September 14 – 2007

Questions and comments for this issue:

+ Follow on comment from last issue from Etienne in Belgium.
+ Link between breast-feeding and CST.
+ Working with the blueprint.
+ CST clinical trials.

Hello,

I was passing a news stand the other day and the
headline ‘Crocs can kill,’ shrieked out at me from
the front page of Britain’s ‘The Sun’ newspaper.
Having lived in Australia for ten years I thought
it had taken a rather a long time for that bit of
obviousness to reach GB and certainly didn’t
warrant a headline.

But it turns out they weren’t talking about
those ridged chompers so beloved of the late Steve
Irwin.
They were talking about the brightly coloured,
perforated clogs adored for their comfort by
doctors and nurses, charged by the fashion police
with crimes against style, and flaunted by
Presidents and pop stars alike eager to capitalise
on their quirky cachet.

The paper reported the banning of the shoes by
some Sheffield hospitals, apparently because of
claims that static electricity generated by Croc-
shod medical staff could knock out vital
equipment.

So that’s what those static electric shocks are
all about.  I just thought everyone was releasing
a lot last week.

Note to self: Don’t wear crocs when
treating again.

Anyhu, I can’t stand around here lollygagging
with you about the pitfalls of being fashionable.
We’ve got a mailbag to get on with so let’s have at it.

***FOLLOW ON COMMENT FROM LAST ISSUE FROM ETIENNE IN BELGIUM***

Hi John,
I stated about the tennis sock  … if their
system can take it … even if you are not crazy
about it, its their system that has the answer !

If you can bring the elderly past their
compensations you will find they are all too happy
to go into babyhood, how do you do that … only
if you drop the idea that they will go
automaticlly into compensation (which they will do
as a defense mechanism, because they do not know
what else to do) , but it is your job not to step
into that pile but via your own system show their
system (in complete silence) how to go beyond the
mind, thats all, of course you have to drop all
prejudice for that, do not forget, knowingly or
unknowingly they are preparing for death … and a
guide out of their cr.p is welcome

There is a very good therapist in St Martin de
Lon… something (South west France) Margo Berr

Have fun,
Etienne

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Etienne,
Thank you for your swift and passionate
response.

I am not wild about the tennis sock thing for
two reasons.

Firstly I think it negates all the years we
spend developing our palpatory skill and learning
about timing and sensitive responding to a persons
system.

I agree that the person’s system has the answer
but there needs to be someone there to hear and
respond to the answer, not an inanimate object.
The person’s system will change in the time
between treatments.  If their system can’t handle
it the tennis sock will give them a headache or an
uncomfortable feeling of pressure.

Secondly.  The people that I treat are by and
large uninterested in natural medicine or
alternative approaches.  I think most of them
would be more than happy if the Doctor was able to
help them.  They only come to see someone like me
because they are desperate.

I am very aware of this and aim to make it as
easy for them as possible because I know that the
really confronting thing will be their having to
take responsibility for their own health.

So I try and minimise the other stuff.  I am
conscious of the environment they will be
returning to and the sort of resistance they may
have to put up with from family and friends.

From a sceptics perspective the tennis sock
thing looks and sounds kooky.  For its benefits,
which I think are minimal at best, compared to the
undermining effects it could have on the person’s
whole process, I don’t think it’s worth it.

As for the elderly, you are right of course.
Having any kind of preconception about how a
treatment is going to go is never good.  Whether
it is that the elderly are like babies and they are
so happy to ride the wave or that they are like
babies that are locked behind 500 layers of
compensation.  We must always treat what we find.

***QUESTION***

Dear John,

I’m contacting you after being very encouraged by
your informative website – particularly the area
on “the top ten causes of trauma”

I have had a very positive experience myself with
Cranio-sacral – jaw work – which helped me to
breastfeed successfully after 18 months of minimal
supply (20ml max)

My problem related to a fractured cheekbone -
where the displaced bone impacted the brain – not
enough to cause brain damage or to stop the
pituitary function, but enough to take away any
room for the gland to swell slightly with greater
need (such as breastfeeding).  The treatment I had
(with the intention of bringing relief to neck and
shoulder pain – not breastfeeding – I’d given up
on that by then) – included jaw work – and worked
to balance a very unstable xyoid process – and
when that balanced – my breast milk flowed like
I’d dreamed for so long (my baby was allergic to
most formulas – hence the repeated pneumonia from
a supposed hypo-allergenic formula).

I have since quizzed Moms who struggled to
breastfeed in my practice – most of them had some
kind of serious trauma to the head or spine in
their lifetime.

Considering the vital importance of breastfeeding,
it might be so beneficial to have some kind of
research project done on this one day…. do you
have any idea who could do it /how this might be
done?  Should I contact Upledger directly?

Kind regards,
C
South Africa.

MY COMMENTS:

Hello C,
Thank you for your feedback about my website.
I’m glad you found it helpful.

In my practice I don’t think I have ever had a
mother come for treatment specifically for help
with breast milk production.

Improvements in breast milk supply have usually
come in the way you have described it, a happy
secondary bonus but not as the main focus of
treatment.

I never really thought of it as a specific
problem that could benefit from cranio sacral
treatment until I received your email.  But once
you say it, it’s obvious.  I will add it to the
list of conditions that can be helped with cranio
sacral therapy on my websites.

I agree with you that it is an important area
and I am sure the Upledger Institute would be
interested in your idea

http://www.upledger.com/

as would the Craniosacral Association of South
Africa http://www.cranial.za.org/
and possibly Le Leche League http://www.llli.org/

I will include your letter in my cranio sacral
therapist and student newsletter and pass on any
enquiries or feedback I receive.

***QUESTION***

Hi John

Thanks so much for your continuing newsletter and
the great tips and humour.
I have a double question.

It’s often a lonely place at the coalface and I
seem to have people come to me with “last resort”
problems that require much from me – I am doing a
lot of anatomy and physiology research these days.

First question. Do you think it’s possible for a
young man whose body doesn’t make testosterone to
get that working again?
He is 23 and came to me essentially for massive
headaches and his lack of testosterone problem. It
was diagnosed at age 15 when he had major back
pain.

Bone testing revealed his bone age was that of an
8 year old. He has to inject himself 3 x weekly
for the testosterone cycle to happen. This
injecting ritual is also affecting his mental
health – facing this for the rest of his life is
depressing.

So, he has major lesion patterns in his head, esp
membranes, akin to birth trauma (although his
mother reports a “perfect” birth), and his pelvic
girdle/sacrum.

Unwinding those complex restriction patterns is
top of the list, with my intention also on all
sites for the production cycle to work normally
(including cerebral cortex, hypothalamus and
pituitary and testes). I can’t see any reason it
won’t, but there seems to be an issue with the
‘kick starting’ of the process.

If he is injecting and producing LSH, then his
body may not have the opportunity to take over.
He has had all the tests and specialists do not
have any idea why this is happening in his body.
They can only offer injections for his lifetime.
Can you give me any clues here?

Second question. I have a lot of people with
conditions related to experiencing terror in-
utero. So, the main problem seems to lie in the
central nervous system, and glitches in its
development.

These all have the quality of having to return to
the blueprint as the major goal. This requires a
lot, from both practitioner and client. (This is
also the situation for the young man already
mentioned)

Can you give some insight into the process of
returning to the blueprint?

Luckily, I have had success already in this area,
but the symptoms and conditions I’m treating
lately, (as well as the overall goal of returning
to the blueprint), are extreme and debilitating
for the clients.
Patience seems to be the major virtue. Have you
any other insights?

Thanks so much for your continued support.
Cheers,
J
Australia

MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for the feedback J, I’m glad you are
finding the newsletters useful.

‘Do you think it’s possible for a young man
whose body doesn’t make testosterone to get that
working again?’

Yes.  When it comes to people and their bodies
I think anything is possible.

Both of your questions revolve around the
blueprint and how to work with it so I will answer
them together.

It sounds like your palpatory skills are at the
point where you are beginning to feel the
blueprint, which is great.   The downside is that
it sounds like you are finding it a bit daunting.

But daunt not because it doesn’t need to be.
The ironic thing is that you have been working
with the blueprint from the very beginning of your
cranio sacral training.  The difference is that
now you have reached a level of refinement where
you can differentiate the blueprint from the rest
of what you are a feeling.

As you know the blueprint is the energetic
framework that underpins our bodies.  The cells of
our bodies being a bit like iron filings on a
piece of paper.  When a magnet is brought to the
underside of the paper the filings are drawn to
form the shape of the magnet.

