Are you a good or a bad one?

“Our new pastor got sick shortly after coming to our church. He was having migraines and upper respiratory problems. I barely knew him, but I finally got the courage to suggest that CranioSacral Therapy (CST) might help. I was uncertain how he would receive my suggestion. When I broached the topic, he showed some interest and accepted my offer to work on him.

I wanted him to have confidence in me and in CST, so as part of my explanation of the work I told him that it is scriptural, like laying on of hands. I was caught off guard by his response. He looked at me from across his desk and said, “Well, that sounds nice, but is there any empirical data to support its effectiveness?” I had expected a less technical question from a man of faith. Apparently, though, I was able to explain the physiological aspects of CST to his satisfaction, because he agreed to let me work on him.

In the first session I arced to his respiratory diaphragm, which was higher than I had expected in a tall man with a long torso. The first release was rather dramatic. After just a few seconds, he took a deep gasp of air, and I felt his breathing drop from his chest to his abdomen. I also felt a shift in his diaphragm. As it released, it seemed to relax and drop lower in his chest, freeing up his breathing. He commented that he could feel air deeper in his lungs than he had for some time. There was a corresponding softening and opening in the thoracic outlet. His hyoid responded nicely, allowing for opening in the throat and deepening of his voice.

Pastor Dan’s presenting complaint had been persistent migraine headaches. When I monitored the cranial rhythm, I felt a restriction of the flow to the left. Similarly, I found restrictions on the left side of the frontal bone, the sphenoid, the parietals, and the temporal bones. I didn’t know which side was affected by his headaches, so I asked if they were primarily on the left. He was surprised that I was able to identify the affected side. When I did a CV-4 still point, he went very quickly into a deep still point. I was somewhat alarmed by its depth and duration. When the rhythm came back on, he was not only more relaxed, but he noted a total relief from the constant pressure on the left side of his head. He said he hadn’t realized how much tension he had been holding until it was gone

Knowing that he had had a recent root canal, I suggested that he might benefit from some mouth work in his next session. I explained the avenue of expression. Since speaking is an important aspect of his work, and he had already experienced an opening up in his throat, he agreed to give it a try.

Pastor Dan’s next session came sooner than expected. When he was too sick to come to church on Sunday, I called to tell him that I was coming over. He was mildly resistant to the idea but agreed that if it would help him feel better, he’d give it a try.

When I arrived I found that he had been very sick, running a high fever, coughing until his chest ached, and unable to get out of bed. He had been to the doctor, who diagnosed flu with a possible secondary infection in the bronchi. The doctor prescribed antibiotics, which resulted in vomiting and abdominal cramping.

My approach was very basic.A series of still points helped lower the fever. Work to the respiratory diaphragm allowed for deeper and less strained breathing. Gentle traction of the dural tube revealed a restriction in the thoracic area that seemed to correspond to the aching in his chest. And dural tube rock and glide led to a softening and lengthening of the paravertebral and intercostal muscles, resulting in less chest pain.

I finished the session with another still point, then advised his wife that I expected he would sleep more comfortably. She later told me that he had slept soundly for five hours, after which he reported that he was feeling better and was hungry. His illness ran its course in another couple of weeks, leaving him pale, weak, and listless but able to resume his regular schedule.

After he seemed well enough, I once more presented the idea of a session with mouth work. Again he seemed somewhat skeptical but willing to give it a try.

The session went very well. He experienced a widening in the maxillae, a relief of restriction in the left palatine, and improved synchrony of the sphenoid and vomer rhythm. Releasing the zygoma relieved sinus pressure. At the end of the session he told me that he felt like he was breathing in areas previously unavailable to him.

After only three sessions, he reports that he is feeling great, has no more headaches, is breathing much easier, and has a lot more support for his voice when he preaches.

I don’t know if this experience has strengthened Pastor Dan’s faith, but I guess he has become a believer in CranioSacral Therapy.”

Lynne Tupper, MPH,OTR, CST
Houston,Texas
CranioSacral Therapy Practitioner since 1998-

Reprinted with permission by The Upledger Institute Inc.

