Student and Therapist Newsletter Archive
   - Therapeutic Conversation - Dialouge - Inquiry.

+ Do I use somato emotional release? - June 07

+ Talking during treatment. - January 07

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 and one asking about its lesser known culinary equivalent, Tomato
emotional release.
   What-ev-er!

So I will combine your answer with the others. I don't use somato emotional release perse. 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.
   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, 'How do you feel?' and 'Are you afraid?' 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.

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 had most difficulty becoming competent in. I devoted a whole trimester of the diploma I used to teach to this technique.

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 from 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.

Top

***Question***

Dear John,
Thank you for your newsletters they are wonderful. 
Here is my question.
I would like to get some of my patients more involved in their process when we are working together but I don't want to do a full somato-emotional release type thing with them. 
Do you have any suggestions for an intermediary type approach I could do?
Thanks again.
PR.
California.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Okey dokey.  Here's something you can do.
   Once the person is on the table and you are settling in and chit chatting and generally entraining with them. 
   No, not entertaining them, I said ENTRAINING with them.
Now take that clown suit off and lets get back to the session.
   Tell the person that you are going to do something a bit different this week.  Keep your tone light.
   Take up a contact that allows you a good sense of the whole cranio sacral system.  Ask the person to close their eyes and begin to see themselves
shrinking on the inside until they are small enough to walk around, inside the structures of their body. 
   Whenever you are talking with a patient choose your words carefully.  I used the word 'see' on purpose.   'I want you to see yourself shrinking
on the inside until you are small enough to be able to walk around inside the structure of your body.'
   Don't say visualise or imagine as I have found these words can short circuit the process before it even gets started. 
   Why?
   Well, because some people are convinced they have no imagination and others have tried visualisation before and are, 'just no good at
it.'
   Start off with a relatively restriction free area.  Ask the person to describe what it looks like.  Get them to describe the area in as much detail as possible.  Encourage them to tell you what they see, even though they may be inhibited by their lack of anatomical knowledge. 
   They can shrink themselves to whatever size they need to be to pass between structures or see something in detail.  Ask them if everything looks
okay in the area.  If it is, move on to another
area, one where you sense a restriction, though you don't need to tell them you think it is restricted.
   If they tell you that everything is NOT okay in an area, ask them to describe what it is that looks unnatural.  Encourage them to be as specific
as possible.  You may need to move your hands closer to the area they are describing.
  Ask them what needs to happen for the area to return to a more natural state.
   Wait for their answer.
   If they are having difficulty seeing a way to correct the situation you can suggest solutions to them using the symbols they have communicated to
you. Make full use of their size in the area.
   They can climb in between bones and push them apart.  They can pull and push things with their hands in very specific ways. You can suggest little tools that may help them, but avoid frightening tools like hammers and saws etc.
   You can suggest light beam machines to warm cold areas.  Ice guns for cold.  Muscle oil aerosol cans for tight or stiff muscles and so on.
   All the time you will be monitoring and following the changes they are making on the inside with your hands.
   This is generally an enjoyable technique for you and the person.  It seldom has a huge emotional aspect and is particularly good with patients who are very out of touch with their feelings. 
   Most people don't find it threatening and are amused by what they find in their bodies. They can be surprised at the clarity of the images they see. This is because the following of your hands enables the person to see more clearly the restriction in their bodies.
   This technique is a very useful way to involve the person and use their attention as an extension of yours, to check things out and correct them
from the inside.
   As you get more experience with it you will get a sense of who this technique is appropriate for. 

It is a good introduction for other forms of therapeutic conversation which you may intend to use in future treatment sessions with the person.

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