Some years ago, I experienced a bodywork paradigm that changed the shape of my physical body and created an environment for deep shift in every other area of my life. The bodywork was the Sandlin Technique and its sole practitioner at that time was Virginia Sandlin. Virginia, a seventh generation Cherokee Mystic, was taught these techniques by her grandmother who was also a Mystic. I went on to became one of the first people outside of this lineage to be taught the Sandlin technique.This bodywork was traditionally done to prepare people for long vision quests. It is the physical component to a philosophy of wholeness that is the gateway to a greater spiritual reality. When the body is in an organic state of alignment, the foundation is laid for expansion in every other area of our beingness.
It was frustration with my lung capacity that brought me to Virginia Sandlin. I'd heard from clients of hers that the first thing she'd done was lower and expand their rib cages. In my first session with Virginia, she took me through a painless process that I couldn't imagine would change the position of my ribs. About thirty minutes after she began, my rib cage was nearly two inches lower and an entirely different shape. I was amazed and my amazement grew throughout the day and evening as I experienced very different posture and physical control.
The next morning, I awoke to confusion at my sudden lack of lower back pain and stiffness. Over the next several days, I enjoyed many new sensations as I felt muscles moving and firming in my thighs that I had never even known were there.
After three sessions with Virginia, my ribs were about two and a half inches lower and a spinal misalignment, that I hadn't known was the source of my discomfort, was corrected. I think that, from a very young age, I had mimicked my mother's asthmatic breathing. Apparently, this caused my ribs to form incorrectly around the contracted breathing pattern. Because they were so high, my spine was pulled out of alignment and my sacrum had become very overextended. Hence, I'd had chronic lower back pain and no muscle tone from my waist to my knees.
Having these things corrected seemed like nothing short of a miracle to me. It was, in fact, the fulfillment of a vision I'd had in meditation two years earlier but did not understand. In this vision one of my guides was lining up bones on a wool blanket. The image had never left me. When I discovered Virginia Sandlin's bodywork, I discovered that my guide was being very literal. She was trying to tell me that my bones needed lining up.
The skeletal system is the foundation of the physical body. The first phase of the Sandlin Technique, the "postpartum session," addresses the skeletal shifts that occur in pregnancy and expedites postpartum recovery. In her years of working on the bodies of both men and women, Virginia learned that this skeletal adjustment is of tremendous help to many people because their own birth trauma left them with a misshapen skeleton.
The corrections the body takes in this bodywork are rapid, painless, and permanent. This is because the Sandlin Technique goes to the original cause and reframes the cellular memory for health.
It thrills me to be able to incorporate a bodywork, that once mystified me, into my practice. I have been more than gratified by the transformation I have witnessed in clients who have embraced this technique. Not only have I seen tremendous postural and breathing improvement in my clients, but also profound shifts in awareness and advancement in their life processes.
I am currently certified in all four phases of the Sandlin Technique and trained to teach Phase I, moving the bones.
