When
I first thought about the way I view healing I just ran with it to see what
came up. Later I looked at the dictionary definition and tweaked it a
little.
by Barbara Shepard
(Published in the August (2003) edition of the Fulcrum the Craniosacral therapy journal)
When
I first thought about the way I view healing I just ran with it to see what
came up. Later I looked at the dictionary definition and tweaked it a
little.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary definition of 'to heal' is:
`v.t. To make whole; to restore to health; to cure (of disease etc); to cause to cicatrize; to reconcile; to free from guilt; to purify. vi. To grow or become sound or whole`.
'What does healing means to me?' is the same question as 'What gives life?' It has a philosophical and spiritual dimension.
On a human level, I view healing as a process in which we bring together the different elements of ourselves into an integrated whole. I understand healing as a process in which we gradually reassemble and remember who we are and our purpose. I see healing as a way of getting down to the bare essentials, to our essential being, about linking into our essential nature and what we have in common with all life.
On a more fundamental level I understand healing as an organising principle in the universe. It moves in us and through us, is of us but is not us, and it is integral to everything that exists, including dark matter, black holes, the constellations and the activities of an ant.
In CranioSacral Therapy it has been called a creative intelligence1, an organising principle at work in the universe. It is the force that directs the way that energy fields coalesce into form2 , creating galaxies, stars and planets, quasars, wave patterns and nano-particles. This is not random but a process, which has form and intention in common with all existence. It can be seen in natural pattern, colour and light. It can be felt and heard like a humming vibration, such as a warm tone or the energy that ignites a smile.
It is also akin to the Buddhist notion of the void. The notion of the void is of a hidden active principle. It is apparently contradictory because it is said that the void is not empty but full. It is where yin and yang envelop each other.
Which brings me to how the personal and the universal intersect in the individual life. I think this happens for all creatures but I will focus upon the human experience. I see healing as the soul becoming unified with the body. I have witnessed people who are `besides themselves`, and dissociated from their body. For a number of years I lived this way myself. I was a bit displaced, living a fantasy-like existence where events happened as in a film in front of me and I was not properly engaged or feeling real here on earth. I used to think it was a blessing because this way nothing could really hurt me, but I was hurting all the time and learned a trick of not really feeling it by not being fully present, and this had become a habit.
I think we become accustomed to this way of being when we are very young in our mother’s womb and our journey in life is a quest to become whole. As an embryo the soul will float in and out of embodiment as we are orientating to being on earth, in a physical existence, with our family and the people that we will have relationships with during this life. We are likely to have powerful emotional responses to this as we hear their voices and share our mother’s most intimate fears and feelings. All manner of trauma in utero will impact on us and the very instinctual defence mechanism is for the soul to come and go from the body, so that we might be in what feels like the safest place for us3. We also have to recognise that not all pregnancies are wanted. There are numerous themes and scenarios for our being to handle as it enters young human life.
Birth itself has a major impact. Our initiation into the world is often a
traumatic event that forces questions about existence
and our major life issues4,
like `Do I really want to be here?`. Life is hazardous and potentially
dangerous. The body is vulnerable and we are so tiny and defenceless. We
have this body. We may not feel confident that those tending our needs, most
especially our mother, is up to the task and is happy herself. We may not
feel loved or accepted. Not surprisingly, after the treacherous death-defying
journey pushing and squeezing our way into the world, we can end up feeling
terrified.
Our future experience, the pleasure and the pain, resonating with our most formative experiences and thoughts may compound or dissolve these feeling. Healing becomes necessary when we notice that something is wrong, not working quite right and want to change it. Maybe we had not consciously noticed that things just slipped a bit out of synchrony and then before we know it things careered way off course. One example of this was a patient I visited who was chronically ill and bed ridden at his home. He was complaining of neck and back pain and his wife sought my help. He had a bowel colostomy and an artificial bladder. He had been right as rain one day and the next day he was taken into hospital in an emergency to have the first operation, a colostomy.
I work with women and their babies a lot. Parents rarely understand that their babies are conscious beings. I try to get them to understand life from the baby’s perspective. I touch and talk with the baby with this insight. It is very gratifying and healing for me because I have to slow down and join their world. It makes me remember. I try to make this formative time comfortable. Although they may have only lived a short time they might have suffered and have huge survival fears. They don’t always show nice behavior; they can scream and cry, displaying anger and rage which tests parents` patience and love. Also, parents don’t automatically like their children and bond with them.
