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Turn Your Wounds Into Tools

Turn Your Wounds Into Tools

Margaret is interviewed by Sarah Kirton of Mystic Mag Read the full interview and check out Mystic Mag and more of Sarah’s interviews here: Here’s just a taste: How can we prevent imbalances within the central nervous system? This is a really important question because 

How Pain Remembers, Teaches and Transforms

How Pain Remembers, Teaches and Transforms

As a therapist, I find that it is not unusual for people to hold a grudge against their pain. By the time people come to see me for Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy or Somatic Experiencing they are tired of their pain. Whether it is physical or 

THE MARRIAGE OF TWO MODALITIES: BIODYNAMIC CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY AND SOMATIC EXPERIENCING

THE MARRIAGE OF TWO MODALITIES: BIODYNAMIC CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY AND SOMATIC EXPERIENCING

 

 

Two of the primary tools I use in the pursuit of a deepening sense of aliveness and well-being within myself and others are Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST) and Somatic Experiencing (SE). I have carried both these tools in my pocket for over twenty years. I found them because I was searching for resolution to my own debilitating trauma. I’d gotten to the point where I didn’t care anymore about what happened to cause my suffering as I did about finding a route to living with more ease and joy.

These two modalities are happily married for me, walking hand in hand and enhancing each other’s strengths. Like any good marriage, BCST and SE seek ongoing connection and autonomy.  They have in common the intention and ability to effectively support the regulation of the autonomic nervous system, a system in the body that is said to be responsible for 80% of disorders. Somatic Experiencing does this by supporting people to track sensation in their bodies primarily using refined and effective verbal skills. Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy does this by tracking fluids and making contact in a way that meets the memory being held in tissues, fluids or bones so that it can be seen and reminded of its full range of capacity. Both modalities help clients to recognize the depth and breadth of their memories and contact the places within them that have isolated themselves.  SE teaches me verbal skills that BCST cannot; and BCST teaches me touch skills that SE cannot. The goal and gift of both lies in their ability to respond to what the person needs in the moment. Both support the cultivation of presence and the ability to respond to the moment more than the past. As a couple, these two rarely fight, though sometimes they step on each other’s toes and can easily take turns outshining the other. The verbal skills that an SE practitioner develops are more visible and often more immediately impactful than the softer subtler experience of BCST. The language of sensation that SE practitioners speak fluently can take years to master, as can the palpation and perceptual skills of experienced BCST practitioners.

Both also support the resolution of trauma and can reach places in the nervous system that literally freeze when something traumatic happens. Both can recognize and amplify the response that wanted to happen and can create the conditions for its completion and thus a new relationship to both the event then and to life now. Trauma has a kind of immortality. It can live on for generations unbeknownst to its descendants – and losses can reverberate through generations with equal weight, becoming the suffering of great grandchildren or the pain that gets left in the pocket of the only coat your great grandfather brought to the new world. Unresolved memories can curl in tissues, rest in bones and gather in fluids. And always within these memories is the memory of something more original, more in alignment with our innate natural capacity, more in tune with a cellular knowing of health and aliveness. We can learn to attune to this aliveness in our clients and ourselves, creating the conditions for it to amplify and facilitate healing in the present.

I have made my life work about aliveness, both a human and beyond human aliveness, the internal and immortal presence of life unfolding. The truth that life is immutable, that individuals, groups or even species can die, but life goes on and always will. Life is not about endings but the endless beginning of new possibilities. What does it mean to make relationship with the life forces that are always there? How do we approach the life force within ourselves or another? Have you ever considered that the forces that made you originally are still alive within you today? These are the questions I ask my students and myself regularly. And yet I too forgot them. I too am challenged in this fast-paced Western world to see life unfolding – not just movement but aliveness, not just breath but the Breath of Life as Osteopaths and others have been known to call the subtle rhythmic motions which are always occurring within and around us. The pace of these rhythms is immensely slow and sacred, and while not recognized or valued by the modern western world, they are ones which our bodies inherently know.

 

In these times, it is so important to find effective ways to turn our collective and individual wounds into tools. Now is the time to jump up with our wounds stinging and start singing anyway.  Let’s write songs for the pain and poignancy of it all, ballads for the beauty of life and death. Let’s turn around and look down the paths we have traveled, culturally and individually, see the value in our attempts and find the courage and passion to keep on going.  We must dig under the distractions of the modern world and the avoidance of our own pain to unearth and reclaim what is and has always been alive within us. We must dig down to the roots of our own knowing, to the wisdom that we carry within us. I faced death early and somehow survived. I know the strength of persistence of life. I know that even when we feel “stuck” that our life force is still moving within us. Whether we do change quietly or dramatically it is inevitable. Time is not only linear or sequential. It can spiral and twist into knots, in can catapult us in an instant to a moment decades ago. Our bodies don’t forget and they each know exactly what is needed. They can awaken now to ancient instinctual memory and find a way to respond to situations our ancestors could never have imagined.

