May 11 – 2009

Questions and comments for this issue:

+ Follow on comments about tinnitus
+ Will the Open Source Cranio training
materials be enough or do I need a school?
+ Is entrainment the same as hypnosis?

Hello,

You’ve wondered ‘What the bleep?’ You’ve discovered
‘The Secret.’   Well now get ready for ‘The Living Matrix.’
From what I have seen of the trailer it looks like a
combination of these two movies but focusing on health,
medicine and wellness.

I haven’t seen the full movie myself so let me know if
you have and what you thought of it.

And speaking of epic cinema check out my first
video podcast on YouTube and let me know what you think.

I have had such interest in my DVD Masterclass
series that I am exploring the possibility of making
it available online. Once you have a broadband
internet connection you will be able to watch them
online. This will make it much cheaper to see them
also.

Now, on with the mailbag.

***FOLLOW ON COMMENT FROM JUDAH LYONS ABOUT TINNITUS***

In answer to the question, ‘Have you had any
success with tinnitus?’ he answers. . .

Yes, somewhat successfully, but most clients in this
day and age don’t give me sufficient time to deal with it!

***FOLLOW ON COMMENT FROM SANDRA FEIST ABOUT TINNITUS***

Hi John

Re Tinnitus.

I have treated tinnitus where there have been great
results and other times, some brief relief. I also
always consider diet and suplementation, so here goes:
1. I agree with tight membranes impacting on the
bones and causing tinnitus.
2. Releasing the TMJ can ease tinnitus.
3. A clenched jaw impacts on the TMJ and then as
per point 2.
4. Kidney challenges also seem to affect tinnitus
and this fits with Chinese medicine of the
kidneys and ears being linked. I feel the
liver also plays a role.
5. Omega-3 essential fatty acids in high doses
can help enormously. I had a client whose
tinnitus eased at 3 Omega-3 a day and disappeared
at 6. I wondered what this was all about – could
there have been some arthritis or did the Omega-3
oils halp the membranes, brain etc.
6. Anti-malaria medication can cause tinnitus.

Warm regards
Sandy

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for that Sandy. All useful perspectives
on tinnitus.  I didn’t know that about anti-malaria meds.

***FOLLOW ON COMMENT FROM ESTELLE SAWYER ABOUT TINNITUS***

Hi John
I read life on man a few years ago found it to be
scary and imagined that I could feel all kinds of
creatures crawling on me for a couple of days.

On a serious note I love to meditate at night
before falling off to sleep and I do believe it
to be a great advantage to me while doing Cranio.
I have not treated tinnitus before but have
treated a lady who had gone to her GP because
she felt off balance all the time. She came
to me for Cranio, while I was holding into
her temporals I could actually feel that her
ears were off balance. The one ear was higher
and more posterior than the other and the ears
were truly trying to balance themselves out.

Just held in until there was complete calmness.

Loved hearing from you

Estelle Sawyer
South Africa

***QUESTION***

Dear John,
If I follow your materials and find myself
a mentor whom I see regularly, could I get the same
training as with a school on the Sunshine Coast which
is adverstising five day workshops nine times over two
years?
Kate Pascoe
Australia

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Hello Kate,
Probably the best person to answer this question
is your mentor. They would need to look over the
training materials provided here, which are as yet
very limited, and the school you mention and then
advise you as to what they think is the best option
for you considering the kind of cranio sacral
therapist you want to become.

If you particularly want to get a qualification
from the school you mention, you could approach
them and find out what their recognition of prior
learning criteria and costs are.

***QUESTION***

Dear John

Recently, a client expressed surprise about how quickly
his body fell into a deep state of relaxation after just
a few minutes of CST. He wondered whether I had hypnotised
him. I had never related hypnosis to CST before, but this
connection made sense. As I am not experienced with
hypnosis. I didn’t feel like I could comment on similarities
or differences between hypnosis and what occurs during a
CST session. I wasn’t sure how to answer him. Since then
I have thought about entrainment and how this may relate
to hypnosis. Can you shed any light on this subject?

