So much of our work together and how it has helped my life lives in a space without language to define it. It took some time for me to be able to put it into words.
I had pain and tightness in my neck and shoulder on the left side of my body. I had an old whiplash injury in that area but it hadn’t hurt like that since I initially hurt myself 5 years previous. Over the course of several months, despite yoga, massage and stretching on my own, the pain only got worse until one morning I woke up and could barely move my neck. I initially thought I had to get into physical therapy, but something in me suspected it was more than just physical.
I found Delia by searching online, although at the time I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for. When I was on Delia’s site reading her blog, I knew she was the person I needed to meet. One of those total gut responses and everything in me said YES!
I’ve had several sessions with Delia. I feel so comfortable, supported and safe with her. My trust in her led us to work very deeply and openly together. In the beginning, I thought that she was “working on me” but I came to understand that it was a partnership. Her incredible care and presence allowed me to open and fully engage in the work. During our work together, when I encountered something that made me nervous or fearful, I was able to face it and work through it with her support and assistance.
I believe that “health” involves mind, body, and spirit (you can substitute energy for spirit if you wish). Delia’s work involves all of these — integrates all of these. She has not only helped me personally but creatively as well.
Emotions come up frequently for me in my creative work. I’m an actor. If I’m not in a place to allow whatever emotion I’m experiencing to move through me, it can get held in my body. When rehearsing day after day and performing night after night, this really accumulates! I often work on characters that have tough emotional journeys, places that are uncomfortable for me to inhabit, and I resist! Not consciously, mind you, but there is something in my body that doesn’t want to feel that emotion. It doesn’t want me to “go there”. I don’t believe our body understands the difference between real and fictional. Our mind does. But what happens when we use our imagination and creativity so well that the circumstances of our character are “real” to us? That we “get” them? How is our body to know the difference?
Working with Delia has helped me connect with my body in a new way, more subtle. Through our work together, I have begun to recognize certain deeply rooted patterns in how my body deals with/doesn’t deal with stress, whether it’s day-to-day or the demands of working on a challenging role. It is an ongoing learning process but now I can go to my yoga mat on my own, still myself, and work with some of the things I encountered in our sessions together. In this way, I can alleviate some of the physical manifestations I’m struggling with. I have integrated some of this into my warm up before shows and I work with it during my rehearsal process as well. This is such a gift in my life. I wish I could work with her every week!