How Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy works Part 2. How to be with discomfort

I turn on the TV

I turn on the TV, I open a bottle of beer, I eat something, I go shopping, I run a marathon, I get drunk, I blame everyone, I don’t ask for help, I don’t ask for love, I avoid people, I big myself up, I act out, I hate myself, I punch somebody.

How many different ways can we find to avoid the discomfort of feeling something that we don’t want to feel?

All this everyday kind of life stuff that we do, see and hear about, comes from a mostly unconscious desire to shake off pain; unresolved, from the past.

Too much

Unresolved pain is that which was too much to bear at the time. When this happens the protective intelligence of the nervous system knows to isolate, freeze and bury the experience. Holding back the full force until such time that it can be released, integrated and healed.

The nervous system then forever re-presents the past in the form of pain, anxiety and bad feelings, compelled by the inherent drive to become whole and the expectation that we can someday find the stability to process it. And if we can’t, we outsource it – we do something else instead.

We don’t realise, mostly, that the discomfort which threads itself in and out of our lives means something; it carries with it information about ourselves - How else are we to know about how to heal, than to listen to what our bodies are telling us?

Gold in the can of worms

Really, it makes perfect sense to think of pain as information about how to heal and that avoiding the truth of it is forever kicking the can down the road.

The can has worms stamped on the label, but it’s actually full of gold - if you know how to open it safely

And why would i want to…

Why on earth would I want to be with my suffering, when I would rather be without it?

Healing isn’t something we do to someone, healing is a universal drive that wants to move towards integration. But sometimes we need help to channel the energy within us, in order for the movement to happen.

The moment we ‘choose to be with’ our discomfort, everything changes. Rather than retreating like it was something stalking us from the shadows we could learn to stop, turn and face it with compassion. This not easy work because pain is scary and it hurts.

But something rather miraculous happens when, little by little, we acquire the capacity to open towards the stream of information from the past – we realise that it won’t kill us after all. There is a part of us that is much bigger, that can finally receive, understand and transform the energy held in an internal trauma bond.

Finding the flow of life again

And we can relinquish that energy back into the flow of life, in the service of love and health where it was always supposed to be.

So this too is the work of craniosacral therapy, we coach and support our clients in the art of being present with pain as it arises in the body. And then we hold the listening and processing that wants to happen as we witness together the stream of information from the past. In this context of relationship and safety our withheld parts can be seen, reconnect and become whole.

If you would like some help with being with parts of yourself that don’t feel so good, please get in touch.