It so happened that some readers I correspond with ‘fell ill’ as autumn arrived. Some are already undergoing biomechanical treatment, others are only preparing to start, and their condition simply flared up. In general, many entered a kind of crisis, although I must say they are holding up admirably. Thanks to these people, who greatly inspire me to keep this blog going (and who, incidentally, have quite a sense of humour), I had the idea for an article about how to live and move through a crisis, to support those currently experiencing one during biomechanical treatment, regardless of which of its types described in this blog they are using.

The more destroyed you were initially, the more you ultimately receive. I risk being misunderstood, but I cannot avoid this subject: in the process of ‘putting their pieces together’, a person unexpectedly receives much more than physical health alone. I will not lecture anyone here from the ‘height of my experience’ (I know that for many people everything has happened, and is happening, much worse and for longer), or discuss the banal idea of ‘moving forward and not giving up’. I simply want to share not so much reflections as sensations that arose in a crisis for me and my good osteopath friend, whose treatment process was much harsher. The pictures here are those that arose from my personal sensations of what was happening. I think in images, so the account may not be very clear — I will simply try to write how I feel.

For anyone unfamiliar with my background, briefly: at twenty, an orthodontist removed a slightly crowded canine from my lower jaw, then closed that space with braces and also removed a healthy wisdom tooth as an ‘unnecessary atavism’. As it later turned out, my lower jaw had shifted and I developed temporomandibular joint dysfunction (at that point, it was still possible to live more or less, though limiting life's joys). Everything changed abruptly after a manual therapist's rough intervention — after the ninth session of this ‘treatment’, a sudden displacement of my body structure, especially around the neck, threw me into a state of shock. Severe panic attacks began, lasting eight months — something I had never known before and will never forget.

Once, already at the limit of my strength in this state, I even saw the ‘light in the tunnel’; my body dissolved towards something greater than myself, and I thought I was leaving to meet — you know Whom. I was so exhausted that I had no fear left. But after two hours of oblivion, ‘bliss’ and a ‘dissolved’ state in enveloping warmth and acceptance, I was abruptly and harshly thrown back into the chaos of a destroyed body — without any poetry, I cannot call it anything else. I cannot even describe the despair you feel then. Merciless destruction and chaos. It is difficult to describe something long gone, but I remember perfectly how, in those moments, I felt like a helpless animal being dragged to slaughter.

During the night-time panic attacks, I felt the wildest, inhuman, animal, primal terror of death, like an animal about to have its throat cut and be painfully deprived of life. When this had gone on for more than two months, using a doctor's prescription, I managed to buy a considerable number of packs of a strong painkiller from two different pharmacies — you can guess why. I understood that I did not want to use them; I wanted to live very much. But it was ‘insurance’ for the worst case, if the suffering became utterly unbearable and I lacked the strength to endure it. Since death already seemed a release, during panic attacks I prayed to be ‘taken’. But every early morning I returned here, strangely enough, with greater strength and a greater desire to live.

I asked myself a thousand times how this could have happened to me: how could I enter the office of a doctor I trusted as a flourishing young woman with plans for life, and crawl out only a few days later as a complete wreck? Many of you who have experienced such sudden, abrupt trauma have surely known this — in an instant, life changes forever, with no way back. Even comprehending it is difficult, let alone accepting it, particularly when you are in a half-mad state.

If you are reading on, you have probably experienced this, even if it happened gradually and had already lasted for years. You know how inhuman and unbearable pain and madness can be. In this state, you desperately want something to hold on to so you can preserve your sanity — you cling to the past, remember who you were, begin cursing the person who harmed you, and refuse to acknowledge what has already happened. It was difficult for me to accept that seeking someone to blame, remembering and analysing in my head were already useless. Everything had happened. You were where you were. You could try to move only from that point. It is like finding yourself wounded at night in a taiga forest in winter, and even without knowing the direction, crawling half-conscious through the bitter frost, even without knowing where.

