The treasure map of you: resolving pain at the source
(I don’t usually do treatments outside in an orchard, this was just a fun day at home… though I reckon trees can support the healing process!)
Pain is one of the great tricksters. It’s one of the main reasons that people book a session with me.
The trickster part is that while pain is generally a messenger letting us know that something in us craves change… the needed change isn’t always what we might think!
What do I mean? This is a huge topic with many angles. On this little blog I’m going to focus on explaining some body structure dynamics and how we work with this stuff in biodynamic craniosacral therapy. I am consistently amazed and fascinated by how we heal and I hope this may give you some more understanding.
So let’s say you have a pain in your body. Your Body Part X hurts. So you come in because you are so, so sure that there is something wrong with Body Part X.
But so often, the shift that’s needed is not in the place where you feel the pain. Sometimes the painful place isn’t even the main location needing treatment.
I like to think of each session as a treasure map. You come in with a mystery problem… and together we enter a journey to let your body tell the story, layer by layer, tracing the issue back to its source, your cellular intelligence instructing us one layer at a time.
Everything in the body is connected. We are each an incredible web of muscles, ligaments, webs of other connective tissues, all woven together in a counterbalanced whole.
Think of a wilderness camping tent with all its different poles and cords. When you set it up right, there’s no excess tension anywhere in the fabric. But if one cord is too slack or too tight, it will affect the rest of the structure.
The body is like that too. In a state of health, all of our tissues are counterbalanced so that no single place holds too much strain. When there’s extra compression or restriction in one place in the body, other places in the web will compensate.
How it works in the body
What does that mean in practice, and how can biodynamic craniosacral therapy help? Here are a few of the common patterns that I often treat in my practice.
• The web of fascia. We are each a shimmering network of fascia. Fascia are flexible but strong connective collagen fibers that surround every structure in our bodies – our bones, our organs, our muscles, our nerves. It’s the web that weaves us together.
Let’s say you come in complaining of pain in your left shoulder. But I tune into the patterns of constriction in your body and I’m guided to treat your right hip first… and then the left shoulder releases easily. Why? When there’s tension around one of your hips, it may pull on at least one of your shoulders. This is because we have trains of fascia running vertically and criss-crossing the torso diagonally, so our shoulders and hips are woven into a close relationship.
One of the strengths of biodynamic craniosacral therapy, in these situations, is that we can work work with the web of fascia in a holistic way. A skilled biodynamic craniosacral therapist can feel restrictions anywhere in the bodily web. And while our hands focus on one place in the body, we can simultaneously support the whole body web to loosen up, rather than focusing on just one point.
This holistic effect comes from our listening and responding to your nervous system and your craniosacral rhythms (the ‘tides’), a rhythm of subtle fluid pulsation throughout the body. As your inner rhythms rediscover their health, a sense of glide and ease can return to the fascia throughout the body. This is why you may find yourself feeling overall taller, lighter, looser, more fluid or more present in your body in the days after a biodynamic treatment.
• Head / pelvis relationships. This one is common in craniosacral therapy. “Hey, why are you holding my tailbone when I came in for a headache or jaw pain?!” (Admittedly my clients tend to be very trusting; no one has ever asked me this! But here’s why…)
First: there is a dynamic membrane system which surrounds your brain and spinal cord.
Second: The bones in your head and pelvis all ‘breathe’ in rhythmic microscopic movements as a complete, connected craniosacral system. If the bones are stuck in a compressed position at one end of this system, it affects the whole.
When we create more ease of motion for the membranes, bones and fluids in the bottom of your spine, that supports freedom in your head and around your brain... and the whole body can respond as well. Ahhhh.
There are also pains that aren’t primarily caused by body structure at all! With longer-term pain there is often an issue with biochemical signalling in the brain/nervous system. This is a special focus of mine and deserves its own post, or book! Short story: Biodynamic craniosacral therapy can bring relief in these cases, as we can calm down the alarm signals in your nervous system. In these cases I also usually offer clients some mind/body practices to help the client retrain their alarm system over the longer term.
Why manipulative therapies sometimes don’t solve the problem
There are, of course, plenty of other wonderful body therapies out there. Sometimes folks will come in to see me after having had some sort of manipulative therapy to deal with muscle tension or posture. It makes sense — something feels tight or off in your body so you want someone to push it back into place. There are many excellent practitioners who help in such ways. However – if you are getting strong adjustments done in targeted body areas and the rest of your body isn’t coming for the ride… you may be left with tension still held elsewhere. For example, your neck vertebrae are back ‘in line’ — but your shoulders are still tense and trying to pull the neck back ‘out of line’ into the old tension pattern.
I find that biodynamic craniosacral therapy can be a really good complement after someone has had manipulative therapies. We can help the rest of your body system catch up to any changes that have happened, which can give you a better chance of adaptation and ease. If it’s rough for you to recover from other treatments or the adjustments aren’t giving lasting results – these are good indications that a biodynamic approach could be what’s missing from your treatment program.
Another reason that I love biodynamic craniosacral therapy is that we deal with the whole person. There’s a whole biochemistry of emotion and stress associated with many physically painful conditions. Working through the autonomic nervous system, biodynamic craniosacral therapy can soften the emotional or stress-related aspects of the issue at the same time that we attend to your physical structure. I think of it as psychotherapy for the body – and in many cases few words are needed for it to work. But that’s a whole other blog or several… watch this space ;)
