Tag: Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy

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Bodies Are Good ~Naomi Chuah, RCST & TRE Practitioner

In our clinic, we are in the business of taking care of bodies. We take care of our own bodies, and spend a lot of time thinking about and putting into action supporting other bodies. We help bodies remember their own capacities to heal, move, and work the best they can in their given situation and place in time.

Right now I would like you to stop and take a minute. Turn your attention inside your own body. How does it feel? There are no right or wrong answers. There are though, definitely comfortable and uncomfortable answers.

Bodies are good, plain and simple. We spend our whole life in these fleshy, physical bodies. Bodies that are a biomechanical/psychosocial wonder of motion, emotion, and connection. We are ever breaking down and renewing and evolving. We are ever adapting to our physical/psycho emotional situations that we are in. Our bodies let us know when we are not happy, and they also bring us pleasure and contentment when we are happy, healthy, challenged, supported, and connected.

Not all of us have grown up with this message. For reasons as various as you can think of, many of us have been taught to distrust our body, and/or think of it as “bad” or somehow at fault for our own ills and for the ills of society. Or we may have had painful life experiences leading to physical discomfort and pain, leading us to view our body as something to be mistrusted.

This body is where it all lands. The comfortable, the uncomfortable, and the challenges. No matter if it’s physical or psychological (perhaps not separate?), the effects always end up in the body. Feel how your body retracts when frightened, strains forward in interest, gets weighed under an intense work load, and then melts into the embrace of a loved one. Do you feel the shapes and different tensions your body moves into and through?

At the end of the day, I feel for a lot of us, our body is the last frontier of facing our fears. After all the blame, the caring for others, the striving, the serving, the fighting. When we finally stop and quiet our minds: “Am I really ok with myself, how I feel in my own skin?”

Sometimes, I liken this fear to feeling a dragon behind us, always scaring us. We fight it, we avoid it, we try to subdue it. Then maybe we lock it up. That makes us feel a little safer, but still on edge. What if that dragon turns out to be the fear in our own nervous system? What if that dragon is part of me? What if that dragon (your nervous system) was looking out for you this whole time, and desperately trying to protect you? And you learn, that just maybe, you can go into that room slowly, and start to befriend it. Learn to feel. Learn to listen to the queues: when to slow down, listen, or maybe move faster, or get help. And learn to feel the contentment of a relaxed body that knows it is safe and capable. Your body will carry you through so much. And feel not only pain, but joy and pleasure as well.

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Radical Acceptance: Embodiment

When I hear the term “radical acceptance”, what comes to mind is social justice and the acceptance we extend to others around us, even if those people are different from us with a different lived experience. Lately I’ve been mulling these words over, trying out how they feel when it comes to our bodies and how we feel in them. I think when we are able to accept ourselves in a radical way, this leads to embodiment. This hugely informs my clinical practice. When asked about what I do, I’ve started saying “I help people be in their bodies”. 

While feeling sensations in our body is indeed our own lived experience, our sensations do not always live up to how we want to feel, how we think we “ought” to feel, or how others think we should feel. Before I go on, a little disclaimer: this article is not saying that we shouldn’t have goals for how we want to feel, or that helping ourselves or others to feel better is wrong. In fact the alleviation of suffering, whether physical and/or emotional, is a lofty pursuit. Instead I am offering that feeling in the present moment can be done without self-condemnation and judgement, that there are moments when we can simply “feel”. This would not only be radical acceptance of ourselves, but a definition of embodiment. 

This practice of feeling without judgement has been a journey for me, and continues to be so. It often involves slowing down, taking a deep breath, and consciously paying attention to my inner sensations. When I try to manipulate my sensations into someone else’s ideas of what I should be feeling, in other words judging myself, my fascia will often tighten up more, creating more physical restrictions within my body. Try simply noticing what sensations are happening in your body in a given moment, or notice the moment when you start to judge the sensation. And try not to judge the judgement! Or simply, accept the sensation and the fact that you are judging yourself. And then see what happens. 

