Student and Therapist Newsletter Archive
   - Assessment

+ Follow my hands or go deeper? - February 06

***QUESTION***

Hi John,

I feel very cut off from my original CranioSacral "training site" on the other side of the world and your Qs and As give me the continued input and inspiration I so need.

I have learned two different styles of CranioSacral (scientific and spiritual) and I have a mentor who is a Cranial Osteopath, who gives me another kind of input. With all the CranioSacral work over the last few years I have learned to and do trust my intuition, as I find it is right 95 % of the time. I am now at a crossroads wether to trust and go with the intuition or to suppress it and possibly find something even more effective behind it.

An example: I work with a human client. I have a plan for what parts I need to check on this person. Unless something tells me to start elsewhere I start with checking the head and the cranial bones to get an idea of what's going on.

Pretty soon my hands start doing their own thing, not of my design. I go with it. This is what I feel as my intuition. Very often my hands find the places which resonate with the client. But my intuitive hands are not always as soft as I have learned they should be in CranioSacral work.

I'm not pushing my hands into the clients tissue, it is as if they are drawn in by themselves to a specific place. After a while the fingers or hands begin to move back and forth and around and around, this way and that. Sometimes there's a still point and the movement comes back, or it is finished after the first round. My hand or fingers get pushed out again.

Now, to me this fits an unwind process, but I don't know any other CranioSacral Therapist who works this way. It happens a lot when I work on somebody (humans, horses...) Here in your newsletter I have read that you work much more still now than you did some years ago. I have asked my other sources of CranioSacral input and they have come back with different answers. Some say go with your intuition and let your hands go where the need to go and do what they do.

The Cranial Osteopath says to suppress it and stay still to get to a deeper level. I would really like to have your opinion on how to interpret what is happening and what to do about it.

Eva
Central Coast

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for the feedback Eva. It means a lot to me.

With regard to your question I've got to say right off the bat that I'm not going to be able to give you the answer you're looking for. There's only one way I know of to give you that answer.

I'll explain. .

I can tell only so much, based on a written description of what you are doing. It sounds okay and the feedback you have received from your colleges sounds right. Sometimes letting your hands go for it is the way to go. Sometimes you've got to try and feel deeper.

Let's say you sent me a video of yourself working. There would be only so much I could tell you from observation. I could tell you that your hands looked like they were in the right position and they looked like they were moving right but that would be about it.

The only way I know that I can give you REAL feedback is if I tune into your patient while you are working. Then I can give you VERY accurate feedback.

Sound a bit extreme?

After quite a bit of trial and error I discovered it was the best way to do practical assessments when I had students. They would come to see me, with a willing volunteer. They would then go through various techniques while I monitored what was happening in their patient.

Time and again the students would have a good knowledge of the theory and their hands would be in the right place but it was only when I tuned into their patient's system was I able to give them really useful feed back about what they were doing.

Feedback like. . .
'You were doing great, then you went past the point and started to push. Their system stopped but you kept going.' Or '8 of those fingers are perfect. But that one is too heavy and that one is too light.' or 'Your shoulders are too tight, it's making your arms tense and shaky.' or 'You're looking too hard, let it come to you.' or 'You've got your intention in this area, which is great, now include this bit and this bit.'
You get the idea.

If you want to arrange to come for a feedback/reflection session like this for yourself, let me know.

Now hang on while I get my soap box out. This is the sort of assessment and feedback EVERYONE learning cranio sacral should get about EVERY technique they learn.

I understand only too well how time consuming this type of assessment is for the assessor. Never the less, if every school adopted this type of full competency assessment and stopped taking the short term, adjunct, quick cash view, cranio sacral therapy would take a massive leap forward around the world in terms of competence and notoriety.

Having said all that I can suggest this to you to be going on with. You may find it helpful to think of a person's system as being like a river with the water flowing at different speeds at different depths. Fast at the top then getting slower as you go deeper.

Depending on where you put your attention you will feel a different speed and quality. Add to that the different turbulences, eddies, counter currents at the different levels and the way they interact with each other and you will begin to get a sense of the broad spectrum of complexity you are dealing with.

Rather than make a choice between following the more surface stuff and going deeper, I suggest you work on encompassing both. Both are part of a greater whole and so are connected. Work towards finding their connected-ness.

When you are working you will be focused on a particular depth and speed, wherever the problem is, but while you are doing that you can still include everything around it. Above and below.

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