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Paolo Solari was speaking in the adjacent
apse and it was a slow day in the foundry for some reason or the other -
we could have clocked out and listened to the talk, but Ed, the crew
boss, wanted to impress Paolo with how busy his crew was. And that's
how I ended up squashing aluminum cans for recycling. I was using a two
pound hammer and had become distracted enough to miss hitting the can squarely;
spinning it out of my hand and landing the hammer on my left thumb. The can
spinning across the foundry floor attracted everyone's attention and my
muted retirement required no explanation. I climbed the outside of the apse
where Paolo was talking to the work shoppers and lay down in the Arizona
sun where I could hear the voices. The painful throb in my thumb
progressed in waves up my arm in time with my pulse and it was to this
that my attention was drawn. As this pulse reverberated through my body,
my subjective evaluation of the sensation of pain broke down and the waves
were then simply pulses of overwhelming sensation and then waves of
dissolving ecstasy. I lost consciousness. In less time than it takes to
succumb to heatstroke in that climate I awoke and was aware, foremost, of
the need to find some shade. I staggered back to the foundry area and
having nothing better to do, began squashing aluminum cans again. After a
while someone summoned the courage to ask how my thumb was. At first I was
surprised - I had forgotten about my thumb! On inspection the nail itself
was splintered down its length and there was a quantity of dried blood
around the cuticle but there was no pain or soreness with movement or palpitation.
The thumb was healed. The nail grew back normally in due time.
This is a case of immediate and spontaneous
healing of serious trauma to living tissue and the key seems to lie in the
unreserved participation in the nervous system's response to the injury.
Perhaps this corresponds to the principle in Rolfing where full healing
requires total experience of the injury. |
