There are more things on heaven and earth.....

 The last couple of years have forced us to rearrange our lives: wearing masks, getting inoculations, staying home a lot, centering down. And though some things about this have been frustrating and even downright scary, there have been some benefits too. With the slow-down came more time to ponder, to discover, to widen our view of life. One of my personal learnings has to do with my massage practice. I am a massage therapist working out of my home office. Mostly I do craniosacral therapy, which I love, with some shiatsu and reflexology thrown in. The pandemic threatened to totally put a stop to my practice. Especially at first, I saw no clients at all. Too risky. But then I remembered long distance Reiki. In massage school, I took Reiki 1, Reiki 2 and Reiki 3. It was required. And though my main interest was in the craniosacral training, it was good to learn other things. Once I became a massage therapist for real though, I never used Reiki. Maybe it was just a little too woo-woo for me, all based on energy that you couldn't see or measure. I remember that we were taught that long distance Reiki was more powerful than in-person Reiki, a counter-intuitive fact. And in massage school we practiced giving Reiki treatments to people far away. I don't remember the results.

But during the pandemic, I was forced to consider offering long distance Reiki to my clients. And some of them accepted the offer. We'd meet on zoom, they would lie down in their home, I'd have a long pillow on my lap with a designated head and foot, and I would go through the treatment ritual, head to toe. At first I thought maybe the main benefit would be psychological. I really didn't know whether this would actually have real physical benefits. But I was soon to be amazed by the results. In time, I began to actually feel my clients' tissue, their stuck places, their body rhythms. I could tell when there was a release. I could tell when there was an area needing attention. And my clients often felt a release at the same time that I did without me telling them. What a mind-opener that was for me! I know some of my family members would roll their eyes if I told them about what I'd been doing. But there is more out there than we can see, lots more. The world is full of invisible things.

Another almost invisible thing that I've just been learning about is slime mold. The first time I heard about this tiny being was during a craniosacral workshop when my teacher started expounding about it. Somehow the movements of slime mold were related to the movements of connective tissue in our bodies. Slime mold sounded pretty gross, but if my teacher was extolling its virtues, it must have been important. Then recently a friend sent me some great links to pictures and articles about slime mold and I was hooked. Since then I've been reading everything I can find about it.

Slime mold, they say, is everywhere. And it's tiny in its one-celled state. It's not a plant or animal or fungus. It's actually an amoeba, brainless and single celled in its initial stage. At first it is one large cell filled with cytoplasm and lots of nuclei (it's called "plasmodial slime mold" in this stage). It moves around looking for food all by itself, but it has the ability to send out a chemical message to other slime molds. And once slime molds get that chemical message, they start to move toward each other. Gradually they glom together and become a big cluster which can act like a single being. That in itself is a very amazing thing. Think of it! A true collective that evolves into one life form. In the cluster stage, they move around together and at a certain point they get ready to reproduce. Some of them form the base, some form stalks rising up, and some form a fruiting body which produces spores. And so they spread widely through the spores with wind or animals or water. In so many ways, they seem like an animal, and yet they are only a collection of one-celled beings working together.

Their blooms are beautiful. They come in many colors and shapes. If you're interested, it's not hard to find pictures on the internet. They are found especially in woods or on mulch, wherever there is dead plant material. And it's when they are in their collective stage that you can see their mounds with the naked eye. Orange ones look a bit like cheesy macaroni. It's said that in Mexico they are scraped off tree bark and added to scrambled eggs. I haven't had the nerve to try this yet. Actually, I haven't even had the chance to see them in real life because I only started studying them in the winter. But come spring, I'll be out there looking.

Although slime molds have been here on earth for at least 6 million years, we really haven't noticed them a lot until recently. But lately scientists have been focusing on them because they have some remarkable abilities. They are smart. They're good navigators and can solve mazes. Some scientists in Japan used them to help identify the best routes for their railroads. They don't travel fast (1 mm/hr), but they seem to have a collective understanding of direction and terrain. Their genetics can change quickly in response to need. And they form networks quickly. There are more than 900 species of slime mold in every color except green (no chlorophyll) and all kinds of different shapes. They seem to have an ability to learn. This shakes up our preconceptions about intelligence. If this unique creature has caught your attention, I'll leave it to you to see what more you can find out about them. They suddenly have caught the public's attention lately, so there's quite a bit out there. Especially look at the pictures of their beautiful shapes and colors! 

The moral of this story, if there is one, seems to be that the deeper we look at the world, all things are connected in one way or another. And that there is so much more than meets the eye. My mind was opened by the mysteries of long distance Reiki and the exquisite beauty of tiny living neighbors. Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered....