June 08 – 2007

Questions and comments for this issue:

+ Do I use Somato emotional release?

Hello,

If you sent me an email towards the end of May
and I didn’t reply, I’m not ignoring you and I am
interested, no really.

Sorry, . . what were you saying?

My email server dropped the ball for about 5
days and I didn’t get any mail so if you sent,
please resend.

I have some treats for you now and no, I’m not
trying to butter you up.  Here are some videos of
John Upledger talking about two cases he worked
on. The volume is low so be ready to crank your
speakers up.

The first one is about a boy who had
developmental delay, a spinal tap, cephaly,
seizures and neutrapenia.  The video is in two
parts.

The second one is about a girl with hearing
loss, seizures, and stiffman syndrome.  This video
is in two parts also.

The last one is of Dr John doing his thing. You
may need to lower your volume for this one.

As you know I gave my ‘Core Success’
postgraduate seminar in Brisbane in April. Jenny
Palmer organised the event and she has written an
article about it, which you can read here.

And speaking of postgraduate seminars, I have
also got around to putting up an article about a
full body release seminar I gave last year.  There
are some good pictures of the full body team in
action here.

And lastly I am putting together a page of
links for my web sites.  I have been collecting
and book-marking web sites for a couple of years
now an am just getting ready to share them.  So if
you have a favourite website, a cause, an
organization or a just plain funny site that you
want to let me know about please send me the
address.

Anyhu, let’s get on with the
mailbag.

***QUESTION***

Dear John,
Thank you for your newsletters.  I find them
fascinating and very useful.  I particularly like
what you say about craniosacral at the bottom of
each newsletter. It is a vision which I fully
support.

So this is me participating by asking a question.
I notice that you haven’t talked about somato
emotional release in any of your newsletters.  I
am wondering if you use it and what you think
about it.
Keep up the good work.

KP
Toronto.

MY COMMENTS:

I have received a number of emails asking me
about somato emotional release.  I even had one asking
about its lesser known culinary equivalent,
Tomato emotional release.

Boom. BOOM.
I know. . .
Tomato. . .
No applause please.

So I will combine your answer with the others.
I don’t use somato emotional release per se.  What
I use is a technique I developed called
therapeutic inquiry.  My own cranio sacral
training was somewhat osteopathic in approach and
didn’t really encourage talking with the patient
during treatment.  I felt this ignored a whole
spectrum of possible information.

I studied a couple of different talking
approaches, including somato emotional release but
found that none of them covered everything that
needed to be covered.  I used elements from all
and filled in the blanks.

When it came time to teach this technique I
called it therapeutic inquiry because the essence
of what I was doing involved asking the patient
the right questions, at the right time and in the
right way.

Not everyone needs to verbalise what they are
experiencing when they are releasing a deep trauma
but if they do then you need to know very clearly
what is happening and be able to assist them
verbally and that’s where therapeutic inquiry
comes in.

Knowing the difference between who needs to
talk and who doesn’t is all part of the skill.

At other times you will have a sense that
someone is on the verge of releasing something and
it is one of those releases that needs to come
through the person’s consciousness.  The patient
needs to verbalise it but it just won’t come,
again this is where therapeutic inquiry comes in.

Therapeutic inquiry is used to help a
particular kind of restriction to release.  As you
know, in the course of treatment we use different
techniques for different kinds of restrictions,
some require direct technique, some require
indirect, some require remote work using intention
away from the site of restriction while others
require close work.
Well some restrictions require therapeutic
inquiry.  The sorts of restrictions that usually
require therapeutic inquiry often have a big
emotional component.

To explain why you would need to use
therapeutic inquiry, I need to talk a little bit
about how these kinds of restrictions are formed.
It usually happens during childhood and it goes
something like this: (You can hum along if you
know the tune.)

A child finds itself in a situation it can’t
cope with.  From the child’s perspective the
situation is threatening to its survival.  The
child needs to process the situation very fast and
arrive at a solution that will insure its
survival.  The child quickly reviews its part in
the circumstances that have led to the current
situation.
It identifies the behaviour that is responsible
and labels it as life threatening.  It then locks
that behaviour away in its unconscious, setting up
the emotional equivalent of a reflex arc.
Too important to leave to mere memory, the
child makes it part of its instinct.

Instinct?

