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Student and Therapist Newsletter Archive + What does a shudder in the cranio sacral rhythm mean? - July 07 + How do I increase my palpatory skill? - September 07 + Palpation broken down into Symmetry, Amplitude and Quality. - November 06 + Sensing the locus of a restriction. - June 06 + Follow my hands or go deeper? - February 06 + How do I feel the rhythm better? - January 06 + What I feel with my hands, am I making it up? - September 05 Hi John, I've just started treating
a two and a half year old girl (caesarian birth) for chronic ear infections.
While assessing her cranially I picked >>>MY COMMENTS: Hello Harold, To quote Sammy Davis Junior, 'The cranio sacral
rhythm is like the great rhythm of life.' That's not an exact quote
obviously, I've shortened it a bit because Sammy had a habit of waffling
on about flexion and extension and the reciprocal nature of the system
at the drop of a hat. The cranio sacral rhythm is present in all the people we treat and the more you go into it the more you begin to pick up the subtle differences in expression of this rhythm between one person and the next. This shudder that you describe is one of those differences. It is an expression of how this girls system interacted with her birth and her life to date. The great thing is that you can feel it. Remember when feeling extension was hard? Let me illustrate. Let's say that you and I are sitting in the ballroom of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in 1966 and we are waiting for the Sammy Davis Junior show to begin. You haven't done too well at the gaming tables and I am feeling sorry for you. The fact that all the showgirls are hitting on me is not helping your mood either, but I digress. I try to change the mood by talking about Sammy's music. I say how much I like the song, 'The rhythm of life.' and particularly how the use of the hi-hat causes anticipation in the verses and build up the chorus. You don't know what a hi-hat is so I explain that it is part of the drum kit and consists of 2 cymbals. The lower cymbal remains stationary while the upper cymbal can be lifted up and down via a foot pedal. You're not really getting it and I'm getting a bit
tired of you ruining the party . . . and this always happens with you
. . . and what did I invite you for anyway . . . Luckily Sammy takes the
stage and conveniently launches into a I point out the hi-hat to you. You see it and you
can hear what it sounds like. Great. After the first chorus the booming
sound reduces to the The cranio sacral rhythm is like the hi-hat and the shudder is like the effect it has in the song. Now don't get the idea that there is only one abnormality to the rhythm, 'the shudder'. There are millions of variations. Right about now I expect you are saying, 'Well that's all great John and thanks for the trip to Vages but what does the shudder MEAN?' I could give you a mechanical semi-enclosed-hydraulic-system
kind of answer including cross currents etc. but I don't think it will
help you Here is the useful thing to know. . . The very thing that allowed you to feel this shudder will also allow you to know what it means. It won't stop with the shudder. Next time you are treating this little girl and you feel the shudder, allow yourself to feel what it means in the context of her whole system system. I would pay close attention to how the shudder is
expressed in her neck and here's why. . . The Eustachian tube is an unusual shape. In cross section it's not circular like a pipe but is more of an elongated circle shape like a lozenge or capsule. As the tube travels up the neck it twists. The twist acts as a valve to keep foreign bodies from travelling up the tube into the middle ear. If there are restrictions in the neck it will have the effect of inhibiting the tube and so drainage will be compromised. Drainage may be very important if the child has had repeated antibiotics as they kill all the bacteria in the middle ear and leave a kind of sludge. It is difficult enough for the body to drain this sludge, a restriction inhibiting the Eustachian tube will make it even harder. Dear John, >>>MY COMMENTS: No worries Pete and thanks for the feedback. The majority of people you treat will have had at least one traumatic medical experience. The memory of that trauma is locked in their body. The person may be your best friend or lover but once
they lie down their body will become cautious, running a dialogue something
along the It's not like the person is going to jump off the table and run away, but they will be defensive. Don't take it personally. From the time you opened the door of your treatment room, the patient's body has been checking you out to see if you are safe. That scanning process continues throughout treatment. The patient's body will test you to see if you are there to 'DO' something or to be available to assist it in what it is trying to do. When you contact a patient's body it is good to hold the following intention in your communication to the their body. What are you trying to do? As you know, the contact of the hands on the body in cranio sacral therapy is exceptionally light, often described as a Butterfly Touch. Like the touch of a butterfly alighting upon the body. A butterfly is not a moth. A moth has an agitated almost frantic quality. In trying to get the Butterfly touch happening it is easy to develop the touch of the moth which is as bad as a heavy touch. Now lets break up what you are feeling when you tune in. Think of it like this. As you listen to a piece of music, many different dimensions of the music are conveyed to you. Volume, stereo balance, tempo, mood