By Ellen Selover, EEM-CLP

One beautiful autumn Sunday, I was at home raking leaves. I raked and bagged a lot of leaves! It is one of my favorite activities when the air turns crisp, the sky turns deep blue, and the sun casts that peculiar light that shines when its path is low across the horizon.

On Monday, I was back at work – primarily a desk job at a non-profit organization at the time. About one o’clock in the afternoon, I began to feel stiff across my back. It came on fast and was so painful I could hardly breathe. I thought I needed to get up and move around a bit, but when I did, the pain shot down my legs and they felt as stiff as boards.

What was going on?! “OK,” I thought, “Donna Eden says that pain is an indication of too much energy.” I sat back down and got very quiet, tuned in to my body and silently asked what was happening. An image of all those bags of leaves came to mind. I had completely forgotten about that work the day prior. Of course, all that lactic acid in my muscles. But then came a thought that echoed another basic tenets of Energy Medicine: “Energy forms habit patterns.”

The message I seemed to be getting was that my body had prepared enough energy to sustain me through another day of raking leaves, but I was just sitting at my desk. The energy had nowhere to go, and so was backing up (literally in my back) and causing pain.

I began to pull that excess energy off my body like gently squeezing a tube of toothpaste, down my back, arms and legs, and off my fingers and toes. I could feel the grip on my muscles loosening. And, because I believed that my body was doing the best she could in the moment, I thanked her for sending all that energy into my muscles, and let her know that I wasn’t having another leaf-raking day; I was having a desk-sitting day and didn’t need to have all that energy ready.

Within five minutes, that pain was completely gone.

I learned through that experience that I can communicate with my body’s energies and let them know when I’m done with a strenuous activity and don’t need that energy preparation for the next hour or the next day. Like when I’ve danced until my legs ache, or after skiing for the first time in more years than I can count. If pain sets in, I pull the excess energy off, and let my body know that I’m done with that activity for now. The pain releases every time.

It works like magic – Energy Medicine magic!

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