I’ve mentioned how fortunate I am to have discovered a supremely talented reflexologist—foot, hands, face manipulation for body equilibrium and spirituality. I am now even more fortunate in that she has taken me on as an apprentice and is teaching me her craft. My first lesson is tomorrow.
Today, we explored many things, and her own manipulations this time revealed different aspects of this world.
First, I discovered that whatever she was working on, whichever area, ended up dictating the thoughts that drifted into my mind. Isn’t that wild? As she worked a point on my feet that deal with the lungs, the body’s communication mechanism with the environment around us, we talked about communication in general, and how a friend of mine has asked to document my transition through photography.
I didn’t know of the connection, for in truth, I still know nothing about these points she is manipulating, but over and over we found ourselves in this place. Similarly, from previous sessions, I learned that where there is pain under her fingers, there is a body issue, a disequilibrium. Previously, there had been pain in areas of the feet (meridians of the toes) that were painful and this had to do with my hormone balance. Today, for the first time, I didn’t feel that pain. It just felt good.
“Probably, you are in equilibrium now,” she said in relation to my hormones. We have spoken about this before. And how her work with trans people has led her to this place. About two weeks ago I felt myself cross a threshold. Something in my mind switched over, almost imperceptibly, but definitively from male brain to female brain. At the same time, I felt ease in my body that I have never felt before. My body “looks the same” to me, but it doesn’t feel the same to wear it, to be in it. For the first time in my life, it doesn’t feel like a burden.
More to the point, during the last full moon, the day before, and for a few days after, I barely slept. This was noteworthy to me, as I have never had a problem sleeping in my life. I get in bed and I am asleep within minutes, even if I try to read. Pavlovian response.
But on these days, I lay awake all night long. I asked my favourite therapist about it.
“You are coming into your female self,” she said.
“You know, a few days ago, I felt as if I had switched from male brain to female brain.”
“And you begin to feel and perceive the world as female.”
“It’s different.”
“Without a uterus, you will fall into the cycle of the earth mother, you will follow the moon.” And she explained the phases of the moon and how that might affect my behaviour and sleep, my mood.
I mentioned this to the reflexologist as she worked my feet.
“This is what I will teach you first then.”
“What is that?”
“The female body contains more water than the male body. The water brings you closer to birth, to the earth, to the flow of life and the energy of nature. And what is the moon? The moon is of water, and the power of the moon is on water, and so, the moon has a much more powerful effect on your body. I want you to feel it. To surrender to it. To feel rhythm of life through it.” I think I love my reflexologist.
Later, as she worked this area on the bottom of my foot, an arc just below the pads of my feet, I could feel a relaxation overcome between my shoulder blades. I said, “a friend of mine has tension between the shoulder blades.”
“That is where I am working now.”
“I feel it. All of a sudden it just relaxed.”
“This is where this is.”
“We call that the ‘reaching out’ muscles in the energy work I am studying…the muscles we use to support the heart.”
“Every muscle has a place in the feet, in the hands, on the face.”
“You have magic hands.”
“It is a gift.”
As she worked my lungs, I spoke of a friend of mine, a talented photographer, who was asked to document my transition for a possible book…nude portraits. In my old days, as a boy, as a man, I was never comfortable being naked. Even alone. And since GAHT this has changed. I am beginning to love my naked body, and can’t stop touching it, touching my skin. I shared this with the reflexologist.
“That is because you are finding the body that you always knew was yours through hormones.”
“Yes. They tell you that, but until you do it, you don’t know what it really means.”
“Photographs are a form of communication. A book too. We are talking about communication as I work the part of your foot which has to do with communication.”
She described the heat in my feet in places she was working. How the blood begins to flow to the area she works, and how it becomes. And that this is the body asking for nourishment.
“You think of your stomach, and the blood goes there. It is important to be present in your body in that way,” she said. “When you are doing something, such as eating, then that is all you should do. If you do email while you eat, your body sends blood to your brain and your stomach, and that is a split of energy. Not effective. Email, then only email.”
There are so many things to savour in my body. My whole perception of the world has changed.
“When a man and a woman don’t understand each other, it is because we really don’t understand each other,” she said. “We see and perceive totally differently.”
What do I feel? I feel much more of the earth. Much more connected to nature. To the energy around me. Much more aware. I feel and see things with a level of subtlety that I didn’t have before. And that goes for everything.
Beyond Non-Binary 
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