There is Big Medicine in Everyone

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I woke up at 3 am this morning. The spring is a time of big energy for me. Once upon a time in my life this energy was pathologized and called manic, bipolar. I was taught to fear it and drug it and by no means express it. I have been unlearning all that for some years now.

Now I learn from this big energy inside me. That involved taming the even bigger fear. We all have so much fear. The energy is inherently benign. It’s the fear that is potentially toxic.  I listen and move and listen some more. I let myself feel anything. Big bad ugly feelings and big beautiful ecstatic ones too. I DANCE. I do YOGA. I WALK barefoot in the woods. I BREATHE. I meditate. I eat good food. I LIVE.

There is Big Medicine in Everyone. 

This lovely piece of music was part of an amazing compilation wave that a women who was visiting my local dance collective put together for one of our Sunday morning dances. I was blessed to get a recording of the entire mix which I danced to again last night. This was the piece that transitioned from Flow to Staccato (if you’re familiar with the 5 Rythyms that Gabriel Roth developed)
Anyway…after I finished my solo nighttime dance wave I thought I’d share a little piece with you. Enjoy and find the big medicine in you.

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To learn a little about 5 Rythym dancing visit these posts on Beyond Meds:

More posts on music, sound and dance healing:

Gabriel Roth’s work

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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7 COMMENTS

  1. Thank you, Monica.

    “The energy is inherently benign. It’s the fear that is potentially toxic.”

    These expressions are little gems in the rough. Not only are they statements of true fact, absolutely and simply, but it takes expertise to notice the complexity that they leave to be discovered and the integrity of the structure that brings them to the surface. They have intrinsic worth, and afford someone who is gifted in understanding the opportunity to project into and investigate the labyrinth of truths that their potential facets indicate.

    Maybe the vein within which they developed has to get reconstructed in the abstract, or maybe it lies near or far in relatively pristine condition. The mind is so diverse.

    These are exactly the kind of insights that come out in good dialogues about vexatious and conflictual things, long before all of their wisdom unfolds. So I’m sure that you thought of them way back before the Dancing and have learned how to look forward to finding these life-enhancing, restorative sayings at hand and before you.

    They really are imbued with a sense of direction that inspires in and of itself. However you have or will further elucidate these notions and track their descriptions in other people’s writings for comparison, your original contact with them will keep its value for everyone and yourself included, I’m sure.

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    • thanks travailler-vous,
      it’s funny that the quote you highlighted is one I pondered throughout the day. This part:

      “The energy is inherently benign…

      I was thinking that perhaps benign wasn’t quite the right word. That energy is also informative and transformative and perhaps that cannot be contained in the word “benign,” but I’m not sure.

      That which is potentially transformative, however, is generally potentially problematic in some ways too…though overall profoundly positive.

      anyway, these are things for which language is generally a rather impoverished thing.

      I do appreciate your comments and thank you.

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  3. Hi Monica C.– Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate that you tried to make the most of my comment.

    Later on I started to think it was so effusive it overshadowed the point. But then I understood that the point that was the point to me was not one I had put into words.

    So many times I have come to think of such workable formulas, like the several of yours here with nothing dogmatic intended, but wholly true if taken in the spirit intended. But then I would let myself get talked into accepting the patient role again…. Now I can get ahold of myself more effectively.

    I want also to wish you the ongoing best of luck.

    (FYI- I had gotten accused of bipolar psychosis, and since now (without any official encouragement and all learning on my own from survivor sites and technical resources of psychiatry) I manage all my symptoms according to the diagnosis for PTSD and panic syndrome, my confidence is on the mend about sticking to the facts as I know them from experience.

    You would not feel surprise about the act that confronted me every time I tried to bring attention to pertinent markers of just the kind of unhappy cognitive and emotional expereinces I was having: it was always that I was trying to get out of the seriousness of a major labelled disgnosis. Truly, the manner of response would have helped more if it had just been a kick in the head, a punch in the gut, and a knee in the groin every time I tried talking things over.)

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