The Healer and I
Fay, the healer and I, the subject, both consult my body in its entirety. Fay directs me to examine the sensations within this body, the instrument of change I have placed upon her table. There is first the feeling of water dripping, ice melting, inside the body. The dripping is insistent, patient, slow. The water is flowing from the head to the feet, and from the feet down into the earth itself.
What is melting the ice? Light, and heat, from a source outside the body. The ice melts, bringing forgotten memories & feelings. A vision of mountaintops, sheathed in ice, but below the ice, green plants wait, alive, waiting to raise their heads, once the ice is gone. Luxuriant jungle foliage, frozen water holding it down. The ice melts, the water is freed — the water nourishes the plants growing on the mountainside. The water has been held in stasis, unable to feed the growth of the plants, but now it is melting.
The water is itself pure & clear, it does not care about having been frozen, it exists only in this moment, the moment of flow. The water is good, the force melting it is good, the plants are good, the mountain is good — there is no bad thing, only cycles of stasis & flux. We, Fay and I, are in a period of change.
The spine is specifically consulted, the spine feels stirrings it has not felt for some time. “Desolation is a file, and the endurance of darkness is preparation for great light.” (St. John of the Cross.) The frozen water has had its purpose — there can be no journey without rest. Soon, the ice will melt altogether. Yet the spine quivers with some unexamined tension, apart from the melting of the ice.
A sensation of another presence, another entity, squirming under the touch, ticklish, evading….
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 