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.

August 06 -2006.  Brisbane.

As adults we are no longer physically held in the way we were as children.

Full body release is a technique that holds us like a baby.

A team of cranio sacral therapists tune into a patient and literally pick them up as they provide complete support for their system.

When provided with intentioned gravity-free support, our bodies begin to release deep, full body patterns.

Wonderful and beautiful as it is, this is a technique that is used infrequently in practice as the logistics involved are prohibitive.

A minimum of six cranio sacral therapists are required to make up a team. When each therapist has a busy practice this is not easily organised.

I use full body release as a post graduate workshop because it is an excellent tool for helping cranio sacral therapists gain a deeper sense of whole body patterns. They can take this knowledge back to their practice where it informs their one to one patient work.

Each participant at the workshop takes a turn leading a team and being a patient.

At the beginning of the process the ‘patient’ is surrounded by the therapeutic team.

The team leader begins to tune into the patient’s cranio sacral system and calls in the other therapists as they are needed.

As the patient’s system begins to release and unwind it stretches out. The team follow this and give support as the patient becomes airborne.

My role in the process is to monitor the patient and team and offer assistance where needed.

The patient’s body goes through and intricate ballet of movement that the therapeutic team must keep up and follow accurately, holding as the patient’s system releases.

Like a big piece of cellophane that has been scrunched up for years, once given the right support, it begins to unravel.

There is continual communication between the lead therapist and the patient.

The process feels timeless but eventually draws to a natural close and the patient returns to the ground.

Their system is settled by the lead therapist and the team takes a well earned rest. We then go through a debriefing process where we assess the effectivenes of the team.

What sketching is to artists, full body release is to cranio sacral therapists. It gives them a chance to deepen their palpatory skill and get a broader sense of full body patterns. When they return to their practices and are once again working alone with their patients, the benefits of the full body release seminar are evident.

The main feedback I get about this seminar from the therapists is how much more they can feel in their patient’s body.

+ 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.

<< Back to Basics 1 syllabus

HOW ARE RESTRICTIONS RELEASED?

We use two approaches
✬ Indirect technique
✬ Direct technique

It is through a combination of indirect and direct technique that restrictions can be assisted to release.

INDIRECT TECHNIQUE

Indirect technique requires the skill of being able to follow the body to the point of restriction.

FOLLOWING
Following the Body is a skill that takes a lot of practice to get proficient at. Without getting too flowery about it, it’s a bit like singing along to a song. It requires you to keep in time and in tune so that your singing harmonises with the music. The combination of the music and your singing produces something more than the individual components.

If you put your body in a flotation tank it will generally start to move because when your body has a gravity free environment it begins to unravel.

Like a piece of cellophane that has been you crinkled up in your hands. When you let it go it begins to unravel.

Following the body means providing this gravity free environment in which the body begins to move. The skill comes in following the dance.

Indirect technique is a process of Unlatching.

You are at a door that is locked. There is a key in the lock but when you try to turn it the key is stuck. You lean your weight against the door, pushing it even further closed knowing this will give the barrel of the lock the space it needs to turn.
While pushing the door in, you try the key again and it turns freely.
You release the door and it springs open.

Indirect technique works in a similar way. It is one of the gems of the cranio sacral approach. It takes the view that substantial permanent release can be achieved by following the body into the pattern of restriction.

If one of my vertebrae has been displaced to the left by a trauma, a whole pattern will have been established around the vertebrae that will keep it displaced to the left.

No amount of pushing to the right is going to keep the vertebrae in line permanently. If that approach is taken the vertebrae will keep ‘popping out’ and will need to be ‘put back in’ with increasing regularity.

A permanent release and subsequent realignment can be achieved by following the vertebrae into the pattern of restriction, that is to the left. At the point of the trauma the restriction will release and the vertebrae will return to alignment naturally.

Indirect technique, going with the restriction pattern.

DIRECT TECHNIQUE

Direct technique is used when indirect technique fails to achieve a release. The restriction pattern has been felt and the therapist knows the structure needs to release in a certain direction. Direct technique is moving in that direction against the restriction.

Direct technique works because of another gem of the cranio sacral approach; a little pressure over a long period of time can move mountains.

You have just made a peanut butter sandwich. You suddenly decide you want to put jam in your sandwich too. If you pull the pieces of bread apart too quickly you will tear them. But if you apply a small amount of pressure and wait, the two pieces of bread will come apart in time.

You are in a lake. In front of you is a huge yacht. You have to move it 200m from one jetty to another. You run at the boat and push it with all your strength. (Not easy when you are waist deep in water holding a peanut butter sandwich.) The boat hardly moves. Luckily you are a trained cranio sacral therapist and you apply direct technique. You place your index finger against the boat, applying a small amount of pressure and you wait. In time you will see that this huge boat has moved and if you continue you will cover the 200m in no time.

Direct technique, going against the restriction pattern.

<< Back to Basics 1 syllabus

<< 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