Finding My Spine in Paris

Egypt, Tunisia, Libya are finding their spines. They are unearthing their forgotten treasure, their spirit. Paris herself, dry old spinster, emerges in the sun to feel her sap flow. Her spine must be the Seine, glittering vein of pulsating gold that seems to flow in both directions at once.

As my own spine sagged under the weight of life here a few years ago, my doctor sent me off to therapists--the last of whom dozed through our sessions toward her ultimate goal of finding her daughter a job through Jacques. Another one, French, urged me to get confrontational with my stepdaughter, which wasn't going to make things any easier at home. So I kept on searching for ways to straighten my spine.

I tried Nia and developed tinnitus from the sound levels in class. I took up mindfulness meditation. I tried acupuncture. (France has had acupuncturists since the 16th or 17th century, imported through Jesuit missionaries. They are among the best trained in the world, outside of China.) I've been exploring tai chi, dodging the egos and sifting out the gold. I'm rocking out with Zumba (led by a Latin Bruce Springsteen). And now, chiropractic. All in search of my spine.

This isn't just any chiropractic, but a subtle practice of reorganizing the autonomic nervous system, linking breath and movement, to wash away old traumas held in the back. The back has three kinds of tension: active, passive and skeletal, all interfering with the nervous system's coordination of a machine far beyond the grasp of rational thought--the human body.

The heart beats 100,000 times a day, pumping 5 liters of blood per minute, feeding 200,000 km of veins, arteries and capillaries. We breathe 26,000 times a day, sending 12,000 liters of air into lungs 100 square meters in surface area. But our nervous system surpasses all that, with 14 billion neurons, each one in contact with 25,000 others, trillions of connections. These govern our 640 muscles and 214 bones, of which 33 are in the spine, the coordinating center and origin of emotions.*

As I lie face down on a massage table my chiropractrice sends a tiny shock wave up the spine here, or asks me to breathe into my neck there, or to stretch beyond what my body wants, into a vertebrae that has been buried for 20 years. And all the time, breathing like bellows, on two other massage tables other bodies lie face down undergoing their healing, sometimes in tears, sometimes sighing and moaning, while our chiropractrice dances from one to another.

The stresses of a lifetime have been stored in muscles, in bones and ligaments, causing spines to twist and crouch even as they pretend to stand upright. The steady release of awkward asymmetry allows those stresses to leave the body, which re-experiences forgotten emotional energy in the process. It is a wild ride.

First my left and right side don't communicate, and then waves of depression return, or bliss, or some forgotten connection through time and the space of my spine, to the long, long journey I have been on for so long. Then the top and bottom are out of sync, then voices from the two sides of my body begin to argue, then someone at the next table releases it for all of us with a cry. Sometimes I feel a pressure on my head, though no one is touching it. Always I sit up to a reeling room, as my neck finds new space between the vertebrae. I walk home on air, but the ensuing days may bring crazy mood swings as the body keeps puttering with its own controls.

A little twist of the spine...

Meanwhile the body of Japan flexes forgotten muscles, in that extraordinary people of fortitude against all odds, like the Libyans who are being slaughtered by their tyrant. The spines of Wisconsin are a little straighter now, and even Democratic senators are finding some vertebrae they had forgotten about. All releasing emotional energy, all breathing new life. Like Paris in the spring.




*Petit Guide des Soins Chiropratiques Network