This past weekend was the biggest deal weekend of the whole year for Molokai, bigger than anything like Memorial Day. It was the annual Hula Festival.
According to Hawaiian legends, the hula dance originated here on Molokai. All the other islands acknowledge this too; we're not just making it up to have a tourist event.
So the festival goes for four days with historical lectures, hula lessons, hula demonstrations, and then the big open air festival on Saturday with all the local craftspeople selling their stuff and food booths, face painting, etc. Plus lots of music and hula "teams" representing the best from all of the Hawaiian islands showing off their stuff.
One of the fair booths was my Hawaiian healer and an elderly lady to whom he introduced me saying that she was his "kumu" or teacher, the one he learned the art from, "Auntie Snookie" to her friends a tiny but stout lady with short white hair on her head and long curly white hairs on her chinny chin chin.
Well, Auntie took one look at me at told me to sit down. No discussion about it. When Auntie tells you to sit down, you sit down.
I had been having all those weird sensations I was writing about before all week plus getting headaches every evening right about sunset but just behind my right eye (which is also the side where he had been doing the work to loosen up my surgical scars).
My healer plus Auntie went to work on me with him doing the physical manipulations and her doing what can only be described as the Hawaiian version of "laying on of hands" along with some lovely chanting in the Hawaiian language.
It was mind blowing. I'm sure (in my logical, scientific rational brain) that there is probably a large component of placebo involved but I really don't care. I was sitting there in full view of anyone who strolled by with tears streaming down my face. Auntie handed me a hankie and kept chanting.
I went home that evening and was out like a light by 9pm and slept for 12 straight hours until 9am. Then last night I slept for another 10 straight hours. I feel so beautifully well rested. Real restorative sleep. Ahhhhhhh......
The only way I can describe it is that the patterns of tension and tightness that had been shaken loose in my session earlier this week were still there somehow kicking around inside me and looking for a way out. Auntie showed them the exits. No more headaches since.
She explained it too me that every time the body experiences a physical pain there is also an emotional pain as well. Losing a breast to cancer is not just about the pain, scars, mobility issues, pills, etc. It is also about fear, anger, hopelessness and helplessness. Until you learn to let go of the emotional pain, the body will hang on to the memory of the physical pain.
I think more attention needs to be paid to the emotional component of healing in western medicine.