I love the way that our work deepens and expands with experience.... I’ve found myself over the last few months holding the awareness of a client’s “optimal template of health and wellbeing” whilst in a craniosacral session. I feel that there is a great template that holds all the potency and potential of the client; then life happens and their system gets shunted onto a different template, a false template that is out of kilter with our essence and causes dis-ease. Our job as therapists is to allow enough freedom and space for the original template (blueprint) to be re-membered, in body, in mind and in spirit. It is also often our job to free up some resources for the journey back... Katherine Ukleja & Cherionna Menzam-Sills had a much more eloquent way of addressing this at the recent Breath of Life conference: the forces that guide our formation as embryos are still available to us in our work. They used the phrase ‘our embryonic being’ which really resonated with me personally. It makes me think of the therapeutic power of a seed kernel; all the nutrients needed for growth stored there, a storehouse of vigour and vitality. As the old adage goes “from little acorns do mighty oaks grow.” I believe that we all have the ability to come back to this force of life, no matter what we have been through. I believe this with every cell of my body. I find it very comforting to know that nothing is ever lost: the blueprint is still there for us to access. Life forever throws curve balls, we get hurt, fall flat on our faces, react from wounded places, get ill, depressed, despondent, face traumatic events, lose our centre... the list is endless. Yet, somewhere underneath all of this... is our embryonic being template where time and events have not had an impact, where there is complete wholeness, potential and potency. So how can we shift from our current template back to this place? Sometimes all that is needed is for someone to hold the bridge for you to return; sometimes we need to discharge stuck energy from our body that holds us in the current template – I get the image of fluidity coming into our energetic and body structures, allowing movement, surrender and flow. And with restrictions released, that river of life would automatically be drawn to the Source, that deep well within us that holds our most optimum template of health and wellbeing. May we hold that image in our Hearts as we travel the difficult times. May we find the transformation that our bodies yearn for and may we remember, remember, remember. This blog of ten insights is inspired by the amazing Dr Gabor Mate who I had the privilege of hearing at the recent Breath of Life conference in London this May. #1 We need to look at the whole picture Gabor talked much about the interconnectedness of all things, and how, to understand anything, we need to always look at the whole picture. This is especially true in the realm of mental health. The human essence is basically and primitively an ensemble of human emotions (this statement brings some amusing images to mind!). A great film to watch that depicts this is ‘Inside Out’. #2 The Self is not static We think we can define Self... however the Self changes dependent on the situation/settings we find ourselves in – thus the Self is part of a larger context. It is not separate. What this points to is the multi-dimensional aspects of illness: social, psychological, biological etc. So can cancer be viewed not as a disease of the individual – but a reflection of our society? This is a very interesting question... #3 Developmental trauma happens even when bad things don’t It is possible to suffer from developmental trauma when something is withheld during childhood (love for instance) and not just when bad things happen (the more obvious abuse situations. The impact of the obvious abuse and the impact of the biological loss are indistinguishable in their affects. #4 Attachment is our most powerful biological drive Humans are creatures of attachment; it is our most powerful biological drive – even more than life itself to some extent (just look at how a mother my give her own life to save her childs). Without attachments we just do not live... #5 Diagnosis is just a description, not an explanation One thing that stood out for me is the ridiculousness of diagnosis. It does not explain things; it just describes it! A great way of summing up how displaced we are from the interconnectedness of health and wellbeing, how we look for quick fixes. Most physical illnesses originate in adaptations to early stress where a short term stress can lead to a long term trait. We can see this is certain patterns of multi generation issues. #6 Mental health starts in the womb The development of our brain architecture begins before birth and continues into adulthood... .thus pregnancy impacts on future mental health. The most important environmental factor is the quality of parental attunement: it literally shapes the child’s brain. Being emotionally and consistently available is the biggest gift a parent can give to a child. #7 Women as emotional stress absorbers Women traditionally have the role in a household of the emotional stress absorber for the family. In this modern age women find themselves still performing this role whilst at the same time having an economical role to play. This really resonated with me and explains much of the stress I see in my clients. #8 Children take it all personally When a mother is unhappy a child can only take that personally (it is the narcissistic time of life after all). Our brains cannot make sense of an attachment void. Core beliefs are formed during the early years; there are many adults with the unconscious core belief of not being wanted. #9 The move to a peer-oriented society In the animal kingdom we see how the young imprint and the drive for this. It is no different in the human realm. What is different however is that we are moving away from living in communal tribal groups and are now much more in a peer-oriented society. We do not yet know the impact long term of this upon future generations. Gabor argued that the compulsive use of digital media is all about attachment. Another sobering thought. #10 Building resilience But how do we build resilience? The presence of an empathic witness builds resilience. The roots of resilience are to be found in