If we hear a sudden loud noise our bodies will
have an instinctive protective reaction.  Without
thinking, our body interprets the noise as
potentially dangerous and reacts to protect
itself.  In these circumstances we are operating
from our instinct.
It is into this instinct that the child puts
this emotional reflex arc.   Whenever the child is
in a situation that is similar to the original
situation, it will have an instinctive protective
reaction.

Back to our child.  Time passes and the child
grows into an adult.  The difficult situation has
passed but the embellished instinct does not
change, it stays in place doing its job. Because
it doesn’t adapt with the growth of the
child/adult, what was once a lifesaver, becomes a
source of disharmony in the persons body, or put
another way, a restriction.

Not clear enough? Okay here’s an example.

A young boy pulls a chair over to the stove to
investigate the strange wispy cloudy stuff coming
from a pot.
His mother enters the kitchen. Horrified, she
sees her little darling about to scald himself.
She rushes to the stove, pulls him away roughly,
slaps him and tells him he is a very naughty boy.

The boy can see she is very upset.  In an
instant the boy decides the following, which I
will explain in adult language.

• ‘A. My mother is very angry with me.
  She has hit me and caused me pain.
  She normally doesn’t hit me.
  My mother is the source of love and
  nourishment in my life and if she
  continues to be angry, she will withhold
  her love and nourishment and she may
  continue hitting me.
• B. If she withholds her love and nourishment
  and continues hitting me, I will die.
  C. What did I do that has caused this
  disturbance in my mother?

Reviewing: : : : : – - – -

Answer: I was being curious and
adventurous.

• D. I must incorporate into my instinct

the following directive.

WHENEVER I FEEL CURIOUS AND ADVENTUROUS
I AM IN MORTAL DANGER AND MUST NEVER ACT
ON THESE DANGEROUS FEELINGS.’

The above conclusion is reached within minutes
of being slapped.  The boy includes the new
information in his instinct and gets on with his
life.
As an adult the boy/man finds change incredibly
difficult.  He experiences abnormal stress at the
prospect of changing house or jobs.  When his
marriage breaks down he becomes so tense he has
difficulty sleeping and experiences chest pains.

Fortunately he goes to a cranio sacral
therapist for help.

Cranio Sacral Therapy to the rescue.
High five!
Low five!
No?
Suit yourself.

Therapeutic inquiry allows the patient to get
in contact with the embellished part of their
instinct and begin to communicate with it.  All
going well this dialogue will lead to changing the
directive.

I have found that a restriction will only
change its function by a direct command from the
person.  Even then it can be reluctant to accept
that authority.  The command from the person has
to be with the same emotional intensity with which
the restriction was first imprinted, because the
restriction was charged with the job of protecting
the person against mortal danger.

Restrictions are reluctant to return the
authority if the person is half hearted.  They are
understandably cautious because of the life &
death imperative with which they were programmed.
The difficult part of therapeutic inquiry is in
easing this instinctive defensiveness.

Therapeutic inquiry is a difficult technique to
become competent in because it requires you to do
all the difficult work you are already doing with
your hands and presence AND include this very
precise line of questioning.

Just to give you a little window into the
technical difficulty involved, there is a huge
difference between asking,  ‘Are you afraid?’
or asking, ‘How do you feel?’
The first question suggests the
idea of fear and in a nanosecond the patient will
be thinking.
‘Why are they asking me this?  Is there
something I should be afraid of?’

Asking the patient how they feel allows them to
tell you the way they are experiencing the
situation; not the way you think they are
experiencing the situation.

It is very important to get it right because
you are engaging with a very powerful part of the
person and you don’t want to be messing around in
there.  Therapeutic inquiry is the one technique
that, far and above all the others, I found
students have most difficulty becoming competent
in.

As with every ‘technique’ it is something that
needs to be mastered and integrated.  In practice
I rarely use isolated techniques and this includes
therapeutic inquiry.  Everything blends together
and is significant.

From the first phone call with a new patient to
everything I say to them and everything they say
to me.  It is all significant and part of the
blend of treatment

So that’s it for this issue.

Cheerio for now.

Till the next time.

Your Mate,

John D.

+ What I feel with my hands, am I making it up? – September 05

Mr Dalton.
I feel I am at a crossroads in my craniosacral
training. I have been studying CST for six months.

I have listened carefully to my trainers.
I have read books on CST. I understand the fluid
mechanics of what is happening, in theory.