Great work Lynn! Thx for sharing-

One of my patients recently asked me this great question I wish to answer.

The reality is that as a patient, there is not much difference; they really do not differ much when it comes to the outcome of the therapy. It is either a good session with resolution or the problem persists.

Both models of treatment are part of natural or w/holistic medicine and therefore are both used to preserve health, and are effective to treat illnesses. They both can be defined as methods that restore health by developing and utilizing the body’s natural potential and self-healing abilities.

CST is one of the most cutting-edge forms of medicine from the Western Model, an offshoot of Osteopathy, while Medical Qigong is one of the most ancient forms of natural medicine from the Eastern traditions of medicine.

The two different models of medicine are both natural and the skills of the practitioner are: the intention, the touch or handling, and verbal or non-verbal dialoguing.

Both are based on the integration of the body and Spirit, and require the participant to become calm and in a deep relaxed state.

They differ according to the “body maps” the practitioner is “navigating” while performing the treatment:

The Medical Qigong practitioner navigates via the meridian system, while the CranioSacral practitioner navigates via the neurological system.

The meridian system is a complex arrangement of energetic pathways and gates throughout the body relating to the organs, and works with Qi, the energy of the body. If the Qi is blocked somewhere along the path, the corresponding organ will be challenged, and this can affect the balance of the energetic circuits.

The Western model of CranioSacral therapy includes the brain and spinal cord, the surrounding membranes or meninges, the bones around it, the cranium, the spine, and the sacrum, its motion and flows; it looks at the proper motion of the structure and its function and proper cerebro-spinal flow.

The CST road map indicators are that if one of the bones is out of place, the neurological conductions will be affected and can affect the function, and vice versa. This model considers more the importance of how structure and function are interrelated.

The Eastern model looks at the brain as “bone marrow” and the Western model looks at the brain as the most important part of the person. When working with your body, the trained practitioner will communicate with your body’s energetic system, while the western practitioner will communicate with your neurological system and the facial networks.

Now, does the participant’s entire being care if it is looked at as an energetic being or a neurological being, or would it prefer be looked as a whole?

It is like being bilingual and understanding the communication both in English and in Chinese at the same time without having to translate. The body speaks all these languages and will recognize what language(s) the practitioner is able to speak and properly and will interface with the therapist accordingly. The practitioner will offer skills, but it is the body that will decide if it can trust the validity and the coherence of the process.

The body cannot be fooled, and it will know if the practitioner has valid roadmaps or not, and will respond accordingly.

I believe that all what your body truly cares about is that as a your practitioner,  I am able to facilitate your health process and to be able to locate, identify, address and facilitate the resolution of its dysfunction, not how.

You, as a person, will enjoy the therapeutic relationship much more if you feel that you can trust your practitioner’s skills are acting as your co-pilot. This role will allow you to relax your body and calm your mind even more, therefore allowing your body to move toward self-correction.

From my own training and experience, I found that combining the two roadmaps give a navigation system that is most efficient to meet your body’s many intelligences without being “limited” to only one stream of information.

We are progressively learning to better understand how the body-mind in Spirit complex really works.

Thx Scott Zeigler for the great artwork.

Quite often, the body has compensated. Most of our work is guiding the patient to access the  “inner physician” as JEU (Dr. John E. Upledger, D.O., the founder of CST; Craniosacral Therapy) coined it, which is the part of the body that knows everything about you and your problem. Practicing CST is like being a detective and an engineer at the same time. Our job is to help the person access their own “inner physician”, to facilitate their inner-communications, reestablishing the link while facilitating the inherent healing process.

We always give to our patients the example of Marie Ellen Clark, the Olympic diving champion, who had developed vertigo. She came to the clinic and Dr John Upledger D.O, worked on her and found an issue with her right knee. Obviously quite far away from the symptom she felt around her ear and head where the symptom was experienced. DR. John treated her and the vertigo went away, she went back to diving and won her 2nd Olympic bronze metal at 34 years old.

