Embracing the Miraculous: A Journey of Healing and Hope

The diagnosis of cancer didn’t cause Meridith a minute’s hesitation. The Bach Flower Essence procedure, or “balance” as kinesiologists call it, began with questions that probed my childhood and marriage. She was looking for attitudes that might reveal any emotional blocks I might be experiencing. She knew my answers would activate my memory to aid healing. When she had finished the interview, she began the balance. First, she had me lie down on the massage table face up. Even after Meredith’s interrogation, my mind was blank. Wide-eyed, still in shock, I couldn’t shut them while she worked. When I settled on the table, Meredith began to spray the flower essences in the air above my head, asking me to breathe them in, taking deep breaths. As I began to breathe deeply, I began to shiver. At first, I thought the room was cold and wanted to ask her for a blanket. However, the tremor soon grew in strength until it convulsed my entire body. I wasn’t cold. I was shivering involuntarily, and I could not control it, try as I might. Even clenching my teeth didn’t help. Meredith continued to work on me, encouraging me to take care of myself. “Now there’s no time.” She fingered my watch. “Forget your job! Forget your husband! You need all your strength to heal.” She continued atomizing the essences, telling me the names as she sprayed: revival remedy, olive. Applying one to a trigger point, she said “Tell them ‘no.’ No demands. Not now.” I couldn’t answer her; the shivering continued to grip my body. I felt it would never end. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed during which she anointed my trigger points with specific flower essences: willow, wild rose, centaury. She explained them to me as she worked. The atomized essences were so faint that I smelled only a refreshing mist. As the shaking continued unabated, I began to wonder if it had been a good idea. Or rather, I thought Meredith’s intent was good, but the remedy might not work for me. My issues were deep. As the balance lengthened into twenty then thirty minutes, I understood dimly that an animus that had all the qualities of a demon, owned me. Meredith was exorcising this demon. She had become shaman, and I the possessed, but the controlling demon was fear. Despite what Meredith could see visibly before her——my uncontrollable tremors——she did not waiver but staunchly continued with the balance, talking me through it with encouraging words. “Now you need all your strength to get well,” she reiterated. “Don’t give it away. Tell them to go away. Tell them ‘not now.’ You need all your strength.” I now understood that fear had laid siege to my body and mind. Then, after thirty minutes, the shaking began to subside and, abruptly even, stopped. Afterwards, I was thinking, Others had cancer and survived; I can, too. I wanted to get up immediately and search my alternative health book for therapies. Meredith would not let me sit up or leave the table. She continued to work, anointing me with the remnants of essences that would stabilize my balance. When she finally helped me to sit up, I felt more energy than I had felt in the entire week since I had first received the call from the radiation center. I was unaware fear shows as a blank mind and the inability to think, because it did not feel like panic or terror. However, when I freed my emotions in the safety of a therapist’s care, secure on the massage table, my fear became so intense that my entire body shook. Even my feeble mental attempts couldn’t stop the uncontrollable shivering that was strong enough to chatter my teeth. Only the fleeting impressions of Meredith’s strong voice commanding my conscious presence led me to realize that fear owned my mind. Meredith never told me if she had doubts, but I knew from my own experience with kinesiology the practitioner often begins to doubt the effectiveness during difficult balances. Some last longer than average because the subject has deep-seated problems. Kinesiologists have faith in integrated organisms. They believe the body will pace healing to its own needs. Even in difficult balances, the body upholds its own equilibrium, allowing only tolerable, even if small, changes. These changes, much like sawing through bark to get to live wood, start with the presenting issue and draw from an immediate past. By that third week, I saw my main challenge was to protect my job and health insurance and negotiate the cancer therapies. I needed to choose carefully.