The magnet is like the blueprint.  The
difference is that the blueprint is not a static
rigid thing but moves and grows.  The growing part
being particularly relevant for your testosterone
light patient.

Like many aspects of cranio sacral work, we
feel something and learn to work with it but have
very little scientific evidence or terminology to
describe it.  10 years ago science was enraptured
with the mysteries of genetics, with few voices
who was saying anything different, one of which
was Rupert Sheldrake and he was labeled a kook.

Then the genome was finally mapped and when the
party was over there was a dawning that it didn’t
have all the answers.  That everything wasn’t
determined by our genes.   This is reflected in
the work of the likes of Bruce Lipton in what is
being called the New Biology.

The idea of an energetic field or blueprint
underpinning our body has been around for yonks
and shows up in different cultures in different
ways, meridians, charkas, assemblage point and so
on.

As I said, the blueprint unfolds during
embryonic development.  The timing of this
unfoldment directs the pace and progress of our
embryonic development and once started moves
forward with its own pace and rhythm.

It’s like a piece of music that begins at the
moment of conception and continues for the rest of
our lives.  Within the overall piece of music
there are movements, passages that have the
general themes of the overall music but have their
individual beginnings, middles and ends.

If something happens to interrupt the music or
a particular beat is missed, it is very hard for
the body to fill in the blanks.
No magnet – so the iron filings don’t know where
to go.

For example the maxillae meet each other and
form the hard palate at about the seventh week of
embryonic development.  If this doesn’t happen
then person will end up with a cleft palate.

It sounds like all went well with your patient
during the embryonic phase of his development.  He
decided he was going to be male and the initial
flood of testosterone ensured this.

The beat that was missed was in his puberty.
The second wave of testosterone never happened. So
he never matured into a man.  It is this point
that I would look at in his blueprint.

So how to work with it?
I have found that knowing about the blueprint
is the beginning of being able to work with it.
It’s the same as when knowing what flexion and
extension were, before tried to feel for them, was a
help in being able to feel them.

A useful initial access to feeling the
blueprint is to use the cranio sacral rhythm.
Think of it in terms of William Sutherland’s
description of it as being the ‘breath of life’.

Think of flexion as the in-breath and extension
as the out-breath of this breath of life.  He also
described the movement of this breath of life as
adding potency to the cells of the body.

I find this kind of imagery helpful in getting
in touch with the blueprint.  It always reminds me
of a beach, in particular that part of the beach
where the sand meets the water.  Where, if you
write your name in the sand the water will come in
and wipe it away and smooth the sand out.

With my hands in contact with the person’s
system and my eyes closed, tuning into the cranio
sacral rhythm and feeling it in terms of an in-
breath that vitalises and recreates an energetic
blueprint, each in-breath washes across the cells
of the body and they become luminous. Any
anomalies in the blueprint itself begin to reveal
themselves.

The daunting thing about working with the
blueprint is that is energetic.  You don’t feel it
in the same way as you feel flexion and extension,
for example, which is a physical movement.  It is
felt in the same way you can feel something
between your palms when you hold them close
together. It’s the same sort of something.

The good news is that once it is felt the
blueprint behaves and responds in the same way the
body does.  So if you get a sense that there was a
disturbance in the unfoldment of the puberty
movement of his blueprint ‘music’ then it is the
same as it would feel if there was a trauma that
had occurred to him during his puberty.

But instead of looking to get a sense of a
trauma you are looking to get a sense of what
interrupted the unfoldment of his blueprint,
which, ironically could have been a trauma.

Once you get a sense of where the gap is then
you can use your intention to fill it.  But not in
a directed forceful, ‘I know what needs to be done
here.’ sort of way.   More with a sense of
providing a bridge with your intention across the
gap.

It is a little like direct technique in as much
as you are encouraging his system to fill in the
gap but you don’t make it happen.

As kooky as the blueprint may sound it is still
a mechanical kind of thing to work with.  Just
because it is energy doesn’t automatically imbue
it with mystical dimensions.

If he doesn’t improve through working with the
blueprint you would have to look deeper.

What is deeper than the underpinning energetic
blue print that holds the cells of our bodies in
place?

Well as I said the blueprint is in essence a
mechanical structure.  It is used by the part of
us that knows the bigger picture of ourselves.
What our life is about.  Why we are a man or a
woman, why we chose the parents we did, the
country we were born in and so on.

That is a different part of the questions you
would be asking yourself about the bigger picture
of what his symptoms might mean in the context of
the deeper issues he may be working out in his
life.

Is he resisting letting go of being a boy and
becoming a man?  Or is he resisting growing up?
The movie, ‘The Tin Drum’ comes to mind.  Were the
headaches just a way to get him to come and see
you or are they part of the mechanical aspect of
how this disharmony is expressing itself.

***QUESTION***

Hi John
Thank you very much for your newsletters and all
the wonderful info.
It was really exciting to read about Harvard
Medical School’s dept of psychiatry including CST
in their continuing education programme.
Hopefully this leads the way for other schools to
do the same. Do you know of any others?

My question today is how do you answer:
patients
medical practitioners
the public
who ask you for scientific evidence to support the
effectiveness of CST?

Yours sincerely,

John Rosen.
South Africa

MY COMMENTS:

Hello John,
Thank you for the feedback it means a lot to
me.  I don’t know of any other medical schools
including cranio sacral in their curriculum as yet
but I will let you know if I hear of any.

Scientific evidence to support the
effectiveness of cranio sacral therapy is pretty
thin on the ground.  There is a lot of what is
called anecdotal evidence, which is basically
people saying it is good or helpful or wonderful,
but not a lot of hard scientific evidence.

One of the reasons for this is the difficulty
of applying the normal scientific testing
procedures to cranio sacral treatment.  They say
it is hard to do the usual double blind
experiment.
In a drug trial the test group is divided in
half.  One half is given the test drug and the
other half, called the control group, is given a
sugar pill.  The people undergoing the test don’t
know which group they are in.

The amount of improvement is measured in the
two groups and if the drug is effective there will
be a substantial improvement in the group that
received the test drug.

The difficulty with applying this model of
testing to cranio sacral treatment is with the
control group.  Their contention being that once
you know how to do cranio you can’t not do it and
so provide a viable neutral group.

This has never made sense to me because I’m
sure you could show non-cranio sacral therapists
how to place their hands at different places on a
person’s body to affect the appearance of giving a
cranio sacral session.

My knowledge of this area is quite limited so
there is probably more to it than that.

I’ve never had a lot of faith in medical trials
to begin with but particularly so after what
happened with the medical trial carried out on the
Buteko method of breathing.

Buteko is a method of breathing that was
developed in Russia.  It is very effective with
Asthma.  There was a large, well organised
clinical trial held at the Mater Hospital in
Brisbane in 1995.  The trial showed that the
Buteko method demonstrated a 90% improvement rate.
This is an excellent result for a clinical trial.
Most drugs are doing well if they get a 50%
improvement.

For some reason the results of the trial got
delayed.  When they were finally released it was
10 years after the trial had been carried out.
The results were deemed invalid because the
testing methods were obsolete.

Do Doctors and Scientists think cranio sacral
therapy is valid?  By and large, the official
answer is no and I think we are partly to blame
for that ourselves.  The combination of in-
fighting between schools and approaches, the
dilution of the therapy to the level of adjunct to
massage in parts of the world and a unilateral
lack of good assessment of students.

All of which have led to some pretty shocking
people calling themselves cranio sacral
therapists.  As you might have noticed John I am a
passionate advocate of cranio sacral therapy yet
even I am very cautious about referring people to
cranio sacral therapists I don’t know.

So not very helpful I’m afraid John but let me
ask the gang.

- O -

Do you know of any trials or Scientific evidence
to support the effectiveness of cranio sacral therapy?

That’s it for this issue. Cheerio for now.

Till the next time.

Your Mate,

John D.

November 22 – 2007

Questions and comments for this issue:

+ Cranio sacral therapy on FaceBook.
+ Working with energy.
+ Reframing.
+ Cerebral palsy and the blueprint
+ More on the arachnoid mater from Al Pelowski in South Africa.

Hello John,
If you were one of the many therapists that
sent me your profiles to have them listed, then
have a look here to see I got everything right.
Right picture, right spelling, right on man! (or
Woman!)

http://www.open-source-cranio.com/therapists/listing.html

Speaking of right on women, Rene from New
Zealand let me know about a cranio sacral therapy
group on Face book.  I’ve had a look and think it
is a spiffing idea.  It’s great to be able to put
faces to names and connect with fellow therapists
across the world.

