Are we all trees waiting for the wind?
Stress and resilience
There is a well known true story of the trees that grew in the protected eco-environment of the experimental Biosphere2 project in America. Scientists were taken aback when the trees began to fall over for no apparent reason as they reached a certain size. As it turned out, the absence of wind meant the trees had not been stressed enough to strengthen themselves to bear their own weight.
It’s quite usual, when you ask somebody about their health, for the response to be an account of what doesn’t feel right. You may get a list of symptoms like pain, anxiety or depression. Whatever the particular symptom, It’s often interpreted as a sign of disease rather than a call to health - we could turn the meaning of it around.
Reframing symptoms
How would it be if we thought of our symptoms as essential and life affirming, like the wind is to the tree? Maybe we could frame our discomforts as benevolent sirens calling us to wholeness, each of which point to a part of ourselves that we need to pay attention to in order to understand and integrate. The attention we pay and presence we bring, gently allowing the wind in to temper us and release the hardened and brittle patterns that have become tired and complaining; making way for resilience, flexibility and creativity.
Wind as breath of life
In biodynamic craniosacral therapy we hold that health is an energetic field that is always present and is always calling us back to wholeness. As we move through life, from womb to adult, we encounter all kinds of adverse experiences, if we don’t have the capacity to process and integrate them at the time, then the body holds on to them in a pattern of defence and compensates the best it can. But this move, whilst protective, simultaneously limits our capacity to express ourselves.
These events are stored and held in implicit memory, mostly under the radar of the conscious thought, but the stories contained within them drive our behaviour. Because these narratives live tucked away, the gentle wind of presence and attention doesn’t get to soften and open to the ground of meaning in them, leaving us fragile, disconnected and breathheld; always fearful of collapse.
In my sessions, all we do really is to prepare ourselves by finding centre and ground, and then get quiet enough to hear what parts of us need attention. Then we just allow the gentle wind of presence do it’s work.
Health and optimism
My last client yesterday, said after the treatment,‘I feel a deep sense of optimism’. I loved that remark because it meant that some part of her had touched and made connection with that ever present field of health.
When we can hold optimism now, as a reality, everything about us expresses to reflect that. The physiology the psychology and the biology all shift and orient to the new theme of health - and we’re on our way…
If you would like some help to let in the winds of change, I’d love you to get in touch.