Emotions Are Important in Healing

A client came to see me who was having some low back pain after birth.  She had all the typical patterns I see in postpartum women.  I was adjusting her pelvis and working physically on her body to release them.  Then, as I typically do, we did some internal work.   A postpartum session is never complete without assessing and helping the pelvic floor muscles and internal vaginal tissues heal after birth.  

Internally I found the typical bladder moved off to the left but her cervix was in a good position.   However, her pelvic floor muscles had tension and tone in them that didn’t release after the bladder was back in its normal position like they usually do.  So I brought my client’s attention down to the contracted pelvic floor muscles and as I did her eyes started to well up but she immediately shut it down.     I don’t like to force anyone to go where they don’t want to go so I didn’t confront her on stuffing the emotion.  

I worked every which way I knew how to get those pelvic floor muscles to release and they just wouldn’t!  The tone remained in the tissues.  The increased tension was on the same side she was complaining of the low back pain so I knew this tension was possibly contributing to her back pain.    If only we could get them to release.  

But we ran out of time and they never did release.  

I told her she could benefit from another session to work on it some more.

As she sat up from the table she said, “Ha!  Two of my friends told me you would make me cry, but I didn’t!”   She was so proud.  

That’s when it hit me!  I remembered the emotion was coming up and she stuffed it back down.  Those pelvic floor muscles aren’t going to release until she allows the emotion to release.  To make that happen she has to feel the emotion, allow it to be there, embrace the feelings and then they can dissipate and release.   I’ve seen it happen over and over in my practice.  

The pelvic space is a holding container for our unprocessed emotions, traumas, and events that have happened to us.   Being willing to access what is being held there, recognize its presence, can help it release from the tissues.   

As a practitioner, we walk a fine line in encouraging women to go where they might not want to go.  Fear has kept those emotions at bay.  Having the courage to help women face them as they come up is the greatest gift we can give them.   I don’t like to force them to face things but this experience has made me more aware of the importance of helping our clients understand what is being held in their tissues.  I wished I would have said, “did you notice how you just stopped the emotion there?”    But I didn’t and I trust my intuition as it didn’t call me to say anything either.   I trust all my sessions go exactly as they should and the intuitive hits I get I discern whether or not to share them with each client.   

This was a great experience for me to truly understand the power of stuck emotions.  I wished her friends hadn’t said anything to her beforehand so she could have had a different experience.  But it wasn’t meant to be.  She never came back in for another session but sometimes opening a door or planting a seed, as I like to think about it, is all that needs to happen in a session.  You never know when that seed might sprout.