Healing Waters in belly's pond

The healer cradles my skull in her hands. Gently she massages the cerebral cortex telling me to add images to the feelings of illness in my body.

There is a churning, swirling, kettle of putrid fish in my gut. Boiling up from my anus the dark brew swirls and spins. From the rim of this sickening pot a snake emerges. Its tail is at the bottom of the pot, it coils all the way up to the top where it slides out my throat and into the air.

“Let it out” says the healer, “there’s lots of room for it out here”. She encourages me to keep breathing new breath into the image and stay in touch with what my body is saying. The new breath changes things.

Now the pot becomes a pond. It is full and overflowing. Still swirling now it is dark water that is flowing over a dam. The water stirs up from the bottom of the pond and overflows down over the lip of the dam towards my feet now. The water forms a stream and it flows down out of the room, out the door, flowing, flowing far away.

Then my body tells me something new is happening. From down at the bottom of the dam a sluice is opening. There is a new sensation as the water begins to flow out from the bottom, down my backside and down the back of my legs and out past my toes.

“Tell me about the flow” says the healer.
“Its flowing fast and churning white.” I tell her “like the rapids above Minden.”
“There’s a lot of it then.”
“Oh yeah.”

I enjoy the flow, the power of it, the anger in it, the cleansing pull of it. The healer asks me what’s happening in my belly now. Now the direction of the swirl has changed. The water is being pulled down and out and it is becoming clearer and cleaner. What I notice now is a large dark log stuck in the mud in the side of the pond. She encourages me to keep breathing, to take my time and keep watching what’s happening around the log. (let it happen – don’t make it happen – in other words)

Breathing air into my belly I begin to see that sunlight is making it’s way down into the murky bottom. The circulating waters around the log are lifting the mud away. Circulating and lifting and clearing. Circulating and lifting and clearing. Slowly the gravel bottom begins to emerge. The sunlight finds the stones and, as the top layer of them begin to join the swirl, it finds the ones that want to sparkle.

The log, that big dark stuck log, is beginning to wiggle. Just a little. But, as I get a little excited about this possibility, it becomes clear that the end that’s in the pond’s bank is jammed beneath a boulder. The boulder is bigger than I could put my arms around – immovable. As I explain this to the healer, she encourages me to just stay with it and keep breathing and watching. I am struck by a thought as I watch. “Anything might happen.” And so it does.

The boulder’s edges become more defined as the water around it gets cleaner and clearer. It becomes separate from the still dark bank that it once was a part of. Sunlight plays on it. A light begins to come from around it’s edges. And then from within its centre. The rock is transforming. And the changes are happening quickly now. The boulder becomes a white opalesque colour. With each passing moment it starts producing light from within - more and more light - and before it really shines bright – it changes. The rock clears and becomes crystal. And before I can really absorb this change, the crystal becomes water and the log is free and bobs up to the break the surface of the quiet pond.

Very cool! But now I am anxious and my brain starts thinking up ways to get the log out of the pond. Will it go over the dam? There doesn’t seem to be enough of an undertow now to suck it down under and through the sluice gates? Again the healer encourages me to be still; to breath and to enjoy what’s happened. To watch and to wait.

The log finds a still point in the pond and stays in one place. And since anything can happen – it does. I notice that it too is transforming - changing from within as if in a cocoon. But something heftier than a butterfly is emerging. Again there is a white light that begins to shine from within and the log changes colour. It becomes a clean, bright white like linen. A bird’s head lifts from one end on a long elegant neck. I can feel the grace and power in that long slim neck. The head rises to a place of rest while the great large swan starts working at its wings. They are wet and heavy laden and lack the power to even stretch out (let alone lift the bird from the pond.)

Again my body speaks. The bird is floating up on the surface of my belly’s pond and from below I notice a connection. The bird and my heart are one. My beating heart is pumping life and love and strength into the bird. The bond is strong and the bird’s strength and power is restored until it is ready to spread its wings and lift into the air.

But it stays and rests still. Regarding all that has transpired on this healing journey, a wave of thanksgiving passes through me from head to toe. How good it is to be still and receive what the ancestors have to offer. What the One who is Healing waits to provide – waits until I will come.

A pair of ravens flies down my spine and rise up to sit on my two feet. They are the answer to my thanks. They are the “You’re Welcome”. They sit regarding the swan who regards them. The healer asks me to notice that the pond is filled and surrounded with such messengers. I am filled with a deep, strong, calm. I belong where I am. I am Native to this place where I step forward, in health, with help, in abundance.