Craniosacral Therapy
Craniosacral Therapy
Craniosacral therapy supports deep, inner change using gentle touch. It involves a deep respect and listening to the body physiology and psycho-emotional energy field.
In optimal health, all living tissues subtly ‘breathe’, contracting and expanding. There are still-points in between. Craniosacral therapists detect and release emotional and physical restrictions throughout the body that could potentially cause sensory, motor or neurological dysfunctions, facilitating the body’s ability to heal and access wholeness.
In our natural state, the nervous system is in a state of balance. When rooted in being, optimum doing can arise. Our minds and bodies are fluid and flexible, restful and productive when required. However, in daily life our bodies become shaped by our activities and habitual thought processes. Our bodies literally hold our experiential world - past, present and future-imagined. Science appreciates this complex relationship (see, for example, Bessel Van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps The Score, and trauma expert Peter Levine’s In An Unspoken Voice). The nervous system can become stuck in recurrent cycles of anxiety, fear, and even powerlessness. Unresolved stresses further weaken the immune system, making us prone to other conditions.
Craniosacral therapists understand that the body has an innate ability to heal. The same forces that made the body, regenerate and heal the body. A core principle recognised in sessions is that health and stillness underlies all conditions. Such understanding is mirrored in many ancient traditions and spiritual texts, such as the I-Ching, Upanishads, and Buddhist scriptures.
Psalm 46:10 says ‘Be still and know that I am God.’
Stillness is the formless core of all form. This includes all living, sentient tissues. This innate Intelligence underlies the chemistry, nervous activity and homeostasis of the body. Its recognition and appreciation reignites the body’s own healing priorities.
Creating an attuned space of presence, an understanding of body anatomy and physiology, and responding moment to moment to the body’s innate wisdom is all at the heart of biodynamic craniosacral therapy. The process is one of integration, returning all that has been lost and fragmented back to its original nature. This includes physical injuries and illnesses as well as psycho-emotional stresses and traumas, and spiritual wounding. During sessions, many clients have discovered the unfolding and resolution of long-held childhood wounding, ancestral genetic patterns, and even past-life experiences. When this happens, we begin to live more from our original nature. Life as Being is naturally one of ease and joy, creativity and aliveness.
It requires at least two years of comprehensive training to become an accredited Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist.
The Biodynamic Approach
Biodynamic craniosacral therapists learn about anatomy and physiology, stillness and trauma. They learn about the relationship of the Breath of Life to living tissues and the fluid-body-energetic field. They learn to explore how organs feel and move, their health expressions, and embryological origins. They learn how patterns of experience throughout life impacts the way we move through the world, from early embryological developments to the fully developed (yet fluid and adaptable) unfolding adult system. They learn how to create a state of balanced awareness within their own systems, and directly experience anatomical states through extensive, experiential awareness exercises.
They learn how to recognise deeper tides of health and wellness below conditioned states of disease, within themselves and their clients. They learn how to create a space of non-doing and receptive listening to the body’s inherent wisdom and desires. Biodynamic craniosacral therapists explore the spine and embryological midlines as the body’s natural fulcums around which growth and healing occur. They understand how to detect and safely respond to the effects of trauma.
Through understanding how we develop in utero, attention can be given to how our early holding environments shape and impact our expression through adult life. Biodynamic craniosacral therapists learn how to relate to the transpersonal, and how to respond to and trust the body’s innate wisdom. They practice - in detail - how treatment can profoundly change another’s physiology, paying particular attention to cranial structures (including the limbic reptilian brain) the spine, gut, fascia, the visceral nervous system and umbilical affects. Health is acknowledged in the midst of disease. At the core, they learn how to meet another where they are at, whilst holding the door open for new possibilities.
Throughout every encounter, stillness is revered as the foundation of our being.
[See www.bodyintelligence.com for more information about practitioner training]
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"To find health should be the object of the physician.
Anyone can find disease."
Dr Andrew Still - Founder of Osteopathy
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