When I tune into the system I begin to feel things.

Then I begin to wonder am I feeling the rhythm
because I expect to feel it. I wonder if I am
not imagining the whole thing. What I feel with
my hands is so tenuous that I could very well
be making it up.

My trainers say that the feeling will become
clearer with time and practice.

It has been six months now. While I can feel more
than I could at the beginning it is nowhere
as clear as I expected.

I understand that with your experience and in
your position you have a strong vested interest
in ‘believing’ in what you do.

I would appreciate it if you could answer me as
honestly as possible.

Do we make it up?

Regards.

M.S.

Somerset.

>>>MY COMMENTS

Let me tell you right now, it’s not going
to get any easier.. . .

What you are looking for is a kind of certainty.

Where you put your hands on someone’s body and
it lights up like a Christmas tree and you can
see EVERYTHING, every restriction pattern,
every cause.

And the road to health for that person looking
like a well lit highway.

And all this without that awful squirmy feeling
like you are groping around in the dark not really
sure of anything.

I feel for you, but it’s never going to
happen. There is something about this work that
always keeps you at the limit of yourself.

I’ll explain.

When you started to learn six months ago and you
heard about flexion and extension, it probably
all made sense.

Then you put your hands on someone and you tried
to feel it and all you could feel was NOTHING!

And it felt awful.

You trusted your trainers and you persevered.

As time passed you learned new things like feeling
lesion patterns in the sphenoid or some such
and when you tried to feel them, all you could
feel was NOTHING!

And it felt awful.

You looked forward to the day when you wouldn’t
feel that awful feeling.

You didn’t notice two important things.

1) Your palpatory skill was improving and
changing. You were actually feeling more. When
you were struggling to feel whether the sphenoid
had a flexion or extension lesion, you failed to
notice that you were feeling flexion and extension
with relative ease.

2) The awful feeling wasn’t changing. It was the
same awful feeling six month ago that you are
feeling now.

As good as your palpatory skills get,
as good as your diagnostic skills get,
as good as you perceptive skills get,
you will still have that voice in the back of
your head wondering, ‘Am I making this up?’

Outstanding cranio sacral therapists haven’t
eradicated uncertainty, they have mastered it.

It’s not like you get it sorted and never have
to deal with it again. It’s something that goes
on every time you treat someone. It’s one of the
most difficult aspects of cranio sacral work.

I know all this because I went/go through it myself
and I have seen ALL the people I have trained go
through it in one way or another.

Here’s what I suggest: put the question on hold for
another six months. Make a deal with yourself that
for the next six months you are not going to ask
yourself that question. For the next six months
you are just going to take it that what you are
feeling is true. It’s not forever, its just for six
months.

I’m not talking about kidding yourself.
You need to understand what you are trying to do.
You haven’t been conditioned to think in the way
that you’re trying to think when you do cranial work.

Your neuronal pathways are formed in a different way.

Continually asking yourself if you are making it
up won’t allow new neuronal pathways to form.

We are not MRI machines. This is science, but not as we
know it, Jim.

Asking if we are making it up is a question from
another approach.

Because we are not machines we have the capacity
to go far beyond our own expectations and pull miracles
out of the bag. It also means we have the capacity to
have an off day and get it wrong.

To answer your very specific question.

Do we make it up?

Sometimes.

Mostly in the beginning of training.

With experience, 1-2 years minimum, you can begin to
discern when you are making it up? You can spot it
and in time it too becomes another thing to note,
along with the multitude of other things you are
registering as you work.

‘The rhythm is changing, I wonder what that means?

The patient is feeling sadness, I wonder what that
means? Now they are angry, I wonder what that means?
I just made that bit up, I wonder what that means?
Now they are about to release this bit, I wonder what
that means? The sadness is still there. .’ and so on.

Have a good look at what I’ve written. Talk it out with
people who know you and care about you. Cranio sacral
therapy may not be the thing for you. It doesn’t suit
everyone. There are lots of modalities that offer
much more of the certainty you are looking for.

Having said that, I encourage you to persevere.
The rewards far outweigh the difficulties.

And the weird thing is as you become familiar with
and master uncertainty, it permeates your whole life
and it becomes more . . well . . fluid.

