Healing, Massage, Yoga, PTSD... and Gemstones

Yesterday evening I called in to speak with Michele Rosenthal of healmyptsd.com regarding the part massage has to play in the healing of my PTSD. She has a weekly radio show called "Survivors Speak", and she liked the comment I made on Facebook about the role of massage in my own healing journey and invited me to give my input. My interview wasn't chosen to go on the air, but some very good information was presented.

Long story short, massage was the one thing that started my healing. After decades of feeling hopeless, in pain, and just plain worn out, Rachael at Nashville Massage & Yoga Studio was the one to show me that, yes, I can feel better, and maybe there was even hope that I could get better.

So this got me thinking, hey, twenty years ago nobody even knew what fibromyalgia was, or, if they did, they sure weren't any of my doctors. And PTSD? Heh. "Only soldiers get that."

Today, I have no symptoms whatsoever of fibromyalgia, though I am still working through my PTSD issues. I no longer have flashbacks, panic attacks, and I sleep well at night, so those are all good starts. Getting through the anger at the people who did this to me and the people who still disrespect me in the name of love -- well, that's gonna take a while. As John Shore comments, "Only two kinds of people claim they’re done evolving: liars and the tragically deluded."

So, this got me thinking... yes, I said that already, but I got sidetracked a bit. Anyway, twenty years ago massage and yoga were still considered part of the "fringe". Heck, to a lot of people they still are. (You should see the looks I get sometimes.) So maybe there are other healing techniques that aren't as mainstream as yoga and massage are getting to be today that actually work?

Therapies like aromatherapy. Sound therapy. Crystal and stone therapy. (Now you see where I'm going here.) What if working with all these stones has actually sped up my healing process? And even if it was part of my healing, it's not like I intentionally chose specific stones and did specific things with them. I choose what stones to work with by color, generally.

Like I've said before, I really don't know. But I'm certainly not going to discount it. What I do know is that our science and technology just isn't good enough to measure all the little beneficial effects of our environments or the things we do.

And as long as this stuff can't hurt to try, why not go for it?