If you are feeling a particularly tough sensation, close your eyes and gently ask your body, “what is this about?” And gently let go the quick answer your brain might send you, instead awaiting the answer that may arise from your body tissues. The answer might come in the shape of the intention of gesture, an intended body posture, or perhaps thoughts or memories that arise from the sensations of your body. Another question you can ask your body, after doing the above (or after doing the above several times), is, “what do I need?” And remember if the answers are not forthcoming, continue to be patient with yourself, as the answers may come another time. And remember to not necessarily trust the quickness of answers in the form of stories coming from your brain, but see what arises in sensations from the body. It’s more about deepening into an aligned relationship with yourself, than getting a quick fix answer.  

To cultivate this culture of radical acceptance in ourselves and others, I believe we need to build a tolerance to sensation, even when that sensation is discomfort. First, let’s qualify the difference between overwhelming sensation and a medium sense of discomfort. We all need help when overwhelmed, whether that be in the form of support from family and friends, physical and/or emotional therapy, and/or biochemically. I think the confusion happens when we equate discomfort with overwhelm, and it brings new understanding and depth when we are able to differentiate the two. As we build tolerance to discomfort, not only can we start to be present long enough to bring new insight into understanding ourselves and others, but I believe it is also an opportunity to gain physical and emotional resilience. It stretches the capacity and flexibility of our nervous systems and enables us to stay out of overwhelm and in the window of tolerance a little more easily. 

Some of the most profound moments of sensation happen when we fall into that place of just feeling, letting go of all the stories and reasons we have accumulated over our lifetimes. It’s a vulnerable place, and can take practice to stay in that feeling for any length of time. Suddenly reasons don’t matter, we stop fighting, and there is surrender, as we fall into the connection of everything. It feels a lot like love. When this happens in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, generally you’ll experience an opening of physical restriction in your body, often changing how you relate with the outside world.

Photo Credit: Jan Kopriva, Unsplash

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Stress

I’ve been ruminating for a while on what to write about, and the subject of stress keeps presenting itself. I like to be positive, but I’ve learned the value of naming a topic directly for what it is. As we come out of the past few months of heightened virus awareness, it seems very few have remained untouched in some way. There are those affected directly by the virus with all the ramifications. Of us remaining there has been uncertainty in a variety of ways: whether around the virus, around work, school, finances, and when and how to connect with those we love. How does this affect our bodies? For a lot of us, stress!

I have spent a good deal of time devoted to the study of trauma, but for the purpose of this article I will mostly use the term stress, as stress does sound slightly more positive and not everyone would describe their stress situation as trauma. Even so, a build up of stress in the body can produce a similar physical symptomology as trauma.

How does our body process stress? First off, stress is a normal part of life. We are wired for it. And to be alive is to experience stress, anxiety, joy, excitement, anger, contentment, love, peace, and all the other emotions that are present in a well lived life.

On a normal day we run on aprox 70% fight/flight nervous system. You may ask, “Isn’t that a scary part of our nervous system, a part that we want to stay out of?” Well, it’s also the part of our nervous system that gets us out of bed in the morning, lets us do our work, get excited, and care for those we love. This system has also recently been coined “attend and befriend“. Originally the research was done on white males only, but as more research comes to light, we are understanding of the variety of ways of how we express this system. So when stress revs up, oftentimes there is a drive to connect and soothe others to find safety(attend/befriend), or a reaction deep in the brain that jacks up our diaphragm, starts our heart racing, and pumps blood to our limbs that enables us to fight or flee. Most of our modern life doesn’t call for fighting or fleeing, so this urge can turn into a driving anxiety- a physical drive that can be verbally aggressive and/or an anxiety that drives us to “do” something about our stress. Even when we know we have done all we can do, the brain may go a hundred miles an hour and the body can have trouble slowing down.

Another part of our nervous system is called “freeze”; the part that kicks in when the caring, fighting or flight has not been able to resolve our perceived danger. Our fascia contracts, our body become less fluid, and it becomes harder to act; a kind of numbing or dissociation that happens when the body tones down sensation to “wait out” the perceived danger. Again, the freeze part of our nervous system has great diversity and also exhibits more pleasurable sensations called “freeze without fear”. This happens when we enjoy a good meal in good company, and also with procreation and when nursing a baby.