Healing can take many forms. Sometimes it is a shock that gives us the wake up call. People say you have to want healing for it to happen.` Seek and ye shall find`. I think sometimes it comes unexpectedly. You might be looking for something and not know what it is; or not know that you are searching but there is a restlessness inside. Then one day you find something that puts the pieces of the jigsaw of your life together. It begins to mean something. So healing is like a discovery and memory is involved, like getting in touch with something fundamental in your soul, of a thing buried so deep but known intimately to you. For me this remembrance brought me to tears. I was shocked by the extent of my denial of something that was precious to me.
Something for certain is that you heal yourself. The journey is always a personal journey although we may take it with fellow travellers.
The condition of life is a condition of degenerating and dying or regenerating and healing. It is not static. The driving force behind that life, the spirit, determines its direction. We can have healing of the spirit when people have a fatal illness and yet the body dies. This doesn’t mean it is a failed outcome. The spirit or psyche may be reconciled.
I had this experience when a patient died. Her spirit parted when she was in my house shortly after a treatment in which we had mainly just talked. During the session it wasn’t possible to touch her for long because when I did her energy streamed away from her feet and lower chakras and up toward and through her head. I had known her for a long time and had a close bond with her. She had often spoken of seeing a gateway into a garden in another world, a beautiful place. She experienced this in her very early treatments and said she saw the art of healing I practice as the way forward and the medicine of the future. She loved to sit in front of my living room window and stare out at the panoramic view. She said she felt at peace here. I now believe that she couldn’t leave the world without coming to resolution on some issues. She needed to comprehend how she had been creative in her life. I unwittingly provided a way for her to understand this. This took the form of a contemplative inquiry and exchange with me. When she found the right answer she thanked me for showing her how she had been creative in her life and shortly afterwards (in about one hour) she took a dramatic leave of this plane. Her spirit left her body through the head and in ghostly form floated out through the window into the landscape. This was the time, this was the place. It was accomplished and I was an agent within this process of change, whether I wanted to be or not.
It took two events to help me put this experience into contexts. The first, a course on the role of ritual leader in shamanism which was run by Michael Shea and Franklin Sills5, and the second a rebirthing session with Margaret Lyth who reminded me that the traditional healer is present at the ports of entry and exit from this world and acts as a mediator for this change. This experience turned out to be a healing for me too. This event taught me that the form that healing takes can appear to be contradictory. For this woman, she was able to let go of attachment to the physical plane.
A hallmark of the healing process in alternative and complementary therapies is that it can involve a healing crisis as a part of the letting go of a condition. Of course the difficulty is in distinguishing between a healing crisis and an overload that can bring about re-traumatisation.
Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of healing is that it is deductive. It is a clearing. To be cleansed is to remove poison and this can be understood on many levels, and in whichever mode of operation healing takes place. Purification and freedom from guilt is the soul's dimension in this, because the body and soul are conjoined, even though this may not always be understood or recognised. An historical example is of Jesus’s miracles. He was a healer of the soul and through purification the body was also healed.
Because the body works for us, not against us, it holds or centres a disturbance in the least damaging way. When cleansing occurs, poison is removed on the mental, emotional and physical levels to make space for something else to happen. The body’s healing potential will grab at the opportunity. We don’t have to tell the body how to heal. It has this capacity. It knows how to build tissue to heal a wound, all we have to do is provide the right conditions for this to happen and cleansing is a prerequisite of this. Likewise we have methods for calming the mind and elevating the soul. Meditation is a way of opening the mind through various methods of focusing and emptying6.
This is why healing is an art and not a science. Scientific method is quantifiable. It seeks to examine, measure and fix things whereas artistic modes are more fluid and responsive. Nothing is cut and dried. It is an ongoing process, constantly shifting and moving. It is a dialogue wherein the healing process is ultimately generated by the patient.
Bibliography
Craniosacral Biodynamics and The Breath of Life, Karuna Institute 2000. Franklin Sills.
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by Barbara Shepard
Holistic therapy aims to work with causes of illness rather than treating the symptoms of disease. In trying to decipher the language of the body, as a therapist, I am asking the question who and what we are; what is the fabric of our being and what is the nature of our destiny? I regard the body as the key to these questions and the map of this territory.
