My New Tattoo

Today I got a new tattoo.  It's the first tattoo I've had done since college, and though I knew that I wanted this particular image as a tattoo, I hadn't planned on getting it done today.  Even so, my adventurous friend had decided that she wanted to get a tattoo she had been thinking of TODAY, and since I was there and the timing seemed right, I decided to get mine done.  I'm really glad I did.

The first tattoo I got in college was the kanji symbol for bear.  I knew all of the reasons very concretely for getting the tattoo - my dad called me "Sarah Bear," I loved bears, I felt connected to them as a totem animal, and I loved the story of Artemis and her association with the bear.  I decided to get the kanji symbol because I was very heavily participating in martial arts at the time, and the kanji expressed my feeling of respect for and love of the korean and other asian cultures.  All of those things - the meaning, the reasons - have stayed firm in my mind for the last many years (5 or 7, maybe?).  I love my bear kanji tattoo, and it speaks a lot about me then and me today. 

This new tattoo also says a lot.  There are a lot of reasons for it - reasons that I am still integrating.  Like the first tattoo, I feel like the reasons for getting this tattoo and the meaning of the symbol I have chosen mean a lot for me right now, and will mean a lot for me in the future.  While the symbol has deep meaning for me, I find that the process of getting this tattoo today also is taking on meaning.  It is different - felt different - is feeling different - then when I got my first tattoo.  Both processes were important.  But while the first was planned and plotted, this second process, though intentional, was not so scripted. 

As I mentioned, my friend decided that today was the day she wanted her tattoo.  I knew I wanted my tattoo done, but wasn't sure about the exact form it should manifest as - I knew the symbol I wanted but didn't have a drawing or an image of it to share with the tattoo artist.  That it manifested in that way, itself, seemes pretty amazing to me - thorugh attempts at sketching the image and then a search of the internet, I was able to find the image that spoke to me, that represented what I see as an iconic form of the symbol in question.  (I'm deliberately not sharing what my tattoo is of.... for now, i'm processing and loving it, just me <3). 

Then, just like that, we were off to the tattoo "parlor" - We went to Hobos in Portsmouth, NH.  Three guys (at least) were there working - there was a man on the table getting ink on his leg, and I stood behind the counter as my friend went to get her work done.  I remember feeling very nervous.  I was committed to this, I wanted this tattoo, but it all seeemed so fast.  I definitely had the feeling of being in a process of manifestation - that somehow things had lined up today for this to happen.  It was not plotted and planned but it was definitely something i feel like I was meant to do today.  But it wasn't just about the symbol.

To me, the symbol I chose means a lot - in part because, in one aspect, it is symbolic of healing.  I knew from the first thought of this tattoo that it had to go on my chest, underneath my collar bone on the left side, near my shoulder.  That is where, exactly, I felt like it should be.  I wasn't sure why, but I think part of the location has to do and had to do with what happened today, what I feel is still happening.

The tattoo artist (Tony Sellers - awesome guy) made the transfer and put the disinfectant gel on my skin. Something felt very familiar about it.  He pressed with his left hand and provided counter pressure on my back, on the opposite side of my shoulder, with his right.  He effectively squeezed my shoulder between his hands.  It felt very familiar, and sent me directly to thinking about my shoulder surgery I had several years ago. 

I have 2 scars on my left shoulder - one in front and one in back - from a labrum repair i underwent about 3 years ago.  It is my understanding that the scars are from where they had to put tools and an arthroscopic camera into my body and the shoulder joint to see and repair my injury.  I've seen a you-tube video of this process - there is some force used when inserting the camera. 

The thoughts of my shoulder surgery quickly passed.  I sat in the seat and leaned back - Tony began to ink my shoulder.  It was painful - very painful - I felt like a scalpel was cutting my skin in the pattern of the symbol I had asked to have tattooed on my body.  I began to try to breathe - I felt like I needed to breathe very slowly, very deeply - Tony was telling me to breathe.  I began to pass out.

Clearly, I wasn't doing that great of a job of breathing.  I've gone through the process of passing out 3-4 times now.  I hate the process of passing out.  It sucks.  I'm also so reluctant to loose control of my body that I fight it tooth and nail, so I've never really gotten to the point of fully loosing consciousness.  Sometimes i think, in retrospect, "why don't you just fuck it and loose consciousness - it might feel better" - but something in my always holds on tooth and nail and I can't just let it go.  So, instead, I go through the whole process of passing out but never really loose consciousness. 