I have already written that I nevertheless searched for ways to climb out and return to a normal condition and to life. I did not find them in hospitals, clinics or ‘expensive’ doctors' offices. Like many of you, I encountered plenty of sidelong looks and incomprehension there (to put it mildly). They told me ‘everything is normal’, and that it happened after ‘massage’ — ‘even babies have it, and nothing happens’. I realised with horror that the doctors, genuinely eminent doctors, did not understand the problem at all. They told me it was all ‘self-suggestion’ and I should ‘live, love and be happy’. But I did not give up. When this nightmare comes every night, you have no choice but to move and search everywhere simply to survive. And finally start trusting intuition alone, your inner feeling, rather than listening to ‘scientists’ who follow mould-covered ‘scientific’ dogmas.

The worst thing is that even loved ones neither see nor understand your condition — for example, they told me I looked the same, just ‘a little sad’. But I was under inhuman tension, going not merely into ‘negative compression’, but ‘compression minus twenty’. I remember a phrase from a guy on some forum: when he suffered from pain, his wife sat beside him, but in his pain he was alone. This inability to accept support even from loved ones is killing. Your world is turned upside down; you are turned inside out, completely inward into your pain and tension, and cut off from the outside world. All I could do was pray constantly and believe that some miracle would happen.

I have already described how I found a thread — biomechanical treatment — which I held on to and subsequently began describing in this blog. I had nothing to lose, so I embarked on the treatment. By then, the panic attacks had gradually subsided, and I was beginning to forget what they were, although my condition remained unstable. But immediately after treatment began, everything returned — the same uncontrollable current carried me in the opposite direction, with all symptoms returning in reverse order. It is a slow operation without anaesthesia, very slow torture, a descent into your personal hell. This time, though, you clearly see the direction and are certain it is right. As I was able to discover, this treatment is special: it does not carry you from point A (pain and trauma) to point B (an ideal state) over a ‘little bridge’. To heal with it, you travel to the very centre of your being, correcting all distortions and ‘screw-ups’ along the way. Before you touch that centre (not even merge with it yet), you must pass through insane Darkness.

Now to the crisis of treatment itself. I do not want to describe everything too solemnly, but many of us hope to ‘slip through’ this period, thinking, ‘I'll get treated, relax, and become healthy and happy.’ We try in every way to drown out our pain and discomfort — understandably. But we forget that this period of ‘Darkness’ contains enormous resource and enormous strength. Pain and madness break you and bring you to your knees, but they really contain enormous strength, however cruel that sounds towards those currently writhing in pain and feeling hopelessness and despair.

I will dare to compare pain with a powerful mistress to whom you must submit, otherwise, as they say, ‘you will get no gift’. You cannot subdue her; you must submit to her. This is a living, deeply felt sensation, not abstract poetry. Breathe in pain and in a mad state, even if you barely have the strength. Consciously accept everything you feel, even if it breaks you. It is like a ball held inside under enormous pressure, which took great effort to contain, bursting against your will: you consciously let everything hidden there pass through you, including terrifying emotions and pain that begin overflowing you. Greet what comes almost with joy: ‘Oh, my favourite little ailment has crawled in; let me suffer you.’ Try to remain conscious even when everything already feels unreal and you are switched off and thrown out of your body.

My osteopath friend, with his experience of crisis in similar treatment, said painkillers should be taken only in extreme cases, when it is completely impossible to endure any longer — this is precisely how damaged nerve connections in the brain are restored (believe me, he understands all these subtleties very well). He himself passed through such a hell, worse than mine, incidentally, after an appliance was placed on his lower jaw in childhood to push it back, affecting his entire body structure.

I have already described what happens during biomechanical treatment — constant rises and setbacks, when all previously experienced symptoms return. At a certain point on the path to balance, as the body begins to straighten, you return to your original starting point before the trauma, but the process continues deeper, and you live through everything down to childhood illnesses and injuries. My friend even experienced states of his own birth. But now he is a completely different person, inside and out, and what he gives people during his sessions cannot be described in words.