For
a long time people have been divided in their belief about what makes us
the way we are. Is our nature pre-determined either by our genes, or
our karma; or are we nurtured and brought up to be a certain way? Social
science doesn't believe in the existence of the soul, but that social
circumstances, such as; class, race and gender, at particular points in social
history, are the ingredients that make us the way we are. It suggests
that certain ways of being are consciously moulded in the social arenas like
school and work. Some are voluntary whilst others are imposed on us
by those with more authority. However, much of our basic forms and
impulses are acquired so early as to be only subliminally remembered. An
important means by which our cultural norms of behaviour are passed on is
through the family; from an early age the young are unwittingly weaned into
a prescribed place in the social pecking order. On the other hand,
spiritual movements, based upon Eastern philosophical traditions, tend to
believe that we arrive on the earth plane, fully hatched and that our karma
forms the blueprint for our mental, emotional and physical type. It
proposes that we are here to learn certain lessons in this incarnation by
living through a particular body and set of circumstances.
The truth involves reading the warp and weft between these chasms of belief. By holding both as possibilities in our consciousness we are able to explore the creative potential in these ideas. The body is an amazing vehicle for doing this. It reveals so much about the way we are. Our posture and body language and the energy we exude is an expression of our identity. Our bodies are the map of our life history; our hopes and fears, joys and disappointment. This is so for whole groups of people with common histories and sense of identity as well as for individuals.
Ways of being; We are what we think?
Although we may not be our body, we live through the body and every action, thought and feeling creates a particular energy pattern. This is expressed not only in the shapes and forms we make, in facial expressions and tone of voice etc, but from the inside out, in the way we organise ourselves as living organisms.
We retain memory on a cellular level as well as in the brain and nervous system. Tissues either tighten and contract in response to a pleasant experience or soften and relax when good things are happening. This also involves specific chemical states. We register emotions as feeling sensations and they become part of our physiological make up, even if we are not always conscious of it. In this way we imprint a stock of responses in the body, so that when we identify similar situations we are prepared to deal with them. It could even be said that we are the product of the way we think and feel, as easily as it could be said that we think and feel a certain way because our bodies are structured a particular way. The classic example is the release of adrenalin into the system as a response to perceived danger so that we can either fight or take flight. In this way our emotions and what we think is going on has an important influence upon our physiology as a whole. For example, people who lead stressful lives can become addicted to the adrenalin buzz and demand more exciting scenarios and foods that stimulate rather than calm the system. This behaviour can become habitual as we have discovered in modern Western society, and people can forget how to relax. Eventually if not enough renewal of resources is allowed to take place this ends in a burnout, and the types of ill-health typical of our time.
Some of this patterning is imbibed early in our lives. Before we were born we intimately shared our mother's thoughts and feelings about herself and us, as though they were our own. This set the scene for our entry into the world as babies. The energy of those around us was mediated through our mother, as well as nourishment from food and air. We can even explore what kind of conception we had. Did our parents enjoy making love? Were we created from a pure loving experience? And how does the way we were conceived affect our attitude toward and experience of our own creative 'life force' energy'?
Boundaries and our sense of self
How we express ourselves through the body, the personal characteristics we describe, the way we look, sound, smell and feel, are what helps to distinguish us from that which is outside the self. In doing so it expresses what is happening for a person in relation to outside.
From the earliest point in our history, our sense of personal identity is to do with the demarcation of boundaries, both internally and externally, and in relation to the transportation and exchange of substance on both the gross material and energy levels. For our boundaries mark what is and what is not of ourselves and the way in which we organise ourselves.
We are a 'self making organism', actively participating in the way we are. At the outset of life's journey,
"Cytoplasm and protoplasm organise a space by compression of outer boundaries and expansion of inner layers - whatever is moving creates a surface pressure that generates a passageway for itself from itself. We create boundaries for fluids to pass through us so that the nutrients are kept in and the dangerous or useless kept out. In a similar way we take in emotional nutrients and exchange with others what we have formed." (Keleman 1988)
I believe that this is the way our spiritual essence is progressively stepped down to grosser material levels of existence. During early embryonic development, whilst in a fluid and gassy state, patterns of expansion and contraction, pulsations and wave rhythms organise our basic perception and cognition. We experience feelings like empty, full, slow, fast. Sensations may be exaggerated by over activity or stilled by under activity, through fear, anger or shock. These patterns and qualities represent how we function and feel, whether we are rigid and fear collapse, are dense with little movement and fear eruption, are swollen and lack a sense of identity or feel empty with longing but fear assertion.