etc. Describing the music in words won't duplicate the music; it will merely be words following an experience. Tuning in to a person's cranio sacral system is like listening to music, something is conveyed in the contact with their body. In refining your cranio sacral palpation it's necessary to identify each aspect of what you're feeling with your hands. This serves the purpose of highlighting aspects of the communication that you may not have noticed. Sounds hard. Why bother? Why not just go with the feeling? Well, the more you can interpret the cranio sacral rhythm the more you will get a sense of the whole Cranio Sacral System and where the restrictions are. It also helps you note subtle changes in the patient's body. It also helps you communicate your palpation to other Cranio Sacral therapists. One way to help refine cranio sacral palpation is to divide it into three aspects; Symmetry, Amplitude and Quality. SYMMETRY AMPLITUDE Amplitude can indicate the location of a restriction in localised areas. If the general amplitude in the body is strong yet very weak in one leg, palpation of that leg will reveal a point at which the amplitude will change from weak to strong. This can indicate the site of restriction. Amplitude also includes how the power and speed of
the rhythm relate to each other. A very slow rhythm in the whole body
can indicate a weak QUALITY Usually a cranio sacral system will have a combination of attributes. For example it may be like a dense, liquid softness. How poetic. Start waxing lyrical because your job is then to refine
these attributes making them as specific as possible. A way of doing this
is to relate the The answer to the question 'Like what?' can
take many forms. Keep refining the quality until it is as specific
as possible. Using the same example your conversation with yourself should
go something like, This may seem pedantic but it's important to be this specific so that you will be able to sense the beginning of a release. This may be signalled by something as subtle as a feeling that the condensed milk is becoming more viscous as it then transforms into fresh milk. GENERAL QUALITY AND LOCAL QUALITY In a strong solid system, one leg may feel weak and fragile. This inconsistency highlights a possible restriction. The difference between general and local quality can take the form of a general quality of, for example wood and a local quality in the neck of metal. This communicates a disharmony to you. APPROPRIATNESS Telling your patient that their brain feels like a fungus covered soft cheese is not going to go down well. Trust me. Symmetry, amplitude and quality inter-relate to give you a comprehensive sense of the cranio sacral system under your hands. ***QUESTION*** My palpatory/assessment skills still have a "way to go". I usually feel I am "in the dark" about what is going on with the client in the bigger sense - I get "reflected" adjustments say at soles from something happening in the cranium but I don't know what it is, but mostly its a little local info. I get, and at the end I get the client's feedback and try to match up what went on. In bio-dynamic approach terms, I generally can create 'the space' for the mid-tide and the long-tide to be present while the client is busy healing themselves. So, I'm looking to see if there is someway to get better
at the above. Kind Regards, >>>MY COMMENTS: Thanks for the feedback. Think of it this way, if you wanted to become a virtuoso
violin player how long would it take? As you might know, I used to work in animation years ago. I worked with lots of animators. These people were technically brilliant at drawing. With one pencil stroke they could convey a multitude. It was well known among animators that to become good at drawing you needed to do a certain number of bad drawings. For most people it is around 10,000. That's right, to get good at drawing, you need to make 10,000 bad drawings. Which leaves you with one of those, 'glass half full / glass half empty,' sort of deals. As you finish your 5,000th bad drawing you could say 'I'm not very good at this I think I'll quit.' Or you could say, '5,000 done and only 5,000 to go.' Because with each bad drawing you knew you were getting closer to becoming excellent at drawing. And yes, you've guessed it, it's the same with cranio sacral therapy. It takes 2 years of consistent practice, [That's a minimum of 6 people a week.] with good guidance and full assessment as you go, to become competent in cranio sacral therapy. And then it takes the rest of your life to perfect it. That is of course, unless you succumb to N.T.I. What's that? Natural Therapist Insecurity. That's where natural therapists get distracted trying to master other modalities to add more strings to their bow to pull in more punters. Like there's a shortage of sick people or something. So keep at it. You will get the level of excellence you want. ***QUESTION*** In assessing a patient, how
do YOU sense the locus of a restriction? Looking forward to your reply >>>MY COMMENTS: Rather than sensing the locus of a restriction, I let the locus of the restriction sense me. I know that sounds like dialogue from a bad Kung Fu movie but it's true. Here's how it works. In the beginning you learn your palpatory skill through the 'listening posts' or something like them. At that stage it's a bit like being in a dark room and holding a flash light an inch away from the person's body. You can only feel what is directly under your hands. As your skill grows it's like the flash light gets further away from the body and more is illuminated. You can feel more than what is just under your hands. You also start to remember what the last hand position felt like and eventually begin to join them up. After quite a bit of practice you can feel about half