My focus as a teacher is on Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy as I teach certification trainings in this modality. But the marriage goes on. Somatic Experiencing and all its teachings and tools hold profound relevance and influence in my teaching and work. I am beginning my own process of celebrating this marriage in my own course – Neurodynamics: https://www.schoolofinnerhealth.org/courses/five-day-neurodynamics/ that I have developed and teach at the school of Inner Health. Neurodynamics is one of many steps on my path to bring the gifts I have received from this marriage into the world. If you are interested in learning these tools, come take one of our courses. We teach students how to develop embodied biodynamic skills of presence and relationship with the aim of cultivating both effective practitioners of bodywork and effective people in the world. We envision a world where all life is valued and where aliveness can flourish and where people can find and live and be who they naturally inherently are and have always been.

 

By Margaret Rosenau

 

 

 

 

 

Contact

Contact

Neutral contact is rare in our world. Most of us experienced contact that had too much need, desire or demand in it from our parents or caregivers. In today’s fast paced world we all too often forgo time with our friends and loved ones to 

Do one thing. Every day. For Her.

Do one thing. Every day. For Her.

How do we not live in denial of the huge challenges our planet faces and still find the courage to act with love and alacrity? How do we find and take actions that are manageable and possible?  If we are not trying to fix can 

Do you often — too often —  feel uncertain or second guess yourself?

Do you often — too often — feel uncertain or second guess yourself?

When something is right, we know it. When something is wrong we know that too. Uncertainty is a normal experience, but when it becomes a way of life it is not an easy life to live. Attachment theorists talk about ambivalent attachment styles –living ambivalently can also become a lifestyle. The good news is lifestyles can change. No choice is ever a life sentence unless you make it one. And the best way out of ambivalence is to start making choices.

Ambivalence is created in the vacuum of trying to make right what is wrong. It is often generated by real events in our past where our needs were not met but we had to cope anyway. We did not have or did not perceive any other option. We were too young to know what we needed or to say no or leave. We had committed ourselves already. Right and wrong represent either ends of a spectrum, and ambivalence is a grey area.

Right and wrong represent definite edges and clear boundaries, as do yes and no. It is important to know where our edges are, to have clear access to our yes and no. When someone does not hear or honor our yes or no, our relationship with them is challenged. When we cannot hear or honor our own yes or no, our relationship with ourselves is challenged.

Where our relationship with ourselves is challenged, we find ambivalence. Ambivalence can express in many ways including uncertainty about someone or something or about whether or not to take the next step in one’s life. Being ambivalent keeps us out of contact with ourselves and others in essential ways. When ambivalent we exist in a familiar but unwelcome place where we cannot access or act out own impulses. Without this access we rely on the impulses and motivations of others for direction. When we are relying on others to make choices for us we cannot live an engaged and meaningful life.

When we live ambivalently we can spend an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to feel certain or make something perfect. Our need to be perfect sits atop a history that is rife with imperfections. Our need for certainty is real and valid; our lack of certainty keeps us ambivalent.

Paradoxically, if you are living an ambivalent life, it feels safer not to choose. Choices have consequences, and consequences are imagined as negative. If you want to stop living a life of ambivalence, you only have to make one choice: to stop. You can start stepping towards your convictions by not committing to anything or anyone without a clear yes to do so. There are many ways to find your yes and your no and once you do, your ambivalence will become a tool by which you can tell that you are not clear yet; a guide to find the right path of action rather than an excuse not to act.

If you choose to stop living ambivalently, your life will change. I know this to be true from my own experience. Once I chose to follow a different path, to go towards certainty rather than confusion, to pause when I met my confusion and wait for certainty to arise, I found love, happiness, capacity and meaning beyond anything I could have imagined. Now it is part of my life work to help others with their ambivalence. If you’re looking for the support to change your life, check out the services at my company Courageous Heart Therapies.  I offer sessions in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, Polarity Therapy and Pre and Perinatal Therapy. I seek to facilitate profound and lasting transformation through deep and authentic connection to oneself.

 

Filaments that connect all Matter

Filaments that connect all Matter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25809967

The Perfect Me

The Perfect Me

The Perfect Me   The Perfect me I’ve never met The one I’m always searching for. Found her in my sleep last night She was sitting at the front door. Not sure whether to go out or come in Not sure where she belonged. I’d 

Tools for Holiday Tensions

Tools for Holiday Tensions

It’s three days before Thanksgiving. The rush of holiday preparations and all the mixed feelings and expectations that  come with them are upon us. I had the honor of sitting with two clients today who were preparing to travel to family for Thanksgiving. Both were able to express and then explore their resistance to going. As they did this the tension they were carrying in their bodies noticeably decreased. What emerged in both sessions was how the history of expectations specifically of  undesirable family dynamics repeating themselves add to and create a lot of the stress of this season. We explored the questions of how to be present with what is occurring and stay present with oneself, how to orient to what is important to us, to our own inner rhythm and  not the external expectations both in the culture and in our families about what this time should be. Both people left with a sense of their priorities and intentions for their time with their family. Both felt more connected to themselves,  to the love they feel for their family members and to their capacity to be present. And in a sign that the sessions had succeeded in helping to renegotiate tension, both people were curious about the time they were about to have and no longer had a sense of dread about it.

Resiliency in action

Resiliency in action

http://www.today.com/health/what-do-you-do-double-mastectomy-dance-course-8C11551557