Yes, it is a bit of a pain signing up and
creating a profile but worth it, no?

http://www.facebook.com/

Now. . .
. . . this newsletter is slightly different to
others in that half the content is on my website.
The reason for this is the inclusion of video and
images.

The first article is about how I use energy
when I am working and includes a detailed diagram
of energy flow.  There is also an amazing video
illustrating how you can work with high levels of
energy and not have it affect you.  Be a good egg
and let me know what you think.
You can read it here.

The second article is about how to use
reframing to help you when you hit a wall in
practice or study.  In fact you can use reframing
in all aspects of your life.  The article starts
off with a great little video which illustrates
the power of a reframe.
You can read it here.

I’ll wait while you go and have a look at them.

Finished?

Okay then, let’s get on with the mailbag.

***QUESTION***

Hi John

I would like to know a bit more about working with
Cerebral Palsy. What is the best approach?  Is
there any chance for the person to recover some of
their functions or is it too much to ask to the
body? I suppose it requires to go back to the blue
print. Your comments about the blue print in the
last newsletter were very interesting. My only
problem is that I am a kinaesthetic kind of person
and images don’t talk to me very much. Could you
tell me how the blue print feels so I know that
what I feel under my hands is the blueprint or
something else. This would be very useful for me.
Thank you.
Odile, Brisbane.

Odile Grisel

http://www.odilegrisel.com.au

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Odile,
Thank you for your email.

I have had some good success with cerebral
palsy and I’ve had some no-change-at-all’s.  When
I think about what was common among the successes
the main thing was that the people were young.
Under 3yrs old.

When treating cerebral palsy I generally find
myself working with the nervous system.  From the
hemisphere of the brain involved out to the
periphery.  Following the nerves, working to
enhance the integrity where it is diminished.

I have heard some therapists say they find lots
of limb unwinding very useful to unlock the
central restrictions.  I haven’t found that myself
but pass it on in case you find it useful.

I never think of treatment in terms of, ‘Is
this too much to ask of the body?’  At this stage
I have seen so many apparent ‘miracles’ that I
know the body is capable of anything.  So it is
never a case of CAN this happen but more a case of
IS it going to happen?

It can often be a blueprint problem, which
leads me to your second question about describing
what the blueprint feels like without using
images.

I had to put my thinking cap on for that one.
Here’s what I got.  To me, the blueprint feels
very whispy and mist-like, but not moist. It feels
like touching a smoke ring that pulses with
flexion and extension and releases like solid
tissue.

Phew!  Okay I’m going to take my thinking cap
off now because my head is hurting.

***FOLLOW ON COMMENT FROM AL PELOWSKI***

Hallo John and thanks for the latest issue!
Gets me going on my deck in early morning Joburg
visualising teacups…

I especially wanted to comment, to give a
different slant on what you said about the spider
web mother.

So here goes.  Let me know what you think of this
version.

Starting with the nervous system’s generative
membrane, the ependyma, all else follows.

Leaving out the details..just remember that most
membranes grow in a doubling process.  They grow
with a potential space between.  The space is
where canals and tissues form.

The primitive ependyma lining the neural tube is
doubled.  The inner layer keeps its name but the
other layer becomes the pia between the two layers.
Ependymal cells differentiate to form the brain &
spinal cord.  The pia also doubles to form a
potential space for blood–pia intima and  pia
externa, it provides a capillary network for the
brain.

Some bits of pia are left in the ventricles bound
up with the ependyma  and together form the
choroid plexi the outer layer of pia, the ‘pia
externa’ is doubled as well its outer layer
becomes the arachnoid between are pulled out fine
reticulin fibres–the spider web the arachnoid
sprouts little cauliflower-like buds as it grows-
granulations.

The ependyma, pia and arachnoid grow out of each
other and are referred  to as the ‘leptomeninges’
in many texts.  They are epethelia–derived from
the zygote wall they are closely related to the
inner linings of organs and to the epidermis all
epithelia share a wide variety of peptides and
receptors.

“As the inside, so the outside.”  Gut / brain /
skin growing more slowly along with the rest of
the body, the dura is not  epithelial, but
connective tissue related to bone and blood.  it
comes to form the fascial sac around the arachnoid
mater.

A whole different animal.   It doesn’t need to bath
itself in CSF.  But it too is a doubled membrane
and its potential space becomes canalised for
venous blood.  The arachnoid graulations become
surrounded by and incorporated into the inner
layer of dura as it grows.

The granulations (like the choroid) contain highly
specialised cells which are involved in transport.
some cells can move waste out of the CSF into the
venous return.  Others will to abstracting
material from the blood into the CSF.

All this gets more interesting when you see how
the 4th ventricle foramina form as the ependymal-
pial separation occurs.  the whole thing is
designed to link qualities of blood and CSF
without haphazard mixing.

The leptomeninges can only survive and function in
the amniotic-CSF environment, inside and out.  The
dura doesn’t mind blood at all and never comes
into touch with CSF.

Keep it up

Al

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for that Al, you describe things real sweet.

So that’s it for this issue.

Cheerio for now.

Till the next time.

Your Mate,

John D.

What follows is a description of my experience of working with energy in Cranio Sacral Therapy. It is intended as an adjunct to any energy work you may already have experience in. My intention is to explore different ways of working with energy that are very effective with Cranio Sacral Treatment.

There are many different ways to look at what is happening during energy work and it is best to find a way that makes sense to you.

If you find the idea of working with energy a little ‘out there’ think of it like this; if you went back in time and tried to describe how television worked to someone back in the middle ages, they would probably say it sounded like magic.

“These images are floating around in the air all the time, yet they can’t be seen. But, with the right receiver you can see pictures of something happening on the other side of the planet.”

Nowadays it is all very normal and explainable. I suggest you approach energy work in the same way. Be as practical about it as possible all the while having gratitude for the gift of whatever energy comes through you.

A key aspect of energy is that Energy Follows Thought.

You can encourage something to release in a very specific way by putting your Intention on it. Your intention is energised by the energy that comes to the assistance of your intent to help.

The cells of our bodies adhere to a continually renewing energetic blueprint we first establish in the womb. What gives this blueprint its potency is the movement of cerebro spinal fluid, in what we call flexion and extension. This energetic blueprint sets the outlines for the structures we are familiar with, heart, lungs, etc. The blueprint also includes the unseen connections between these structures, what in Chinese medicine are called Meridians. Another aspect to the blueprint are the structures that conduct energy flow through our system in the same way water flows through a hose.

ENERGY MODEL FOR HEALING
One of the things we are doing when we treat people is we are working to help this blueprint to repair itself. I have found there is a specific circuit we work with. It starts with perceiving energy leaving our right hand and entering our left hand. Our right hand is the one we use to put energy in with and the left is for taking excess energy out.

PRACTICE
You can feel this if you hold your hands about three inches apart and tune into them. You will first feel energy between your hands.

Follow the flow of energy coming out of your right hand. Up to your elbow and generally coming from the right side of your torso. Feel where the source of the energy is coming from.

Now hold that thought while you feel the next bit.

You can sense energy coming down from the sky or universe and also up from the Earth. The energy from the universe has a light, airy and vast quality. While the energy from the earth is grounded, solid and deep.

You can feel it entering your body on the left hand side and leaving it on the right. The energy from the universe and the earth meet as they enter your body. Energy
enters through the left side of your head from the universe and up through your left foot from the earth.

It converges in your torso, crosses your body to the right side and travels down your right forearm and out of your right hand.

The energy that is picked up by your left hand travels up your left forearm is pulled into the left side of your torso. It crosses your body and diffuses up and down to leave
through the right side of your head out through your right leg & foot.

Confused? Here is a diagram that will help.

The flow between our hands is the focal point for the sort of work we do. Having a sense of this circuit will allow you to tap into as much energy as is required. Knowing that you are availing of energy flowing through you will help you conserve your own energy and not feel so drained from the work.

To get a visual reference for how you can have a lot of energy flow through you without being drained by it, have a look at this video. It is of a man who works on high voltage cables. They are not turned off. He is flown in by helicopter and wears a faraday suit which the high voltage flows through. Apart from it being a fascinating video clip, it’s a great example of how you can work with a lot of energy and it not affect you.

January 27 – 2008

Questions and comments for this issue:

+ Follow on from Jean in Ireland.
+ Blueprint follow on from Gayle in Cape Town.
+ Shingles follow on from Donovan in Durban.
+ Can you treat people with active Cancer?
+ CST and people recovering from Stroke?
+ Shingles follow on from Eva in Australia.
+ Treatment for Focal Dystonia.

Hello,

Another brand spanking New Year fresh from its
wrapping is off and running.  You know in olden
days Kings were very careful about what they did
on the first 12 days of each New Year.  They
believed each day represented its equivalent month
in the year.