<< Back to Basics 1 syllabus

You are in the fruit and veg department of the supermarket. You pull a bag from the roll provided. You are talking to your friend as you try to open the bag. You rub the end of the bag between your thumb and finger. After a couple of attempts you realise that you are trying to open the wrong end of the bag. If you look closely at where you have been trying to open the bag, you will see that your thumb and finger have left an imprint in the bag. You could say there is a pattern of restriction in the bag. If you smoothed out the imprint as best you could, you would still not be able to get the fine creases out of the plastic.

This is similar to the way restriction patterns are formed. The body undergoes a trauma of some kind. Let us say a car accident. The impact of the steering wheel on the body puts a large pattern of trauma in the body. Broken bones, lacerations etc. The body can release much of the pattern of restriction but it may not be able to release the entire pattern (the fine creases in the plastic). The residual pattern of restriction is what causes the symptoms that the person comes to you for help with.

You might wonder why these patterns of restriction are not detected and treated with expensive machinery, like MRI machines. Also how could such small residual patterns of restriction be so devastating?

To get an idea of what goes on in the body think of fascia as being like 20 layers of glad wrap one on top of another with a thin layer of fluid between each layer. When your body is functioning normally each layer glides over the next. If you poked your finger into the middle of those layers the imprint left by your finger would totally compromise the glad wrap’s ability to move one layer over the other. Take the above small analogy and multiply it by 1,000 and you will begin to get an idea of the effect patterns of restriction can have in the body. The machines are good but they are not looking for widespread minute restrictions.

Patterns of restriction are often wide spread but like anything that is creased, some parts are more creased than others. They are called focal points, trauma focuses or energy cysts.

Patterns of trauma are usually complex because the body moves as it is impacted. So in the example above the person would not have a steering wheel shaped pattern of restriction imprinted in the area of their body where they struck the steering wheel. The pattern of restriction will include the way their body moved as it was thrown around in the accident.

If you have ever seen crash simulations using dummies you will know that they move around a lot during the impact.

Also to be considered is the depth the pattern is imprinted in the body.

You have a large bowl of jelly and a ball bearing. You hold the ball bearing 5cms above the surface of the jelly and let it fall. It hardly breaks the surface of the jelly. You retrieve the ball bearing and drop it into the jelly from a height of 1 meter. The ball bearing has now embedded itself into the jelly to quite a depth.

With patterns of restriction the greater the force of the trauma the deeper into the body it is imprinted.

EMOTIONS
Emotional trauma also lodges in the body and can cause restrictions equal in severity to patterns of restriction formed in a purely physical way.

You are six years old. You are walking past a building site. A brick falls off the scaffold and hits you on the shoulder breaking your clavicle. 40 years later you have frozen shoulder.

You are six years old. Your father is angrily telling you that you are stupid. As he does this he taps you on the shoulder with his finger to make the point. 40 years later you have frozen shoulder.

The memory of these events may not be in the conscious mind, but stored in the cells of our bodies. In the course of a Cranio Sacral session these memories can spring into the conscious mind as patterns of restriction are releasing.

TISSUE MEMORY
If you find the notion of ‘Tissue Memory’ difficult to accept, think of it this way; videotape is made of plastic with iron filings stuck on its surface. There is nothing too amazing about that, yet when the videotape is played through the VCR and we watch the film, we laugh and cry and become emotionally engaged. The cells in our bodies are a lot more complex than videotape. They store an incredible amount of information and perform a mind boggling number of tasks every second, it is very plausible that they can also store individual memory.

TRAUMA RELEASE
Patterns of restriction release when the body returns to the position it was in when the trauma was imprinted. For example if a person’s frozen shoulder was caused years before by their arm being violently. Then the pattern of restriction resulting from that trauma will release when the arm is in the exact position it was in when the trauma occurred, in this case bent backwards.

When the body returns to the exact position that the trauma occurred in, a spontaneous release occurs.

It would be practically impossible for the therapist to find the exact body position a particular trauma occurred in based on the person’s memory and external guesswork. Luckily for us we don’t need to work it out because the body remembers. The cranio sacral therapist tunes into the body and allows it to move. With skillful following the body will lead the therapist to the point where the trauma occurred.

The cranio sacral therapist uses the body’s memory of the trauma and follows it knowing that with timely and appropriate assistance it will release it’s own restrictions.

We will go into patterns of restriction in great depth as your training progresses. For now, knowledge of patterns of restriction will give an appreciation of what you have at your fingertips as you practice.

<< Back to Basics 1 syllabus