"listening touch"

What is Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy?

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Summarised simply

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The longer I am in practice, I have really seen that the body loves to be in a 'rest and restore, repair phase' (parasympathetic nervous system). It feels as though, it is here that the inherent knowledge of your body can be heard and felt, and then can switch into an easier, safer space to repair, adjust, release, uwnind and begin to heal in a way that it inherently knows how to. I believe that’s what BCST is.

 

With an experienced practitioner, they will create the right environment for the patient, so that the inherent intelligence of their body will present itself.  It is a joint experience but initially the practitioner can educate and guide the patient to tap into their body’s knowledge and bring about change, enforce, support the health that is already there.

 

We live in such busy, stressful times and most of us have experienced physical or emotional trauma and our bodies can often stay in a sympathetic state of 'fright and flight'. I feel that we don’t give our bodies a chance to return to their natural state enough. Of course the sympathetic does adjust on its own most times, especially when there is a serious threat but we don’t support it enough or have the awareness that we are mostly still stuck in a wired state or pattern. 

 

We haven’t been taught to really listen to what our bodies need and it has the ability to tell us, if we allow it space to do so. I also feel we haven’t been educated that our bodies do have an intelligence system, that it is constantly trying to keep us in health and that it has the capacity to do so.

 

I feel that in BCST, the power has been given back to the patient, they can acknowledge their own bodies, feel the power of their health and learn to listen to what it can do and what they can do to help it.

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With all my training and experience, I feel that my skills of a listening, feeling, hearing and observing touch provides a safe space for people to connect to their bodies and entrust me to work on their health goals, whether it be trauma, physical or emotional held in their bodies presenting itself as holding patterns of tension and pain, headaches, migraines, depression, anxiety, insomnia or the like.

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What BCST can treat?

• Feelings of disconnect to the world or to yourself

• Emotional/Physical trauma

• Exhaustion

• Help feel calmer in your body

• Regulate your nervous system

• Jaw & TMJ dysfunction and pain

• Teeth grinding

• Anxiety

• Insomnia

• Headaches/Migraines

• Dizziness

• Tightness & pain

• Sinusitis

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History

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Craniosacral was initial discovered by Dr William Sutherland a student of the founder of Osteopathy, over 100 years ago. After he discovered on examining the articulations of our cranial bones (bones that make our skull), he found the sutures that hold our cranial bones together are in fact designed to express small degrees of motion. 

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Sutherland conducted years of research and was able to demonstrate the existence of motion and concluded that this motion is produced by our bodies inherent life force, which he called the ‘Breath of Life’, also known as ‘Qi’, ‘Life force’, ‘Universal energy’ and more.

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Dr Sutherland was considered a pioneer of Osteopathy Craniosacral. As the science and skills of this style of Osteopathy evolved especially by one of his students John Upledger in the mid 1980’s, it was taught to non-osteopaths and termed Craniosacral therapy. The work became more evolved and developed into a fuller model, working with trauma processes, an orientation to a deeper expression of health, a more holistic nature of the human body now known as Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, which is what I am trained in.

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My training was aimed at helping me to become highly skilled at developing a listening touch (feeling with sensitive hands) to the body’s inherent health mechanisms. We were also trained to observe and feel not only with our hands but with all our senses, a perceptual awareness. We develop these skills, along with providing a safe space so that in a session the natural forces of your own bodies health can brings about natural adjustments from within your own resources and set by your bodies priorities. Sound confusing? Watch the video below.