Aïkido-shihoo_nage “Aïkido-shihoo nage” by My father – Ygonaar. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A%C3%AFkido-shihoo_nage.jpg#/media/File:A%C3%AFkido-shihoo_nage.jpg

Dorothy Mead is an incredibly talented BCST practitioner along with being a black belt in Aikido, a Doctorate of Clinical Psychology.The following is a paper she wrote at the end of our training. This work eloquently states parallels between Aikido, Psychology and Spirituality. It is worth the time it takes to read. Enjoy!!!

Dr. Dorothy Mead has a BCST practice in Mineral Point, Wisconsin

To an observer, it may appear that nothing is going on in a BCST session, especially if the therapist prefers to work in silence (as I do). The same criticism is often applied to much of psychotherapy, especially psychoanalysis. In BCST, the therapist is merely touching the client; in psychotherapy (unless it is highly structured behavioral therapy), the therapist is merely talking (or not) with the client. How can these things be helping, or changing, anything? For decades upon decades psychoanalysts argued that the proof is in the case study—look at the patients, listen to what they have to say about how their lives have improved. Surely that was enough. But not in this day and age. BCST is in a similar situation. Sumner and Haines put it bluntly and unapologetically in their text Cranial Intelligence (2010), stating, “Subjective, experiential knowing is the rigour of biodynamic craniosacral therapy” (p. 119), going on to note there is very limited research into cranial work as a whole—not to mention the biodynamic approach to that work—as recently as 2010.

Perhaps this is due to the technology of science being still too crude to measure the subtleties of attunement of one human being to another (i.e. empathy), or the effects that follow certain kinds of resonance (i.e. insight). But that is definitely changing—witness the burgeoning field of neuropsychoanalytic research. I feel certain those in the field of BCST who are interested will find their way to such research (and other neuroscience, embryology, physics, whatever, research) and may become interested in doing studies themselves, building on those findings, looking more closely into the efficacy of treatment and what the necessary elements are to bring about positive results. A body of quality research does have the advantage of legitimizing what we do, but I myself am content with the case study model. I have read literally thousands of pages of research and need no further convincing from them of the power of evenly suspended attention (i.e. presence), unconditional positive regard (i.e. impartial love), insight, or empathy, to effect positive change. I also find these typically psychological terms to be at the core of BCST practice, albeit with different emphasis and/or expression than in the field of psychology. In BCST these pass between myself and the person on the table in silence, through my hands in a more direct communication with the Breath of Life, as it was termed by Dr. William Garner Sutherland. That intrigues me.

I was told that Carl Jung once pointed out how long it could take before a patient stopped lying to him. This had nothing to do with intention (although, conceivably it could at times). No, it had more to do with a combination of developing trust, overcoming fear, and the client not actually being able to articulate what lay behind his or her suffering. Arguably, BCST therapists must also establish trust within the therapeutic relationship, but the body does not lie. It cannot. That also intrigues me.
If you have not lived through something, it is not true.
Kabir, Hindu saint and mystic poet

What follows are personal experiences that are directly related to the truth of what I have learned about the fundamentals of BCST—experiences many of which long pre-date any inkling I had that such a thing as BCST even existed.

In the late 1970’s, a slender book was recommended to me, The Body Has Its Reasons, by Thérèse Bertherat and Carol Bernstein. It was all about unlocking one’s true potential through the practice of simple physical exercises Bertherat termed “preliminaries”—to invite self-awareness through conscious movement. Two of my colleagues and I read it and were so taken by what she was suggesting, we decided to try her preliminaries together. Mostly my memory of our experiments is a blur, with one exception. We were lying on a Persian carpet, each balancing on a tennis ball beneath our shoulder blades and gently rolling around on them, moving them across and down our backs. My companions were making various sounds of wonder/pain, as was I, until suddenly, from nowhere, I began sobbing deeply. I had a mental image of a large scar crossing the area of my ribs where the ball was. I immediately sat up—to the astonishment of my fellow experimenters. That scar was not on my back; that scar was on my mother’s back. When I was four years old she’d had the lower lobe of her right lung removed in order to save her life. I was carrying that trauma in my own body! No one has ever had to convince me since that moment that there are psychological traumas locked in our flesh, waiting to be released. I’d just never heard them referred to as inertial fulcra until now, nor as fully appreciated their impact on our overall health and sense of well-being.