For those beginning biomechanical treatment, the worst period for ‘comebacks’ is from four months to a year and a half. Then you begin occasionally ‘surfacing’, and increasingly often over time. Initially, it is difficult to draw strength from uncertainty and the unknown, but when you are carried along, tumbling who-knows-where, however frightening it is, you are forced to let go of everything you clung to and begin accepting all that happens and trying to relax (there is not much choice). Your familiar world collapses to its foundations. This is precisely why people begin praying during this period, to find some kind of support.

From my experience, I would like to say it is very good to turn to your ancestral line — simply ask for help and support. It contains not only those who ‘messed up’, but an enormous resource of survival: strong people with sturdy physiques and structures, and absolute health. All the resource they developed is yours by right — already in your genes and blood. Scientists have even recorded unique cases of a person consciously changing their blood group (in our case, of course, everything is gentler). But blood changes the body's structure and even DNA — the very programmes carrying the genetic code! Ultimately, through the body, we finish living what our ancestors left unlived, and we can ask them for help. You simply need to place a hand over your heart and ask for help and support in treatment, for a blessing. Many find this strange, but believe me, it works. You begin listening only to what comes from within, and to nobody else.

Incidentally, another thing — those advising you not to drink or smoke during this period can take a hike. They have not been in this situation; they do not understand what is happening. I am not urging drinking binges or excessive smoking. But smoking during this period helps you ground yourself, I am serious. It relieves inhuman tension during treatment. Corvalol and other crap will not help here. Paradoxically, you begin listening to your body rather than ‘healthy, beneficial advice’, even if your body demands something ‘harmful’. You begin following it and giving it what it asks for. Living not by a schedule, but in its flow. If you want pastries or ‘unhealthy sausage’, that means you need them. Everything that helps you get through and feel some pleasure. You are allowed. You are mad right now. You are worse than a pregnant woman right now, because in the truest sense you are giving birth to yourself. Everything accumulated over generations is surfacing and passing through you. You are going through a crisis. You need to help yourself pass through it. Once the crisis ends, everything will settle and the body will no longer need ‘bad habits’.

Many people fear everything dark and deep. But if you are reading this, you are already at rock bottom anyway, where you no longer care about conventions or ‘white-and-fluffy niceness’. In pain and madness, we become ourselves and unite with ourselves as a powerful current washes away every layer of superficial husk. All the restrictions that bound us and our body with tension fly whistling away in every direction, like metal plates under a mighty explosion from within. This is the strength and power of the inner source you are now connecting with. All that remains is to feel it and accept it. But this is precisely how you finally become yourself.

Recently, I watched an interesting Indian film, ‘I Am God / The Outcasts’, which caused quite a stir in India. It is not one of those touchingly naive Indian films. It is rather merciless cinema, but very interesting for our subject. Briefly: frightened by astrologers' terrible predictions, a father brought his young son to a temple and abandoned him there. Many years later, he found his child performing horrific rites over the dead, having become an aghori — a member of a closed sect of Shiva. He does not worship God, because he himself is God. There are no laws for him, and he can give death as punishment or release. A kind of Darkness leading to Light. One can argue about these things endlessly, but in some Indian traditions it is believed that a person can indeed merge with a deity by giving themselves to its service.

But that is not our subject. We will neither agree nor disagree with the Indians, but if we consider all the film's characters as parts of the human psyche, we see a God within it — wild, primal, non-Christian. The inner ‘policemen’ cannot control him. The inner ‘cripples’ turn out to be the most psychologically healthy and joyful parts of this psyche, while the ‘slave traders’, with the help of this powerful inner God, eventually pass into oblivion. During such treatment, this kind of wild inner God awakens in you, caring nothing for conventions-as-‘policemen’ and sending the ego-as-‘slave trader’ to its proper place.