What I’ve often noticed in life and when doing cranio is that generally the lines are blurred. Each person has their own way of reacting when stressed. One person may go straight from normal to freeze when stressed, and another person may live much of their life in a semi ramped up fight/flight state. Or another may be living with the brakes and gas on at the same time, fascia clamped down around bones in freeze while nerves are shooting flight messages like grinding sparks.

I think it is important to honor our bodies and how we have survived. Even when it’s not what we currently want to feel, these nervous system states have got us this far, and they are legitimate ways of being.

Understanding stress, trauma, and how our nervous systems are fundamentally wired to attune to safety by checking in with others, whether by touch or by being profoundly seen and heard by another, is foundational to how Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy works. Our fascia literally responds to our environment, and will soften when it feels safe, allowing more blood flow and informing our central nervous system with softer messages.

A very primal way of understanding stress and the effects that attuned and caring touch have on a very physical level, is to ponder what happens to a baby’s body during birth.

Babies when born only survive when touched by a caregiver, and only get nourishment through the attunement of another. First let’s remember that it’s a healthy baby that gets to scream their discomfort and distress upon their entrance to this world. Then, as baby wriggles up the front of their parent and suckles the breast, bones in the baby’s head that were so recently squashed, overlapped and retracted in fascia from the monstrous effort that is birth, suddenly soften, expanding outwards as embrace between parent and child set off cascades of oxytocin and endorphins. At the same time the suckling of milk exerts a gentle internal pressure, also expanding the bones outward. We perceive ourselves through the touch of another.

What are all the ways to acknowledge and soothe stress? Probably there are as many ways as there are people. Learning how to tolerate and even befriend internal sensation is important. Connection to nature is huge and can bring healing to both us and land. We learn to come to terms with our stories by telling our stories and by hearing the stories of other’s. Craniosacral therapy, massage, reiki, and counselling, are all high on my list of favorites. Dancing, yoga, and walking, are all ways for us to feel our bodies and to help us build a healthy sense of embodiment.

Finishing a hot shower with a cold blast, we wake up, reminded that we can tolerate the comfortable and the surprising in a renewed surge, gulping lungfulls of air and stepping forward into life.

Written By Naomi Chuah, RCST, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist

Some recommended reads:

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indiginous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Ways to connect to and learn from Nature)

The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD (Understanding Trauma)

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Connection

The quiet ache propels me out of doors. I round a corner, and once again my eyes rest on bark, roots, fungus, and moss. Tiny fairy kingdoms, worlds within worlds, the miniature touching my eyes. I know, once again, that I am okay.

Legs moving, feet padding, led onward, deep into the pale green and whites and browns of cottonwood forest and paths, springy sappy scents opening my nose and lungs.

An inner knowing propels me off the trail, and I am sitting by the water listening to my inner rhythms. Reminded once again to trust my body. Coming to peace sitting on mud, gazing into a high tide river knowing to its muddy depths.

As humans, we keep asking the question, “What makes us feel ok?”. We wade through hundreds of pages in search of heady knowledge. And then, falling back to sensation, we once again become acquainted with ourselves. A pleasant gurgle moves through the tummy, a brush on the arm from a friend, the whispered caress of wind on the cheek. We even start letting in unpleasant sensations, letting ourselves feel, knowing that we are, or might be one day, okay.

Some would say spirituality makes us feel okay. Brene Brown talks about spirituality like this: “Our expressions of spirituality are as diverse as we are. When our intentions and actions are guided by spirituality – our belief in our interconnectedness and love – our everyday experiences can be spiritual practices”. Might I venture further to say that one doesn’t have to call it spirituality to feel connected; to family, community, animals and plants.

Falling into awe of the starry universe or the miniature of a tree bark’s mossy ecosystem, both somehow reassure our senses that yes, we are real, and there is more going on than just our internal sensations.

Conversely, at times when I cannot connect, and surrender to being myself, suddenly the extra stories fall away, bittersweet, and I just am, as the world comes rushing in to meet me.

Written by: Naomi Chuah, BCST

Photo Credit: Jay