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In the early 1980’s, I was three days into an intensive Aikido training seminar when I noticed my urine had a pinkish hue in the morning. By noon it was unmistakeably bright red. My kidneys were bleeding. I had no choice but to stay off the mat, going down like a rock, so to speak. The Japanese guest instructor was told of my situation and he sent a message for me to come to his room that evening for a “treatment,” that he would heal me. I gratefully obeyed, not having a clue what to expect. He instructed me to lie on my stomach on his bed and he simply placed his hands on my back in the location of the kidneys. There was no pressure, no massaging, nothing I could detect other than an incredible sense of calm and well-being. His hands remained there for ten minutes or so, after which he told me to get up slowly, drink some water, then go to bed. He assured me the bleeding had stopped and I would be fine in the morning. He was absolutely correct. When he saw me the next day, he merely smiled—no offer of an explanation, no need for me to have one. I knew what I had been through. He may have been intending something through his hands; he may have been “sending” something through his hands. But I have experienced the latter in Qi Gong treatments, and this was not at all the same—it was my first experience of the healing power within an all-embracing stillness. A BCST session almost three decades later was the second.

But this is by no means the only Aikido-related link to BCST. Consider these words of the founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, or O-Sensei (from Aikido, translated by John Stevens):

Budo [Japanese: martial way] is not a means of felling the opponent by force or by lethal weapons. Neither is it intended to lead the world to destruction by arms and other illegitimate means. True Budo calls for bringing the inner energy of the universe in order, protecting the peace of the world, as well as preserving everything in nature in its right form.

Aikido does not rely on weapons or brute force to succeed; instead we put ourselves in tune with the universe, maintain peace in our own realms, nurture life, and prevent death and destruction. The true meaning of the term “samurai”  is one who serves and adheres to the power of love.

Ultimately, you must forget about technique. The further you progress, the fewer teachings there are. The Great Path is really No Path.

This final quote seems particularly applicable to the biodynamic approach to craniosacral therapy. It echoes in all I have been taught about expansiveness, generalized holds, and the fact that touching anywhere on the human body in a biodynamic way connects to the whole of the body.

O-Sensei declared over and over again, that the goal of Aikido is to become one with the Universe. Working towards this, all the teachers I have studied under repeatedly stressed the importance of being aware (an expansive awareness) and always remaining connected to one’s center, core. It is from this state of being that one can respond to any “attack”—in other words, one should strive to be in a state of stillness brimming with potency.

In my more than three decades of training, I have had the great good fortune to train under a few of the most highly ranked and internationally respected Aikido master teachers. From the multitude of experiences with them, there are two in particular that come to mind when I think of this concept of dynamic stillness in biodynamic work. As described by Michael Kern (2005), “It can be felt as a sense of grace and merging with the infinite. It is marked by the kind of silence that can be cut with a knife.” (p. 174)

The first incident occurred about eight years into my Aikido training. An elderly, high ranking Aikido master was visiting from Japan. As is the way in Aikido, he was demonstrating a technique for the class to work on and called on me to be his partner. He stood quietly in front of me and signalled me to attack. I gave it all I could, and the next thing I remember was lying face down on the mat, engulfed in a profound silence—as if when I moved towards him, I had simply fallen into the Void. I had no idea what he had done. Now I would say that he had brought me into the center of his dynamic stillness. Indeed, I clearly remember the silence that could be cut with a knife.

The second incident occurred about five years later. It was in a large gymnasium at a public demonstration in front of perhaps 500 people. Although the crowd was very respectful, there was plenty of background noise. My teacher (a youthful, but again, highly ranked Japanese master) was tossing three of us around as we attacked repeatedly, from all directions. I saw my opportunity, ran in to strike him, and suddenly I was flying through the air—and off the mat. Time slowed. The only sound I heard was a collective gasp from the audience. In an instant, I was back on the mat. Yes, I had landed on the wood floor from a reasonable height, but it was as nothing. No pain, no bruising, no damage. It was then I learned by experience about the love that permeates that dynamic stillness, and its power. I knew I had been protected by it.