In the article about karma and trauma, I wrote about Spanish duende, implying soul, fire and feeling. A brief reminder: in Russian we say, ‘There is no fire in him’; in Spain, ‘No tiene duende’. Its strength cannot be comprehended unless a person has passed through difficult inner trials. The famous Spanish poet García Lorca said of duende: ‘It is a demonic force with which one must enter a duel and win: it sweeps away cosy, memorised geometry; its approach heralds the breaking of everything familiar. But it is also dawn, unprecedented, unimaginable freshness — duende, like a blossoming rose, is like a miracle.’ Imagine: all the pain and horror you pass through in this treatment help awaken this ‘dark’ duende, fire and soul within you.

This treatment, gathering your pieces into a whole, is ‘surgical’, dark and magical. It really is a slow operation without anaesthesia, torture. But ultimately, after removing all your distortions and ‘screw-ups’, you begin feeling strength coming from your soles, overflowing your groin and, above, your palms, opening your chest as you begin breathing fully, while in your head you begin seeing and thinking clearly. You feel warmth in your heart, and — I will not fear this word worn out in today's world — love awakens in you. You begin interacting with the world from within your wholeness, no longer needing anyone to plug your holes, and understand that generosity is born from this wholeness overflowing with strength (what a mouthful, but I do not even know how else to convey the feeling). There is a plant, the white lotus, whose roots reach very deep into dirty, dark sludge, while above is a flower of extraordinary beauty and fragrance. You become that flower.

The conflict between the animal and the human disappears. You become a sensual, sexual being capable of sincere love and childlike joy. You also understand that God is not an abstract idea somewhere outside, but lives within you. You do not need to believe this; you simply live it with your whole being. But first, you pass through hell. One reader wrote that he too used to ‘float somewhere in the clouds’, but trauma abruptly returned him to his body and finally forced him to listen to it. This is why we consciously enter the pain of all our traumas. Through such treatment, you understand in the most literal sense what it means to go from Darkness to Light.

Through trauma and pain, even very young people acquire the wisdom and depth of old people. You will say: why would I want that depth, enduring all this? But in any case, for some reason, you are already where you are. You can either keep looking for someone to blame, or begin accepting and opening to discomfort and pain, become mad for a while, exhausted by tension and insomnia, and experience everything frightening. Allow everything familiar to break and let go of all you clung to. This pit is not bottomless, believe me. Whatever happens, you simply consciously illuminate everything that surfaces. Ultimately, you will stop fearing the ‘predator’, wherever it is — outside, in what is imposed on you, or inside, as fear. You will stop running from the ‘predator’ or being submissive and nice to it. You begin stalking it yourself, directing a spotlight at it and illuminating all its movements. When you are at the very centre of your being, nobody can deceive you any longer.

Starecta founder Moreno Conte described this whole process in his book using ‘The Shawshank Redemption’: like the film's hero, to escape prison to freedom, he had to ‘crawl through stinking sewage in narrow pipes the length of five football fields’. I felt it as a continuous, absolutely uncontrollable, turbulent current in the depths of complete darkness, carrying you along and completely breaking your coordinate system: you lose your sense of up and down, and it already feels as though you are going mad. Only complete trust, acceptance of what is happening, relaxation and resignation to never escaping help you survive.

When you resign yourself to this, at first you begin occasionally surfacing for breath; then you begin seeing barely discernible points of light on the horizon. Then the ability to move and swim returns, even in a terrible storm, with frightening waves covering your head. At some moment, when you no longer expect it at all, you suddenly feel your feet touching something solid. Without noticing how, one day you come ashore.

I do not expect everyone to understand me. For some, what is described here surely resonated deeply; others understood nothing at all. There is nothing esoteric in what is described — only living, deeply felt sensations. In any case, when you begin treatment, compare your own sensations.

Vegetative-vascular dystonia and psychics: could someone have given me the evil eye? — here.
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