“Maybe you are searching among branches for what only appears in the roots” – Rumi
Our bodies are brilliant, they are constantly communicating with us; sometimes the communication makes sense and other times it sends us searching for clarity. One form of communication is pain. It alerts us that something is not right and keeps screaming out for attention until the cause is addressed. We scan our bodies trying to identify the source of our discomfort, to make sense of it.
A client of mine once presented with pain in her temporomandibular joint (jaw). By the time she showed up in my treatment room, she had been to the dentist, tried acupuncture, had a chiropractic adjustment, and gone for active release treatments on the muscles of mastication. Her doctor diagnosed her as having Temporal Mandibular Joint Dysfunction based on her symptom picture. She was desperate for relief from the pain in her jaw and confused as to why nothing was working. She diligently documented her pain looking for a common trigger but was at a loss as to why she was suffering. After a full assessment I could not identify anything structurally or functionally wrong with her jaw, she had pain, but did not present with any abnormal deviations, clicking or popping in the joint. So, we looked deeper.
The body is connected and imbalances in one area can manifest as symptoms in another. It turns out my client had slipped on the ice early in the year, and she landed hard on her tailbone, when the pain went away, she no longer thought about her fall. Her body, however, was compensating. I referred her to a fantastic Osteopath who was able to assess and treat her pelvic dysfunctions and within days her jaw pain subsided.
The above Rumi quote is a call both to a deeper life but also to a deeper awareness. While the branches are a beautiful part of the tree, the roots give it life and nutrients.