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My somewhat considerable exposure to psychoanalytic theory during my doctoral training (including everyone from Freud to Klein to Fairbairn to Bion, Winnicott, Kernberg, Kohut, Bowlby…the list goes on) neatly dovetailed with all I had previously studied about learning theory. In short, complex theorizing aside, all agree that our past shapes our present and potentially our future. The belief that early life experiences, most long forgotten or inaccessible to our immediate awareness, can continue to play a pivotal role in one’s life—for good or ill—is firmly rooted in me not only from client histories, friend’s stories, but also personal experience. Of course, I am hardly alone in this. But the challenge to me as a psychologist or psychotherapist was to sort through the theories (some of which bordered on the truly bizarre) and the techniques (some of which seemed downright sadistic) to find effective ways I could work with a person who came to me for help because they were in distress. Certain basic tenets I had come across over the years became the core of my approach, and in my mind they are equally applicable to the fundamentals of healing set forth in BCST.
Chögyam Trungpa, Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche, scholar and meditation master, delivered a lecture at the Naropa Institute Psychology Symposium in 1978. I came across a version of that lecture in 1983. It may be difficult to appreciate from this distance how extraordinary his words were at the time, but what he was saying to psychotherapists was revolutionary. Editing liberally from the text, this is what stayed with me, “We are in touch with basic health all the time…health is intrinsic. That is, health comes first: sickness is secondary. Health is…” (p. 126). In my mind that translated into a different way to conceptualize the symptoms of what we in the West consider mental illness—to view those symptoms merely as something laid over, masking, this basic health. My job was to be and act in such a way that I could attract, uncover, nourish, the basic health (or sanity, if you will) hidden within every human being, even those who seemed the most “insane.” Or as Dr. Andrew Taylor Still stated (Kern, 2005), “To find health should be the object of the physician. Anyone can find disease.” (p. 155). His repeated directive to his students was to “listen for health as a starting point.” (Sills, 2002, p. xxix) Over the years this approach became quite natural to me, far more so than assessing/diagnosing/writing up treatment plans based on symptoms of illness ever did or could. Pigeon-holing is not for me. It is one reason I was pleased to learn that as biodynamic practitioners of craniosacral therapy we do not diagnose.

But Trungpa also went on to speak at length about being genuine, radiating compassion and wakefulness (or mindfulness in contemporary terms) as the way to speak to the health in another. “It is necessary to work patiently,” he says, “all the time. If you have patience with people, they slowly change…you have to cut your own impatience and learn to love people. That is how to cultivate basic healthiness in others.” (p. 130-131)
As I see it, these ideas Trungpa espoused for psychotherapists and psychologists, challenging to many in the field to this day, are not only embraced, but central to the work of biodynamic craniosacral therapists. Again and again we are reminded to still ourselves to get in touch with our own basic health (through expanding awareness while maintaining connection to the practitioner fulcra) and then, and only then, gently and respectfully place our hands on the person in front of us—only to wait, wait, patiently wait, to connect to the expression of primary respiration in the other, which most definitely is.
Psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion in his Italian seminars of 1977 stated unequivocally, “The most important assistance that a psychoanalyst is likely to get is not from his analyst, or supervisor, or teacher, or the books he can read, but from his patient. The patient—and only the patient—knows what it feels like to be him or her.” (2005, p.3)

Bion’s intent was to encourage analysts to sit with their patients in a state of what analysts refer to as “freely floating attention,” listening for whatever might appear, without any preconceived notions.

To me this is not at all unlike James Jealous’s admonition to the biodynamic therapist to wait and watch, with no expectation. Underpinning both is the belief that what needs to be seen (or heard) for healing to take place will make itself known, in its own time, in an atmosphere of quiet presence.