Happy Easter and best wishes

Cathryn Nitschke
South Australia

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Hello Cathryn,
There is an aspect to the way John Upledger teaches
somato emotional release that is similar to hypnosis.
Specifically the part where the person has no recollection
of the session.

This kind of approach has never been my cup of tea.
Some restrictions release without there ever being a word
said. Other restrictions need to come through the person’s
consciousness.

I have had some people get off the table and tell me
they had no recollection of what happened even though we
spent much of the time talking. It happens rarely and any
releases achieved usually don’t hold.

I came to realise that if a person’s system is
indicating to me that a particular release needs to
come through their consciousness then that is what
needs to happen. Not a partial journey through the
consciousness that is forgotten as soon as
the session is over.

On reflection I came to see that this had to do with
the person needing to integrate whatever was revealed
to their consciousness in the release and they couldn’t
do that if it remained unconscious.

So, for me, there is no link with hypnosis and
entrainment or cranio sacral therapy and hypnosis
for that matter.

Entrainment is the melding of you and your
patient’s systems. Your cranio sacral rhythms become
synchronised. When you still point, they do and visa
versa. The depth you can achieve within yourself helps
them achieve greater depth.

Entrainment is deeply relaxing to a person’s system
because among other things you are listening to their
system in a way that it is unused to and it finds it
very soothing.

The other thing that came to mind from your letter
is that in the course of entraining you may be
inadvertently causing still points. This will make him
feel very relaxed. I say inadvertently because it
isn’t a good idea to actively induce still while
you are entraining.

The reason being that an induced still point causes
changes in the person’s system. When you are entraining
you are trying to get a sense of how the person’s system
is normally. So inducing a still point kind of defeats
the purpose.

And finally the fact that he mentioned the whole
hypnosis thing and put it to you that way would incline
me to think that he had something he wanted to release
but was anxious about what might be uncovered and was
looking for a safe way to do that. Just a thought.

So that’s it for this issue.

Till the next time.

Your Mate,

John D.

There’s a lot more to cranio sacral practice than vault holds and energy cysts.  The reality of helping people who are sick and in pain can be very challenging and confronting.  Cranio sacral therapy can be lonely isolated work with a big space to have your confidence dwindle.

Do any of the following sound familiar?

• In your practice do you sometimes wonder, ‘Did I really feel that or am I making it up?’
• Do you feel you can really leave your “stuff” outside your treatment room?
• Even though you know, “No one can heal anyone else.” do you still feel responsible?
• Do you have trouble with the, “Well, what’s wrong with me?” question?
• Do you have people who come for one treatment then never come back?
• Do you feel you could be getting better results in your practice?

If you answered “YES!” to any of these questions, don’t worry you’re NOT alone. In fact, that list of questions was created from years of personal experience in my own practice and from working with other cranio sacral therapists and students.

This Masterclass DVD series covers all these questions and a lot more.  There are 7 DVD’s with more than 9 hours of viewing.

Review

Here’s what Lisa Gillespie a veteran craniosacral therapist (16yrs+) has to say about the Masterclass DVD series.

Here is what is covered in the DVD set.

Disc One Contents

• Introduction from Al Pelowski, principal of The South African Institute of Cranial Studies.
• Overview of the Masterclass and intentions.
• The story of my life through the prism of how it resourced me for cranial work.
• Rain Makers – “They don’t make the rain come; they allow it or, more exactly, their inner atmosphere of allowing and affirming what is, creates a climate in which what needs to be happens.”
• Introduction to Reframing; a concept developed out of Neuro Linguistic Programming that helps unlock rigid perspectives, release our creative energies and allow us to be more fluid and responsive.
• Applying Reframing to the uncertainty of craniosacral work.
• How to get out of the way and allow the body to get on with what it needs to do.
• Reframing responsibility in a treatment session.
• How acknowledging that everybody is as sensitive as everyone else helps increase your connection.
• How to recognise the level of connection between you and the person you are working with and avoid doing harm.