So if they wanted January to be peaceful they
would spend the first day of the New Year in
contemplation.  If they wanted August to be joyous
they would have a party on the eight day of the
New Year and so on.   They were careful to not
have anything happen in those first 12 days that
would affect them negatively in the coming year.

Considering it is now the 27th I suppose I am a
little late in telling you all this.  Depending on
how wild and crazy your New Years Eve celebrations
were, January may be finding you with a continually
sore head and a feeling of remorse.

I’ll type softly.

For myself, the coming year will bring the
expansion of my Open Source Cranio project.   This
is about making cranio sacral training information
available to people in developing countries
through my websites.  For me this is a no brainer
as cranio sacral therapy doesn’t require any
technology to practice. Just a pair of hands.  But
then you knew that already.

The idea is that if someone in a remote village
has internet access, which is not as unlikely as
it sounds, they can begin to learn the basics and
start practicing.

Would you like to help? Register
yourself as a mentor or contribute an article or
suggestions or perspective that you think might
help that person.  If you can’t think of anything
else just let me know you want to help.

Anyhu John, on with this, bursting at
the seams, mailbag.

***FOLLOW ON FROM JEAN MCDONALD***

Hi John,
good on you for your description of
cerebral palsy – can’t really add to that!

Thanks for the listing. The practice is general
and of course working with the children is
particularly interesting.

In the Novara Centre some multidisciplinary work
is happening and this is working well. A boy of
four at present is being cared for from an acute
episode when starting big school- my colleague is
a Kinesiology’s suggested we work together.
Progress is apparent – from a craniofacial
viewpoint second trimester showed as problematic
and the child had suffered some bullying at
playschool.

Stillpoints are amazing for this child, he becomes
so insightful of his own place in the
difficulties. He has returned to his birth and re-
entered many times over, a much calmer child!

Little Jodie (the case study I sent you a while
ago) is doing well. The treatment involves
palpating the parietals and now that she is older
some more on her cranial base which has
dysfunction with the left side.  Drawing the
sacrum to lengthen the dural tube is always
necessary and the respiratory diaphragm with a
tonic liver for the last number of months has been
less so on the last visit.

Jodie is receiving remedies for her vaccines and
at present the polio one is being addressed. She
is much more affectionate to Mum and to her little
sister and initiates hugs and kisses with both,
this is separate form the craniosacral treatments
which would frequently end with a move to Mum’s
knee.
She has overcome her great difficulty with Music
class – she tolerates it now if it is not in the
big hall and can articulate that they don’t give
her the guitar or whistle.
Best wishes,
Jean

MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for that Jean.  From the feedback I get
from other therapists and students who subscribe
to this newsletter, getting a glimpse into someone
else’s practice is very helpful.

***BLUEPRINT FOLLOW ON FROM GAYLE IN CAPE TOWN***

Hi John

I don’t know if they were in your part of the
world, but a few years back there were these 3D
pictures around. They basically look like a whole
lot of messy dots, and then when you relax your
eyes, you suddenly see the picture.

And you can always see that picture every time you
look at it. The more of these 3D images you look
at, the better you get at seeing the image.

Ok so I know that was using an image- like
description, but it might make sense to some
people. The blueprint – to me at least- is as
solid and as apparent as the image that you would
see.

If I had to compare “seeing the blueprint” with
any other of the more common 5 senses, I would say
that it is like your sense of smell. Perhaps the
‘whispy and mist-like’ can be described as an
aroma. It is tangible, it is stronger from the
direction of the source. It has an associated
memory or emotion. It also has a “rabbit-hole”
effect. The more you try to analyse the smell, the
more you can describe the components that make up
that scent.

Hope I made some sort of sense?

Gayle (Cape Town, SA)

MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for that Gayle.  It is always good to
get another perspective on how different people
relate to different structures.  I’m not a
‘smeller’ myself but I really like it when someone
can involve their sense of smell in their
palpation, it must add a whole other dimension.

Try as I might, I could never do those ‘magic
eye’ things.  In the end I decided that there was
no image there really and it was all an elaborate
conspiracy to make me look stupid.

What?

It might be . .

***SHINGLES FOLLOW ON FROM DONOVAN IN DURBAN VIA
HIS WIFE – HE HAS HIS HANDS FULL AT THE BARBEQUE -
GIVE HIM A BREAK***

Dear John

Thanks so much for your lovely newsletters (this
is Dee, Donovan’s wife and mother of his adored
2.5 year old daughter Naomi!!!!).

I have to confess that I read your newsletters
with great enjoyment, especially as I am handling
the advertising and promotion of cranio here in SA
and I eagerly absorb all information about the
various conditions and problems it can treat, and
as you are a guru in this therapy, I hope you
don’t mind me sneaking a peak at the info you send
to Donovan.

Yes, Donovan has treated a woman who had shingles.
She was brought to him by a student practitioner
who was feeling overwhelmed and asked for his
support.  The whole top half of her body was
covered in the sores and she also had HIV AIDS.
She believed she was cursed by the local
witchdoctor and she was going to die if the
shingles spread and joined at the midline of her
body (she was told this by an “Inyanga”/aka
Traditional Healer).

Yes, we live in a very interesting culturally
diverse country with many of our inhabitants being
governed by very strong cultural beliefs.  He has
asked me to tell you this on his behalf (he is
braaining [barbequing] our meal and his hands are
filthy) that during the 4 sessions he had with
her, he worked on boosting her immune system and
holding into, and working with these deep seated
fears.  When this began shifting, her healing
accelerated dramatically.  Unfortunately, she was
very unreliable in keeping her appointments and
only came for the 4 sessions – even though she was
being sponsored to come.

I trust that you were suitably rewarded by Santa
for being a good boy this year, and I look forward
to more of your newsletters in 2008.

Warmest regards from Sunny South Africa and
wishing you a fabulous 2008.

Dee, Donovan, Naomi, Hamish and Angus (our 2
scottish terriers)

MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for that Dee and Donovan.  It conjured
up a very cute mental image of Donovan up to his
armpits in barbeque sauce, roaring cranio sacral
descriptions to Dee.

‘I said holding into her deep seated fears,
not folding into her cheap pleated smears.  What
does that mean anyway??’

It sounds like you helped the woman in question
a lot Donovan.  It was also another glimpse into
the different sorts of issues that practitioners
in different parts of the world are dealing with.

***QUESTION***

Hi John,

I look forward to putting my details on your site
when I finish my course and get some more
practical hours up!

I am interested in your theories on treating
cancer patients?  My Cranio teacher says it is a
contraindication if any cancer active is in the
body?

I have tried looking it up in Cranio books but
have not found any information, if you do treat
cancer patients what are you treating them for,
the cancer, the pain, the side effects?  I read
somewhere (it may even have been on your site) of
people having chemo being treated but it did not
say why or how?

Luv your work!

Karen
Australia

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Karen,
The main thing to get about contraindications
is they are for YOUR protection as much as the
patient.

The chances of you doing any harm to the
patient are slim to nonexistent.  On the other
hand, the chances of you giving yourself a major
fright and setting you palpatory skills back years
is very high.

For example, let’s say you go against your
teachers/mentors recommendation and start treating
someone who is in the middle of dealing with
cancer.
And let’s say they have a major episode the day
after you treat them and end up in hospital.

Take a minute and think about how you would
feel.  Can you imagine how difficult it would be
to stay objective about your contribution to their
being in hospital.  Can you imagine how hard it
would be to avoid putting yourself through the
wringer wondering if your intention was too heavy
or too light, how you could have missed what was
coming and so on.

I am not saying don’t treat people with cancer
or who are having chemotherapy.  I am saying that
you need to nurture and protect your growing
palpatory skill.  It is hard enough to develop
without unnecessarily putting it in the way of
potential body blows.

To answer your question, I have treated people
with most stages of cancer, benign, malignant,
aggressive, in remission and I have treated people
who are having chemotherapy and radiation
treatment too.

Here are some things to consider . .

When someone has a life threatening condition
you need to take a very long perspective on their
situation.  We need to stand back from our
conditioned response that the happy ending is
where the patient ‘beats the big C’ and lives
happily ever after.

When working with people with life threatening
illnesses, more than anything else you need
humility and respect for their process.

Bearing in mind that you don’t know what their
process is about.

I have found it helpful to adopt the
perspective that the circumstances of a patient’s
life are not random but are very significant to
them.  This includes the way they will die.  I
take it that the way they choose to die is as
significant as the way they choose to be born.

This makes it is easier for me to stand back
and not try to ‘fix’ them.