More recently, one of my patients, I will call her Angie, came to me for a session complaining about severe jaw pains. After listening to her tissues and hooking-up to her inner physician, my hands were guided to her upper cervical area and I found a severe restriction between her atlas and axis, the first and second cervical vertebras.

My hands gently followed the tissues with just a few grams of pressure, she did an “unwinding”, or what we also call  “a regional tissue release” where the body reboots itself or reorganizes itself. Progressively the restriction released and the vertebras came back into place and this took about 20 minutes of progressive gentle and slow motion with a very gentle touch for her body to get back into alignment. It can be so simple. Her jaw pain went away. I did not touch her jaw.

This is quite common; we find that the most important is to pay attention when the body talks to us, it is not going to go away.

If the problem is not dealt with, the body will just compensate and the problem will take roots and get worst because the longer the problem has been lodged into the tissues, the more the body will have to compensate and it will be that much more challenging to identify and get to the root cause of the issue, since the body might have grown deeper roots and mostly both the structure and the function can be compromised.

Receiving regular CST, keeps the communication with the “inner physician” activated and dynamic and allows us to be in tune or aware of our internal healing processes .

This hypersensitivity may be detrimental to the body as a whole, depending on the tissues involved. For example, if the segment that provides nerves to the liver become facilitated, the liver may become hypersensitive. The person who has this problem may be presenting toxicity to the liver,  nausea, depression, headaches, irritability, etc. The symptoms will disappear once the facilitation has been corrected.

A facilitated segment will produce palpable changes in the tissue texture. The muscles along the spine and related fascia will have a “shoddy” feel and the joints in the area will be less mobile. The tissues are usually painful, tender to the touch and irritable. There are also changes in the skin texture, sweat gland activity, and capillary supply to the skin.

Facilitated segments seem to occur at areas of focus for postural stress, sites of trauma, and segments of the spinal cord related to visceral problems. Once it is there, a facilitated segment can continue for years, even ultimately contribute to illness and death. A facilitated segment at the fourth thoracic vertebra may cause decreased vitality of the heart, leading to blockage of the coronary arteries and heart attack.

Therapeutically any approach that interrupts the self-perpetuating activity of the facilitated segment will be helpful. Osteopathy, CranioSacral Therapy and Medical Qigong are helpful in that they reduce the activity of the nervous system, reduce general stress, help endocrine function, assist in postural balancing and improve fluid exchange. An advanced therapist is able to first locate these “facilitated segments” and work with the body’s intelligence to facilitate the normalizing of the flow of Qi and neurological conduction and de-facilitate the “facilitated segments”.

“Would you live with ease, do what you ought, and not what you please.” Benjamin Franklin.

Indeed, we are still operating at the same location and treating patients. Dr John has officially passed on, the “flame and the flow” that is. If anything, our core group is now composed of the 6 practitioners with the greatest longevity at The Upledger Institute Clinic around our teacher, Dr. John . Six amazingly soft and powerful women (yes, including my Upledgered self), each having our own clinical expertise and specialty in our practice of CranioSacral therapy.

As you can read through my blog, I blend CST with Medical Qigong together with my Osteopathic skills.

Following Dr. John E. Upledger, D.O.O.M.M., our beloved teacher, we come to embrace and trust the work he has taught us even more, if anything, just because people come back for it (we might for a brief moment  have thought they were coming back for him). Why? simply because it works!!!.

We keep witnessing the amazing cures that people receive through our hands. Craniosacral therapy keeps growing on us and it will continue to do so. Thank you Dr. John for following the flow and guiding us into its intelligence and helping us define its road maps.

I also wish to acknowledge my dear friend and associate over the years, John Matthew Upledger, Dr. John Upledger’s son, and his organization, for coming back in the “saddle” and helping with the business end of our organization.  The immense work he and his team are producing is facilitating the teachings of natural health and healing to circulate throughout the world, in 28 countries and growing.  It is a great honor and privilege to be part of this group.