Disc One Trailer

Disc Two Contents

• Symptoms; how to let them present themselves to you rather than chasing around looking for them.
• Staying neutral; how to avoid getting pulled into the drama and remain compassionately present.
• How treating people teaches you all you need to know.
• Refining our understanding of palpation.
• An introduction to the energetic blueprint that underpins our bodies.
• How your own blueprint works, what it feels like and where it comes from.
• Vacuum Intention; a way of inverting your intention to create the best environment for a body to find equilibrium in.
• Feedback and question from the participants on a vacuum intention exercise.
• Not Doing, the power of it, and how to go about it.

Disc Two Trailer

Disc Three Contents

• Working With Children; how to avoid the common mistakes.
• Dealing with defenses, why it isn’t personal and the importance of setting the frame of your relationship.
• Using a mental whiteboard to help remain fluid throughout the course of treatment.
• Being scanned; recognising when it’s happening and how to work with it.
• Assessing the appropriateness of what you say in a treatment.
• The metaphysical contract between you and the people you treat, and why sticking to it is so important.
• Being overwhelmed and how to deal with it.
• Symbology of the Body; a simple system for using the location of symptoms to help you discern the significance of why the person has the symptom in the first place.
• Examples of body symbology in practice and some exercises to illustrate it.
• Primary lesions, what they are and how to work with them.

Disc Four Contents

• Questions from the participants on the material covered so far.
• Exploring how people get better?
• Analyzing the patterns of recovery and how a dip in the recovery progress can give insight into the underlying causes of an illness.
• Deconstructing reality to help improve effectiveness.
• Alternative models for inner and outer space.
• Treatment application for deconstructed reality.
• Introduction of a sensation exercise to help expand and explore inner space, and change your internal shape as needed.
• Feedback and questions from the participants on the sensation exercise.
• Exploring structures in the body from the perspective of deconstructed reality.
• Working with people with autistic spectrum disorders or schizophrenia.

Disc Five Contents

• Being more effective when working with children with autistic spectrum disorders by not trying so hard.
• Frequency of treatment? How often? For how long? and when to stop?
• Anatomical Doodles; a way of simplifying complex anatomy so it stays in your head.
• More in-depth exploration of primary lesions and the importance of the correct focus.
• Core Lesions; what are they and how to work with them.
• Questions from the participants about core lesions.
• Treatment program length as it relates to core lesions.
• Working with people with Tinnitus and Ménière’s disease.
• Life And Death; how seeing the bigger picture helps alleviate the fear associated with it.
• Working with people with terminal illness introduced.

Disc Six Contents

• Questions from the participants about working with people with terminal illness.
• An exercise for expanding your palpatory field.
• Full Body Palpation, how to see more by doing less and where past lives and other “psychic phenomena” fit in the progress towards wellness.
• Symbology of the body continued with feedback and questions from the participants.
• Anatomical Doodles for more complicated structures.
• Centering yourself to bring it all together and why, “good intentions,” are not enough.
• Working with people with Trigeminal Neuralgia and an example of an extreme case from my practice.

Disc Seven Contents

• More in depth exploration of the energetic blueprint that underpins our bodies.
• A practical application of stillness with an exercise for working with the blueprint.
• Feedback from the participants on working with the blueprint exercise.
• How the blueprint relates to working with people with down syndrome and also people with autistic spectrum disorders.
• An explanation for auras from the perspective of the blueprint.
• A comparison between the workings of the blueprint and tissue memory.
• Working with life stories and trying to see the biggest picture possible.
• Tension Myositis Syndrome, what it is, what it isn’t, and how to work with it.

As well as all the above I talk a lot about my own practice throughout the Masterclass and give numerous examples of how the material covered is applied in real situations.  I also answer question from the participants on all aspects of cranio sacral practice.

Cost $169.50USD including priority shipping. (3-5 Days within the US, 6-12 Days outside the US)

Get your copy of the Masterclass DVD series now and bring your practice to the next level.

Note: By clicking the ‘Buy Now’ button below you acknowledge that these DVD’s contain some strong language.