As we develop a more complex structure, Keleman believes that the innermost core represents the secret, deep and ancient past, the outside is the boundary and therefore the social self, whilst in the middle is the volatile self which modulates between inner and outer.
Craniosacral therapy: Accessing the 'life force energy'
Particularly fascinating to me as a body therapist using craniosacral therapy is that I am able to tune in to the fluid and nerves in the spine and brain, to facilitate access to the core of an individual's being; their 'life force energy'; an innate intelligence which stimulates their natural healing potency.
Along with the cardiovascular system and respiratory system, the craniosacral system is one of the three primary life support systems. It is also described as the primary respiratory impulse, because it is thought to exist prior to respiratory breathing and is formative in the developing life of the foetus. Human life organises itself around the third ventricle of the brain and the central nervous system, forming a membranous tube, ballooning at one end, which surrounds the nerves and envelops the brain. The third ventricle is the space which houses the pituitary gland (the controlling gland) and pineal gland (the intuitive centre which manufactures and stores tiny crystals). The craniosacral rhythm is created by the tide-like fluctuations of cerebro-spinal fluid. It can be felt by sensitive, trained hands at any point on the body. This precious fluid which nourishes the brain and central nervous system and is transported throughout the body via the minutiae of cells and tissues is described as the vehicle for 'the breath of life' or 'life force energy' (Ching Chi in the Chinese system of medicine). As I resonate with their energetic pattern, by palpating the craniosacral rhythm, this takes us closer to both my own and their spiritual essence. We are exploring the territory of the soul.
Energy blocks and somato emotional release
At any point along our
life journey we can experience a sticking point when we contract in response
to an unpleasant stimulus and are unable either to eliminate or assimilate.
We may circumvent and isolate these as pockets of undigested lumps of experience.
Vulnerable, the damaged areas wall themselves off from their surroundings
and so impede the flow of energy and nourishment to the area. The area becomes
numb and lifeless, frozen out of existence. Wilhelm Reich believed that this
is the way that humans suppress feelings in order to survive oppressive social
conditions. Through body work it is possible to help people cross this barrier
and integrate their experience. This may simply mean being with that person
and helping them to acknowledge what they feel. There is often an emotional
release as the area comes out of the cold. It is as though the encapsulated
energy holds a memory of the feelings and thoughts in time warp. John Upledger,
an important name in the development of craniosacral therapy, calls this
process "somato emotional release".
A more sophisticated version of this idea was developed by spiritual healer Barbara Brennan. Drawing upon Eastern yogic tradition and the concept of chakra energy centres, she interpreted the meaning of energetic patterning and defence systems in the human auric body. She believes that at the point of conception we already have a blueprint of our form to be, held in the energetic body (in the etheric layer) which is carried over from our previous lifetime. Therefore our body can yield information, not only about our current lifetime but also preceding ones. How it works is that as we take shape from conception onwards. Our new experience is constantly measured by reference to our energetic patterning. Most likely we will have a bias which tallies with our inherited characteristics. We will have a pre-disposition to be a certain way so that specific traits match up with those carried over from past lives. For instance, weakness in the aura can easily become the site of further trauma and injury which is then translated on the material plane. This process continues throughout life so that ways of being tend to get re-inscribed and exaggerated.
An important aspect of this idea is that particular thought forms, emotions and physiological characteristics share the same energetic patterning. Louise Hay in her book Heal Your Body, detailed the thought forms implicated with certain illness and the affirmations that can be used to neutralise them. Classical Chinese medicine also associates functions of the organs with particular mental and emotional functions. An example of this is the kidneys and fear. The adrenal glands sit on top of the kidneys and when we are nervously excited by fear such that adrenalin is released into the system, the water works are also affected. In extreme cases we can wet ourselves.