It is also a great honor and privilege to have the trust of all of you, people who trust me and have trusted me over the years with your life processes and your family’s. This work is magical and keeps me really busy all day during sessions and I wanted to come out of the treatment room, where I seem to live lately and to share this with everybody.

The winter season is associated with the Kidney season in Traditional Chinese Medicine and the correspondent element is Water. In the human body, the water element represents all body fluids, blood, plasma, lymph, interstitial fluid, etc… all fluids including cerebrospinal fluid. It is Yin, feminine energy, as water pours down towards the Earth. It symbolizes the prenatal energy, DNA, the structure of life, the inherited energy that we have received from our parents and our ancestors, our bones, Jing.

Dr. John’s work and discovery of the CranioSacral system and his pressurestat model which explain the cerebro-spinal fluid flow mechanisms is transforming humanity to the core by helping us understand our body and mind processes. It also further develops (for the therapist) the intelligence of the human hand by its extreme light touch in the interface with the {Body-Mind in Spirit} Unit. The flow takes us, let’s go with the flow…flow, flow, gently down the stream, with the most gentle and subtle touch human hands can achieve, that is pretty much what we do at the Upledger Clinic. This is what we have learned from you Dr. John.

You did train our hands as they just know how to follow the flow; all we need is to get softer and softer to feel the flow and the flow takes us where we need to go and as you always said:

“ Just T R U S T”.  Gratefully and Gracefully and Divinely The Best we can  now and always, yes we are,… we do Dr. John, following your steps- What an Honor, OMG I feel blessed, I want to share.

http://www.time.com/time/innovators_v2/alt_medicine/profile_upledger.html

Qigong is a personal practice and it means “skills of cultivating vital energy”, or “the ability to work with the electromagnetic energy of the body” and is a practice on its own. Practicing Medical Qigong therefore in itself entails first and foremost a diligent personal Qigong practice. “Physician, Heal Thyself” said Jesus in Luke 4:23.

Knowledge and Humility
Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self requires strength;
(chap. 33, tr. Feng and English) DAO DE CHING

Before working on someone else, I must work on myself. And I diligently do, although the practice of Qigong is not a spiritual practice per say, it has replaced all the other practices for me and continues to be my priority; Daily and before treating patients, I practice Qigong and this gives me Qi, energy and a flow to the work I do like nothing else can. It goes beyond any of the multitude of “techniques” I must have learned along the way. The flow takes over my hands and my energy and guides me, steps by steps with great ease and I become the vehicle and the channel for the flow, that knows, exactly what the patient I am treating needs, better than what my rational thinking could ever conceive.

The practice of Qigong encompasses the training of the body and mind and it includes meditation and gentle movement. Over the years I have been blessed to receive Daoist training and teachings from prominent Chinese Qigong Masters, including Master Binhui He (Beijing, Hong-kong. Master of the year at the World Congress on Qigong in 1999), Doctor Effie Chow (East-West Academy, and the Chairman of The World Congress of Qigong) as well as the teachings of Dr. John Upledger DO.

For the last 3 years, I have continued my studies of Medical Qigong with The International Institute of Medical Qigong and have attained  and now achieving the Master’s Degree Level. I will be entering a time of intense practice for the completion of this mastering process and therefore will be off internet and social media for a while, fine-tuning and strengthening my electromagnetic field and skills for the completion of the challenging upcoming test and  I just wanted you to know why.

I wish you all the most Wonderful Blessed Holidays. Peace Health and Happiness.

Qi Be with you Now and Always, with Love.

Cloe Couturier – Master Zhao De Ren. LMT. CO, Cst-D, MQM.

The practice of CranioSacral Therapy is  a life journey both as a giver and a receiver since it is all about facilitating self-healing processes at all levels of being. This facilitation itself promotes its cultivation, time after time, furthering the comprehension of its mechanisms both from the standpoint of both  receiver and giver. Facilitating self-healing is helping the person’s body to heal till completion, so that symptoms never come back. The person can move on with his or her own life without any residual activity nor need for further intervention nor drugs. It also means that the original cause or “primary lesion” as we refer to in Osteopathy, has been addressed,  solved, resolved and dissolved.