the person's body from one position. So from the ankles you can feel up
as far as the Eventually you're able to feel the whole person's body from one point of contact. Once that happens your capacity for band-with increases. By band-with I mean the breath of information you can receive. All the above is a description of the process of developing your palpatory skill. This process goes hand in hand with your ability to get a sense of where the root cause of the problem is. It is a parallel, but different, process. And that's where I get all Zen again. Developing your palpatory skill is something that requires a certain amount of activity on your part, particularly in the beginning. Whereas getting a sense of what the root cause of the problem is requires you to be the opposite - very receptive with no inner movement. Getting a sense of what the root of the problem is requires a lot of trust on lots of levels. You are trusting that the person has come to you because
they want to get better. You are trusting that the person has seen something
in you That's a lot of trust and it usually doesn't come overnight, it takes time. Being able to get a sense of what the root cause of the problem is is fifty percent of good cranio sacral work. The other fifty percent is being able to assist whatever is wrong, to sort itself out. By then end of your training you should be competent in the latter. However, getting a sense of what the root cause is, takes a lot longer. It continues to improve over time, lots of time coupled with lots of experience. When I used to teach people from scratch I would tell them on the first day of their training that it would take them 2 years to become competent in the techniques and theory of cranio sacral therapy and the rest of their lives to perfect it. I read this story about Carl Jung that bears out what I'm saying. During a lecture, he was told a dream and asked to interpret it. He correctly interpreted the dream as indicating that the patient had a swelling of their fourth ventricle. A young student asked him how he arrived at his conclusion.
Mr Jung replied that it had taken him his whole working life to arrive
at that When I first read that I thought he was a bit of a grumpy old geezer. Now I understand what he meant. Some things don't come quickly with fries and a shake but only with time. 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. >>>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. . . 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. ***QUESTION*** >>>MY COMMENTS: It sounds like you are doing pretty good already. What you’re looking for is mastery of palpation. Here’s how you go about that. With palpation it’s easy to confuse looking with seeing. ? I’ll explain. You’re at a party, you enter a room filled with people you’ve never seen before. You take in the crowd. It’s a pleasant experience noticing all the different people, interactions, shapes, sizes, stories. In the far corner you notice two men in a flirtations conversation with a woman. As you observe the interaction your attention is drawn to the woman. Slowly it starts to dawn on you that the woman is maybe not a woman after all but a man dressed as a woman. Rewind a bit. Just before you enter the room I run up to you and tell you there is a cross-dresser in the room and it’s urgent that you find them. The fate of the world depends on it. If they catch you looking for them they will hide so you have to do it surreptitiously. Oh yeah, and you only have 5 minutes to find them. Dramatic enough? Let’s say you believed me. You’d enter the room and franticly look from person to person. Your gaze would be very focused. Rather than standing quietly, you would move through the room searching. Looking, looking. In the first instance you would have seen the woman/man, whereas in the second instance you would have been looking for her/him. When you put your hands on a patient are you looking or seeing? Seeing is passive, it requires you to be receptive and open. Looking is active, directed, focused and you could miss something. Most of the people you will see for treatment are in pain of one kind or another. Because of this is it is easy to feel like it is up to you to find what is wrong with them. It feels like the stakes are very high. You’re obviously a caring person or you wouldn’t be drawn to this kind of work. In many ways mastering palpation is a process of making your caring more efficient. Wanting to help the person can make you start looking for the root of the problem instead of being available to see it. One way to avoid this is to work the trust issue through. Some part of the person picked you out and identified you as the one who could help them. Some part of the person brought them to see you, brought them in the door. And it’s the same part that will show you what it needs help with. In an ironic way, typical of cranio sacral work, the more you relax into that trust, which is another way of saying the more you let go of wanting to be better at palpation, the better you get at palpation. I know. Try not to damage too much of the furniture. It will sound more helpful in a couple of minutes. Mr Dalton. My trainers say that the feeling will become clearer
with time and practice. It has been six months now. While I can feel more
I understand that with your experience and in your
position you have a strong vested interest in 'believing' in what you
do. >>>MY COMMENTS Let me tell you right now, it's not going to get
any easier.. . . |
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