All better and back in the states!

Hello dear ones.

I have visions of sharing a few more birth stories before I officially complete my "Bali adventures" blog but at the moment I want to give a little update from my bike accident as many of you have asked.

I have healed amazingly well from my run in with the dog in my little village of Nyuh Kuning. I could not have picked a better place to have an accident than down the street from Bumi Sehat. I received more support than I would have ever imagined and I believed it created a new imprint of what health is - on a cellular level. I had to learn on an even deeper level the power of surrender. I kept wanting to go back to work but was not allowed! I  guess I had this irrational fear that if I really stopped working and did nothing for awhile, that I would start liking it and never want to work again. Well it ended up just being a really wonderful resting time, and yes a reminder to move slower - but definitely not a loss of my passion to work and do good things in this world. It was really wild for me - over and over folks reassured me that there was enough volunteers at the clinic, that my body was asking me to rest, and that there was no way I could do a water birth anyways with all my healing wounds! So rest it was.

I want to share some of the sweet healing that I received from the Bumi Sehat crew and beyond. The clinic Acupuncturist, Bobbi, this hilarious and sometimes downright abrasive ex-patriot who has been volunteering at Bumi Sehat for 4 years, came over and stuck about 30 needles in me on a few occasions. She is not the gentle type of Acupuncturist but she does help people!  She did these "surround the dragon" protocols around my wounds - ouch(!) and helped relieve the inflammation in my left shoulder and arm. She also had me apply yu nan bia yao powder topically to help my wounds dry up ( Yu nan is the chinese herbal formula for stopping bleeding - we give it to women to drink with honey postpartum to prevent hemorrhage ).  In the tropics it is easy for wounds to get infected because it is so wet. It was a little intense for my raw skin but it did create some mighty interesting scabs. My dearest friend Shannon was also a huge help. She is an energy worker  who had just arrived from North Carolina and had actually been biking with me the day of the accident. She kept me sane and helped me find the teachings and wisdom of being down on my back for 2 weeks. This amazing Naturopath/Nutritionist Esther did this type of applied kinesiology called Body Talk on me immediately after the accident and a few times afterwards. There is a whole Body Talk emergency first aid protocol that helps the brain release shock and trauma. I found it extremely helpful and am now curious to study it myself (another thing to learn! ). And actually I watched her do it a few times with the moms and babies and saw it clear whatever was in the way of the birth process, help with successful breastfeeding, etc... My sweet friend Lisa, an excellent homeopath from Oakland, arrived for a visit just in time to wean me off arnica and prescribe bellis pereniss for deep bruising and ledum for healing puncture wounds.

So I give many thanks. Oh wait- I didn't even share this amazing story. So I got brought to the clinic immediately after the accident to be bandaged up and such and about 2 hours after being there Leonid walks in. Leonid was my craniosacral teacher and while I had been laying there I was thinking oh I am going to need Leonid to come and assess if I broke or sprained anything. And all of a sudden he was there. How did he know to come right then?!! I couldn't figure it out as he rarely came by the clinic in his normal life but at that moment it didn't really matter- I just felt like I was looking at an angel : ). He sat down and did his magic and told me that it seemed like nothing was broken but it would take a lot of rest. There is that rest word again...

Well I hope that you all don't mind my sharing a little of my healing journey. I believe I have always been on a healing journey actually - that one that some of you may know - healer, heal thyself - but the acute healing experience is a whole other journey and I am grateful for every moment of it. They say that Bali chews you up and spits you out. Ya - I think I would agree.

So 40 hours later I have arrived back home in Berkeley - my second day of experiencing February 29th - yesterday I was in Hong Kong and it was also Feb. 29th. Spiraling in and out of time and space I land here and settle into a meal of my roommate's farmer's market steamed veggies, the beauty of the redwood tree out my back window, and my first sweatshirt and socks in 3 months.