The Dentist

This is a Dentist Story

I went to the dentist. I have braces this year, yeah I know I’d say I was re-visiting adolescence except for that I never had braces when I was an adolescent. So brave new world and welcome to it full metal jacket in my mouth.

Number one: I used my body awareness to make sure I communicated with my practitioner. I told him that I am quite nervous about this whole process and that my neural system seems to be so sensitive that I am having more than the usual discomfort with the process but that I trust him and did want him to proceed.

Number two: he starts removing the old wires and pressing so aggressively on my teeth that my whole body had a reaction of danger. I had to decide whether I needed him to stop and I was in trouble, or was I simply wildly “comfortably uncomfortable” in a Chi gong sense. (Meaning that I wasn’t being injured, I just felt like I was being injured and it hurt dammit.) So I decided to shift my entire attention to my breathing. I thought, “ you’ve got very understandable fear with a capital F all through your system, so shift from that to assist the body to not get more and more tense. So I started using an erotic breath. I then shifted to a tenderness breath because (from the residual fear in my body) I thought my mouth breathing might be getting in the way of the dentist. I’m sure it wasn’t, but that’s what I thought.

So I switched back to erotic breath opening everything possible in my mouth and my throat and that began gradually to assist my body in coping with what was being done to me! I was allowing my body to feel what it was feeling, but not to run away from the feeling internally but, but to stay with it, continuing to breathe more and more fully. This worked. At one point sound came out of my chest which was a very clear indicator of the level of discomfort I was feeling. My poor dentist! But, hey, I was doing what I needed to do and he was doing what he needed to do.

After all the adjustments were made I turned and said to him, “let me explain to you what I was just doing. “he said, “you were in pain.” I said, “I was.” he said, “when you made that sound I got very afraid...” and I said I am sorry to hear that that is why I am reporting to you what it was that I was doing so that in future you will understand how I am controlling my mind and my body. He was, understandably, fascinated. I had all his attention. So I simply described to him the process that I was working with to Allow me to most healthfully work with him and not against him for my health.