By Christie Deddens CMT, APP
Originally I shared this story on a phone conversation with Lisa Nemzo. The following is the story of what brought me to Polarity therapy which I’m sure is not unlike the story of so many others.
My. Name is Christie Deddens and I have been a licensed massage therapist for many years in California and as often happens in that profession I got injured about 5 years ago. I was working with an elderly gentleman who was not in possession the best motor reflexes and I was attempting to turn him over on my massage table. In so doing the gentleman managed to kick my wrist just the right manner to sprain it. This was not the most intense pain I have ever felt and it did not stop me in my tracks. However two days later in the middle of massaging I noticed significant soreness beginning and throughout the day it escalated to the point where I was forced to stop working. My hand swelled up to the size of a baseball glove and any movement or any touching created the most excruciating pain. This was not only upsetting it was also absolutely mystifying. I never seen anything like it. In the ensuing days, the pain grew to levels that were unbearable. I could not lay my arm down when I was attempting to sleep and I could not have it touching anything. It was hard even walking. I had to put my arm in a sling but it was very very tricky to to maneuver. I saw two hand specialists and both of them were mystified. They guessed perhaps rheumatoid arthritis or a severe sprain, they just didn’t know. They gave me painkillers—which did nothing and they prescribed occupational therapy which was actually helpful to some degree.
Somewhere in the course of things when I was at my chiropractor’s office, he took a look at my hand and he said, “I think you have CRPS which stands for complex regional pain syndrome. “ He then said I needed to get energy healing right away. Now, it should be said that this chiropractor is not just any chiropractor he’s an SOT chiropractor which stands for sacral occipital technique. My chiropractor, Dr. Charles Blum, learned chiropractic from Dr. Dejarnette who was a fixture in Dr. Stones life. There are no accidents.
After the injury, I could not work so I had to find some form of energy healing that I could afford. I think Dr. Blum wanted me to do Reiki but I didn’t have a practitioner at the time. All I had was a credit for a class at one of the schools that I had learned massage techniques from and as it happened they were offering a course in Polarity therapy. The Course was being taught by a husband and wife team —Cami and Mauro Zappaterra. Mauro is also a Harvard trained physician specializing in pain management. He’s a specialist in CRPS as well as other things. What are the odds? Again, there are no accidents.
When I attended the class Dr. Zappaterra took a look at my hand and he said, “ yeah that’s what you have….CRPS….. and yes this will help that as well as the other instructions I am going to give you to follow.” He said that we needed to reset the nervous system and that Polarity could help with that.
Now, to back up a bit ….CRPS is a debilitating syndrome about which not much is known but it appears that when there is some trauma that occurs to a limb , a percentage of the time —-and no one knows why exactly—the sympathetic nervous system goes into overdrive and won’t. stop. The effects vary from patient to patient however they can be very very severe. It can last years and it could be so severe that patients have to be either given a nerve block or put in a coma. There’s no fooling around with this stuff. Therefore I consider myself exceedingly lucky to have found this course and these teachers and I am eternally grateful to my chiropractor for sending me in this direction. I immediately started to feel better from taking the class, from receiving treatments, and from Following the instructions he had given me which had to do with working the hand and wrist and working through certain types of pain and avoiding others. All told it took about six months for me to get back to work but that’s apparently an incredibly short amount of time for this syndrome. I had another doctor I was seeing and he looked at me in disbelief and said” how is it you’re getting better ?”. And I told him. I said to him “you’re not gonna like what I’m going to tell you because it’s all alternative.“He answered that he was OK listening to it because his wife had the same thing and that she was an anesthesiologist—the person who administers the nerve blocks and she wasn’t getting better. So I told him and he looked into it and she’s doing better.
I think as you all know the nervous system is a delicate and complex thing and Polarity therapy is perhaps one of the best tools out there to deal with the many different challenges that face us and our nervous systems daily. . I am grateful for and committed to this path because it has been a miracle in my life. Now I just want to spread it. I am sure you can all relate .
Thank you and Namaste 🙏
Sincerely,
Christie Deddens CMT, APP
Los Angeles, CA
Connectingmassage@yahoo.com
Christie Deddens is a native of Los Angeles, CA. and currently resides there. Her early studies were in foreign languages, communication, and art at Sonoma state university , UCLA., and the university of !”Neuchâtel, Switzerland. She ran her own international agency representing photographers in advertising for many years before becoming a health practitioner. She has been a licensed massage therapist for more than 13 years and a polarity practitioner for 5 years . She has worked with many celebrities, professional athletes, and vip’s throughout her career. She will be lecturing in September at the École de polarité suisse romande this September in Lonay, Switzerland .