Solar and Spinal Flares: Catalysts for Awakening

On Chronic Pain, Self-care, and Finding Flow Again

Fiery Sunset Over Chincoteague Bay, Echos of a Pain Flare. Photo by AMP.

On July 4th, The Sun emitted a most powerful X-class solar flare, causing minor radio blackouts and generating vivid auroral displays visible across the northern U.S. Even the outlandish pyrotechnic display on The Mall – a record 850 thousand rounds shot off – could not begin to compete with Ra's fire power.

On that same auspicious day, my body went into its own X-class flare – flames of pain engulfing me – shooting, prickling, gnawing, burning. In scoliosis parlance, it's called a flare-up – the pain comes roaring forward and will not be ignored. How long a flare-up lasts is anyone's guess - and the fear it may never end only fuels the fire.

Confined to my bed on and off for the last week – forced to rest – I got to thinking: how are these two explosive events – the heavenly and the bodily – connected?

Actually, lying there, back, hips, thighs radiating bolts of pain, I got to pleading – what on earth (or our galaxy) will help me through this?

According to NASA, solar flares occur when tangled magnetic fields in the sun's atmosphere snap and release energy, projecting light, heat, and high-speed particles into space.

Tangled magnetic fields going snap is just the way my body feels as I stand at the computer – shifting from foot to foot - nerve pain exploding all over – and I pray that she – Caroline My Blessed Crooked Spine – allows me to type these insights before sending me back to bed.

I want to go deeper. From the astronomical to the mystical, I need to get woo-woo for answers. Consulting my favorite astrologer, Pam Gregory, I learn that solar flares aren't just space weather. They're catalysts for awakening, upgrades to our collective consciousness.

Oh, I'm conscious, all right – of the ways I've been abusing my body – forgetting, inconveniently, that this flesh and blood of me is a precious thing – and shall not be taken for granted. I pushed myself through two back-to-back deadlines – strapped to my desk for two weeks – ignoring my morning self-care routine – shutting my ears to messages my spine was sending me to please take a break -- to move and stretch and breathe. Moments when I did comply, my routines were fast and furious and half-hearted.

Gutting it out at the desk, igniting the flare-up. Photo by AMP

Now I am paying the price. Tears gloss my eyes as the heat of fear rises inside. Will this flare land me back in the emergency room – will it send me to the surgeon's table?

Or will it Wake Me UP?

According to Pam, increased solar activity brings high-frequency energies that act as ingredients for upgrading our DNA and awakening multi-dimensional awareness. In the process, there can be turbulence for the mind and body – a need to ground and surrender as the body tries to hold these higher frequencies of light.

Good yogi that I am, I think Mountain Pose: rooting down through the soles of my feet, I rise up through the crown. Exhaling, I close my eyes and let this truth resonate throughout my body. At a personal – and universal level – we are in a difficult but necessary period of awakening.

We are moving away from the dense, old, patriarchal, push and strive and command and control ways of being into higher frequencies of peace and love and light.

That expansion begins right here, with me – and you. In this process, we must take good care of ourselves. Courage requires self-care.

Cooling the flames at the Y pool. Photo by AMP.

On that note, time to put on my suit and go for a swim – not at the river or ocean – the pool at the Y will do – to cool the flames -- to feel that flow, again.

Water douses fire.