being understood by another. And there is always hope..there is the capacity for rewiring (neuroplasticity) – provided we provide the right conditions. As Andrew Taylor Still said: "Anyone can find disease- to find health should be the object of the doctor". This was a plea to move beyond the analytic and embrace the holistic paradigm. But why? Well, the more we resonate with the part, the less aware we are of the whole and vice versa. So if we concentrate on the injured or diseased part in a patient, we lose its relationship to the bigger picture. And if we just look at the bigger picture, we are not aware of the injured part. So the challenge to us as practitioners is how do we hold the part and the whole at the same time? How can we find the health rather than merely attempting to confront dis-ease? Yet the holographic principle states that to access the part is to access the whole...hmm an interesting conundrum indeed! So maybe the first challenge to us as practitioners is how do we enter the relational space to become holistic? Maintaining awareness of the three tides at the same time (the ripples on the surface, the deeper water and the ocean floor is a great analogy) would be a good starting point. And the second challenge then becomes - how do we come into contact (touch)? Touch is incredibly powerful – it is our bio-electric searching tool, more powerful than any machine! Touch carries charge even if it’s just projected touch (say touching the cranium and intending touch to the sacrum). Touch is fundamental to the human experience. It is the first of the senses to develop in the human infant, and it remains perhaps the most emotionally central throughout our lives. Research has shown that less than one second of safe, interpersonal touch, such as a hand to the back or the shoulder can influence health and behaviour in remarkable ways. The questions we ask the body through touch are like sonar, we are listening to an incredible amount of information, as we become the fulcrum for our clients. And this fulcrum is loaded with intelligence. In fact the complex matrix of health is profound and unfathomable. It is the quest for health that keeps us alive and steeped in mystery...... This blog is inspired by a lecture by Robert Lever at the Breath of Life Conference 2017, author of 'Finding the Health'. I recently attended an excellent lecture by Dr Rollin McCraty of the Heart Math Institute, where he talked about the importance of self-regulation. I share some of my insights here... I guess the best place to start is to answer the question of what is self-regulation? Behaviourally, self-regulation is the ability to act in your long-term best interest, consistent with your deepest values. Emotionally, self-regulation is the ability to calm yourself down when you're upset and the ability to cheer yourself up when you're down. The fact that sticks out for me is this: failures of self-regulation are central to the vast majority of health and social problems. Because self-regulation is how we deal with stressors it lays down the foundation for all other activity. Learning self-regulation requires self-awareness, emotional intelligence, efficient filtering of sensory stimulation, coping effectively with stress, relating well to others, and sustaining focus. Ideally we’d learn this naturally in childhood simply from being around self-regulating adults, from playing and exercising, being in nature, eating well and getting plenty of sleep. Unfortunately that is often not the case and we only have to look around at our society to see the impact of dys-regulation, both on children and on adults. We have repeating patterns that are being passed down generation to generation.... Consistent self-regulation requires focus on your deepest values rather than feelings. Did you know that the heart sends more information to the brain that the brain sends to the heart? This means that our emotions affect our physiology (our body) much more than our thoughts. In fact, it is where we most waste energy. And our Hearts are amazing, with a storehouse of intelligence... a fact that completely inspired me from the lecture was finding out that a future event that is emotionally relevant will be known by the heart before the event takes place (the heart produces a measurable neural signal which has been scientifically tested). This shows that the Heart has access to a field of information that is not limited by boundaries of time and space! When we are self-regulated and coherent, our magnetic field is coherent, and our heart’s magnetic field acts as a carrier wave, impacting all those we come into contact with. Now there’s a powerful image for sure. Our nervous systems can detect these magnetic fields better than any technology currently known to man. Awesome! Somewhere, our hearts, physics, and the Earth’s electromagnetic field all connect—and their intersection is both incredible and intuitive. One of the primary resonant frequencies of the Earth’s field-line resonances is 0.1 Hz—and that is exactly the same frequency as the human heart rhythm when we’re in a heart-coherent state. So 0.1Hz is the human resonant frequency—the frequency at which spirit, heart, mind, emotions, and body are in resonant alignment with the planet. Yes, the earth Herself. So in a nutshell, the more heart coherent we are, the greater the resonant energetic connection we have with people, within ourselves, and with all of nature. What a powerful force humanity would be in this coherence.... But the most important thing I want to get across is no matter who you are, where you come from, where you are going or why you are here, at an individual level you can make a huge difference. You are not small and insignificant. Simply learning to self-regulate will feed into the larger Earth field environment. Becoming responsible for our own thoughts, emotions, and actions (and not blaming others) will feed into the larger Earth field environment. Being kind, compassionate and more appreciative feeds into the larger Earth field environment. These steps are available to anyone; and along with the health benefits, will go a long way towards social harmony and heart coherence for all. |
May you walk in Beauty
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Copyright of Ri Ferrier 2024
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