Linda White’s treatments have been so helpful in my healing, allowing my body and mind to relax and often adjusting my joints in the process. Here is Linda’s story:

My husband Joe died of a chronic illness on a Monday and later that week I went to see my massage therapist who was taking Biodynamic Craniosacral training. When she put her hands on my ankles, she said that I felt like someone who’d just had major surgery. This was my first inkling of the potential of this work: to be able to place hands gently on a body and attune to their system seemed amazing to me.

In my grieving state, this modality was a good fit for me. The touch felt more caring and healing to me than massage yet resolved the aches and tensions I was experiencing. Rather than counselling, I didn’t have to find words for the bewildering and disorienting condition I was in. Intuitively, I knew that relying on my thinking alone wasn’t going to help me as much as coming from my body, my somatic system.

With skepticism about my own ability to tune into someone’s system, I began the first week of training in 2011. I decided to continue after the first week because I could actually feel something in the bodies of the other students! And I was ready for a new career after over 30 years in social work and later management in the family violence area. I missed the joy of working face-to-face with clients.

I continued to be awed by the effects of the work. I learned how disconnected I was from my own body. My cranio therapist said session after session that my legs felt like sticks, that there was no sense of energy or fluid movement there. “Could I feel the soles of my feet?” she’d ask. Over time, I gained my legs back! I learned that connection to my legs represented being able to move forward, “having my feet under me” so to speak.

Why Craniosacral Therapy?

In my experience, many clients come to cranio living in their heads, or they may be aware of parts of the body and other parts feel absent. Disconnection is a protective mechanism that helps us endure physically and emotionally difficult situations. Frozen with trauma, one’s legs and feet are often the first to disappear as mine did.

These are reasons clients give me for coming to cranio sessions:

• I’m exhausted and not rested when I wake up in the morning
• I feel pressure in my head – I was in a car accident years ago where I hit my
  head
• I have had vertigo that comes and goes over the last 5 months
• I’ve been operating in crisis mode, lots of stress over the last few years, I’m
  looking for calm and rejuvenation
• I’m in pain – I’ve tried physio, osteo, naturopath and an energy healer – I think
  it might be related to my relationship
• I’m going to counselling and I want cranio to support release in my body
• I’m feeling good compared to previously – I want preventative help as I transition back to work
• I’m carrying trauma from past relationships – I want to heal
• I’ve been setting myself aside, putting kids needs first: this is doing something for myself
• I want a reset – I’ve slipped into fight-flight mode
• I want to be more grounded and listen to my intuition
• I want to heal my heart (emotionally)

How does Craniosacral Therapy work?

I believe that every unresolved injury – physical, emotional, even spiritual – gets nested somewhere in the body and eventually leads to pain or illness. The body carries the memory of these injuries despite having no conscious recollection of them.

I’ve been learning more about the prenatal and perinatal time of a baby, which includes from conception through the first year. The initial blueprint for the body that manifests at conception can carry imprints from injuries from that time on.

In my case, my mother was highly anxious during the pregnancy and in my infancy, and that set up my nervous system to approach the world with those hormones (e.g. adrenaline, cortisol) and emotions (fear). To be in a cranio session, and feel myself settling, coming into stillness, was initially a most unfamiliar and amazing experience. I’ve learned practices to achieve this state on my own now. In the course of my many cranio sessions my body has had the chance to feel the beauty of this calm and to reorganize and heal itself. I still love to go to a cranio therapist once a
month and be supported in that deep stillness.

Craniosacral work doesn’t “fix” anything. In sessions, Craniosacral therapists tune into the body, listen with their hands, and note places of health and tension. Through a gentle calm touch on an area that feels disturbed, the body summons additional resources to reorganize itself. Just as the body wants to heal a cut on a finger and knows how to do it, it also knows how to heal the injuries that are stored from past experiences. I have come to trust the inherent intelligence and health of a client’s body that that wants its original blueprint to emerge. I help set up the conditions for this to happen. Safety is the primary consideration.

What happens in a Craniosacral session?

Cranio is safe and gentle for everyone including babies, pregnancy, children, and frail adults. In contrast to massage, in Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy the hands do not knead or jiggle the tissues, they remain still. A client generally lies fully clothed on a massage table.

Sessions generally last an hour or can be 90 minutes for a deeper experience. Number and spacing of sessions depends on the client’s needs, budget and availability. The work is cumulative, in that familiarity with the therapist and the modality, a client is more able to relax and let go into the experience of a calm and settled nervous system where the healing occurs at a deeper level.

Does craniosacral Therapy release trauma?

A word about trauma. In my view, trauma occurs when we go through an experience that is overwhelming without adequate supports. Accidents, falls, surgery, deaths/losses, birth issues, abuse – these can be traumas. They don’t necessarily cause trauma if you have internal and external resources to help you through them at the time they occur.

When an experience hasn’t been acknowledged, resolved and cleared, tension patterns appear in response to physical, emotional or spiritual injuries. Our tissues can contain unresolved experiences in a holding pattern – sometimes for years – without symptoms. When the body can no longer compensate – symptoms beset us.

As examples:

• after surgeries where tissues have been cut, scar tissue has formed that has less flexibility, causing tissues that connect with it to be strained
• in an emotionally painful relationship without safety a body can become accustomed to being tense, on high alert
• spiritually, someone may believe that God/life has treated them unfairly and a chronic illness may develop

Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy effectively and gently releases the tensions, constrictions, emotions, pain and energy that is showing up as symptoms. When the holding pattern shifts, symptoms discontinue.

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is a way of releasing the old patterns that are no longer needed, allowing the body to calm itself, for a sense of wholeness and wellness.

I invite you to try it out and experience the benefits for yourself! Contact me today to book a session. I work out of Healing Tree Wellness at 390 Northmount Drive NW, Calgary.

Click here to book a session with Linda online.

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