I have talked about this in other newsletters
so won’t go on about it too much now.

http://www.open-source-cranio.com/sacral-training/cancer/

Treating someone who is having chemotherapy or
radiation treatment can be very helpful for them.
I have found it is similar to treating someone who
has had a pin or plate put in their body to help
with a compound fracture.

Their body will be freaking out and trying to
dispel the foreign object.  Treatment usually
involves helping their body to integrate or make
peace with the foreign object.

With chemo or radiation treatment the person’s
body will be freaking out in a similar way because
it is in essence being poisoned or attacked.  Your
job will be to help their body deal with the shock
of attack.  To find some kind of equilibrium in
the situation.

Treating people with life threatening illness
is not for the faint hearted.  It forces you to
look at very fundamental questions about what you
are really doing.  Once you embrace the inherent
challenges it can be very rewarding.

***QUESTION***

Hi, John

Your Q&A’s thus far have tremendously contributed
to my knowledge as a cranio sacral practitioner.
It is now my turn to ask a question.

My mother is 76yrs old and has had a stroke due to
her tissue (mechanical) valve being in for too
long without replacing it. She had a clot in her
frontal area, which was dissolved with medication.
She is back to normal and does not have any after
effects. How can I help her in a cranio way?

All the best for the New Year.

Regards,
Shahnaaz
Cape Town, South Africa

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Shahnaaz,
I am glad you find my newsletters helpful.

As you know, most strokes are caused by a blood
clot forming in some part of the body and then
travelling to the brain and causing a blockage to
the blood supply and then permanent neurological
damage to the effected area.

Recovery from stroke is the transferring of
function from the damaged area to another part of
the brain.

If someone comes to me for treatment and they
are recovering from a stroke, the first thing I
would do is check if they still had a tendency for
clotting.  If I got a sense that they did, I would
withdraw gently and not continue treatment.

Not because I could cause another stroke but
because of the effect it would have on me if they
had a stroke while I was treating them or even the
day after treatment.

Also the family of the person involved may not
understand that I couldn’t have caused a stroke
and that could cause a lot of complications and
ultimately interfere with me treating the other
people I treat now and in the future.

For me it’s not worth the risk.

So if you feel that the clotting is over. .

‘How will I know?’

If you are asking this question then you
haven’t had enough experience yet and you need to
get a second opinion from a more experienced
practitioner.

Assuming you are not asking that question I
would focus on assisting the transfer of function
process that will be going on in the brain from
the area that was damaged to the new areas.

Based on what you have written it sounds like
your Mother has recovered well.   Has she asked
you to treat her?

If not, you have a very weak contract with her.
By contract I mean the framework within which you
work with a person.   It is set by what they ask
you to help them with.

So if someone asks you to help them with their
painful knee then that is the contract.

Regardless of whatever other issues you may
feel in the persons system, if these issues don’t
affect the knee problem directly then you will be
going outside the bounds of the contract if you
start trying to treat these issues.

Just because you can feel it doesn’t mean you
have been asked to ‘fix’ it.

I have found the loosest contracts are nearly
always with family members.  This happens because
of the history between you and the fact that they
knew you before you were a cranio sacral
therapist.

There is no tricky way around this. It’s not
like you can go to your Mother and ask her, ‘Would
you like me to help you recover from your stroke?’

The strongest contracts come from a request
that has originated from the person unassisted,
un-enticed.

What to do?

If your Mother hasn’t asked you to help her
then I suggest you wait until the next time she is
talking about her health.  When she states a
concern that you feel you may be able to help with
then say it.

‘What?’

“I could help with that Mum.”

Then, and this is important, keep quiet.  If
she doesn’t respond, leave it.  You don’t have a
contract.   If you respect the fact that she
hasn’t asked you it will make it easier for her to
ask when she is ready.

***SHINGLES FOLLOW ON FROM EVA IN AUSTRALIA***

Merry Christmas John!

I have two responses to your newsletter below:

I would be happy to be a mentor. I’m at Lisarow on
the Central Coast, just north of Sydney,
Australia. Contact phone no 0410234490.

I have had shingles myself, or at least that is
what it was diagnosed as when I was 25. Situated
in a particular place between two ribs on the left
side.  Had pain off and on during childhood, then
a lot of pain and much longer periods during the 4
years I worked in Nigeria, which was a very high
stress time, emotionally.

What sent it on high alert was that I got mould
allergy and sneezed a couple hundred times a day
for a few months, and that’s when it was
diagnosed. It calmed down with nose spray to stop
the sneezing, but was still very much there in the
rib cage, just not rampant. I never have had any
blisters from it, though. Since I started having
and doing CranioSacral Therapy I haven’t had any
relapses.

I have also treated someone with an acute shingles
outbreak on her arm. The lady had already been for
treatment a few times for a lot of other problems
a few months earlier. This time she came for
treatment the shingles had come out in blisters on
her arm just 2 days before the session. I treated
her as usual but also did Photonic Therapy
(acupuncture with a red light instead of needles)
on the specific points for shingles as well as
around the blisters.
2 days later when she saw the doctor the sores
were nearly gone. The doctor had never heard of
such a rapid retreat of shingles without
medication.

Best regards,

Eva Kuhl Bornefelt
Central Coast, Australia.

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Eva,
I will add you to the Mentor list.

Thank you for sharing your personal experience
of shingles.

It sounds like you did a great job with the
woman you were treating too.

***QUESTION***

Hi John, Hope all goes well in the wider world
beyond our shores. . .

A quicky that may be a useful topic for the next
newsletter. . .

I’m currently treating a fellow who has presented
with Focal Dystonia. Being a writer, and avid
keyboardist, he is experiencing a gradual increase
in tonic spasm mostly within carpal/wrist flexors.

He is a man who lives life on his own terms, his
own agenda, despite the fact he has a couple of
very young children and a loving wife.  Driven,
ambitious, capable.

Any resource/ideas/anecdotes . . . politically
incorrect focal dysplasia jokes???

PS Happy X-mas to you and yours.

Greg Robson
Brisbane.

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Greg,

I don’t make jokes about conditions.

I am far too wonderful and holy for that.

From what you have written it sounds like your
patient has focal dystonia only and not focal
dysplasia, which is more on the epilepsy side of
things.   Let me know if I got that wrong.

The thing that stands out to me about focal
dystonia is that it mainly occurs when the person
is focused on a particular task.  Classic cases
being the concert pianist or surgeon who only get
the spasms when they are about to perform or
operate.

It always feels to me like the bodily version
of stuttering.

And in terms of root cause, this is where I
would be looking.   What is going on for the
person in relation to their expression or their
work?

Are they happy/frustrated in their work?
Do they feel the work is a good vehicle of
expression for them?
Do they feel like they are bursting with
expression and their work holds them back?
Are they frustrated?

Are the spasms symmetrical? If they are
predominantly in his left hand/wrist it could be
to do with receiving.  If on the other hand . . .

‘Hang on, that’s a joke!’

No it’s not. I actually meant his other hand.
His other hand is his right hand . .

‘Oh. . . ‘

If his spasms are predominantly in his right
hand it could be to do with expression or power or
expressing his power.

The medical model for what is going on
mechanically describes the brain as being a bit
like a cartoon character that has been given too
many instructions to carry out at once.
Eventually they shake their head vigorously, with
an accompanying sound effect, which I can’t spell
and shake the confusion away.

I know you have probably looked this up Greg
but bear with me while I explain it for the other
readers who may not have.

You know the way the left side of your brain
controls the right side of your body and visa
versa.

Just nod.

Well it gets more specific.  There is a sort of
map called your somatosensory cortex that deals
with each part individually.  So each finger, for
example, has a specific region.

This is different from you tomato-sensory
cortex which is the part of your brain that helps
you find tomatoes in the dark.

‘Really?’

No, not really.  That was a joke.

‘But you said . . .’

It wasn’t about a condition.

‘Oh . . ‘

Can we get on?
If you have ever watched a musician in full
flight you will notice that their fingers move so
fast they are almost a blur.

The medical explanation for focal dystonia is
that with repeated practice of the same movements,
the brain gets confused and the regions of the
somatosensory cortex for the fingers involved get
kind of mashed up.  But unlike the cartoon
character the brain is unable to shake the
confusion away.

While it is a good explanation I don’t think it is
the full story.  To fill out the picture a little
more let me include a little quote from an
interview with John Upledger that adds another
perspective to the smearing of the somatosensory
cortex theory.

Here’s Johnny . . .