It usually starts with a wiggly feeling in my legs, followed by sweating and a feeling of heat all over my body.  Then, I go cold - cold all over, and my ears get echoey and the room gets echoey and my vision tunnels and my head starts to hurt and ring and wobble internally.  Usually, on the way back out of the process, I feel like I want to barf.  It's all a horrible, horrible feeling.  And it happened today, as I was getting my tattoo done, this tattoo related to lots of things but related to healing as well.

I had mentioned to my friend my intention to breathe more - that I wanted help in breathing & grounding - before beginning this process today.  As it turns out, it was my lack of breath that put my body into a place where I nearly lost consciousness.  But when finishing the tattoo, and then leaving the studio, the thought came to me that I felt like I had a re-birth.  A reset. Something bodily had changed, had released, had altered on a molecular level.  That the process of passing out was necessary for some reason.  I'm not sure of the reason, I just feel like it did something somewhere in my body that was important.

Which is where I think of my shoulder surgery again.  When I had my shoulder surgery, they put a nerve block in my neck.  It blocked some major nerves to my body.  I remember, in recovery, not being able to feel my shoulder but also not being able to speak certain vowel sounds and form certain words for quite some time.  I also remember feeling that I was, in some way, drowning, because the nerve block had blocked the nerve to the left side of my diaphragm.  Being asthmatic already, it was an unnerving thing.  I was worried and scared and in recovery and i couldn't speak the way I wanted to and I couldn't breathe with the entirety of my ability.  Back then I knew if felt crappy, and awful, and as I recall I also went through a process similar to the process today... my legs got wiggly... I got hot, and then I got cold, and then I felt like I was going to throw up.  It was from the anesthesia, the drugs they had given me.  At the time, a Reiki master was working on my post-surgically, and I just couldn't handle the energy and the feeling of it all.  It was a horrible, horrible feeling.

Today, I think it was something my body remembered.  The feeling of the disinfectant, the squeeze of the tattoo artist as he pressed my shoulder between his hands, the process of passing out, the inability to breathe and regulate my breath, the nausea... though my brain quickly forgot thoughts of my shoulder surgery, my body has obviously not.  And while this tattoo has nothing to do with my shoulder surgery, I think the process and the tattoo has everything to do with my shoulder surgery at the same time.

As a believer in the power of somato-emotional release, I am amazed at how the body holds on to and processes input, information, joy, and trauma.  My body has often been a silent, ignored ally in my life's work and processes, absorbing and processing and protecting me and storing it all away with my brain just moving on and on and on.  Lately, I have come to recognize how much my body takes on - how much past pain can be stored there without my knowing, past trauma that still impacts the way my body operates today.  I've worked a lot with a more recent injury to my wrist, with some of the major life pains, but haven't really spent the time to go back and process through the shoulder surgery.  I am so grateful for my body, for it's openness and responsive nature, that today it took the opportunity to bring to my attention some things it was holding on to, and to hopefully take that opportunity to reset and release.  I am grateful that I have had the ability to connect my body and mind, so that now my body has a greater voice and my mind isn't the only one running the show.  I am so grateful for the process of somato-emotional release, that has allowed me to understand me, and how my body is a valued and treasured ally in the walk of my life, and that it truly absorbs so much and that our pain and injuries can be healed and resolved and lessened through the processing and release of these pains and trauma.  I am grateful for the teachers and fellow travellers in my life. I am grateful for my amazing physical therapist, who has been an extraordinary guide and facilitator for my brain and body as they merge together and work to become a cohesive working unit.

The body - my body - is not just something I live in - it is a part of me.  It is me. 

So while I love my new tattoo and I am looking forward to my life with it, I am also so grateful for the healing the process of getting the tatttoo created in my life.  It is amazing what the universe creates for us and makes available to us.  I'm sure that, in my life with this new tattoo, this new aspect of me that I have hilighted with blood and ink, even more will be expressed and understood.  I look forward to the journey and am so grateful for the process that has framed it. 

Love and blessings - Namaste.