The Story is in Your Tissues
So many of us get caught up in replaying old events, wishing we could change how they unfolded. Others seem to forget what happened or rewrite their stories almost immediately. We know that memory can depend on many factors, including mental exhaustion, smells, social situations, and emotional state. Memories aren’t foolproof, and we often have a hard time connecting with them (1). Through your body, you can connect with your memories, shift how you relate to them, and even unravel their lasting harms.
In Upledger CranioSacral Therapy (CST), we work to connect with the memories stored in your tissues. Just as a silicon chip or a record can store amazing amounts of information, so can our own bodies. If you have been on a treatment table or in a yoga class, you may have experienced some of this - physical releases accompanied by emotion, memory, images, or other sensations that seem separate from your current experience. For example, I often remember the smell of strawberry shampoo and how it feels to have someone else wash my hair when I am particularly relaxed and receiving or providing CST.
As CST practitioners begin to learn in CS2 and expand upon it through SER1 & 2, this phenomenon enters our treatments and provides fertile ground for helping our patients/clients move towards their therapeutic goals. As we work together, there are times when the focus of treatment expands beyond the tissues to include memories, thoughts, images, and feelings (as in my shampoo example). By palpating changes in craniosacral rhythm, we practitioners can be alerted to this shift and help our patients explore the story their tissues reveal. Not only does this facilitate deeper releases and pattern shifts, but it also helps our clients better understand themselves and what they need in order to work towards full resolution.
On the way towards this level of work, we learn how to open the avenue of expression. This includes releases through the hard palate, the floor of the mouth, the jaw, and the tissues surrounding the larynx. We begin learning this process in CS2 and complete it in SER1 before we explore the skills of dialoguing with patients to help them explore their tissue stories and discover what their inner wisdom is trying to communicate.
While we explore this aspect of Upledger CranioSacral Therapy, we never lose sight of our paradigm. So far this year, we have learned the following:
We follow the craniosacral rhythm, an inherent self-organizing body rhythm that exists within everyone, through gentle, intentional touch.
We trust our patients’ inherent healing patterns to guide us and subordinate our egos in this work. One of our most effective tools is facilitating a still point, followed by witnessing the reorganization of the nervous system.
We understand that self-healing is possible in all living creatures. We meet people where they are and understand that CST can also be offered to the non-human world.
We understand as therapists that we are facilitators of our clients’ self-healing - we are not healing them ourselves. We provide the least possible influence to support without getting ahead of the healing process.
The only one who can determine the timing, ordering, and process of self-healing is our patient’s inner wisdom, and it is our job to support this, not direct it. We treat what we find and understand that CST is process-driven rather than technique-focused.
We provide this support through gentle, non-invasive touch, verbal and non-verbal communication, and intention. We understand that we are working with people as their whole selves - mine/body/emotions/spirit, and our presence can influence at all levels, so our neutrality, grounding, empathy, and compassion are imperative.
This means we do not provide psychological counseling to our patients, we do not interpret their experiences for them, and we do not give them advice on what to do next. Unless we are licensed to provide these services, they need another source for this support. As one of my teachers, Maggie Gill once said: “Do not be the therapist from hell.”
Additionally, at times, you may experience emotions or sensations while treating your clients; those are for you. Do not share them with the people you are treating. They are messages that may help you maintain focus, capture your attention, or show you something you are ready to work on yourself.
It can be very tempting and gratifying for our egos to interpret someone else’s experience or to share our own, save it for your journal or for your own therapist - this isn’t for our patients and can actually cause harm - even when we have the best of intentions and are so sure that what we share will enrich their experience. Let their story be their own, let them develop their relationship with it, and let them uncover their own epiphanies. Then do the same for yourself.
Next month, we will explore the eighth principle of the paradigm:
“Each human being possesses, and has access to, infinite levels of consciousness that can manifest at the conscious level in support
of health, self-awareness, self-responsibility.”
References:
Wixted, J et al. “Rethinking the Reliability of Eyewitness Memory.” https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617734878
International Alliance of Healthcare Educators. (n.d.). The Upledger CranioSacral Therapy paradigm: A clinical approach. https://www.iahe.com/storage/docs/articles/Upledger-CST-Paradigm.pdf