‘I just wanna share a little study that I came
across.
In February 1988, ‘Brain Mind Bulletin’
published in the abstract some work that was done
at UC San Diego. They were trying to understand
how somebody like a professional pianist or a
professional violin player could move so fast,
with the messages going up to the brain, decision
made, and back down again. So they used
electrodes, and they used an EEG.

What they found was that the electrical
impulses that control finger movement were not
going up the arm! The decisions were being made
right there in the hand! You could use electrical
measurement of neuron impulse conduction as a
reasonable indicator. So what that says is, you
have decision making ability in your hands!’

You can read the full article here

http://www.open-source-cranio.com/resources/articles/Intelligence.pdf

Now that’s jolly interesting isn’t it.

So another way of looking at it might be that
the people who don’t get focal dystonia could be
more surrendered to the intelligence of the hands
that John Upledger is talking about.  While people
who do get focal dystonia could keep engaging
their brain and so confuse it.

This would lead me to ask the questions I
always ask about anyone with any condition.

Why did they get it?  Lots of people don’t.
Why them and not someone else?
What does it mean?

While you are thinking about that here are some
of the mechanical places you can look because
regardless of the deeper issues everything prints
out mechanically.

As you know, nerve impulses are conducted by a
mixture of chemical and electrical means.  The
chemicals are conveyed in fluid and the electrical
impulses are . . . well . . energy  . . . and
guess what we work with fluids and energy!!

Alright!!

I would check the nerve supply from the brain
to the area involved, in this case his hand.  I
would also be taking a close look at the brain and
in particular the cortex around the posterior
aspect of the parietal lobes, around where they
meet the occipital lobes.

This is generally where the somatosensory
cortex is considered to be located.  I would be
checking the cerebro spinal fluid in this area and
the meninges.  The lambdoid sutures might give you
an indication for what is going on beneath.

That’s it for this issue.  I know,
hard to believe but don’t fret there will be more
next month.

Cheerio for now.

Your Mate,

John D.

October 2 -2008

Questions and comments for this issue:

+ Shunts?
+ 2 cases from Australia.
+ The wonders of entrainment.

Hello,

I’m delighted to report that the Boikarabelo Children’s
eco village in Johannesburg, South Africa have begun to use
my training materials on Open Source Cranio in the training
3 of their careers. Which is great. All I have to do now is
finish putting all the training material up.. yikes!!!

Which reminds me if you haven’t had a chance to look at
‘The Visible Body’ definitely have a look – it is awesome.

http://www.visiblebody.com/

Because it doesn’t work on Apple computers I couldn’t get
a decent look at it so I snaffled my wife’s laptop one night
and four hours later I was still at it.

I don’t care where you are in your cranial career you can’t
but find this useful. To be able to look at these structures
from whatever angle you like, to peel off layers and see how
one structure relates to another. It just helps so much.

If you haven’t already done so have a look
and let me know what you think.

Speaking of visuals I want to tell you about the beautiful
cranial artwork of Ray Lacy.  As you know I used to work in
animation before I became a cranio sacral therapist so I
got to work with lots of first rate artists and I can tell
you Ray is right up there. He has produced see beautiful
drawings of the structures we work with. Have a look
then if you feel so moved, write a review and send it to Ray.

http://www.craniosacral-art.com/index.php

Anyhu, on with the mailbag.

***QUESTION***

Hi John

Your newsletter’s archive is fantastic.  Very easy to use
(much better than mine). Thanks.
My question today is about treating people with a shunt
in the head. Do you(or anyone else) has experience with that?
Is there a risk of having the shunt come out of place
(and causing big problems to the personn) when working
on the personn? I was wondering because of the movements of
the bones and membranes in the head (things coming back
in place).
Any comments will be much appreciated.
Odile. Brisbane.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Hello Odile,
I’m glad you find the newsletter archive useful.
I’m hoping the ‘search’ function makes it easier for
people to find what they are looking for across the
whole site.

I have treated quite a few people with shunts.
I’ll just explain what they are for any of the other
readers who don’t know.

A shunt is tube that is fitted surgically to relieve
cerebrospinal fluid pressure. There is a one way valve
in the shunt that stops the cerebrospinal fluid coming
back up the tube.  They are usually fitted in people
who have prolonged or extreme hydrocephalus.

The types of shunts I have treated have fallen into
two categories.  Cranio shunts and spinal shunts.
Spinal shunts go from the drural tube and drain into
the stomach. Cranial shunts drain from the cranium into
the heart.

From my experience they are pretty robust arrangements
and I have never got the feeling that they would dislodge
with treatment. The main thing I have felt when treating
people with shunts is how the fluid dynamics of their
cerebrospinal fluid is screwed up. Their cranio sacral
rhythm is usually confused.

Most of my work has been firstly dealing with the
underlying cause of the hydrocephalus and then helping
the person’s system come to terms with the foreignness
of the shunt.

This is similar to any kind of work where there is a
foreign object in a person’s body be it a pin or a screw
or a pacemaker.

***QUESTION***

Dear John

From reading your emails its great to see that the world
of cranio is opening up.. I have to say the enquiry coming
in to the clinic for treatment for complicated cases from
all over Australia is amazing. And hence I am in need of
some guidance with a couple of troubled young lads..

The first is 15…born with a large head that expanded
from the parietals but little frontal growth, at 12 months
his head was so heavy he carried it on the side…at 8 had
a head on collision on a jet ski into a tree an acquired a
compressed skull fracture and brain injury
…although the extent of that is not clear as they suspected
ADD anyway…has learning difficulties, class clown and
recently attempted to throw himself off the tallest building
at school. He has 5 steel plates in his head holding the
parietals and frontal together…his system is very
sensitive and flexion, extension inhibited by the plates..

The second boy is 14, a difficult birth resulting in
emergency c section, swallowed blood and meconium has
chronic asthma, seems ok at school but suffers anxiety
especially separation from mother… she bought him
because 3 separate clairvoyants told her he died in birth and
came back and that there were issues for him to sort out.

Both these boys seem to have a space or separation in their
system from which they are operating that does not seem to
belong to them but is quite a definite separate space…then
there is a pretend who I am and a big hole to the other…
where do I start…seeing that both these boys are seeming
in a serious situation for themselves..

Your pearls of great wisdoms will be greatly appreciated
as usual!!!

LK
Brisbane

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Well these certainly are serious cases and my response
has to be based on what you have written only. Which is
another way of saying I could be completely wrong.

I had to read the part about the sense of space or
separation you were feeling quite a few times to get an
idea of what was going on.  The main thing that it sounds
like to me is the detachment that comes from shock.

If I am right it should resolve like any other trauma.
I suggest you don’t treat it any differently to any other
kind of trauma even though it may feel more intense to you.

With the first chap, the 15 year old, it sounds like
you are dealing with 3 separate issues.

The first sounds like a developmental problem. Why didn’t
his frontal develop in tandem with the rest of the bones in
his skull? Why did his head become so full?

My guess would be some problem with his embryonic
development and if that’s the case then it will probably by
a problem with his blueprint.
I’ve written about this before so won’t bore you with it again.
If you need a refresher go here

http://www.open-source-cranio.com/sacral-training/

and search for blueprint.

Love that ‘search’ function.

The next thing be has going on is the head trauma he
received from the jet ski accident. So  now you have a
system with underlying blueprint problems, so its healing
response is compromised to begin with, trying to deal
with a major trauma.

The the third layer is all the surgery and the ensuing
plates in his head.

It’s enough to make someone detach. .hmmmm. . .

It would be nice to deal with each thing separately but
in practice it probably won’t work out like that. It will
probably be a bit of a mash up of all three layers.

Probably the best way to deal with this is to see it as
whatever arises is what needs attention at that moment.

So in any given session the blueprint issue may come up,
then the head trauma, then the plates in his head, then the
head trauma again and so on.

The second chap sounds like a straightforward case of
birth trauma, if you can call any case of birth trauma
straight forward.

It sounds like he is stuck in chronic alarm as a result
of his birth.  I have found that issues relating to Mother
can often end up in the lungs and chest area.
I suggest you focus your treatment on the birth trauma
first, then as the separation anxiety begins to ease you
can focus on what remains of the asthma.

***QUESTION***

Hello John

I have been practicing CST for two years, but have the most
amazing results since switching to the biodynamic style of
work.  I am always enthralled by the intelligence of the body,
as it guides the healing process. Clients are just as
captivated, felling me remaining absolutely still while the
Breath of Life takes over within them.

