Massage Therapy as a Doorway to Recover Vision and Hope
A Vision Recovery Story of Health and Hope.
Attending Sutherland-Chan Massage Therapy School opened the doors for me to recover my vision and passionately work with clients who want to improve their eyesight, deepen their insights and see a more beautiful world. It also eventually lead to a PhD in Integrative Medicine focused on helping people with Parkinson’s disease and other brain disorders.
When I was eight years old in a Colombian jungle my father helped me catch a blue morpho butterfly. Its huge iridescent wings were the most beautiful things I had ever seen. I grew up seeing the world and in my twenties worked as a professional photographer and a journalist.
And then …. everything changed.
At 28, I found myself in an ophthalmologist’s office. In his white coat with impressive degrees on the wall, he said, “Kim you need to consider how your life will go if you become blind. It is genetic so there is nothing you can do.”
Diagnosed with Keratoconus, a genetic condition of the cornea, I went into a depression, believing the doctor. I wish I had said to him: “Bring it on! You have no idea who you are talking to. You have no idea my drive, my curiosity and my potential. You have no idea what might be discovered tomorrow that will change the face of genetic medicine forever. You have no idea the healing potential of complementary and alternative medicine, along with information medicine approaches.” Instead, I sat stunned and noticed in just those few moments the world seems a little darker, less colorful, certainly bleaker. My vision and professional life already starting to slipping away.
A few years later, I started massage school, in part because massage therapy is a profession you can do whether you can see or not. One day while taking a test at Sutherland-Chan, with a wicked bad migraine and a big black spot in the middle of my visual field, I had to move my head from side to side, in order to see the test questions. On the street car ride home, I took a stand and said to myself, “This is not okay! There has to be something I can do to improve my vision and stop the migraines.”
That day lead me into further study of massage therapy and ways to relax the neck muscles and improve the blood flow carrying oxygen and nutrients to the head. I took craniosacral therapy, osteopathic manual medicine and acupressure classes. I became certified in integrative manual therapy and matrix energetics.
I found solutions for myself and today at 55, my vision is better than when I was 28. It is probably better than when I was eight years old catching an iridescent blue butterfly. And the chronic migraines….. I have only had one in the last 15 years.
Blue Morpho Butterfly
I remember / a visual memory / a giant blue butterfly / eight years old / I see / then I couldn’t / darkness descended / hope out of reach / healing like crazy / again I see / details in the wings / an eye / a smiling mouth along the edges / like a fishes mouth and eye / a face / brown shiny with blue / white ridges like snow on mountain ranges / the black visible not darkness / I see / and write ekphrastic poetry / a response to what I see.
Today, I share my journey and the vision and brain health solutions I have found with my individual clients, in my chapter, The Eyes Observing Your World in Christine Kloser’s anthology, Pebbles in the Pond, Transforming the World One Person at a Time and most recently in at the 2012 World Consciousness Raising Summit online.
