mulberryshoots

Yesterday at my shiatsu session, I related the events that have occurred since our meeting two weeks ago when C. first gave me Chinese herbs called “Clearing.” It consists primarily of lotus seeds which “are believed in Chinese medicine to ‘clear heat’ (清熱) and be particularly nutritious and restorative to one’s health.”

I don’t know what has happened,(maybe it’s even some kind of placebo effect,) but there’s been a major shift in my energy based on the amount of productive activity that has transpired since then; not only just clearing things, but reorganizing for optimal usefulness. C. immediately commented that this sounded like a feng-shui element for allowing energy to flow more effectively. Mundane things like the kitchen drawers, cabinets and the pantry have been reorganized from the bottom up, and amusing things that I forgot all about have surfaced, such as a kitchen towel in red letters on a white background saying, “I had a really nice dream last night about Daniel Craig” which is now hanging on the handlebar of my oven.

Anyhow, back to clearing heat from within. Something has shifted or disappeared. This unease used to compel me to question myself, to prove myself or to limit my capacity to be happy even when everything seemed to be fine. As a result, my energy level seems to be steady and strong, not driven or rushed in any way. And I seem to be able to get a lot more accomplished with a lot less impatience. Humph!

C. my shiatsu guru, says that there is a new feel when she takes the pulses of my organs as well. Before she confirmed that, she suggested that perhaps what I was experiencing was what she called “assimilation,” which I thought was a very good word to describe the clearing out of heat and the resulting assimilation within my internal forces.

Assimilation from a biological standpoint means “the conversion of nutrient into the fluid or solid substance of the body, by the processes of digestion and absorption”; assimilation from a psychological standpoint means “incorporation of new concepts into existing schemes.” Pretty good for a handful of Chinese herbs containing lotus seeds, right?

Of course, I’ve been working up to some kind of clearing for some time now–and feel that I have arrived like that woman climber in that incredible ad on TV where she stands on top of this mountainous pinnacle, as relaxed as can be, the rest of us wondering if she actually climbed up there (she did) or whether it was photoshopped in some way (it wasn’t.)

So what do you think about this metaphor that it’s as hard for some of us to change and shift around our internal energy from that which we learned a long time ago as it is to scale the peak of a mountain? Our mountains are what we make of them, aren’t they?