Recently I have seen two people with head injuries, one
from a surfboard blow, the other from a fall backwards onto
the occiput. The first man was blown away, exclaiming that
his head had completely changed shape over our three sessions,
and that he could sleep at night, something rare in his
experience. During a large part of his session time his body
chose to work on trauma from ear surgery 3 years ago, for
which he was relieved and grateful. The second client, a woman,
felt as though a veil was lifted from her head after the first
session, she almost needed to wear sunglasses, the world looked
so bright and clear. She still had some nausea and dizziness
but was well enough to drive herself to the second session.

Sometimes I feel in my own body what is happening with the
client, and other times I sense directly what they are
experiencing. Can you shed any light on this?

Christine Whitelaw

Moruya NSW
Australia

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Hello Christine,
Thanks for sharing your stories. It sounds like you are
doing great work.

Now to your question. When you are treating someone your
system becomes entrained with theirs.  Entrainment is a
multi-spectrum connection that includes a lot more than
just your cranio sacral rhythms coming into sync.

Once entrainment happens the persons system will show
you everything you need for the session.  Sometimes this
is a strong sense of what the person is feeling.  At other
times you might feel what they are feeling directly in
your own body.

Feeling things in your own body is fine in small doses
but if it is persistent it can be tiring.
If you can’t stop feeling things in your body and it
becomes a problem you might want to look at your boundaries.

So that’s it for this issue.

Till the next time.

Your Mate,

John D.

+ What does the blueprint feel like? – November 07

Hi John
I would like to know a bit more about working with Cerebral Palsy.
What is the best approach? Is there any chance for the person to
recover some of their functions or is it too much to ask to the body?
I suppose it requires to go back to the blueprint.

Your comments about the blueprint in the last newsletter were
very interesting. My only problem is that I am a kinaesthetic
kind of person and images don’t talk to me very much. Could
you tell me how the blue print feels so I know that what I feel
under my hands is the blueprint or something else. This would
be very useful for me.
Thank you.
Odile, Brisbane.
Odile Grisel

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Hello Odile,
Thank you for your email.
I have had some good success with cerebral palsy and I’ve had
some no-change-at-all’s. When I think about what was common
among the successes the main thing was that the people were young.
Under 3yrs old.

When treating cerebral palsy I generally find myself working with
the nervous system. From the hemisphere of the brain involved
out to the periphery. Following the nerves, working to enhance
the integrity where it is diminished.

I have heard some therapists say they find lots of limb unwinding
very useful to unlock the central restrictions. I haven’t found that
myself but pass it on in case you find it useful.

I never think of treatment in terms of, ‘Is this too much to ask of the
body?’ At this stage I have seen so many apparent ‘miracles’ that I
know the body is capable of anything. So it is never a case of CAN
this happen but more a case of IS it going to happen?

It can often be a blueprint problem, which leads me to your second
question about describing what the blueprint feels like without using
images.

I had to put my thinking cap on for that one.
Here’s what I got. To me, the blueprint feels very whispy and mist-like,
but not moist. It feels like touching a smoke ring that pulses with
flexion and extension and releases like solid tissue.

Phew! Okay I’m going to take my thinking cap off now because my
head is hurting.

+ Working with the blueprint. – September 07

Hi John
Thanks so much for your continuing newsletter and the great tipsand humour.
I have a double question.
It’s often a lonely place at the coalface and I seem to have peoplecome to me with “last resort” problems that require much from me - I am doing a lot of anatomy and physiology research these days.

First question. Do you think it’s possible for a young man whose body doesn’t make testosterone to get that working again? He is 23 and came to me essentially for massive headaches and his lack of testosterone problem. It was diagnosed at age 15 when he had major back pain. Bone testing revealed his bone age was that of an 8 year old. He has to inject himself 3 x weekly for the testosterone cycle to happen. This injecting ritual is also affecting his mental health - facing this for the rest of his life is depressing.

So, he has major lesion patterns in his head, esp membranes, akin to birth trauma (although his mother reports a “perfect” birth), and his pelvic girdle/sacrum. Unwinding those complex restriction patterns is top of the list, with my intention also on all sites for the production cycle to work normally (including cerebral cortex, hypothalamus and pituitary and testes). I can’t see any reason it won’t, but there seems to be an issue with the ‘kick starting’ of the process. If he is injecting and producing LSH, then his body may not have the opportunity to take over. He has had all the tests and specialists do not have any idea why this is happening in his body.
They can only offer injections for his lifetime.

Can you give me any clues here?

Second question. I have a lot of people with conditions related to experiencing terror in-utero. So, the main problem seems to lie in the central nervous system, and glitches in its development.

These all have the quality of having to return to the blueprint as the major goal. This requires a lot, from both practitioner and client. (This is also the situation for the young man already mentioned)

Can you give some insight into the process of returning to the blueprint?

Luckily, I have had success already in this area, but the symptoms and conditions I’m treating lately, (as well as the overall goal of returning to the blueprint), are extreme and debilitating for the clients.
Patience seems to be the major virtue. Have you any other insights?
Thanks so much for your continued support.
Cheers,
J
Perth, Australia

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for the feedback I’m glad you are finding the newsletters useful.

‘Do you think it’s possible for a young man whose body doesn’t make testosterone to get that working again?’

Yes. When it comes to people and their bodies I think anything is possible.

Both of your questions revolve around the blueprint and how to work with it so I will answer them together.

It sounds like your palpatory skills are at the point where you are beginning to feel the blueprint, which is great. The downside is that it sounds like you are finding it a bit daunting.

But daunt not because it doesn’t need to be.

The ironic thing is that you have been working with the blueprint from the very beginning of your cranio sacral training. The difference is that now you have reached a level of refinement where you can differentiate the blueprint from the rest of what you are a feeling.

As you know the blueprint is the energetic framework that underpins our bodies. The cells of our bodies being a bit like iron filings on a piece of paper. When a magnet is brought to the underside of the paper the filings are drawn to form the shape of the magnet.

The magnet is like the blueprint. The difference is that the blueprint is not a static rigid thing but moves and grows. The growing part being particularly relevant for your testosterone light patient.

Like many aspects of cranio sacral work, we feel something and learn to work with it but have very little scientific evidence or terminology to describe it. 10 years ago science was enraptured with the mysteries of genetics, with few voices who were saying anything different, one of which was Rupert Sheldrake and he was labeled a kook.

Then the genome was finally mapped and when the party was over there was a dawning that it didn’t have all the answers. That everything wasn’t determined by our genes. This is reflected in the work of the likes of Bruce Lipton in what is being called the New Biology.

The idea of an energetic field or blueprint underpinning our body has been around for yonks and shows up in different cultures in different ways, meridians, charkas, assemblage point and so on.

As I said, the blueprint unfolds during embryonic development. The timing of this unfoldment directs the pace and progress of our embryonic development and once started moves forward with its own pace and rhythm.

It’s like a piece of music that begins at the moment of conception and continues for the rest of our lives. Within the overall piece of music there are movements, passages that have the general themes of the overall music but have their individual beginnings, middles and ends.

If something happens to interrupt the music or a particular beat is missed, it is very hard for the body to fill in the blanks. No magnet – so the iron filings don’t know where to go.

For example the maxillae meet each other and form the hard palate at about the seventh week of embryonic development. If this doesn’t happen then person will end up with a cleft palate.

It sounds like all went well with your patient during the embryonic phase of his development. He decided he was going to be male and the initial flood of testosterone ensured this. The beat that was missed was in his puberty. The second wave of testosterone never happened. So he never matured into a man. It is this point that I would look at in his blueprint.

So how to work with it?
I have found that knowing about the blueprint is the beginning of being able to work with it. It’s the same as when knowing what flexion and extension were before tried to feel for them was a help in being able to feel them.

A useful initial access to feeling the blueprint is to use the cranio sacral rhythm. Think of it in terms of William Sutherland’s description of it as being the ‘breath of life’. Think of flexion as the in-breath and extension as the out-breath of this breath of life. He also described the movement of this breath of life as adding potency
to the cells of the body.

I find this kind of imagery helpful in getting in touch with the blueprint. It always reminds me of a beach, in particular that part of the beach where the sand meets the water. Where, if you write your name in the sand the water will come in and wipe it away and smooth the sand out.

With my hands in contact with the person’s system and my eyes closed, tuning into the cranio sacral rhythm and feeling it in terms of an in-breath that vitalises and recreates an energetic blueprint, each in-breath washes across the cells of the body and they become luminous. Any anomalies in the blueprint itself begin to reveal themselves.

The daunting thing about working with the blueprint is that is energetic. You don’t feel it in the same way as you feel flexion and extension, for example, which is a physical movement. It is felt in the same way you can feel something between your palms when you hold them close together. It’s the same sort of something.