Happy birth day
One of the earliest traumas for most people is the experience of their birth. It usually subjects the body to enormous compression and pressure. The positive aspect of this is that the contractions act as a stimulus to the craniosacral rhythm, to nurture and sustain our energies in life. The nature of this event is very marked in our psyche. Whether we were dragged into the world with forceps or rushed headlong into things is a statement about the way we are. How we are born, whether we want to be here and how we are received and welcomed sets a precedent for the way in which we meet life's challenges.
Cellular memory
Our earliest form of knowing and individual self awareness is recorded in our cellular memory through tissue connectivity. During the early foetal stage, prior to the development of nerve communication, brain cells and heart cells lay near to each other. They communicated through the tissues to transmit sensations as qualities of pulsation. The vestiges of this remembered contact means that when cells proliferated and migrated to perform more specialised tasks, we remain linked into this intimate knowing through the connectedness of our tissues.
This is a powerful level of being to plug into as a body therapist. The connective tissue, or 'fascia', envelops and embraces all the structures of the body in a continuous sheath. This includes not only the bones and muscles but the nerves, blood vessels, organs and glands. From the periphery of the skin to the deepest recesses and sulci of the brain, all is one continuous mobile whole. When working to facilitate the release of restrictions by melding, turning into and following the subtle twists and movements in the fascial layer, and allowing it to release and disentangle itself, I witness expressions of being that come from this early state. I am tempted to call it a pre-conscious state but that is incorrect. What I am involved in as a therapist is helping to bring this prior knowledge of who and what we are into consciousness.
Thus true change can only be wrought and karmic debts paid through a total body, mind and soul healing process. A person can only be healed if they want to be and are a party to it. For however much we think we ought to be a particular way, if it is not fully felt, realised and assimilated, we just wont feel right and the energetic configurations will jostle with the grosser material levels. This is what can happen when we are forced into realignment using over-zealous techniques to push us into place, without paying heed to what the body is telling us and being sympathetic to the direction of energy, the fluid movement and tensions in the softer structures and connective tissue. Craniosacral therapy, like spiritual healing, doesn't set out to fix anything. Using a gently, non-invasive, hands-on technique, it helps correct imbalances and stimulates healing by reflecting back and accentuating our existing patterning, enabling us to access the resources to do something about it.
The potential for change
If, as Keleman believed, "as self reflecting creatures, we take in, hold and give back what was taken", we can learn from our experience and are able to "use and transform the world". This is true of anything we think, feel or do. We are transformed by and transform it. It becomes a part of us. We imbibe its meaning and carry its energy as part of our learning and in turn reflect it back into the world. One example of this is how women in the West tend to restrict the natural swaying movement of the hips created by the fuller pelvic girth, because of socio-cultural factors, especially religious ones. Men also constrict the pelvic area, but in a different way. This not only clamps down on sexual expression but on sensation. Stifling the 'life force energy' flow from the base of the spine represses our core creative energy which is essential to our health and wellbeing. It influences the energy with which we engage in all of our creative endeavours and we will feel similarly constricted whenever our creativity is called into play.
Whether or not we want to use our primary energy in sexual ways or transform it for healing or other creative endeavours, in seeking to free ourselves through body work or by exploring movements from ancient cultures like yoga, qi gong, tai chi or African and Egyptian dance, we inevitably challenge our preconceptions about who we are. This may mean pushing the boundaries of our sexual identity as women and men, and our ideas about what loving really means. As much as it can at times feel liberating to do so, we can also experience incredible resistance and fear as we break with deeply ingrained taboos.
This process holds the potential for not only clearing uncomfortable patterns build up in this lifetime, from conception to birth, but it has the potential for dissolving a backlog of karma built up in previous incarnations. Change on a core level reflects out into auric body to make a person's energetic vibration very different. This extends beyond our immediate world and reverberates and resonates with the energies further afield. This holds enormous potential for us as a species. In un-learning who we thought we were there comes not only personal responsibility,but also the excitement of discovery and the freedom to explore who and what we are.
Bibliography
Hands of Light, Barbara Brennan. Bantam Books, USA, 1988
Emotional Anatomy, Stanley Keleman. Centre Press, Berkeley, 1985
Heal Your Body, Louise Hay. Eden Grove Editions, London, 1989
Cranio-Sacral Therapy, Upledger and Vredevoogd. Eastland Press, Seattle,
1983
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Photos by courtesy of www.bigfoto.com.