Little was known from this principles in the western model of Medicine until Dr. A.T. Still D.O, the founder of Osteopathy in the late 1800’s. His work and teachings are based on the precept that the body can self-heal . This was a major breakthrough form the reductionist  vliew of allopathic Medicine and the beginning of the merging between Eastern and Western Medicine. “Your patient is your teacher” says Dr. John Upledger D.O. and “you are so right Dr. John!”. As a practitioner, the more we practice CranioSacral therapy,  the more we facilitate self-corrective/ self-healing mechanisms, the faster the person’s body will reveal the core pieces since this work is all based on trust and repetition. The person’s “inner physician”(IP) as Dr. John coined it, will interface with the “outer physician”/ practitioner only if the relationship is abled and trusted. We are all familiar with the knowing feeling that we may have experienced from someone ’s touch: “I trust and like your touch” or “stay away from me”. “Abled” is in the sense that the IP sees it’s own reflection and becomes aware of its own glitches which it will self-correct since it will work through the hands of the outer physician/ practitioner. Nobody, nothing can control this event. It is there or it is not and the practitioner may be going through loops to attempt to engage in the interface and might with sincere negotiation reach the surface of this relationship, with great deference and respect. If the IP does not trust the therapist, the person won’t come back for more. That is obvious. Over time and with experience, the practitioner progresses, acquiring skills and knowledge, patience and virtus, as well as a good handle on the relationship with their own Inner Physician.  This allows the interface with greater ease and will reveal the person’s “primary lesion” fast and clearly making the healing possible both as a giver and a receiver.

http://www.osteopathy1000.org/sr_anne/sr_anne_brooks.htm

When I listen to Sister Ann, I feel this amazing feeling of peace and tranquility. I love the way Sister Ann talks about Dr. John E. Upledger D.O, O.M.M. and the way she tells her story and how Dr. John inspired her to become an Osteopath herself after he taught her and empowered her to heal from what was considered by the medical community an “incurable illness”. This interview represents the meeting of Science and Spirituality at the edge of Medicine today when Eastern and Western principles meet for the highest good of the patient. We all are designed and gifted with an inherent ability to self-correct and heal and we need to focus more on exercising these gifts. Osteopathy, CranioSacral Therapy and Medical Qigong are 3 modalities, that promote that empowerment. When I work on patients, I teach a lot and eventually the “therapist-patient”relationship becomes more of a “teacher-student” relationship . I like to empower people who want to be empowered. The teachings happen in the moment, we never know what we are going to get. Sometimes, a simple brief piece of aware-consciousness can be the turning point; Dr. John (Upledger) knew Sister Ann could heal, the other doctors didn’t, how could she have felt any differently until she was taught another way?

At the very end of our session today…

Cloe‘: ” Carol, you really knew you were supposed to come here for a session…”
Carol: ” Yep, I knew.”
Cloe’. ” How did you know?”
Carol: ” I don’t know.”

After facilitating Carol ’s release of her sphenobasilar junction,
- the joining of the 2 main bones of the cranium, the Sphenoid and the Occiput-
I had this amazing feeling of satisfaction that my hands diligently training and practicing for over 2 decades now, could accomplish such incredible feast with hardly any effort and less than 5 gr pressure.

Carol, had been suffering from migraine headaches and came for a session.

Non only my hands could first feel Carol’s cranial motion which is measured in 0.5 microns of motion, they could also identify the problem in the motion within these bones and their orbs and furthermore they could guide Carol to correct the issue by moving with the rhythm of her tissues while guiding the direction for the release.

The same feeling that I have for my hands doing things that my mind could never even begin to conceive…an “inner knowing-feeling” of the right thing to do, the right place to go, is what drove Carol to my table today:)
Do we really need to know how it happens?

Healing is an ART ~ Both as a giver and a receiver and all it requires, is to be present.