to help my body heal and regenerate so quickly). However, in this situation, ice cold water would act as a stop-gap and help me get moving, before my body's natural healing mechanisms could set in and immobilize me.
The short walk to dry land was shockingly painful.
Yay, neuroplasticity!
Sitting on a rock to put my shoes and socks on, I noticed an overwhelming desire to stay on that rock until the pain subsided.
My mind played a few movie-like flashes of what might happen if I had to spend the night out here, and death was a definite possibility. We were at about 8,000ft elevation; it would get very cold in this canyon at night; I did not have the necessary gear in my pack.
What if Stefan had to go get help?
Noticing myself start to panic again, I pushed those movies and "what ifs" out of my mind.
Standing up, I put my backpack on and told Stefan:
"We have to start moving right now, or I'm going to sit here all night."
Summoning every ounce of will available to me, I made myself some promises that I spoke aloud to Stefan, because I needed him to make me some of the same promises:
► I would let my body reveal what was objectively true about this injury, and neither of us would speculate about it.
► I would name the sensations I felt (sometimes aloud), but only when they made themselves known; and I would resist the temptation to make them mean anything (a nervous system impulse).
► Pain is protection, so I would allow myself to feel the pain fully; and we would both resist the temptation to suppress my pain in any way through comforting words, speculating positively about the future, or with distracting conversation.
► I would initiate thoughts and conversation sparked by curiosity about the present moment, which would allow me to learn something new about my body, about this injury, about the human body and this amazing gift of nature called neuroplasticity.
► I would play with my gait and use gratitude whenever there was opportunity to do so genuinely. And,
► Whenever I noticed myself falling into a habitual nervous system program - through story telling, meaning making, feeling states like helplessness or trying to predict the future, I would acknowledge them and then quickly bring my focus back to the present moment by naming sensations, tuning in to my body, feeling the pain and getting curious so I could learn something.
We slowly headed back along the meandering trail beside Elk Creek towards Animas River and the steep uphill climb that would take us to the mountain pass, and my car.
I kept my promises.
Sharp stabbing sensations, throbbing sensations, sensations of instability and sensations of electrical shock coursed through my leg, from ankle to knee and back again.
Committed to letting my body reveal what was possible, rather than make stories up ahead of time, I made a conscious effort to put my full weight on that left leg rather than relying on my right leg to compensate.
Pain is protection.
My body would tell me with painful sensations anything that might cause worse damage; in those moments, I would honor my body's request to the best of my ability.
All other sensations would go in a separate "bucket" called "good data" that would help me learn something about the nature of this injury.
When we finally started the uphill climb, I celebrated with genuine gratitude that, of all the trails to get injured on, I was blessed it was this one (I don't know if I could have endured 1,700 feet of downhill).
Walking uphill felt good (which was good data!)
Something in my knee joint (at the epicenter of pain) felt caught or stuck, and I felt an instinct to "pop" it.
Following the instinct, I began toeing off very deliberately on certain uphill steps, extending my knee as much as the toe-off would allow and slightly twisting my knee at the same time.
After several failed attempts...POP!
Immediate pain relief.
Followed by a rapid return of pain.
This became a game I played for the duration of our uphill climb.
Over and over, I looked for rocks to step on that would help me push through my left big toe, extend my knee, twist slightly and toe-off with a super straight leg and....POP!
Sweet relief.
It never lasted more than a few seconds, but I was learning a lot about the nature of this injury which later prove invaluable to my recovery.
The fact that I could get 3 seconds of painlessness was really good data.
Where I felt the pain (and where I didn't) was also good data.
Whatever snapped when my foot got caught in the river was on the inside of my knee (I would later learn that my MCL fully ruptured), and I wasn't feeling any pain there; what I did feel there was immense instability, and an absence of normal sensory awareness - that feeling of losing "contact" I mentioned earlier. Most of the pain was in surrounding tissues, the rest of my knee joint, calf and ankle.
Several times, my leg buckled violently under my weight, causing me to yelp loudly as tears sprung into my eyes.
When the feelings of helplessness came, and the visions of a bleak future, and the old familiar stories of being broken, I put them in the "bucket" of "good psyche data" and then reminded myself:
Not this time.
This time, I will be fully awake.
This time, I will exercise my freedom.
Filled with gratitude to see my car, we reached the parking lot at dusk, hours later.
Getting into the passenger seat, I couldn't bend my leg into position under the glove compartment. I adjusted the seat as far back as possible and burst into tears of relief as soon as I sank into the soft cushion.
Within minutes of being stationary, before we had even left the parking lot, my knee and surrounding tissues had swollen to nearly three times its normal size. The blessing of inflammation is a lessening of acute pain, though the throbbing was still omnipresent.
I was alive.
We made it out.
I let myself drift in and out of sleepiness on the drive home.
Stefan knew better than to take me to a hospital. I will only go to a hospital if I'm in a life threatening scenario. This was not that.
I would not take any painkillers.
Pain is protection; the suppression of pain is called trauma.
Trauma consumed the first 20 years of my life.
If I numbed my senses, I wouldn't be able to listen to my body and learn what she needed.
Whatever the nature of this injury, I would discover it moment by moment; I would gather as much objective knowledge as possible, and choose my responses out of freedom rather than reflexive programming.
Mercifully, I slept deeply that night.
When I awoke the next morning, my real "work" would begin.
This may be a radical statement, and yet it is something I now know to be true:
We can separate our psychology from our biology; we can untangle our emotions, stories and beliefs from our physiology, thereby liberating consciousness from the body and the body from bearing the burdens of our soul.
Until we untangle ourselves, however, we will exist within a confusing maelstrom of enmeshed sensations and emotions, where physical traumas become emotional, and emotional traumas become physical; thus, we remain unknown to ourselves, afraid of our own body, afraid of feelings, and our own mind; afraid of pain, afraid of disease, and afraid of freedom itself.
With our physiology unknown to us in its purest expression, we cannot know or experience our true potential for healing and physical freedom because our soul is too deeply embedded there.
Similarly, we cannot know or experience true soul freedom with our soul too deeply embedded in the physical body.
Follow along next week for Part III, where I'll be sharing how I continued to separate my psyche from my physical body.
Three days after the injury, a series of events occurred that showed me the primary psychological prison that I had erected around my body and soul at age ten, and I released myself from its grips.
You'll learn how that action freed my physical body to move quickly through the healing process, unencumbered from those soul wounds.
In hearing my story, I hope you'll be inspired to give yourself this same gift.
With love,
Elisha
Oh yes I've found them now! Clearly a newbie to substance over here ! 🙄 😆 😂
How do I get to part 3..it's a cliff hanger!