The good news is that once it is felt the blueprint behaves and responds in the same way the body does. So if you get a sense that there was a disturbance in the unfoldment of the puberty movement of his blueprint ‘music’ then it is the same as it would feel if there was a trauma that had occurred to him during his puberty.

But instead of looking to get a sense of a trauma you are looking to get a sense of what interrupted the unfoldment of his blueprint, which, ironically could have been a trauma.

Once you get a sense of where the gap is then you can use your intention to fill it. But not in a directed forceful, ‘I know what needs to be done here.’ sort of way. More with a sense of providing a bridge with your intention across the gap.

It is a little like direct technique in as much as you are encouraging his system to fill in the gap but you don’t make it happen.

As kooky as the blueprint may sound it is still a mechanical kind of thing to work with. Just because it is energy doesn’t automatically imbue it with mystical dimensions.

If he doesn’t improve through working with the blue print you would have to look deeper. What is deeper than the underpinning energetic blue print that holds the cells of our bodies in place?

Well as I said the blueprint is in essence a mechanical structure. It is used by the part of us that knows the bigger picture of ourselves. What our life is about. Why we are a man or a woman, why we chose the parents we did, the country we were born in and so on.

That is a different part of the questions you would be asking yourself about the bigger picture of what his symptoms might mean in the context of the deeper issues he may be working out in his life.

Is he resisting letting go of being a boy and becoming a man? Or is he resisting growing up? The movie, ‘The Tin Drum‘ comes to mind. Were the headaches just a way to get him to come and see you or are they part of the mechanical aspect of how this disharmony is expressing itself.

+ CST and bowed legs? – December 05

Hi John,
As always, superb and enjoyable! I feel like an empty sponge,
ready to absorb and learn – the only problem seems that one
tends to forget most of what one has absorbed, at this stage
of ones life!

Have you had any success with bowed legs? Am going to have
to work on a baby about 16 months old. He has nearly all his
teeth (molars too) already which is a bit abnormal? If I hold his
upper legs together, that part looks totally normal, but the lower
legs then cross over with the feet facing nearly sideways.
The problem seems to be in the ankles, so that the legs have to
adapt? I will only be able to see him once a month.
Enjoy your day.
Your Buddy
JB
Cape town

>>>MY COMMENTS:

It’s worth checking to see if he was lying in an awkward position
in the womb but I don’t think that is the case here because when
I add the bowed legs to what you’ve said about him having all his
teeth, I think it’s more likely to be a case of a disturbance when
he was developing in the womb.

Think of embryonic development like an orchestra playing a piece
of music. Once the performance starts it plays through to the end.
If one of the musicians makes a mistake or drops their instrument,
the orchestra won’t stop and restart, they just keep going.

Remember that the first 8 weeks of our embryonic life is the time
when all organs, systems and tissues are outlined. If that process
is disturbed or interrupted, we can get all sorts of problems. Cleft
palate is a good example. If the two Maxillae haven’t met by around
the 7th week, then they never meet.

Disturbances to the process after the 8th week will cause problems
in refinement or development of the systems and structures outlined
in the first 8 weeks.

It sounds like your boy has had a bit of both.

That’s great John, what do I do about it?

Getting that developmental piece of music to play again is a bit
like trying to remember on old childhood song. You can remember
bits of it but remembering ALL the words is tricky. It’s the same
with helping a persons system reactivate developmental energetics.
It’s possible but not easy.

The most remarkable demonstration of it I ever had in clinic was an
87 year old man who was in constant pain and loosing power in his
legs from stenosis of his vertebral canal.

During treatment, he managed to access the notocord part of his
embryonic development music and the cells around his vertebral
canal started to migrate away from the area where his physical
notocord used to be, just like they did when he was an embryo.
His vertebral canal consequently got larger and his symptoms
went away. It was bloody remarkable!

That’s great John but how did you facilitate that?

Think of a spy movie. Remember the scene where the rookie spy
was about to walk into the unguarded vault but was stopped by
the older more experienced spy who then sprays an aerosol of
some stuff in the air and reveals a web of infrared sensor beams
and we nod our heads and think, ‘Man, this movie is full of clichés.’

The point of the analogy is you firstly need to know there is
something there, the energetic blueprint in which the developmental
music is contained and secondly you need some of that magic aerosol,
which in our case is our intention.

+ Why does the body return to the position of injury in order to release? – November 05

Hi John
I have a question. In SER the body often returns
to the position of injury either emotional or
physical in order to release the disease (energy
cyst) held there.  This fits perfectly with the
founding law of Homoeopathy “like cures like’ or
similia similibus curentur.  But I can find no
written explanation for why this law is a law!
What is your experience of why the body holds to
this?. Or does it always?
Thank you.

Lorraine Archer
County Roscommon.
Ireland.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

The principal of ‘like curing like’ is the same
in cranio sacral therapy and homoeopathy but the
mechanics of how the ‘curing’ happens are
different for each.

During cranio sacral therapy the body goes to
the position it was in when the trauma occurred so
that it can reconnect with its underlying
energetic blueprint.

But hang on, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s talk about the blueprint for a minute.

Why do plants, trees, animals etc. grow into
the shape they do?   How do the cells in a bone
know to become bone cells?
Currently we are told that the answers to these
questions lie in the mysteries of DNA.

DNA is very cool stuff and remarkable in its
own right. But in time, the limitations of DNA
will reveal themselves.  The genome will be mapped
better than Manhattan and these questions will
remain unanswered.

What has yet to be proven is that when a seed
is planted it starts to unfold an energetic
outline or blueprint of the shape it will grow
into and the cells migrate in accordance to the
blueprint.  DNA is the executive of this process
and responds to the blueprint.

Think iron fillings, magnet, paper.  The magnet
(Blueprint) influences the iron filling (Cells) to
form into a particular shape, the shape of the
magnet.  You may not be able to see the magnet
because it is hidden behind the paper but you know
what shape it is by the shape the iron filing are
forming.

Most of the older traditions have identified
different expressions of the blueprint and
represent it in different ways.

In traditional Chinese medicine there are the
meridians. In Ayurvedic medicine there are the
charkas.  In Toltec or Mexican shamanism there
are what are called the feathers of the eagle.

The botanist, Rupert Sheldrake has been talking
about this kind of stuff for years, he describes
it in terms of morphic fields.

When a person’s system gets traumatised, the
cells may be displaced but they return to their
original position under the influence of the
underlying blueprint.

As they do this, they have a particular
movement which thankfully for us, is palpable.
The whole process goes to make up the auto repair
mechanism we call a release.

When the trauma won’t release it’s because the
blueprint itself has been bent out of shape.

We learned early on, that given the right
support a body will start to move of it’s own
volition.  If we can follow this movement and
know when to hold it, we may be able to facilitate
a release.

That initial movement is the cells of the body
looking for the blue print.  When the persons body
returns to the position where the trauma occurred,
the cells and the blueprint reconnect.  It’s at
this point that all the different manifestations
of release can occur, pulsations, trembling,
shaking, sweating, crying, laughing and that’s not
to mention what goes on for the patient.

Couldn’t resist.

Once the cells and blueprint reconnect then the
whole system, cells and blueprint, come back into
alignment and harmony.

So as I said it’s a process of re-collection.

Not all bodies need to go into the traumatic
position to release.  Sometimes restriction
patterns are very ripe for release and need very
little support to complete the process.

I’ve also found over the years that as I’ve
gotten better at working with the blueprint,
deeper subtleties have revealed themselves.
I find more releases are happening at deeper
levels and require less gross movements on the
surface.

Back to the homoeopathic question.  As you know,
I’m not a homoeopath but I do know some great ones.
So I went and checked with one of them to see if my
suspicions about how the mechanics of ‘like curing
like’ are different between cranio sacral and homoeopathy,
and she confirmed what I thought.

With homoeopathy, the remedy caries an
energetic signature that causes the whole
energetic structure in the system to change.

So going back to the magnet and iron filings
analogy, I’ll explain the difference in mechanics
that I spoke about in the beginning.

If a square shaped magnet gets bent out of
shape on one side.  What cranio sacral does is
collect all the iron filings on that side and help
them to ‘find’ the bent shape and collect it,
allowing it to return to its original state of
squareness.

With homeopathy a magnet that is normally red
has become blue.  The homeopath identifies the
remedy the magnet needs.  Blue.  They know this
because in the proving of the remedy many healthy
red magnets were given this remedy and they all
started demonstrating blue symptoms.  So the blue
magnet is given the blue remedy and the whole
composition of the magnet starts to change.
Eventually the magnet returns to its natural state
of red.

Who said two wrongs don’t make a right.