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In a very early BCST treatment session, I entered a most unusual state. For a long time I had been immersed in Meher Baba’s writings, and one of the most confronting, if not outright bewildering, statements He makes over and over again, is that all we take as reality is merely an illusion. He is not the only Perfect Master to have said this, of course, but He takes great pains with this message, going into lengthy discourses in extraordinary detail. Yet how does one get closer to understanding such a challenging concept? How could it be? How could the indescribable beauty of nature, or the overwhelming exquisiteness of Michelangelo’s work—obviously “physical”—simply be illusionary? In any case, at some level I took it at face value, tried to accept it, tried to comprehend its meaning. So there I was on the table, deeply, deeply relaxed, watching the play of colors and shapes in my mind’s eye, when it came to me and I knew, I knew, that the body did not exist! I was filled with a wonderful feeling of bliss—for a nanosecond—until I clearly experienced my mind grab on to it, take credit for it, and the bliss was gone. But it left a smile in my heart.

So you can imagine my quiet pleasure to come across this quote from osteopath Dr. Viola Frymann in Michael Kern’s Wisdom in the Body (2005):

Man is not the physical body, the emotions, or the mind: these are merely the instruments that enable him to function in the physical, emotional and mental realms… None of these individual aspects…is really you, any more than the clothes you wear. Rather, you are an eternal spirit and these aspects are like the garments you put on to function in a particular area. (p. 222)
Finding these words in a craniosacral textbook had a significant impact on me. A practice based on science, which also closely aligns with my spiritual beliefs, is new and wonderful to me. By and large, I keep this to myself and adapt my discussion about the work to my audience. I usually refer to a balancing of the autonomic nervous system to promote health (for those who are primarily medically-minded) or augmenting the body’s natural healing powers through deep relaxation/facilitated meditation, for those more familiar with the health benefits of mindfulness. Recently I met a Healing Touch practitioner and easily found common ground in the spiritual beliefs underpinning our individual practices. The biodynamic approach to health is a multi-layered phenomenon, and it seems to me, the more one understands these layers, the more effective one can be as a BCST practitioner.

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One final note. My experiences of burn-out as a psychologist were generated by multiple causes, but the most significant source seemed to be an inability to maintain my own sense of health as I sought to promote it in my clients. The recommendations on how to maintain practitioner well-being gleaned from my training, simply were not powerful enough for the challenges presented to me. Perhaps the fatal flaw was an unacknowledged belief that the other person’s health somehow depended upon me—a terrible burden, not to mention an impossibility. But BCST is very clear on that score—healing potential already exists within the person—my effectiveness in facilitating that depends in large part on connecting to the mysterious potency of that health in my own body. As a result, my experience of being a BCST practitioner is astonishingly different than what I experienced as a Clinical Psychologist. I realize it is early days, but so far my experience has been that practicing BCST at the table can be as rewarding (albeit in a different way) as receiving BCST on the table.

Afterword

Paraphrasing Glasser, with the background I have, this is how I see Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. But I must add the qualifier, “at this time.” It has been six months since I began this paper and already much has changed. The process of trying to keep up with that became overwhelming at times when new information, questions and parallels, came to me as I learned more about embryology, anatomy, trauma, BCST principles, and conducted practice sessions. I’ve had to remind myself that this paper, like the course I am about to complete, is merely a representation of the foundation—the jumping off point. It reflects only the beginning of an understanding that I believe will continue to grow with experience and knowledge. And that is an exciting prospect!

References

Bion, W. R. (2005). In F. Bion (Ed.) & P. Slotkin (Trans.), The Italian seminars. London: Karnac.
Kern, M. (2005). Wisdom in the body: The craniosacral approach to essential health. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Sills, F. (2012). Foundations in craniosacral biodynamics: The sentient embryo, tissue intelligence, and trauma resolution (vol. 2). Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Sumner, G., & Haines, S. (2010). Cranial intelligence : A practical guide to biodynamic craniosacral therapy. London: Singing Dragon.
Trungpa, C. (1983). Becoming a full human being. In J. Welwood (Ed.), Awakening the heart: East/West approaches to psychotherapy and the healing relationship (pp. 126-131). Boston: Shambala Books.
Ueshiba, Morihei (1999). J. Stevens (Trans.), Aikido. Retrieved July, 2013, from http://www.fightingmaster.com/masters/ueshiba/quotes.htm