Answer to coping with pandemic was locked inside me
Mary Somano likened the first part of her therapeutic practice to a storm — “it brings everything up to the surface.”
The “storm” is what can happen when we confront the experiences that have changed us, she said, from invasive surgeries to traumatic news to adolescent memories tucked away in a journal on the shelf.
I’ve never sought out a storm, but they’re sort of inescapable here. As a Southeast Texas native, I’ve experienced three major hurricanes: Rita, Ike and Harvey. I reported on the devastation in Wimberley during the Memorial Day floods in 2015, and spent a month in Rockport and Port Aransas after Harvey damaged 70 percent of their structures while my parents had to be rescued by the Cajun Navy from our home in Port Arthur.
It doesn’t matter how many you go through, a storm slams into you a different way each time.
The other half of Somano’s practice has little to do with physical touch despite the practice’s name: Healing Touch.
It’s about restarting or redirecting the flow of energy in our bodies and opening up space in ourselves that we may have unintentionally closed.
“Yes, I do touch the clients at their energy centers but I don’t have to touch them,” Somano told me by phone a few days before my appointment.
I was on the hunt for an expert on touch deprivation and its effects on humans while we’re stuck inside during a global pandemic. But when I found the 71-year-old certified Healing Touch therapist and longtime Houstonian, the story took a different turn. She was the right source, but not for a story on touch deprivation.
“This connects you to you,” she told me. “Chronic emotion is just energy, honey; don’t be discouraged.”
The practice
Healing Touch can help restore and balance energy that has been depleted in a person’s body. Energy depletion can be caused by stress, injury, grief, chronic illness, surgery, or medical treatments associated with cancer treatment like chemotherapy or radiation, according to the Healing Touch Program, a San Antonio-based business that specializes in training Healing Touch therapists.
But don’t call it alternative therapy, Somano said. When combined with traditional medicine, Healing Touch is more like additive therapy.
“I do have cancer clients, and Healing Touch goes hand in glove with chemo and radiation because its helps remove the toxicities associated with those therapies,” she said. “There are psychological issues associated with the things our body goes through, and Healing Touch is so helpful with emotions.”
It also can promote relaxation, which improves blood circulation, elevates oxygen levels throughout the body and promotes healthy cell regeneration and a sense of well-being, according to the program.
After my appointment, I felt what some would call “Zen.” To me, it felt warm and safe — like I could let out a breath I had been holding in for weeks or months.
Healing Touch is similar to Reiki; though Reiki uses a more generalized approach to balance the body’s energies and Healing Touch is body-specific, according to the program.
Somano is a facilitator — she doesn’t create, push, send or manipulate energies. She uses Healing Touch as a support tool to put the body in the best position to heal itself, she said. She believes that energy centers become blocked or congested because of prolonged emotion, like anger, fear, anxiety or depression.
Before stay-at-home orders were declared, Somano saw the majority of her clients in person. Still, she redirects energy with the use of a pendulum, so physical touch has never really been necessary. Since the pandemic started, she has transitioned to distance healing and has found herself busier than normal: Something about the world now is causing people to seek a more holistic experience, she said.
The intake
Two hours before my appointment, I recorded a video on my phone. I wanted to document how I felt before it all began.
“We don’t know what the body and soul and energies are all capable of, so I’m a pretty good candidate for something like this,” I said. “I am going into this kind of skeptical, but very open.”
I scheduled the twohour appointment for a Friday afternoon on the sixth week of working from home. By that point, I was beyond the point of missing the daily things that made life recognizable: the coffee machine in the break room, traffic on the way to an assignment, that scented jelly thing that makes the bathroom smell better.
It’s in-person human interaction that I have missed most of all, so talking to Somano helped in multiple ways.
Before the “healing” even started, she helped me shed the no-nonsense “I’m on the clock” persona that we adopt during work hours. She gave me a nojudgment space to be honest and vulnerable. Within 10 minutes, I was crying. And I felt embarrassed.
“Crying is a release,” she said. “It’s much more advisable to release than to stuff everything inside. There’s absolutely a reason you’re crying, but sometimes we just don’t know the reason.”
We spent 45 minutes reviewing my medical history, which I had emailed her beforehand using her standard intake form.
It was personal and in-depth. In our conversation, I shared experiences, thoughts and feelings that I had never said out loud or written down. We talked about addiction, traumatic reporting experiences and domestic violence.
When it was time to transition to the energy portion of the appointment, I felt like an exposed, raw nerve. I was already exhausted, but maybe that was the point.
The touch
Somano told me to get in a comfortable position lying down, away from my phone or other distractions.
Even though I had just awakened a tsunami of emotions, I had to quiet my mind and focus on breathing — in through my nose, out through my mouth.
Almost immediately, I felt tingles shoot through my ankles, shins and calves. I have lingering pain from years-old running injuries, so I thought that could be the culprit. My heart was beating fast, like I was about to bungee jump off a bridge.
Two songs played on a loud rotation in my brain, “Besitos” by Pierce the Veil and a version of “La Gallina” by Fito Olivares y Su Grupo.
When I rolled onto my stomach, I felt the beginning of a burp, a brief pocket of air in my solar plexus. But it went away, and I fell asleep for the remainder of the appointment, waking in a haze 15 minutes after my time was up, with two missed calls.
My body felt sunburned, but it wasn’t painful. It was like I spent the entire day at the beach and came back to the cabin to rinse off — just radiating heat even though I had spent no time in the sun.
When I followed up with Somano, she said she burped several times during the session. She told me I had blocked energies, but now everything would flow smoothly and I would start to feel different.
And I have felt different ever since: calmer, clearer, better able to face the realities of being sad in a world that is uncertain and scary.
Somano said it’s like a storm — it brings everything up.
And right now, that feels OK.