I nearly cried on the table last night.

We were doing energy work. I'm actually a bit of a skeptic when it comes to energy work; it sounds like a lot of feel-good goopy hocus pocus to me. People may break down when I massage them because their muscles can hold emotions within? We need to remember the emotional and spiritual connection when thinking about mind/body, because it's all interconnected? Maybe, but I'll withhold judgment for now. I believe in the things I can see.

So anyway, we were doing hands-on energy work. Broke up into groups of three; a counselor, a scribe, and a client. I got to be the client first.

So my upper rib muscles and the muscles over my sternum have been sore the last few weeks. I'm not sure why. I've figured it's something to do with the dancing I'm doing recently; I'm using new muscles in ways I haven't before, and they are sore as a result. The soreness is a good sign.

On a whim, when asked where my 'counselor' should do her hands-on work with me, I indicated that my upper ribs should be touched. I lay down on the table, she touched...

And man, it was emotional.

I had images of cold steel, hard, light glinting off of it. Where her hands were, all gray. The rest of my body, red, warm, but still cold where our connection was, that part of my body, her hands. The image shifted a bit to steel padlocks, a lock, locked. Her hands, the connection, felt so far away. Here I was, but that part of me was almost unreachable, was somewhere else. And I felt inexplicably sad. And I almost cried. It took a while to come down from that, even after she stopped touching me.

I don't know if there are actually emotions locked away in those muscles, or what the deal was, but it was an emotional experience. Maybe there is something to all this energy stuff, and I need to just be open to it? I don't know.

Later on, when I was 'the counselor', my client asked that I put my hands on her forehead, with my fingers cupped over her eyes. I did. She visualized this, visualized that... then asked that the pressure be a little less. I realized that I was putting some of my own energy into her, that I wasn't being really open to the messages coming from her body, wasn't listening to what was coming from her. I let up the pressure.

Momentarily, a vision come to me of her head as a glowing white-green ball of energy, much like the bauble Eilonwy carried about with her in The Black Cauldron. I listened. And she felt a difference, and her experience was deepened, improved. That she could feel a difference when all that had changed was the way that I was thinking, receiving her... I dunno. That's something, too.

Then I went dancing, and I swear, I was aware of people's energy in a way I'm usually not, and it made my dancing better.

I don't know what all this is about, or if I can be aware like that more of the time, if I can cultivate an energy awareness. Our teacher last night talked about quantum physics, how if we studied it, we would learn that we all have pockets of energy rooted in our bodies, more commonly known as auras. Magnetic fields and such. It's so outside the realm of things I know, have been taught, have believed in. But is that cause for me to cast a quick judgment and throw it all out the window?

My upper chest muscles are still sore. Not as much as they have been, but whatever's going on, physical, spiritual, emotional, whatever - it's still there.