I’ve been travelling for work a lot recently and haven’t been in the Yorkshire Dales, so I’m not able to send my usual nature diary. On one hand I’m a bit sad to be missing the spring flowers, but on the other hand I’ve been following the weather reports and it’s been pouring down. The rivers are in spate and I expect my ‘no-mow-May’ lawn has turned into a ‘June jungle’ that will need scything when I get back next week.

Instead of a nature diary I’m going to tell a story from years ago when my children were small and I was still married. The story illustrates the well-known adage of ‘the body keeps the score’ and tells about my search for a cure, and eventual success, with what is known in western medicine as a ‘complementary therapy’.

I usually wake up early and potter about making tea and doing a bit of sorting out whilst listening to Farming Today. For me it’s the best time of the day. It’s a quiet settled sort of time.

This particular early morning I was emptying the dishwasher, twisting and bending down to extract the cups, cutlery and plates as I listened to the radio. Then, suddenly, my back muscles went into spasm. All I could do was lie on the kitchen floor.

My children got up to have breakfast and get ready for school. They were amused to find me lying on the floor and stepped over me to get their breakfast. Eventually my partner appeared and helped me get to the bedroom where I took some ibruprofen and continued lying on the floor waiting for the spasm to subside. 

It was a couple of days before I could move about and work on relieving the muscles with some gentle stretching, and even then I was stiff as a board and had to be careful not to set off the spasm again. The doctor suggested steroids, which may have done the trick in the short term, but I was not keen because of their side effects. The physiotherapist gave me a set of stretching exercises, which I did, but I could feel the muscles were ready to spasm again if I twisted or moved suddenly.

So, I tried complementary medicines. Reflexology, reiki and acupuncture didn’t work. Whether it was me or the practitioner is hard to say. Eventually I found a shiatsu practitioner and tried that. The results were surprising and did the trick. The main thing I learned was that the muscle problems I was experiencing were the manifestation of emotional stresses and strains. If I wanted the spasms to be alleviated, then I had to also sort those out.

If you’re not familiar with shiatsu it follows the same sort of principles as acupuncture in that the body has a series of meridians through which ‘chi’ energy flows. This energy flow can be stimulated by gentle pressure on a series of points along the meridians. If you’re interested, I’ve put a link to the UK Shiatsu Society at the end of the blog and will write more about my experience with shiatsu in future blogs as I’m planning to return to it when I retire in a few months and have more time for self-care.

Have you ever tried complementary medicines and found them useful?

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member

Shiatsu Society website with information and list of practitioners: https://www.shiatsusociety.org