Eight Practices to Get the Most From Biodynamic Healing Sessions
Although the work of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is powerful healing work, most changes rarely arrive with any fanfare announcing their presence. How do you track your own healing?
When you are in a healing session with me, you get 100% of me. I am completely present to you and your intention. I am dedicated to serving you. I trust and support the tide to bring about your inner healing capacity. No matter what, you will benefit from being in a session with me. However, I only see you once per week. What happens during the remaining hours outside of our weekly sessions?
There is only one other person capable of being fully present with you in your healing process….and that person is you. Ask yourself: am I present with myself? Do I serve my intention? Do I trust and support my inner healing capacity? A healing journey is enhanced if you can answer yes to these questions. It can be easy to feel wonderful during a biodynamic healing session, and then neglect your healing intentions until your next session. What can you do to create a more beautiful healing pathway? Here are 8 considerations to make the most of your biodynamic healing journey:
1. Be engaged in your own healing process: A perceptual shift from passive to active. The medical system here in the west traditionally puts the professional in the ultimate authority position (hugely beneficial in many ways). Unfortunately, this model has trained people to be passive observers of their own health, rather than taking an active part in it. This health model also corresponds to an older model of reality that looks at our bodies (and everything in creation) from a mechanical point of view, where everything is separate, and driven by cause and effect. In this model, there is little you can do to participate in your own healing. The healing paradigm in which biodynamic craniosacral therapy sits corresponds to the quantum model of reality. In this model, all phenomena are connected on an energetic level, and are influenced when an observer pays attention to them. The biorhythms that drive biodynamic healing are energetic in nature. Energy is participatory, so when you place your presence and attention on your health and healing, you are influencing it. Therefore, it is vital that you are a conscious participant in your own healing ecosystem. All of the following points sit on top of this perceptual shift, and are methods of being an engaged participant in your health.
2. Assemble your team: in the quantum model of healing, nothing happens in isolation. Every part of your body, mind and spirit make up the multi-faceted being that you are. This extends into every part of your life–and here is where you create your healing ecosystem. Do you need supportive complementary therapies? Who or what can support your intention outside of sessions? A supportive partner, friend or loved one who is your cheerleader, champion, or simple accountability buddy can be a huge support. Implement supportive practices, such as journaling, meditating, or creative endeavors. Ensuring you have layers of support outside of sessions will be a big benefit.
3. Set an intention: this is a powerful part of the process. Your intention helps orient attention– the attention of the tide, of your practitioner, and your own attention within the wide realm of healing possibilities.
4. Filter for health – within and outside of sessions. Human brains are biologically designed to scan for danger, which is a smart and handy survival mechanism. However, referring back to the quantum model of reality, your attention focuses and influences the field within and around you. It’s a default mode to focus on what is negative (and oh so easy to do). It takes a lot of awareness to focus on health, what is going well, what feels good, and to positively influence your body, mind and spirit. Filtering for health is one of the most challenging, beneficial and most misunderstood steps within this healing paradigm. It’s so much more than “toxic positivity”; it’s an ongoing practice in awareness and tending to your mind – just spend 5 minutes paying attention to your inner dialogue to give you a sense of just how much your mind trends towards negativity. Then multiply that by the number of minutes and hours per day you let your thoughts wander…..and will understand how important it is to continuously train your mind.
5. Open to possibility: this is an energetic and emotional shift. Doing so welcomes curiosity, which is a necessary ingredient for change, and requires letting go of past narratives around diagnosis, disease, and your identity in it. Most likely, you don’t want to go back to an old version of yourself anyway. Ask yourself: who do I need to be for that to happen? What habits and patterns have I been engaging in that need changing in order to support my healing intention? Cultivating self-awareness and honesty is key to understanding ways you may have been holding back from the new possibilities that are available to you.
6. Riding the waves: Especially in the realm of energy, the journey is non-linear. Allow for ebbs and flows within the process. One week you may feel great, like you are “making progress”, then the very next week you may feel like “what in the heck? I thought I had already dealt with this!” This is especially true for women, with the cyclical nature of our hormones (and that goes double for women in perimenopause, when our hormones that normally regulate those cycles become unpredictable). Healing is a spiral, not a straight line. One of the greatest markers of health is the psychological trait of resilience. Spiritual practitioners use the term equanimity. Essentially, cultivating the ability to be with all of the ups and downs of life and to remain present within all of it and with yourself is a very potent marker of health.
7. Connecting the dots: Notice moments between sessions where your intention is being met. Are you able to meet life’s challenges differently than you have in the past? Are you having insights that allow you to think about things in a new way? Are you feeling more vibrant, energized, calm, or joyful? If your intention was to feel more connected to yourself, for example: notice specific moments throughout your day when you feel the connection. Start noticing and cultivating a collection of moments that are indicators that something is changing. This creates a thread of continuity that you can follow along your healing path.
8. Do your homework: Similar to connecting the dots, creating moments between sessions where you are tuning into your intention– whether it is a new meditation practice, active imagination/visualization, journaling or creating art in support of your intention. (This is where your healing team can help keep you dedicated to your practices!) Taking a small, daily action has both a biological and energetic effect: you are creating new neural pathways in your brain, and you are signaling to the universe your commitment to change.
If all of this sounds like a lot, well, it can be, depending on your approach. Life is so busy that oftentimes the only way to feel we can get through it is to add things to your list and check them off, much as you would a grocery list. This transactional approach isn’t very practical or transformational. My approach? What if you could make your healing a devotional practice? This turns my healing into an ongoing and unfolding way of being, rather than an item to mindlessly check off. Every time I remember that part of the human journey involves taking care of the one person who will be with me for the entirety of the trip (myself!), it becomes a whole lot easier to keep up with the supportive and nurturing practices that make me feel connected– to myself and the world around me. And that’s really what is at the heart of biodynamic craniosacral therapy: reconnecting to your true essence. I once heard this quote, and it stuck with me: “Handle yourself as if you were sent here to take good care of that person.” See if it resonates with you. I hope these practices give you some helpful ways of handling yourself with good care.
