Meet one of healers who’s been integral to me finding my voice … a path so many of us are walking collectively.
“Talk to it. Ask it why it hurts.”
I’m mid-Skype session with British healer Gail Love Schock, and I’ve just told her how my neck has gone out again. How I’ve finally put the puzzle pieces together, and realized this happens every time I launch a project, or put myself out in the world in a visible way. It had ocurred yet again as I unveiled the Four Bodies Wellness program I created for The James Hotels—waking up the morning of the launch with a stiffness in the left side of my neck, which progressed throughout the day leaving me unable to move my neck more than a few inches in any direction.
And now Gail is asking me to speak to the part of my body that keeps doing this.
The answer comes so fast and seems so obvious: “Because … you’re putting your neck on the line and you need to be careful.” Of course! Immediately, my mind adds another piece to the puzzle: “I wonder if there’s a past-life memory of a hanging or a guillotine …”
We’ve heard of muscle memory, but could this extend to past-life traumas? Gail doesn’t seem to think it’s so far-fetched. Having briefly lost her own ability to speak after a car accident in 2011, her work is focused mainly on voice retrieval. Also “being more human, less personality. Less pretense, more essence.” We began a series of sessions together last year as I was anticipating my book coming out—and facing the fear of being asked to do a lot more public speaking as a result (the #1 most common fear in America in case you’re wondering.)
During each session, Gail let me in a guided meditation, asking me to visualize different versions of myself as a set of Russian dolls. To speak to these parts, and show them to their seat in my being, inviting the most mature self to the forefront. She passed on breathing techniques, ways to feel at home in my body. She advised me to chant, sing, massage my jaw and beat my chest before I speak, to free up the channel.
She also spoke to me of “sacred privacy,” knowing what to share and what to keep to myself, and the difference between the voice of the “controlling” and the “mature” feminine. One shrill and demanding, the other rock solid, forgiving and full of love. All ways to feel safe and secure in my truth, helping me speak without fear of being judged.
And all work that’s done its part in me feeling more comfortable speaking up—a path we’re also walking together as a collective. So many putting our necks on the line in the name of truth, justice and equality. Oh and by the way, three days before my book launch my lower back froze up so badly I could barely walk.
“Ask what you can do for your body,” Gail guides me, as we near the end of today’s session.
“Be aware, protect yourself, create good boundaries,” comes the answer. I think this one was for all of you, too.
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Gail Love Schock is a Spiritual Life Coach and Mentor, Meditation Teacher and InterFaith Minister. She teaches worldwide and is writing her first book. Discover more about Gail and her work and book a session HERE and follow her on Instagram.
